Blog Archive 1

19.04.09

Susan Boyle, What a sensation!!! Absolutely top world class !!!! I was astonished and very moved by her singing and performance!!!!!

- thrilling, entrancing, most emotional experience in a long while! And for free!!!!

Susan's performance is the most remarkable thing I have seen in all my life!!! Not just because I was so surprised watching ‘just’ a talent show on TV, but because of the supreme beauty of her singing! You deserve all of your success because you are you!!!! I praise God (and you!) all the very more because of your marvellous and very wonderful talent!!!

What a complete missed opportunity by the Government. They could and should set maximum dividends of 8%, maximum borrowing rate of 12% and forget the notion of an uncontrolled financial sector. We presently have people chasing 0% credit card short term rates (with an implied 3% charge for transfers). This is great in the short term for the card companies. It gives them a guaranteed 3% upfront cash advance each time from customers whose credit rating is good; (At least when they take out the new card, unless their job goes in the meantime). What happens to customers if there are fewer or no such deals in the future doesn’t do thinking about.

Presently we have people who are affording to eat and stay warm, depending entirely on their credit cards. Overdraft rates are at their highest ever. What will these people do when their available finance runs out?

Maximum dividends of 8% would stop banks and corporations taking unnecessarily high risks. It would force prudence in investments. It would also stop wilful profiteering and money-stealing by corporate greed. Maximum borrowing rates of 12% would stop wilful exploitation, often of poor or very poor people , and ensure people have a chance of affording interest payments. It would also mean people affording to pay off some of the capital borrowed. It might also mean FINANCIAL STABILITY instead of boom or bust politics.

There should also be a limit to price rises, especially for super rich companies like mobile phone service providers, utility companies etc, say a maximum close or very close to the RPI.

But no, the government is putting extra money from public borrowing into ‘Will of the mist’ ideas. Look for smaller North Sea oil and gas fields, putting MORE MONEY into the coffers of multi-national giants. Off-shore wind farms – Heavens, we are a nation of amateur sailors in coastal waters, and even with GPS (and many don’t / can’t use this), strong currents, adverse winds and dense sea fogs (Often!!!) mean possible disaster for amateur sailors; or even more immense risks for rescue services (just don’t ask them to navigate off-shore wind farms at the best of times (with a helicopter) or in rough sea conditions or limited visibility (with Lifeboats)).

What happens if a mega cruiser with 5000+ people on board has a mechanical failure and drifts or is pushed by sea/ wind conditions into an off-shore wind farm? Disaster of multi-mega Titanic proportions. Huge Oil tanker strikes off-shore wind farm. Don’t say it can’t happen, over time, many as strange things HAVE and DO happen.

Any hurry to invest in reducing the number of gas guzzling vehicles on the road, better public transport infrastructure? Not a bit of it. Free bus passes in England can only be used for local travel in future, not to visit friends or relatives who live some way off, or to have a nice day out somewhere....

We still have NON-means tested winter fuel subsidies, no doubt claimed by some on £100,000+ pensions.

What will those on £150,000+ do with a 50% tax bill, simply award themselves even higher pay rises!

And they still haven’t thought it out that INCREASING fuel duty INCREASES INFLATION.

What a load of political buffoons? Anyone scratch my back fellow monkey raccoons?

More help for savers with ISA’s? It takes a good deal of wealth to afford to invest £10,000 per year in ISA’s. Peanut crumbs for the poor, more champagne for the rich..... Well to do anyone?

Manufacturing companies that haven’t out-sourced manufacturing to the Far East or similar are dead in the water. No mention of the real successes of designing in the UK, setting up Internet supply chains for parts, and assembling outside the West, and shipping worldwide for resale.

It has always puzzled me that relatively ‘poor’ countries like Spain have been streets ahead of old ‘dear’ GB / UK in IT terms. Their geographical ‘inaccessibility’ meant they had to be more fore-sighted about using IT to access supplies and markets elsewhere. Bread and butter UK companies who previously had it good locally are now going to the wall. UK customers search globally for goods, where their funds haven’t shrivelled in the heat from energy companies taking all of our money out of our pockets before we can spend it. UK firms now have a wakeup call to Use IT globally themselves or perish on the vine.

There’s nonsense talk of water meters for all UK consumers. What piffle, extra expense and extra infrastructure to install, read, service and maintain these. What disruption in road/ pavement works across the land. Yes, customers in water shortage regions perhaps should all be metered, with the proviso of subsidies for families and the poor. But in areas where water is plentiful? There are strong hygiene (and comfort) reasons not to so ration water supply nationally. Things that are washed and recycled at the moment would go straight in the bin to save water. (but wait councils are lining up to weigh domestic refuse and charge for it....). And forget the hanging baskets and flowerbeds that brighten up our daily lives.... Clothes only washed when they are filthy and stinking?

Help for families? What help for when they grow up and live at home unemployed? ......

What help for the REAL poor in Britain, often the middle class?

The poor working class often claim each and every benefit, get subsidies for children to study and often have subsidised housing and relief from council tax. They have sympathetic doctors who will put them for instance on mobility allowances, with free (or nearly free) new cars (road tax and insurance paid) every two years.

The lower middle class get none of these, and are often far worse off now than the working classes. They have huge mortgage payments, crippling debts and often now negative equity in their homes and cars. The children of the middle class get saddled with huge further study loans and no help or extra incentive for Sixth Form study. Who’d be lower middle class at the moment?

Triple whammy today. Bedding plants more expensive than last year, less discount on multi-buys and less multibuy discounts generally. All in all its added at least a fifth (20%) to the cost.

07 05 09

Speed camera company chief does 102.9 mph on dangerous road. If HE can’t be bothered to observe speed limits and watch out for speed cameras, who can?

