It Comes Back To Bite You

The level of incompetence in the ruling class is breathtaking in the extreme.  With the Iranian war going on, fuel prices (heating oil) have jumped over 50% in a few days.  I understand that Petrol and Diesel are jumping and luckily when I was out at the weekend I filled my tank at about the lowest rate I've seen form months.

So our Business Secretary says we must "double down" on our Carbon Neutral Targets!  What planet is this man on?  The punishment is already a huge element of tax for now scientific reason or benefit other than filling the coffers of the fat bureaucrats.  We stopped our own Oil and Gas industry and now we are facing the very thing we have all been saying that if supply from abroad that we now fully rely on starts to dry up where are you going to get your supplies from?  The stuff is right underneath our feet but is ignored in place of importing it from abroad! 

The folly of it all and these imbeciles in government just don't appear to have thought it all through.  You security relies on many things and keeping the lights on is one of them and the more they tamper with its supply the more vulnerable the country becomes.  So concerned are they with pronouns and minutiae control of our everyday lives that they forget the very basics of keeping us safe.  And worse still the uneducated metropolitan elite want more of it.  They just cannot see how dangerous this all becomes as they eat away at our liberties, choose progressiveness of the woke kind and avert their eyes from the utter hell that they are building up for us.

We have turned the heating off and will use the log fire until this blows over (let's hope it does) and will just have to see what contingency plans these idiots in charge actually have.  I suppose the good news is that at times like this it brings the fifth columnists to the surface and more people get to see them for what they are.  

NHS Bucking Fonkers

 Send us your BP readings.  Done - they are slightly above the "recommended" 120 over 80 but apparently higher than the number of 120 over 80 that everybody in the world needs!!!

If you know - you know right.

So they've asked for the next 4 day's readings.  NP I can do that so I click the link and it's not 4 days worth it's 7 days twice a day.  The NHS clearly hasn't sorted this out at all has it.

So I will give 4 readings as they asked and they can whistle for the 14 readings that the link asks for.

I kind of wonder whether all 7 billion of us can all reach the 120 over 80 target?  

Lifting The Mood

 It's all doom and gloom out there at the moment - wars and conflicts, Labour government, and so on but here, the Sun is out for the second day in a row.  It has been grey, raining and gloomy for months but now a change in the Jet Stream (I guess) and weather patterns and the move towards lighter days as we turn to face the sun means that we have blossom everywhere in our Hedgerows particularly and the birds are getting pretty excited as I see nests appearing once again.  Lighter mornings and evening and my mood becomes lifted.

I struggle every year in Autumn and Winter and this year wasn't much different and I've had a couple of pretty depressing years.  I think that will all change soon.  I am almost certain that I will close the business and that will lift a huge weight off of me.  After a few months that should all just be a memory and I can get on with being retired.  Something ties me, like it always does, to try my best and keep working as if I am actually employed by some strange force.  Conditioning from the past perhaps.  

I need to "Get it our of my head!" that I am not an employee slave and whilst I have committed to trying to do my best, surely by now, I have done that?  It all needs to go away and I need to dedicate the remaining years to enjoying myself and my family - my grandchildren too I feel have been neglected and I need to work on that - not to put things right but to actually spend some time with them (if they want to) and doing some things for my family and for me.  I have done a lot for other people and generally had that thrown back in my face so now, let's go and do things for me!

It doesn't need to be anything huge either of course.  Just enjoy the independence and look after myself would be a good start.  

Shaking My Head In Disbelief

 I am probably not alone in wondering what has gotten into people's heads?  I am willing to accept people's opinions and free speech is a given albeit not for our government who dislike it intensely. No, I'm talking about people who's only apparent reaction to almost anything is to take offence, get upset and then double down on their own belief or shoulder chip. 

There's a heavy weight people carry around these days (the Pain Body as Eckhart Tolle would describe it) who's only form of interaction is to be offended or who have ideas that make no scientific or any other sort of sense.

