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All posts in category: Politics

If you are going to sing the National Anthem at an event, the faster the better

  • June 14, 2019
  • Life Politics Sport
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Do people insist on singing National Anthems at major events at full vibrato and wringing out every note for eternity? I understand the recently deceased Aretha Franklin set the bar in the USA at a staggering 4 minutes 55 seconds at a football game on Thanksgiving 2016. That’s longer than it took a surgeon in the 1550’s in Malta to whip out a kidney stone AND amputate a leg! The normal time for the US ditty is one minute 40 seconds. I mean, I’m all for putting your hand over your heart and showing some national pride but 5 minutes before you get to ‘From sea to shining sea…’!? In winter?

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you

  • April 4, 2019
  • Finance/Law Life Politics
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Are we surprised at the contempt in which politicians hold the voter? There was a comment the other day on the radio from a frustrated Brit who mewed: “If my vote really meant anything they would take it away.” The honest answer is, no need... it’s simply ignored.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Say what you like about Trump... at least he understands deals need to close

  • March 1, 2019
  • Finance/Law Life Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Has the great European jaw-jaw resulted in a draw-draw? When the history of Brexit is eventually written, no matter on which side of the great divide you stand, the sheer lack of understanding by politicians as to what a clock is, will stand as a supreme lesson. I cannot think of a peace treaty let alone a deal negotiation which has taken two years... and that does not look like it’s long enough! At the time of writing this blog, it seems like the negotiation is going into extra time to prevent everyone throwing their toys out of the pram. Yet, so far this chit-chat (note: with our friends and allies) has cost the British taxpayer on expenses, travel and outside consultation fees around £600m. Nearly a billion dollars and it’s got nowhere. That is in itself such a monumental achievement I have to pinch myself whilst re-reading my own text. To paraphrase dear Winston, “Never in the field of human negotiation has so much time been wasted at so much cost by so few to the utter bewilderment of so many...” Like him or not I suspect the UK might have saved a fortune by asking perma-tanned occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to thrash out a deal for a fee of say £100m, with a £100m bonus if he could wrap it all up in the time it takes the English cricket team to play a test series. Sadly, La Donald had just got another job when this all started so we might have needed another slippery deal maker. Anyone know what happened to the other Donald, Don King?

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

I am sorry, if you want to be in a ‘cowboy outfit’, please come dressed as an incompetent and dishonest plumber

  • October 26, 2018
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Politics Sex
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Can’t I dress up without a dressing down? I understand the Student Union in Edinburgh have come out with a long list of what is no longer acceptable to wear at fancy dress. Students have been warned that costumes “based on racial or cultural stereotypes” are banned including those portraying Native Americans, Arabs, Nazis, a woman in a Burka, Buddha, a Mullah or a Catholic Priest, (although for some strange reason a nun is OK). They have now added the ‘Cowboy Outfit’! Whoever is President of the Student Union needs to donate his or her body to medical research so we can try and find out how God managed to remove the humour chromosome. This is the thinking that got rid of Kleenex Man Size tissues and will no doubt tell us ‘the time of the month’ is now when females wo-menstruate. Students are meant to be stroppy, rowdy and obsessed with big hopeless causes; saving the polar bear, stopping melting ice caps, ending world poverty or getting Simon Cowell to quit Botox and white T-shirts. They tilt like Don Quixote at these windmills of impossible dreams until the real post graduate world bites. Your bolshy economics student grows up when he has to go spend their cash on white goods (washing machine, fridge, freezer) rather than a few tabs of E. But fancy dress! Is that a needy focus of undergraduate ire?

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

I spy with my little eye... well anything I want if I’m a Russian

  • October 12, 2018
  • Animals/Pets Life Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Do we all act surprised and indignant that our Russian friends have been peeking into our electronic in-tray. It was ever thus. Ever since Neolithic man discovered he could use an empty coconut shell as an eavesdropping devise and hear his neighbors in the next cave having sex with a Mammoth, we have all been snooping on one another. Let’s face it. Most of what those Russkies tap into is either boring or irrelevant. And if they could actually influence an American election with a couple of tweets as opposed to the $1 billion Hillary and Donald used to batter the electorate into submission, campaign managers and spin doctors should all be made redundant. For the West it’s perfectly OK for 007 to surreptitiously bump off a double agent or photograph the head of the secret police in bed with a nun to blackmail him, but it’s completely outrageous if Putin’s Dzhemys Bondski gets one over on us. If there is one heartening thing to come out of all this, is that the GRU (formerly KGB) aren’t very good. Assassinations go awry, and if the rumours of Trump Golden Rain on Obama’s bed are true, so what? Trump seems unblackmailable! The GRU launched a spy ring of young girls in the 2000’s working at MIT who were so unutterably incompetent that the FBI didn’t bother to arrest them. Tatiana and Lyudmilla (cover names Tiffany and Chablis) even put sticky notes on their computers with their passwords as remembering them as well as the names of the best nightclubs in town was too much for the vodka addled brains.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

I say, anyone for tennis?

