Thursday 25 April 2024

Analysis of an issue which got past us

On the British Commonwealth ANZAC Day (April 25th), there’s a flood of issues washing over and past us … this is one affecting the UK as far as trade and govt agreements go … guess one of the evil Brit muvvers working towards this? Yep, Pigboy Dave, Grand Chatham House Rejoinist.

As X becomes the premier news and views exchange platform for those not tik-tokked or whatever else the young lefties use, so X comes under heavyweight fire and certain layouts and practices have crept in, been introduced, including shadow banning, outright banning and if opposed, as it’s a big player, then when reinstated, it’s minus 600k followers (in the case of Radio G).

My explanation is that it might be Musk, maybe not. His focus is on many things, inc. Space X and Brazil, and so someone or something like AI deputises. Much was made of 70% plus of the Dorsey Woke departing but that still leaves 30% and the Dorsey rump are not in the menial areas.

It makes treatment of issues in any serious way difficult and this is one of those:




It’s a drop in the ocean whilst we’re distracted by another drop in the ocean … five illegals killed yesterday by fellow illegals, all who paid money on the French side of the channel for a place in a dinghy … the dinghy racket allowed and abetted by both UK and French govt, using the help of the navies, plus bodies such as the RNLI, volunteers with CEOs and HQs on big money … fake charities.

The redacting reorganisation at X does not help bring any issues in depth … rather news “bites” … which people then base views on in lieu of something in more depth.

Given the sheer number of issues we’re flooded with, is it any wonder many slip by unscrutinised, esp. on four or five person blogs where the main redactor has the same overall sleep issue as many others do.

Wednesday 24 April 2024

Strange: or Suspect

As must be fairly obvious, either from my photo, or my Online Name, I am a Pensioner. And as a Pensioner, I watched, with some perturbation, as the time drew close towards the latter part of last year, when the calculations are made which determine what kind of rise the normal State Pension would be. 

As it turned out, the increase was calculated to be just over 8%, which made a significant bump in the Pension payments to people such as myself.

And lo and behold, as from the 1st of April, the 8% extra small but significant slice came automatically into my bank account. For which I am duly grateful.

But here’s the ‘Suspect’ bit. I shop at only one supermarket, and my purchases, these months and weeks, tend to be much the same in most minor things, with the occasional bump when, say, an appliance needs replacement. I also, possibly because I had to check on the spending on major contracts when still working, keep a very simple spreadsheet of my monthly spending. 

Now we all, or most of us, are aware of the need to allow or account for inflation, especially for those of us on limited incomes; as we are constantly reminded by this so-called Government, that they are ‘winning’ the battle against inflation. But checking, as I can do on my basic spending, I came across something which I do feel can be labelled “Suspect”.

Since the last week in February, my weekly outgoing spending on basic necessities, has slowly but remorselessly increased to level off at 7.95% above that February total.

Funny? Nope. Funny Peculiar? Definitely.

Saving The Planet, Or Pleasing Your Customers?

Tesco appear to be taking the former option:

While the new policy does not yet apply to all Tesco locations, employees and shoppers took to the store's Reddit page to call out the "sneaky charge being imposed".
One user said: "So, was in Tesco today, got some swimming clothes for the kids and my wife got a dress."Went through the scan as you shop and paid, went to get the tags taken off and was told it’s 10p for a clothes hanger.
"Now I work at this store, and I’ve never heard of this. I’ve also never seen anything around the store or around the clothes section.
"So either someone is trying to earn some extra dosh or it’s a sneaky charge being imposed on customers. Has anyone else had this?"

I shopped in Tesco at the weekend and obviously my local isn't in the trial, but you know what I DID see? A box where you can donate unwanted hangers for recycling. 

One person responded: "Tesco charging 10p if you want to keep their hangers now! Next there will be an entrance fee."

Please don't give them ideas!  

However, some agreed with the new rule with one user writing: "It’s a trial. They are trying to discourage people from taking hangers as they usually just get chucked anyway.
"If Tesco can keep them they can reuse them and therefore don’t have to produce more. Little planet-saving steps."

Then what's wrong with the box for you to leave them in? 

Tesco said only a small number of stores are taking part in the trial with the brand yet to announce how many more locations will implement this idea.

They'd be mad to, it's only going to alienate customers. What the hell is wrong with retail owners these days? 

Tuesday 23 April 2024

St George's Day reviewed

More on today's MET disaster

St George’s Day

Assuming that by now the stories are all known, of St George, of St Edmund, of Alfred, of Arthur, of Ethelred … assuming all that, and if not, why not … then why use a saint like George, particularly as other countries such as Sicily also do?