Where were these people for example decrying regimes that existed on the back of piles of their populations killed for ideological reasons?  They weren't there then but now that something is happening that may redress the situation they scream out how unfair it is.  Why not tell that to all the dead, maimed and injured?  Then they become defence and foreign affairs spokesmen and proudly proclaim stuff from Facebook, X and Instagram what world leaders should do and how they should do it among other grievances and the naivety of it all does make me shake my head and wonder whether these people really mean it.  I suppose they do.

There used to be a rule when I was at work which was something along the lines of "Engage your brain before selecting gear"  I wish more people would just take a deep breath, work out what their point is and then say it having worked out what the consequences of their actions and more so, wishes are. 

Dawning Realisation

 I suppose it should come as no surprise to me least of all that the business just doesn't look like it will make it.  This Tuesday a big change will take place in the way things operate and in that change will be the very last chance to see if the App will make it.

So far, some of the signs have been encouraging but having now invested 4 times more than my original budget I am empty handed despite increasing numbers of people interested but, of course, interested doesn't mean buyers.

So I sat down last night and went through the plan for shutting it all down.  I could have done that over a year ago in reality but I wanted to make sure that this long-term project actually saw the light of day and if it had (or didn't have) potential.  The reality is that we don't have the capital like our competitors to flood the market and in many ways, whilst I could put my shoulder to the problem I no longer feel inclined to do so after the way I have been treated.

So with this big change I will give it a couple of weeks and if the fortunes do not change then shut it all down.  It's an easy process but a little complicated by other factors, easy enough to get over though I'd say. 

Perhaps I will strike it lucky and it will all come good but I don't think so.  The good news about shutting it all down would be that I can walk away and get my life back.  That would be great as I was surprised how much of my time this has taken up.  

Having worked on this for 9 years or so, I do feel a little pissed off that the chap who wanted all this assistance has turned on me, walking away and leaving me to it!  I just hope that he fades into the past and never darkens my door again. 

Interesting Times

 It's a strange old world and we've got another couple of wars to deal with in the interim.  We've had a wake up call or at least those of us who are interested in this sort of thing in the Gorton and Denton By Election. The Greens winning was perhaps inevitable but the style of the campaigning and the result should ring alarm bells a bit. The Greens do not seem to be the luvvies we were led to believe and have changed into a sort of far left of Attila the Hun sort of party.  It's a protest vote, of course and that's understandable given the complete shower of excrement we have a a government at the moment but it's how they went about their win that should worry people.  Quite a bit of the canvasing wasn't done in English.  The manner in which people voted is against the "rules" but they overturned the 6th safest seat for Labour demoting them to 3rd.

So it's pretty seismic I'd say, as the two uni-parties were in 3rd and 4th Places with Green in 1st and Reform in 2nd.  In 5th trailing in were the liberal democrats but they both must have lost their deposits as they were only in the hundreds of votes not the thousands.  

I think that people may be worried about this but it is a By Election and that is going to be different to a full election.  I also think that as a protest it works well but a party that wants opne borders, houses for illegals, legalizing Cannabis and Class A drugs, de-funding the police and so on aren't serious contenders.  Their stance on Middle East Politics will get them a certain % of the vote too but quite how they square the LQBTQ community with the Muslim community will be a very interesting mashup. 

What is for sure is that the old two party system has had a shakeup and a new left and new right are appearing.  It's all a bit bitter and squalid to my view and the ugly manner in which this campaign had been conducted doesn't bode well for the future.  I still look on with abject amazement and morbid curiosity as to why I'd want any of them in government at all?  The way this lot have behaved has been disgusting and their naivety is shocking.  Grab the popcorn, settle back and watch the horror show. 

Fix - Temporary

I fixed my door mirror and it will do for now.  It's a different colour but hey ho, it will do the job and at least keeps the water off of the electrics which were exposed.  A few of the lugs were smashed up so it didn't seat quite as neatly as I'd like but a small bit of Duck Tape seems to have held the snapped clip for now.