  • July 7, 2018
  • Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Politics Sport Technology
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Have some events managed to stay essentially the same in character whilst others have changed beyond recognition? Wimbledon is in many ways gloriously anachronistic and has stayed resolutely the same since 1877.  My late father was on the board and I was immensely lucky to have watched every men’s final from 1969 until his death in 2004. Yes the event is old fashioned but still managed to sneak in the odd dollop of progress. It took till mid 60s before the All English Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, to give it its official name, allowed professionals to compete. In the 1970s skirts went high and in the 1980s rackets just went high tech. In the 1990s Wimbledon led the way in taking a little pressure out of the balls to stop short serve and volley rallies that threatened to ruin the game... but those two weeks in July are still rooted in Agatha Christie’s England. Pimms Number 1 cup to drink, smoked salmon sandwiches, strawberries & cream to eat, and a fearsome dress code. All men must wear jackets and ties in the members enclosure, trousers are frowned on for women and no one raises their voice (John Mcenroe in his prime, the exception that proved the rule). Even now the men’s and ladies champion pair up at the opening dance at the Gala finale ball. You almost expect to see Maggie Smith as Dowager Lady Grantham complete with lorgnette inspecting the crowds to make sure no riff-raff have gained entry. And yet Wimbledon has survived, even thrived. Unique in the tennis world as a Grand Slam on grass yet with the atmosphere of a smart village fete. It’s not the quaint atmosphere that puzzles me, but why no one else has tried to copy it.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Do you wanna be in my gang?

  • June 22, 2018
  • Finance/Law Food & Drink Life Politics Sex Technology
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Why...