The answer might be that for a start … it’s a ripping story, it can galvanise, as much as can a song by an C18th English mystic:


And brave people have fought and died for her … and here’s a tale of one of those, one of the stalwarts at site N.O., Steve, retired army, inc. special units:

Recalling St. Georges Day at my junior school: the corridors and assembly hall were festooned, the national flag of England displayed on a thousand pieces of bunting. Additionally the flagpole at the centre of the quadrangle would fly the Cross of St. George for the day - the flag of Union would take the day off - and go for a wash. 

Monday 22 April 2024

Wrong Tense!


It never used to be, what changed, I wonder

Akter had come to the UK from Bangladesh, where Masum was also from. She had been living above a shop in Oldham but was staying in Bradford on the day she was killed.

Ah! 

Muhammad Shehzad said crime had worsened significantly since he came to the UK in 2003.

You don't say?  

He blamed Rishi Sunak for driving down living standards to the point where people felt the need to turn to crime.
“If you give a good chance to work, crime goes down,” said Shehzad. “There needs to be more investment in this country, my home.”

What difference do living standards make to the typical Muslim mysogynistic crime of passion? 

Naz Shah, the Labour MP for Bradford West, said the city had been traumatised by what was a rare attack on an ordinary day.

Yes, Reader, this Naz Shah.  

“People are very clear this is a very isolated incident and Bradford isn’t like this,” she said, adding that the fear was not that people would be killed in a random attack on the street but that women were being murdered by men.

Muslim men, Naz. Your voters,  

“I went to speak to literally hundreds of women in the Chaand Raat events, prior to Eid, where everybody gets their mehndi done. We had a conversation and all of them were saying: ‘When is this going to stop, men killing women?’ It wasn’t about Bradford, it was generally women really, really angry that, again, a woman has been murdered. They were saying: ‘Naz you need to talk more about it. This has got to stop.

Women at segregated events urging another woman to do something about it? It's a nonsense, and it's what has turned Bradford into what it is today. 

Passover, Pesach, Catholic & Protestant Easter, Orthodox too

Ignore that other one from the C7th.

Sunday, May 5th I know to be “Xhristos voskres” or Christ is risen and the bible story is set over Passover of course … or Pesach … that’s why Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem. In other words, May 5th is Orthodox Resurrection Day or Pesach or Easter egg day.

But what’s this about Jewish passover? I’d always thought it was around our Catholic and Protestant Easter already passed.  Best look up Jewish Passover (or Pesach) right now:
Evening of Mon, 22 Apr 2024 – Tue, 30 Apr 2024
Whoa!  Hang on … this is doing my ’ed in! All four events are on different days or evenings this year … not forgetting that the Jewish and Orthodox days go dusk to following dusk.

There’s also that deathcult guy Ed Mubarak to factor in … think that one’s gone now but it’s irrelevant anyway as it was C7th and seems to be about microwaving Jewish babies and raping women, slaughtering Christians … that sort of thing.

The one which dislocates me is Pesach or Orthodox Passover, which I now know culminates on Sunday, May 5th. 

Phew!  I’ll look it all up and get back to you but it does seem an auspicious year, 2024, in more ways than five.

Sunday 21 April 2024

Sanity in diet and exercise

A reposting from another place? Yes … guilty, I confess.

As various commenters wrote on the first one:






This, as I forever bang on about, is the offputting thing with vlogs and podcasts … the clickbaiting, the setting up of the punter who still clicks in, the BS game playing … je deteste.

Also, who’s to say he’s even a doctor? Coz he wears that outfit in a constructed video? And even what he says, e.g. about fruit being not good in sugar … yes and no.

More after the videos:

Saturday 20 April 2024

The Invasion has Already Occurred.

As some may remember, I am one of England’s many authors, with eight books to my name. I am, unfortunately, also one of the many unsuccessful English authors, if success is termed in books sold or read. But I don’t really mind, because the writing, the establishing of a theme, a plot, expanding the reader’s knowledge of the imagined heroes’ or heroines’ lives, how my writing flows: that, for me, is the finest achievement possible. 

The one novel which came near a printing works was also the one which I felt proudest of, because it was about British politics, about what could happen, given the manner in which the early theme occurred. That novel was entitled ‘Single to Westminster, via Berlin’, and it documented the rise to ultimate power of a former right-wing thug; of the changes in both his life, and in his ideas of politics, how those changes came about, and how he coped with those changes. This book was written and published in 2009.

One of the main drives in our hero’s progress was illegal immigration, and, in those days of my novel, our continued membership of the European Union. I had watched, in real life, the beginnings of the Blair actions to loose, beyond all bounds, immigration; with the vast majority coming from the European Union as it expanded eastwards. 