 I have to do a bit of Motorway driving tonight so that should prove the installation one way or the other.  It's a fix and whilst it looks a bit strange it will have to do as if I'd bothered my insurance company they'd have got me to pay the excess which is about £200 anyway so for £30 it will just have to do.  

It's a car not a work of art and so I don't mind it too much.  Years ago it would have bothered me.  It did with my old Jaguar with its lovely blue and white leather interior but I really like this Volvo, it is a working car and it gets dusty and dirty and is scratched where it rubs along the hedgerows, dirty as it bounces in and out of the potholes and it does its job perfectly.

I'm about to go out to meet some people.  Annoyingly it will cost me £12.50 for the privilege with this ULEZ crap payment and like everything else that is wrong in this country at the moment we all know it makes no difference to health or air quality at all.  It's about the money.  If it was about anything else they'd ban cars wouldn't they?  You can but hope the people of this country wake up from their sleep walking, realise that the magic money tree is in fact their own purses and wallets and do something about it!  After the By Election result last night you wonder what people are thinking?  The Green party are now anything but and a few of my local councillors are Old School environmentalists and their hearts are mostly in the right place.  This new incarnation is the nearest thing to communism dressed up as "be kinder" politics I have ever seen.  Let's see what happens - it looks a bit worrying to me.

 

So What Can I Find To Moan About Today

 Probably everything.  I used to say that we men only have two faults according to me Ex.  Everything we say and everything we do!  LOL.  

And so when you look at the performance of the political parties and the point scoring that was yesterday's PMQs all bluster and no substance, much as it has been for years now and then you look at the petty potty mouthed insults in the By Election happening today it makes you wonder why on earth anyone would vote for these people.  The sectarianism on display was breathtaking and the sheer hypocrisy of the name calling beggars belief.  We are in the schoolyard again, calling out words like "Racist" and so on.  What is going on?  Is that what it has come to these days?  As I've often said here, the weaponisation of words is these days perfectly acceptable.  It's just that and I like that someone actually promoting  sectarian politics is calling out the other party for doing exactly what they are doing?  I cannot remember the actual phrase this chap I once knew used to say, something along the lines of "They are exactly what they accuse you of being" 

They do not discuss their policies they witter on about far away lands, they produce their political leaflets and videos in other languages for those who do not speak English and so on.  If that doesn't boil your piss I don't know what else would.  The messages are unhinged and totally crazy.  One of the parties wants to legalise drugs, all of the drugs, Class A included.  It wants to teach kids how to take them properly.   It wants infant schoolkids to be able to "identify" as whatever gender they want (from 4 onwards).  Can't we let kids be kids anymore?  Then there's the open borders, de-fund the Police and give housing and benefits to illegal aliens.

This is their policy and people will vote for this.  Cast your eyes across the pond and see what that brings and yet people will vote for lawlessness and a return to the Wild West.  The world's gone mad.  Let's see what the results of this By Election turn up.  Sure, it can be seen as a protest vote but who wants to vote for something that will harm you in ways you know not.  The lunatics have taken over the asylum and whether we will be able to shake loose of the insanity currently befalling us remains to be seen. 

Facing Up To Facts

 I see the business in its final throes as I continue to experiment with getting paying customers, of which, so far there are none.  It could be that this is due to the reporting issue they found a couple of weeks back which isn't showing any sales at all.  So I have to come to terms with the fact that whilst people are downloading it now, no one is buying it. And inevitably that means, the business cannot support itself and neither can I continue to support it either much further.

There's only so much cash you can throw at something and the level of work I have put in and the cash injection to pay for the advertising system just isn't producing the results in purchases but is producing downloads.  Next week a new version of that comes into being and so I can give that a few weeks to see if anything improves.  Then of course, a decision needs to be made.  Should things pick up and we get purchases and dependent on how many of those versus the cost to obtain them is the calculation that's required.

I can only keep going if the money in is greater than the money out and if not, the business needs to close.  That's unfortunate but no need to be sentimental about it.  Ii know the chap that started it with me will be less than charitable but facts is facts and that's that. 