Do we seek solace mixing with people who on joining a group or club revert to stereotype? “I never want to be a member of a club which would let me in,” may be a classic Groucho Marx line and a cliché but for good reason... It’s true. I have been very lucky to have been invited as a guest to several clubs and they break down into the following seven categories.  Back to school There are a handful of Gentlemen’s Clubs in London holding a male only policy. They are all in Pall Mall and St. James and distinctly different to other Gentleman's clubs that can only operate by having scantily club members of the opposite sex. The London Gentleman’s club is really just public school (private school in the US) for boys who never grew up and miss nanny. The place runs on old fashioned rules. The Nanny organises the social desk and membership fees but that’s the only woman you will see. You better turn up in a tie, shoes polished, nails clipped and hair brushed. Yes, you can drink, but do not get rowdy. Most of the food is what I call nursery menu. A perfect lunch would be: Windsor soup, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Jam Roly-Poly, & Welsh Rarebit. Conversation through the meal with other members sharing your refectory style table equally as stodgy and bland. This is followed with a port and a snooze reading yesterday’s The Times. These throw-back establishments work on handed down privilege, who you know and how you behave. I am sorry to delude new members who have fought their way up in society through hard work and brains to join but… Old Biffo and Squiffy in the corner still look down on you as nouveau riche; the same way they dismissed Johnny Foreigner as a new boy at Rugby or that boy with the flash watch as parents “working in trade”. Back to Basics Health clubs. No frills. Over sophisticated gym equipment and eye wateringly expensive juices, drinks and rabbit food. Staff preachy and superior with bodies buffed to within an inch of their lives. Off peak these caverns of sweat are filled with the bored and rich. These poor souls have nothing else to do except cheat on their partner and sneak off for plastic surgery to show the results of all the dieting and training they pretend to follow. Peak time it’s just an overcrowded dating agency.  Back to the Future The Lovie playroom. Media based haunts are filled with overloud voices recalling their last meeting with Brad and Angelina, how genuine the Spielberg’s are and what a shame about Amy’s drug abuse. Always in slightly seedy parts of town set up by failed media wannabes who see this as their entree into the glitterati. The propeller head equivalent of techy clubs are full of earnest members trying to convince you to invest in some crypto crapto currency or hint they might get you into an angel start up fund with guaranteed returns. “So, you’ve invested yourself,” is a sure-fire way of getting rid of them... and leaving you with absolutely no one to talk to. Pointless. Back to the Wall The exclusive nightclub. Exclusive because there are only so many people willing to spend £10k a year for membership to an overcrowded noisy hell-hole that charges prices that are an insult and a door policy that admits only good-looking people with an IQ quota the same as their shoe size. To make it worse should you be insecure enough to have to order a five litre bottle of vodka or a jeroboam of champagne for £1,000, the staff bring attention to your vulgarity by having sparklers light up the bottles as they bring them to you and alert everyone else in the place who is tonight’s soft touch. If you have to go to one for a night of drug fueled fun, you never want them to have your real name anyway. Always make sure someone else is the member. Back in the saddle The Horsey Club. Filled with overweight florid faced men and woman who bray when they laugh. If you ask for the bridal suite it’s a large room full of saddles, riding crops and Gucci buckles and the last place you’d want to spend your honeymoon. If you can separate the bullshit from real horse manure you might get a good tip on a horse.  The Back Nine What can I say about a golf club except I don’t want to join one. Ever. It’s a chance for you to dress up like an extra from a Blaxploitation movie, though ethnic minority representation still remains low. Members may slice their tee shots to the left or right, but politics is invariably to the right. I speak with some experience here when in Myrtle Beach a club member made the mistake of asking me my opinion on abortion. “The obvious answer is it is not really a man’s decision; though if it were men who got pregnant, I suspect  termination would be so easy it would come from an ATM machine. “No religion recognises a miscarriage or the trauma that causes. So, until they do they cannot go on about the rights of a foetus.” He pulled a gun on me and called security to eject the “limey liberal pinko”!  Back Inside There is a great line in the TV series set in a woman’s prison Orange is the New Black with a character greeting a new inmate saying… “Welcome to the 1950s”. The speaker is not referring to the building or facilities. But to the clubs. The Narco Mexicans stick to one group, The Neo-Nazis another, right down to the Nepalese Horse thieves or Belgian child molesters. Everyone has a group. It’s basic. It’s for protection. So, on that note console yourself that Bernie Madoff is not the wife of some 6’6” ex Cripps member but closely closeted with some other fraudster both cheating at monopoly but a least paying protection money to keep their balls.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

The Village Idiot has gone global

  • May 25, 2018
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Life Politics Technology
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Are complete idiots so keen to show the rest of us how stupid they are and why do we lap it up? Now this is not me having a rant and sour grapes. I happily peddle this blog for mainly selfish reasons… I simply enjoy doing it. But honestly who would have believed that a format that is literary in nature would see as the pinnacle of success the scribblings a bunch of self-obsessed wannabees. Originally the internet gave us a lovely set of rose tinted spectacles and we were encouraged to believe the ether would be filled with undiscovered literary titans. China no doubt would produce a dozen Mark Twains, (his little-known book Running for Governor was actually taught to every Chinese kid in school). Instead we got Fang Junping, who is an overnight blogging sensation there… as he explains cosmetics to a population that a few decades ago all wore the same uniform and the only bestseller was Mao’s little red book!

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

And then they insisted Putin issue a public apology...

  • April 21, 2018
  • Politics Sex
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Does everyone think diplomacy is like laundry... to be aired in public? The easiest way to get people to change their minds (excluding attaching parts of their anatomy to a car battery) is not to make it look like they changed it in the first place. Now I am no apologist for some of Russia’s excesses but we equally overstep the mark in what we release in public. There is no public evidence of Russia meddling in the US elections at the request of the Kremlin.  I am sure a battalion of James Bonds and Jason Bournes have secret evidence... but isn’t that the point? In public you give Johnnie Foreigner the benefit of the doubt but you stick incontrovertible proof under his nose in private. Yet you still give him a way out publicly as you haven’t painted him into a corner. Note that our Kremlin buddies have been unusually quiet about the Golden Shower allegations swirling around President Trump... the only reason I give the sordid claims any credence!