DNA records still to be kept for 6 or more likely 12 years for people not convicted? Keep them for a year or two at the most and then only for those who get off conviction on a legal technicality. Under Tony Blair’s laws, at present they are kept on file indefinitely. People DO have Human Rights.... what happened to INNOCENT unless PROVED guilty?

There are more people each year who either haven’t enough food available or can’t afford enough food to eat. A lot depends on political and military stability, but more needs to be done in food aid by all of the better off countries. GM foods certainly help, as they give increased yield, better protection against plant diseases and against insect pests. Rationing portion size by some large companies in the USA might help!!!! But distributing food supplies in poorer regions of the world needs much more allocation of funds and resources.

Following the so-called Green Revolution of the 1970s - during which crop yields and food production skyrocketed - aid money spent on agriculture has dwindled from 17 percent of total aid to just 3 percent.

Financial help with irrigation is one key factor that needs a massive increase in funding.

Birth control education and funding for eg condoms needs to be better implemented. This is particularly a problem in Catholic countries. Far better to have birth control and not have people starving to death!!!!

British lower paid workers from the middle class down have fared very badly indeed over the years when Britain was prospering and even worse now during the credit crunch. The cost of basic foodstuffs has soared and increases in alcohol tax have hit drink prices very hard too for poorer people. Even for Mps, whisky that started at £7.00 a bottle is now usually well over £10. Shame on the boardroom magnates who are DOUBLING their income over three or four years, and who now get severance payments higher than most weeks national lottery jackpot payout.

One reason Gordon Brown and his ‘cohorts’ in politics is ‘marginally’ less than popular (ie downright despised) is the way workers on below average pay ( ie much more than half the population) have seen their disposable income (if any!!!) plummet and hit rock bottom.

28. 5. 09

MP expenses seems to have taken over the media at the moment and quite rightly so, as some have been stretching the rules well, as in very far beyond, what was intended, for their own personal financial gain, at taxpayers expense. A few somewhat incredulously have been indignant and refused to acknowledge that they have very wrongly interpreted, almost certainly deliberately, the claims rules. Massaging or ‘bending’ MPs expense rules is never in the public interest, as neither is one set of rules for MPs and another altogether for Government Ministers.

I was just slightly disappointed in the Semi-final of Britain’s got Talent for Susan Boyle. She has a natural strong voice and I hope she chooses a more powerful song for the Final. It was after all only her second public performance to a large audience, and her first live TV performance. Quiet passages are much more difficult to sing, and much more prone to any apprehension or hidden nervousness showing through. Anyway Good Luck for the Final!!!!

It was a weekly treat that was always savoured.

George Pretty, 72, would drive to the local fish and chip shop and pick up meals for his fellow residents at the sheltered housing complex. But then health and safety concerns were raised - and common sense took a battering. Lakenfields Social Services Housing wardens banned Mr Pretty's Wednesday lunchtime trip because he did not have an insulated box to carry the fish and chip portions home 'But all the orders are wrapped individually in polystyrene boxes and would be eaten only five minutes after I picked them up. Everyone used to say how lovely and hot they were'.

This is as nutty as our own local social services now preventing care workers from doing cleaning work for clients in their own private time, saying there is a conflict of interests. This in effect prevents many infirm elderly people getting reasonably cheap cleaning done in their houses, as often other cleaners are simply not available or far too expensive. Also, the elderly clients far prefer people they know or are at least police checked to do cleaning for them. The risk to the elderly is far greater from private cleaners, who may have criminal records and/or violent character. Yes, if items go missing, carers could be blamed for during their time cleaning, but they have equal access to the elderly persons property while caring, and if items are declared missing during caring time, then I don't see how this differs! The care workers have sometimes lost upwards of £50 a week because of this and carers are very poorly paid anyway.

Ruth Ducker always legally parks her Volkswagen Golf around the corner from her house, so it came as a shock when she discovered it had disappeared from its spot - and in its place was double yellow lines. Her confusion deepened when Lambeth council claimed to have no knowledge of where her car was. It took three weeks for the council to admit its contractors were behind the disappearance, and then add insult to injury by telling the 44-year-old graphic designer she owed more than £800 in fines. Parking scandal: Lambeth council lifted Ruth Ducker's Volkswagen out of the way as they painted double yellow lines - but then replaced it on the new restrictions. In fact the car had been carefully lifted out of the way for the double yellows to be painted in Gordon Grove in Camberwell, then replaced on the new restrictions by the contractors responsible. The same day a different set of parking enforcers spotted the 'illegally parked' car, and had it towed away - after photographing it on the newly painted double lines. This is appalling and an insult to common decency!!!! Lambeth Council sink to new depths of disgustingness!!! 3 months of stress and worry for Ruth, the council should be forced to pay out a high compensation!

Boy Racers who severely injure can only be sentenced to 2 years in Prison which in practice works out maybe 6 months in custody and 8months in an open prison. Please let’s have a new law ‘causing serious injury by dangerous driving’ and up to 5 years sentencing.

Glad to hear former MI6 chief is warning about a disturbing surveillance society with 'striking and disturbing' invasions of privacy by the Big Brother state - claiming some are an 'abuse' of the law, referring mostly to very high levels of stop and search in London, gross overuse and abuse of CCTV and councils resorting to techniques that would not be amiss in a very rigid communist state. Are we all going to stand here and allow gross surveillance of each and everyones Internet use (as planned by HM government) or is that HM police and prison state??

Quote of the week "It might take a firm of pest control experts to get him (Gordon Brown) out of No 10" !!!!! Let's hope they (the pest control experts) are more experienced and skilled than Gordon Brown in keeping his MPs AND Government Ministers in check!!!! Do the pest control experts also clean out cabinets!!!!!!!!