You get attached to "your baby" and want it to do well and flourish out in the wider world but either the market isn't right or you come up against some stiff opposition or as in our case we are very late to market by some 8 years of messing around and frankly not listening to me when I suggested to stop making unnecessary futile changes.  You put the thing out there, see if they like it, see if you grow your revenues and if changes are wanted (by customers not some vanity idea) you make the changes and can charge for them.  

Any-road, here we are, decision point coming in the next few weeks and a little bit of me would prefer it to close down so I can get my life back.  

Taxi Update

 Great so I get delayed to go pick up and as I drive through the village a Royal Mail Van driving like Lewis Hamilton on a Race weekend smashes into my mirror and wipes it out - it's notorious and normally I would wind my mirrors in but he came so fast that I had to emergency slow and he just kept going.

Of course I could go via insurance but the components are readily available and less than £50 so I'll do it myself (the excess on the insurance is in the hundreds).  Typical!

Taxi Service And Is It Just Me?

 I'm driving the OH around at the moment and of course, plans have changed and it's me that has to try and accommodate such changes even though I was booked for a specific time and have built MY day around those hours!  Lucky I got the call or I would be sitting outside the wrong place!

In other news why does this happen?  I just ordered £100+ from the Butcher and used my loyalty card points.  Order is confirmed and what's just arrived in my email?  Of course 20% off for the next two hours FFS!  It's not the first time either - it's just so annoying.  Maybe I'll check when these arrive and plan my shopping around the bigger discounts! 

Other than that I see the world has gone crazy with luvvies and all their caring and sharing and be nice stuff shown up for what it is as they did not understand what Tourettes Syndrome actually is even though it was one of the films in the awards!  The world went into ATomic Meltdown and with a little real love and understanding and a knowledge of what it is, they'd have realised quite how ugly and poisonous their shallow, vapid and superficial lives really are? 

These people who tell us what to do are Philistine pig ignorant benighted and worthy of the title "The Ignorati" I think that sums it up but I have other derogatory terms if you'd like? 

SO I'm hanging around now before I go and pick up in the rush hour, another blessing - Not!  AT least I've done something useful with AI today as I got it to detail out my financial calculations for the club subscriptions.  It was really useful as I brain dumped all the details and calculations, numbers, costs and so on and it was brilliant in allowing me to look at the figures in a different light.  I have to say that it was a real Godsend and once I had the figures resolved it produced a letter to go with the figures, back up rationale and a spreadsheet to use the next time too!  That saved me a good few hours. 

Leave Us/Me Alone

Woke up to the HMRC radio advert.  Unbelievably patronizing and it sounded all the world to me like a full on piss take.  We're changing so you need to do this.  They have gone from yearly accounts for sole traders and the like to quarterly reporting.  These are sole traders mind you and they are being forced to report quarterly like some USA corporation!  What is the actual point of it apart from making life even worse for them.  They have to pay to buy "approved software" so it has to be online now too.  

I cannot be alone in looking at these draconian rules which aren't made to do anything other than piss us off and benefit the lazy gits in the Civil Service and make out lives miserable.  Does anyone actually think it will increase revenues to the Government?  In fines maybe but who has the wherewithal to do this level of administration when you are a sole trader or self employed or a landlord? 

Some spreadsheet jockey has realised that it makes their lives easier and pushed the burden on to the working guy who has to purchase software and make more of his working week as an unpaid clerk to HMRC.  When IR35 arrived I took my foot off the throttle and shut down my business.  It was hard enough to run the business anyway.  You are responsible for your own sick pay and contrary to popular belief you paid taxes at a company and personal level and NI and with all that on your plate why bother?