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

And they all lived happily ever after

  • February 24, 2018
  • Life Politics Sport
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Do we think that nations with opposite views will eventually all become lovey dovey? The fact that North and South Korea are competing in the snowman building competition at the Olympics or that the British and our continental friends like a sing-song event called the Eurovision Song Contest does not mean for one moment all is platonic. The UK has had a very jaundiced view about foreigners ever since 10,000 BC, when the British Isles uncoupled itself from France due to tectonic shifts and became an island fortress. “If God had wanted us to be European, we would not take baths but showers nor eat food that has gone off and whose rotten taste is covered up in fancy sauces,” say many limeys. However despite this feeling of self righteous ‘differentness’, every high street in the UK looks the same as they are all franchises from multi-national brands, whereas in most of rural Europe individuality at retail level rules supreme. Go figure. The rift between North and South Korea is but a blink of an eye in the history of our times but looks to run as long as the all time Box Office Champ of dispute between the Jews and other Arab nations.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Give up something nearly impossible for Lent

  • February 9, 2018
  • Food & Drink Friends Politics
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

For a bunch of people who are normally about as religious as Loony Tune characters, do my friends go all peculiar at this time of the year? Some wish they could still cavort and writhe about on a float in Rio, whilst others long to don mysterious masks and wander about in Venice like the kid in the red coat from the movie Don’t Look Now. However putting aside the differences in choice of Carnival they want to romp about in, most go all ‘holier than thou’ by announcing they are giving something up for Lent’s long forty days and forty nights.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

W.H.O. are you, ♫ whooooo-hoo, ♫who-who?

  • October 28, 2017
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Not add suggestions to compliment the W.H.O award to Robert Mugabe as Goodwill Ambassador? Nobel Peace Prize:  Kim Jung Il Comeback of the Year:   OJ Simpson Humanitarian of the Year:   Harvey Weinstein Good Housekeeping of the Year:   FIFA Conde Nast Holiday Destination of the Year:   Barcelona Spain Catalonia, Europe Most in Demand After Dinner Speaker of the Year:  Bill Cosby Airline of the year:  Ryan Air Most Anticipated Invitation of the Year: President Trump to Buckingham Palace Crime Reformer of the Year:  President Duterte of The Philippines Toy of the Year: The Cowboy Outfit formerly known as a Goldman Sachs Diplomat of the Year Award:  Dennis Rodman Employment and Career Advisor of the Year:  Anthony Scaramucci

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Holiday reading... nah this is not far-fetched enough

  • June 16, 2017
  • Friends Kids/Family/Relations Life Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Can I not find a decent fiction for my holiday read? Their plots are so boring compared to reality. In the last 12 months true events would have been roundly rejected in Hollywood as too far-fetched. Uncle Donald's mental pirouettes with regards to Russia, Korea and the CIA, make House of Cards shenanigans seem rather tame. The TV show Veep has stopped being a comedy and is simply a reality show. Then there is Melania Trump who looks as comfortable in her role of First Lady as a Nun in a Trojan factory.  I think she is very cool but a plot line suggesting a First Lady having posed in the nude would have been rejected by even Mills and Boon. It's not as if there is not Volume 2 still to play out with second generation Trump... Ivanka and Jarred are names that come from bit players of Star Wars. And Tiffany???  In a recent poll of the most popular name for strippers the name Tiffany came second. What was Trump thinking (or thinking about) when he chose it?

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

It's election time....

  • June 1, 2017
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Politics Sport
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

Does the patter of canvasser’s feet make me so upset? If there is one certainty in life, even if you promise me eternal youth and free parking in Kensington and Chelsea, I will never vote for you if you come bang on my door.... especially if I am eating, drinking, watching TV or generally larking about. The idea that someone armed with a clipboard and shoes like Cornish Pasties can impart even a smidgen of information I may have missed from the blitz of TV commercials, political flyers, endless news coverage and posters covering our nations like a rash, is ridiculous. "Goodness me. Are you telling me…

  1. The Tories are to lower tax,
  2. The Labour Party will raise them,
  3. The Green Party will make the tax demands themselves biodegradable?"
I suspect if you started a party that promised just to stumble on like all the others but never send a flyer, make a TV commercial let alone canvass your home and make it illegal for everyone else, they would win by a landslide.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

What did Europe ever do for you...

