Ship of Fools

You might be wondering why I have chosen this title. I was passing by the television seeing the news reporting on the 200000 Britons who leave every year for new shores.

Fools! Do they not realise that Australian and New Zealand driving laws are more draconian and more punitive and more databased than the English system?

New Zealand always says it needs more skilled workers and it actively encourages stupid Britons to go there. Why do I say stupid?

Here is a question for those people emigrating. Why do you think there is a lack of skilled workers out there? Have you looked into why there are so many New Zealanders and Australians in London? Do you realise that New Zealand would not be able to cope if all those with a New Zealand passport or heritage came home to those islands? Do you know that there are more New Zealanders living outside New Zealand than there are in the mother country.


Do you not know the reasons why they have left? One very switched on New Zealander told me when I worked there briefly that New Zealand has two main exports.

Sheep and Children!

Plain fact of the matter is that both Australia and New Zealand are police states.

They have a small enough population for it to be very easy to database everyone and cross reference them to their cars and any other purchase. They even limit how much you can spend every day. Sorry I don't like that. Its too much nanny and mothering by the state and it really grates when you have a windfall because you have to spend a week spending it rather than one day.

I was forever being stopped in New Zealand because I had not purchased and databased myself with a computer referenced driving licence and therefore when I bought a car using my international driving licence the police could not cross reference the car with its driver on its database so I kept on being pulled over. Is that fair? NO

Now our government talks of bringing Identity cards and I hate the idea. Why? Probably because I know how it will be used. You will be tracked and cross referenced everywhere you go.

If they are not able to do that with you then they will stop you and ask you why you do not have so and so card or why you are not on the database etc.

I intend to leave also before that happens but to a place where all these concerns are not even going to happen

Facebook and its alter ego

We've all heard about Facebook now haven't we. Well it has an alter ego called Arsebook

Made me laugh anyway. Facebook seems to be taking over my life because there is so much to do on it and because my usual haunt is off limits (long story).

Sheeple

Sheeple of the world
Line up for your slaughter
Your bell has tolled
and you are used for barter

Your DNA is databased
Your identity can be erased
You follow blindly
and baa- baa kindly

Your wool will be shorn
Your hooves will be torn
Yet you shall follow
Being so shallow

It is Google's Ninth Birthday

Happy Birthday Google


Without google there would be no free blogger and no blogspots now; so Many happy returns of the day from this Blogger

Never discuss Politics on the first date

That's my thought for the day. It comes from me watching Brothers and Sisters last night.

On a separate note I had a weird dream this morning, I had gone back to visit my old school and I met four of my old teachers who were exceptionally happy to see me.

Mr S, Mr W, Mr F, and Mr C and two of them were going to do a parachute jump.

Like I say it was a weird dream.

Thankfully I have realised what it means. It means that whatever you do in life, if you put your heart and soul into it, it is worthwhile and part of your life. Seeing them in my dream has given me the courage of my convictions.

Its like they are cheering me on and that from your original teachers is a good portent of things to come.

On another note I see Jack Straw is to review the Self Defence law Link here
This is probably needed but I have a proviso for Jack.

Make sure that the level of reasonable force is appropriate. If you injure and hurt someone who burgles you, or think that because you are using self defence you can let rip and be overly nasty then that is wrong. That will only escalate the situation for as we know injured animals are the most dangerous.

There is also the old adage. Do as you would be done by.

Be careful Jack. Don't put people in danger with this and what's more don't make them into pseudo-police officers either or you risk bringing the fascist state a little bit more closer to full reality.

The Lord's Prayer meets Dodi Al-Fayed

Our Dodi Al-Fayed, who art in heaven,
Dodi Al-Fayed be thy name.
Thy time has come,
thy will be ignored,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our Daily Express.
And forgive us our French Underpasses,
as we forgive the driver who crashed and killed us.
And lead us not into another tunnel,
but deliver us from Henri Paul.
For thine is the Mercedes Benz,
the power and the glory. remember me for ever and ever.
Amen

Kindly supplied by John Hirst

In homage to Zinzine which is no more

Posts maybe infrequent

Posting may be infrequent. Apologies to the regulars. One is having a semaine horribilis

Northern Rock loses 2 billion pounds cash

Savers have been pulling out their money.

Now that's economics at work

We are all German now

Blog anzeigen, Im einem neuem fenster?

Blogger has been having a little joke perhaps with us all recently

All the instructions are in German

This is the case with all Google blogs which is funny really.

I understand quite a bit of German but for other people it can be a little foreign

For example:Tastaturkürzel: drücken Sie Strg zusammen mit

Between a rock and a hard place

I talk of course of Northern Rock's debacle, of its crisis over the last few days.
Should you take your money out? and further worsen its position or leave it in and worry yourself to death? Last night on BBC News 24 I was stunned to see someone I knew complaining about their inability to access their online account with Northern Rock. I've walked my dog with her many a time and she's looked after my dog too overnight.