I hate being told what to do or having decisions made for me.  If you do that you would find immense kick back.  We used to finish work at 4 p.m. on a Friday and often my arse of a boss would say there's a meeting the other side of London at 4:30 or some such and he'd do it to everyone.  My response would be along the lines of "Well you are going to be lonely" or variants to the same.  Don't book things until you ask me - he used to be as thick as mince on this stuff.  He may not have had a home life but come Friday evening, that was family time and so tough, you set up the meeting, you go to it.

Any such order that arrived was treated the same.  You don't make up your mind on what I will do. You don't take decisions in my name or setup anything without my say so.  It makes me angry just recalling these idiots,  On one occasion someone set up an 8 am meeting for me on Monday and emailed me at 6 on a Friday evening.  I drove into work which was around 150 miles away from the meeting.  Opened my email to see this "instruction".  First, he worked for me not vice versa so had no authority to do so and as I told him when I phoned him up, he has neither the authority to do that and what made him think that I can access emails from home?  Apparently he could.  When I explained how far away I was and that the meeting was to start in a few moments and that I had not made the meeting arrangements and that he had, he had better make the apologies.  I also asked him what was wrong with a telephone call to make the appointment.

I had a lot of trouble with him until I was able to get rid of him from my team.  So don't tell me what to do, don't arrange things that I am not party too and leave me alone.  

Knowing The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing

 "Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" is a famous quote from Oscar Wilde's 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan, defining a cynic as someone focused solely on cost or monetary worth rather than intrinsic, emotional, or ethical value. It critiques materialism and a shallow, profit-driven society. 

It's something I come across quite a bit and no more so than someone who has no idea what goes on behind the scenes and is quick to trash the work undertaken with some idea in their head about what should happen based on their life experience in the business which, in layman's terms is the square root of sweet Fanny Adams!  

I used to find this when people queried how much my quotes were for certain projects and they could not get their heads around the fact that you cannot discount people costs.  You can possibly do it on capital equipment but I cannot reduce the people and get the same work done in the same amount of time.  I used to enjoy asking them which person we should lose from the team and what part of the project didn't they want delivered!  It's my fun facts time where surely it would be easier to have a baby that rather than a lady having to produce a bay in nine months we could get 9 ladies to do it in one month!

The other one was it takes a month to build one mile of motorway and so if you increase the workforce 30 fold you can do it in a day!  Flawed logic and it's impossible to actually achieve even if you were able to as you'd also need 30 times the machinery and all the materials to arrive in the correct order and in huge quantities.  Everyone would be getting in each others way and the overall logistics just could not achieve it.

In many ways this is how politicians appear to view the world, in a way modelled by home grown spreadsheets and an idealized view of their world.  They apply their own rules to things, not asking the experts if it is (MY favourite word comping up...) DO-ABLE.  Yes, can your idea actually be feasibly implemented and of course in 101 cases out of a 100 of course it can't.  

There's also the knock on effect.  input and output, cause and effect, impact on other projects and so on.  It's what I used to do planning at an Executive (Programme) level.  I used to watch their eyes glaze over as I spoke about the overall Programme rather than the individual projects that made up that Programme and how project managers (I used to be one so I know) and sponsors were focused only on their part of the overall scheme and had no cognizance of the other things going on around them unless they were delivering into one or more of those projects.

A delay in one project could cause problems across the whole spate of projects and cause bigger problems elsewhere.  A one week delay on an individual project could cause months of delays elsewhere.  Operating at their own project they could not see the whole thing but it did have an impact.  More often than not huge impacts could be caused by something very small at the project level.

How many times I had to explain this I've lost count.  There'd always be some smart arse with no connection to the overall programme ready to offer their 'considered opinion' and we often used the phrase to laugh at them "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong!"

Is it worth explaining to these people the error of their ways?  I don't know, I'm tired of attempting to do so as they get all defensive and don't listen to the explanation anyway! 

Turtles All The Way Down?

 It's beginning to feel that way I think.  Just look at the complex situation where we find ourselves in and as we scratch the very outer surface of the huge almost unimaginable web of lies, corruption and deceit I think we all know that this is hardly all of it and that it goes very deep and to many layers of depravity that we cannot or are not allowed to see.