  • May 18, 2017
  • Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Life Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

As we waive bye-bye to the EU can we not acknowledge that Europe has made some small beneficial contributions to English life? In the old days before dear old Blighty got friendly with Johnny Foreigner and joined what was then the European Economic Community, life in Britain was a tad dreary. Our European friends gave us modern bathrooms. 40 years ago English bathrooms were a place so opposed to change it would have made North Korea look like Narnia. A blindfolded Victorian would have had no trouble finding his way about. Firstly we had no mixer taps! I would run a separate hot and cold tap in a basin and wave my hands about like a magician to balance out freezing cold and burning hot. In a bath my left foot poached but my right one got chilblains. A shower cubicle was seen a waste of a linen cupboard and anyway, if I wanted a shower I could always attach what looked like a large rubber stethoscope to the bath hot and cold taps and hose myself down.....until one flew off so hot water boiled my feet and the cold froze my head till my hair crackled. A bidet was a rather quaint invention only ever found in foreign hotels. When I asked my mother what it was, she explained they were to wash your feet in or rinse a bathing suit. In my first flat my plumber had never been abroad and I asked him to fit one. He screwed it to the ceiling thinking it was a shower... I know we love our heritage but hanging onto a flushing system invented in Victorian times by Mr. Crapper (strange but true) seemed sticking to tradition in the extreme. In nearly every home in the 1970's there were loos with a chain with Pull written on the handle (as opposed to doing what)? Above a water tank frequently leaked and when activated made a noise like a concrete mixer. Four decades on the Brits still don't like electrical items in the bathroom so UK homes with hairdryers, electronic heated loos, make-up lighting or chargers for cell phones or tablets whilst having that all important post breakfast 'ablution' are rare. Certainly no radio nor TV! But dual taps only exist now in stuffy old clubs and Downton Abbey.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Opinion Pollsters.......the world's most useless profession?

  • November 18, 2016
  • Food & Drink Life Politics
  • View all 0 Comments
Why...

Are opinion polls as reliable as a chocolate teapot? The largest wailing sound after Donald Trump's victory did not come from Hillary Clinton's hotel suite. It came from the offices of the smuggest of all 20th Century inventions…the Official Pollster. Despite twice in the UK being proved to be as accurate as a cross-eyed tattooist (Conservative Victory and Brexit), the pollsters' Achilles heel is they seem unable to grasp so many of us fib to them. Their self-importance (only matched by their belief we are flattered by being asked our opinion), belongs to the thinking of 75 years ago; a time when the man in the street doffed his cap to a Gent in a suit with a clipboard! During an election you not only resent being asked your vote every time the wind changes direction, but also the scorn or derision your views might bring down. If the media hounds your preferred choice at an election as being the spawn of Satan, you are unlikely to say to a complete stranger that Beelzebub has got your vote, for fear of their reaction. It seemed obvious to me that 90% of the undecided in the US probably meant a vote for La Donald and a good chunk of those declared for Hillary were secret Trump kissers. My beef here is not if someone is a good candidate or not; if you want to vote for Biffo The Bear as Prime Minister, that is your entitlement. What astonishes me is Opinion Pollsters belief what we say to them nowadays is even on nodding terms with our true feelings.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

The pen is mightier than the sword... so long as it is writing gossip

  • November 11, 2016
  • Food & Drink Life Politics
  • View all 2 Comments
Why...

Do we allow real news to be eaten up by rumour and gossip? I promised never to write about events of the moment but is pretty clear to me the battle between Hillary and Donald was fought not with facts on policy but rumour and tittle-tattle all dressed up in self righteousness. But let's be honest. The truth is we are all more interested in the activities from inside someone's underpants than what goes on between their ears. What is Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms other than a digital funnel to feed grist into the rumour mill?

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to..... You would cry too if it happened to you...

  • September 1, 2016
  • Finance/Law Life Politics Technology
  • View all 1 Comment
Why...

In all that's logical, has the world's most powerful democracy and its two parties come up with such unappealing candidates? What is remarkable is that both Trump and Clinton can engender such visceral dislike! Ex pluribus unum is the motto of finding the President of the United States but Good Golly Miss Molly how can it have filtered down to Shrillery or The Hairstyle?  I suspect the real reason is the battle is about the perceived status quo vs something new. I'm no fan of the current status quo but I'm not sure any alternative is the right one. But oh woe, the fault for the candidates must fall to the respective parties.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

It's an AMENDMENT dummy. It's already been altered....

  • July 21, 2016
  • Finance/Law Kids/Family/Relations Politics
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Why...