Strange how the whole world becomes very much smaller sometimes

All the Zeds! Zopiclone, Zaleplon, Zolpidem?

Reports in the newspapers that Madeleine was sedated and overdosed. I saw them in our local Co-op proclaiming it on the front pages of the Wail and maybe the Excess aswell

Question is which Zed made her and the twins sleep so heavily? or was it our favourite Z the benZodiaZepines? Zzzzzz Snore.

Catching Zeds is one of my friend's euphemisms for sleep. It also happens to be the first letter of no less than three hypnotics (generic names)

Gerry and Kate have dismissed these claims.

Question is did they or didn't they? We don't know. Worrying times ahead folks.

I will not point a finger at anyone. At this current time nobody knows exactly what happened.

Swiss being racist

This isn't new news, Most of us enlightened people knew that getting a Swiss passport was the preserve of the right wing white middle class in Switzerland and having been there for generations doesnt automatically give you the right either. Its like the myth that there is no Swiss Navy.

Edit: Has anyone else seen the film called The Swissmakers? Die Schweizermacher?

Thatcher meets Brown?

This is just the first step? We knew that Tony was her natural successor but it seems it was the one eyed man all along.

Madeleine McCann with sonic screwdriver

Is it me or is she holding a sonic screwdriver? Is she a timelord in disguise?

The taxman cometh

Taxes and Death the two most bitter truths of life

Am I bovvered?

The revenue is a churning machine

Disgusted of d' advocates

Lawyers, well what can I say . They are one bunch of ( insert rude word of choice)

its enough to make me sit the CPE and go and earn £200 an hour plus vat and do the relevant articles.

Im fed up today and it shows.


I warned you that blogging would be infrequent didn't I?

Blogging likely to be infrequent over next week

I say likely but you never can tell.

Im going to be busy with certain things and this may prevent me from just sitting down and spewing blog content with witty repartee and political comment.

The Galloping Beaver: One of life's little monsters walks free

The Galloping Beaver: One of life's little monsters walks free

Edit Update

He was sacked at the beginning of this month and no longer has his job

Small comfort for his soon to be exwife

Creative Juices not flowing so

I'll post up the start of what I thought might be a novel but is going nowhere fast and let the public that do come here decide whether it should be McCanned or McStarted again

Colvin's Story ( I dreamt the name up)

Sitting at his window Colvin yawned deeply and sighed. He was bored, bored stiff having been there three months in the deep countryside with nothing to do and no inspiration had come to him about his new writing project. He had had many false starts and he was now thoroughly fed up of all his poor efforts. He could not understand why his writer’s block should be affecting him this way.

It had been a cool summer, with lots of rain and lots of time spent indoors, and it seemed that since the ardour of the summer had cooled so had his writing abilities.
He resolved that he must start a new type of writing and to experiment with characters and story plots.

Sunday had started early and he needed provisions from the local store before making his return to London later on that week, the summer let had come to an end and it was time to go back and face the rat race, the noise and smells of North London.

Summer was over and autumn was beginning and Colvin’s mind was turning to other things.

Colvin was annoyed he had spent three months here in the Lake district searching for inspiration and none had come, He had certainly enjoyed being here but it had proved a fruitless exercise and one that had not actually involved him in writing a jot and his agent would be on the phone in a few weeks asking him when his next book would be ready.

Sighing Colvin got in to his car and drove to the supermarket with a heavy heart.

Inspiration was a fickle thing, and he had had plenty for his first book, drawing on his dreams and his wild imagination which had wowed the critics and the reluctant literary agents who are loath to take on a book unless they think it can really sell and are prepared to pay for its self promotion.

However as he browsed through the supermarket aisles not thinking about anything in particular his eyes wandered over to a father with a small child, who was being rather difficult. Colvin passed them and thought nothing more of it.

However thoughts were forming in his head so that by the time he had got to the checkout a plot line had started to form.

The father was called Richard and the son Danny, they lived in London and Danny went to a special school however Danny wasn’t really progressing and Richard being a thoughtful soul was keen to understand why, but had not got a proper explanation from the teachers, nor had he had any joy when he had gone there and taken a week off work to sit and see what actually happened.

It was time for Richard to take things to the next level and to install a little spy camera in the classroom, working in the IT industry he had already installed web cams at his home and he figured it would not be too much of an invasion of the school’s privacy as he was indeed desperate to find out what really was happening there and he figured that a week or twos footage would accurately tell him exactly what the real story behind Danny’s lack of progress was and the way he used to hate going to school and leaving Richard behind and would often be red eyed and irritable when he came home though Danny had never told Richard why he was like that.