This itself in the beginning was not so bad, because certainly the Polish migrants came with a reputation for hard work, and because most of those migrants were simply ‘like us’. They worshipped as we did, they looked as we did, they accepted that they were the incomers, and had to adapt to our ways of life. Unfortunately, besides the educated migrants of Northern and Eastern Europe, we also saw the beginnings of Labour’s plan to alter the very nature of our society, by importing ever-increasing numbers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and from the Middle-East: all of those thousands worshipping a different god to ours. 

Now when I write of a different god, I write of Islam. Islam is not only a religion, it is a political force. It is also a proselytising religion, in that its adherents actively push to get others, from any other religion, to accept their god, and also to accept that their prophet Mohammed, spoke and speaks for them all. The followers of Islam are also pretty canny when it comes to politics, as can be seen by the muslim london mayor, the muslim scots first minister, many Labour politicians but not many Tory ones: I just wonder why. 

But, returning to migration both legal and illegal, we see not only the Blair processes being embedded into our society, but the asylum laws themselves are being twisted every way possible, by both the illegal asylum seekers themselves, and by both left-wing lawyers and Members of Parliament. As I wrote some time back on one of my own blogsite postings:-

“Certainly, sir, if you could just point to the document which shows and confirms that you were on patrol with British soldiers in Helmand province, acting as an interpreter, and your stay will be immediately confirmed, as agreed and formally accepted by the newly-appointed Muslim Home Secretary.”

Afghani man:  “Whilst I cannot truthfully state that I was a member of that brave group who kept their faces hidden at all times for fear of retribution, I can confirm that the second cousin of my fourth brother’s third wife worked as a cook for a cobbler who regularly repaired British Army Interpreters’ footwear. The word got around, and the threats of instant retribution against all collaborators came for us all, so we decided to flee, and here we are.”

The Prime Minister himself sounded almost proud of his Government’s actions when he confirmed that, literally “Thousands of Afghans have been transported safely to our shore”. The stupid, dangerous and downright lunatic thinking of this so-called Tory Government is best observed in its alleged attempt to ‘DEAL’ with the thousands pouring over the channel on ever-larger rib-dingies; with its Rwanda Bill. That farrago has so far cost over £400 million pounds, and not one ‘effing asylum seeker has boarded an aircraft bound for Rwanda.

If my readers have viewed the same YouTube videos as myself, you will no doubt have seen, in towns and cities all across this once green and pleasant land, the fruits of the Blair ideals to change Great Britain; and they are not very pleasant sites to view. With literally regiments of muslim men, all stripped to the waist, performing whatever they wish, waving their bloody arms around like demented dervishes, and; again literally, not a single policeman in sight. 

Why, you may ask? Its is simply because those policemen know that they will be either laughed at, or mobbed; so why even take the chance. Now if it were a single Christian preacher, attempting to read from his own Testament; you’d see six heavies along to whip him away within minutes. I have also seen the many instances of muslim men blocking roads and pavements because they get the ‘urge to pray’, and the only police visible are those ensuring no-one gets to vent annoyance at what is now a “Fait Accompli’.

The single most scary photograph I have seen in over forty-odd years of viewing things political is simply the one from a gathering in Birmingham in 2023 which says: “We’re here to Stay, so you’d better get used to it”

Blogging, tweeting, gabbing, other online media

As primarily a blogger since 2006, a prolific one with quite a few fellow contributors/patrons, our perspective online is going to be a bit different to a young instagram or snapchat girl, maybe even a vlogger who loves “shorts” and sees $$$$$$s as the main reason to exist online … or those who drone on and on for an hour before getting to the point … any point … or the dreaded podcasts which go on and on and on and on while we await the data.

For me, X and Gab are interwoven with the blogs … the idea being to take the fast 140 character summaries and explore them in more depth for the blog. The blog, X or Gab format is vastly better because we can scroll down or click out when we want, whereas on vlogs or podcasts, we’re eternally going at their pace, way too slow … Monty Python did a skit on a radio talkback show where the host allocated ten seconds per caller or whatever … Gardeners Question Time it was called and an old fogey came on … started to drone … the host interrupting to hurry him up, frustrated.

Even this now is posted at the blog OoL and on X … how many find this way too wordy?

The thing which set me off was a girl on X who wrote something like: “Goodnight to all my loyal followers …”. You wot, love? Followers? Fans? Admirers, one of a multitude? Sorry, love … that ain’t me. For me, you’re an online friend or not … you know … mutuality? Friend? No friend? Bye bye.

And I do block hundreds who only want to argue. On X, it’s lovely as those I admire tweet something, I comment, sometimes they repost or re-comment … it’s online friendship in my eyes … I have zero concept of devoted “followers” … on the blog, we have visitors and repeated visitors … different way of looking at things I suppose.

Goodnight to MY devoted satellite followers?  Hardly, darling.