Do I have to  see my dear transatlantic cousins twist and turn in the wind of argument over gun control? I know this is a subject that has undone many a Brit scribbler but I am deeply perplexed at the argument that it's practically divine a right to bare arms.... or arm bears.... and then quote the second amendment. Isn't that the point? It was an AMENDMENT. The original needed altering. It wasn't right first time. Perhaps in this day and age it ain't right now? The constitution was changed to allow you Colonials to bear arms to form a militia against perfidious Albion....but we ain't coming after you anymore. And if you think even a battle-bus full of patriotic armed citizens was going to prevent a modern attack such as 911 or the Boston bombers, that's wildly optimistic? A hand gun revolver if you must, and a bolt action rifle for hunting, but Yogi and Boo-Boo don't wear Kevlar nor run at 70 miles an hour so you don't need armor piercing bullets that pop out at a zillion rounds a second to stop them. Clearly if you have a country with a gabillion guns sloshing around in it, it's a trifle tricky to ask everyone to hand them back. And I suspect the least likely to then hand them back are those that you would most like to. It's therefore tough beyond belief but you have to start somewhere. How about the manufacturing bullets for certain weapons becomes an imprisonable offence unless supplied at a shooting range? I accept there are some countries who's citizens are armed to the teeth and live a relatively peaceful existence; Switzerland for instance (I claim a little bias here as I have a Swiss passport). Every citizen is issued with a rifle to defend against invasion. It's actually pretty pointless because if Uncle Putin wanted to get in, all the passes are mined and blowing those up is far more effective than a bunch of yodeling bankers trying to take pot shots at the Russian Army. Still no one has gone on a murdering rampage as far as I know. However maybe it's because gunfire exchange is less evident in Swiss culture. Heidi was not packin' an Uzi as she wandered around the Alps, and even William Tell could only fire one arrow at a time...even if it was at his son's head! The peaceful locals are renowned for whipping up cuckoo clocks not 3D printed handguns, chocolates not 1, 000 round magazines.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

Congratulations on your forward planning! No one wants to buy a car, ‘Och Aye’ means ‘Nay’ and Tibet's treasure will rule the world!

  • February 25, 2016
  • Finance/Law Life Politics
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Why...

Do Western Governments think no further than the next sound bite and company executives are unable to see past their annual bonus and the specifications on their next BMW? We need to understand that long-term planning is more than just remembering to set the TiVo or Skybox to record every episode of Homeland. Former Chairman of the People's Republic of China President Chou En Lai was asked once what he thought of the 1789 French Revolution. He replied "It's too early to say." Take cars. For my generation a car was aspirational on a number of levels. Along with total independence and the sheer exhilaration of driving was added the heady mix of sex and cool. We had no mobile phone, let alone Facebook, so you had to physically visit people in your car. When you did, normally the only chance of 'hooking up' was in the back seat, so 'the cooler the wheels, the sexier the heels'. My and millions of other's youth was full of parked cars that wobbled like jello and was why Lucifer had a bumper crop of souls from 1949- 1990. We gladly traded them for four wheels. Three generations drooled at the prospect of owning a car....and behind it all stood behemoths like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler down to (then) independents like Ferrari, Maserati, Lotus and Lamborghini. All employed a zillion people in their own businesses as well as the countless ancillaries from advertising agencies, tyre companies and design studios to the local gas station and body shops. Now everyone seems taken by surprise that the current generation are not really interested in cars; sales in the developed world are plummeting and we are heading towards automotive employment Armageddon.  How could this be??????? A suggestion? Maybe something to do with the fact over the past twenty years successive Governments have made motoring as appetising as a waiter sneezing over a burger? All the fun and skill of driving has been replaced by mad costs, nannying computers and insane road planning. Roadworks stretch into the horizon and traffic police spend three hours investigating a mild knock of two cars in rush hour. Insurance companies treat kids with one minor infraction on their license as being as dangerous as Kim Jong Un with a migraine. George Orwell could not have imagined the level of surveillance, nor Creusus the level of tax on fuel and the Maquis de Sade would have quivered at the endless constriction of traffic jams. SPEED KILLS is flashed everywhere. Speed never killed anyone. Stopping does. The Government (and so mass media) took sex out of cars.......and are now panicking that no one wants to buy them. Did anyone for the teensiest moment think or say... "OK, environmentally we need to tighten things up, but maybe turning one of the largest employment sectors in the world into a pariah might make Mr. Magoo's short-sightedness look like 20/20 vision?"

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

What is rss? "rss" is about getting live web feeds
directly to your computer.