Richard was suspecting either that the teachers were not bothering to give Danny any attention or that the other kids were being beastly or worse still something else was happening but he didn’t really want to think more about that possibility.


Colvin smiled at the checkout lady, and numerous beeps later he left with bags full of provisions and a thin plotline that he hoped would start to flesh out more as he began his preparations to leave and to tackle the M6 down to London.


Needless to say its copyright so if I see it in any novels prepare for battle

Its time to tell

What happened to James and the reason this blog started 18 months since July 7/7 and the bomb blasts that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more and silently injured a lot more.

I'll say it here cos I know this isn't going to be read that often( my blogstats for visitors aren't that great after all) but James had both his legs blown off and his arms below the knees and at the elbow.
He was the man, one of the rescuers describes as trying to get up but not being able to( which I found on the BBC website by accident hidden away in somebody's account though haven't been able to find since) though the official line is that he died instantly. God alone knows what exactly happened. He was in the tube until July 9th in a pool of his festering blood and guts.

He was barely 28. He would have borne no resemblance to the curly headed, freckled young man with a few extra pounds that I knew, as his hair and features would have been burnt off by the force of the explosion.

He was very near to the explosion in fact he would have been standing less than two feet away from Jermaine Lindsay, and he got on at Kings Cross on the first carriage
at the set of double doors that Jermaine had.

Rachel would have been standing less than 12 feet away from him but as she describes on the first post of her blog it was less than standing room only it was, as I describe it often when I travel on the tube, as Sardine time.

A very promising young man, with a Politics degree no less got blown apart and the ripples have only just subsided in my head because I can type this without getting tearful and without getting sad. I have as they say come to terms with it, its taken a lot of time and a lot of medication or maybe its because I have taken a benzodiazepine this afternoon and I can do this and not scream with anger at God or life or fate or destiny and am able to describe James's final moments on the tube that day.

What prompted this post?

Rachel's account of what happened to Danny Biddle, I tripped by it by accident today and thought mmm thats the guy that was on the telly the other day.

I had had no idea what had happened in fact I was rather ignorant but it seems he was in the same position as James though he survived and James did not

Talking about an ex lover in the way that I have only serves his memory. I hope that James is watching and reading from the ether and I hope it is a fitting memorial that I alone of the many people he met can actually crystallise what happened to him and post it up for whomever reads this blog post.

This post is dedicated to the 26 people who lost their lives that July 7th 2005

May our thoughts never forget them.

Henry

Leisure

"LEISURE"

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

By Wm. Henry Davies.
(Wm. Henry Davies (1871-1940)

Book Review

Its not often I recommend a book on just reading a little article but in the case of
A Throne in Brussels: Britain, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Belgianization of Europe
by Paul Belien I have to wholeheartedly recommend it.

It seems that Belgium is on the point of splitting apart and surprisingly for those of us of a certain age that it is a relatively young country having only been in existence for 166 years.

I certainly didn't know that nor that the first King of the Belgians was Queen Victoria's father in law

I knew that Victoria did exactly what Leopold did and tried to get all the monarchies on board by having nine children and marrying them off to the crowned heads of Europe such that when she died she had no less than nine monarchs and two emperors as relatives following her on the gun carriage on which her coffin rested.


It seems Leopold was the Tony Blair of his day except he wasn't the poodle rather all his lovers were

If the earth were only a few feet in diameter

I f
the earth were only a
few feet in diameter, floating a
few feet above a field somewhere,
people would come from everywhere to
marvel at it. People would walk around it
marveling at its big pools of water, its little pools and the water flowing between the pools.
People would marvel at the bumps on it, and the
holes in it, and they would marvel at the very thin
layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in
the gas. The people would marvel at all the creatures
walking around the surface of the ball, and in the water.
The people would declare it precious because it was the
only one and they would protect it so that it would not
be hurt. The ball would be the greatest wonder
known, and people would come to behold it, to be
healed, to gain knowledge, to know beauty and
wonder how it could be. People would love it,
and defend it with their lives, because they
would some how know that their lives,
their own roundness, could be nothing
without it. If the earth were
only a few feet in
d i a m e t e r.


I have reproduced one of my favourite poems for today, the day that all the Hindus in India celebrate the birth of Krishna

Light Pollution

London 4th February 2003

No wonder I can never see the stars at night

Best place to go stargazing is on a small boat in the middle of the sea

You'd be surprised at how bright the stars are at night

Three day tube Strike

Sure enough the tube people want to strike and cripple London.

Story here from BBC news

The roads will not cope with this and there will be massive traffic jams

The only way to get round this is to use a scooter/ motorbike

Praise be that Im not going to be in London to witness it