It should shake us to our very core but we are so used to these levels of depravity and corruption that it no longer shocks us.  The can of worms is perhaps an infinite number of cans of worms each as disgusting and sickening as the previous ones.  

Are we being fed a little at a time to make it acceptable?  Are we defending out own sanity by blocking this stuff out of our minds "well it hasn't affected me or my family?"  or is there something else at play here?  

What is more concerning is that these things involve children and again, can we really fathom out what is going on or what has happened and why is no one tackling it?  We aren't being told the half of it and how deep does this scumbaggery go?   

It looks bad from the little we know of it and I imagine as it is leaked out to us in snippets it won't look as bad as what it actually is.  

Choreographed Political Theatre

 Well imagine a press release all ready and waiting for something to happen?  Really?  Of course, things don't happen these days without the spin doctor's say so and this close choreography beats and synchronized Olympic event hands down. 

It should not surprise us in the slightest but I am certain that half of the public "buy it" and the rest of us roll our eyes towards the heavens and wonder when will they realise that half of us no longer listen to (or if we do don't believe) these propaganda press releases and related actions.

It's tiresome and see through.  It insults the intelligence and undermines democracy and trust in the very people who are meant to do our bidding rather than trying all the time to rule us.  They rarely  use words that mean they are meant to rule on our behalf and instead use words like power.  "When we get power", "When we are in power".

Talking of power we had two old ladies living not far from me both fined by local enforcement officers £300 each for the heinous crime of...... leaving a charity collection bag on their doorstep for the charity van to come and collect (as per the instructions on the bag).  Not lying on the pavement or in the road, no, one their very own doorsteps.  That's the shit head low life council for you.  We pay their wages, we vote them into power, they fine our old age pensioners on the spot the bastards, I feel utter contempt for these low life gits (as you might have guessed) and everything that is wrong in the UK now can be wrapped up in that one act!

I was involved in a pubic consultation last year about parking where I explained that if they were to introduce parking fees in this particular area that it was as easy to go park on the streets nearby as there were no parking restrictions there.  Did they listen? You know the answer as well as I do and guess what?  The local roads are now clogged up with people parking and it is causing local traffic issues - obviously and no one is using the car park as predicted.  Useless pricks the lot of them.  Why ask if you aren't going to listen and what we, the ordinary general public, who are loaded with real life experience, worldly hard earned from life's hard knocks and having to face these public servant made issues every bloody day?  

It's like everyone can see what the government's next failure is going to be before they do, what fiscal crap they publish, what the budget will mean and lo and behold it comes to pass as if by magic and is a huge surprise to them and yet we've all been saying it to them since the lauched their latest policy etc.

The whole thing is beyond a joke.  It's all spin and ideology with no risk reviews.  

As I often quote from the late Sir John Harvey Jones: “Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.”

Retirement - Decision Soon

 I found myself at it again the other day,  thinking that I needed to be doing something and of course, there really isn't anything to be doing.  There is and there isn't.

The App and my journey are continuing.  I have given it until March to see what happens and then I need to make a decision either to continue or close it down.  It would be nice for it to be winner but it isn't looking as if it will be based on improving views but no actual purchases.  I am surprised a bit as it is very different to other subscription Apps but it is what it is of course.  So perhaps in another month I will be able to make that decision.

I have things to do, of course, but I still have this sort of frozen impasse where I feel I should be doing something but I am not doing it (whatever it may be) and working out what to do with myself.  I'd like to be doing something more than I am doing now but there's getting the enthusiasm for it and this want to have a rest.  Just don't do anything at all but knowing me, that's not going to happen.  I can busy myself with hobbies but so many things these days have lost their joy and I cannot be bothered.  When I do get motivated well that's different of course but where is that old spark and how do I get out of the rut I am in? 

I find myself quite settled in my home and happy with my own company but really do want to get out and sort stuff out.  I suppose I will be able to work this all out in 4 or 5 weeks time?  I hope so.