Quote worth repeating

I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains... My advice is : "Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the sunshine, go out and try to recapture happiness in yourself and in God. Think of all the beauty that's still left in and around you and be happy!"

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Anne Frank

Overcrowding

Living in South Essex I'm getting really fed up with how crowded the area is.  Traffic moves slowly everywhere; no parking when you get where you want to be; public transport nearly ceases by 19:00; high land/property prices.  The really big one is how unfriendly people are, complete contrast to small towns, it's very unusual for anyone in the street to talk to a stranger, or even neighbour.

Government/council is only interested in packing more people in, encouraging infill building at stupidly high densities with no new infrastructure.

Soon as our kids are out of school I'm moving.

Fairness in education

Just been reading an article - the UK is increasing the extra payments to schools for disadvantaged children to £600 from £480.  The idea is to give all children an equal chance in life.
Surely to be fair all kids should have exactly the same resources spent on them.  I used to teach special needs groups and was quite surprised at just how much resource is available to this group - once they have crossed an invisible line and been classed as 'special needs'.  Against the intention of government this extra resource was withheld from kids with special needs at the 'superbrain' end of the spectrum.

There seems to be the idea that all individuals should achieve identical levels of attainment.  This seems contrary to my own experience that different individuals have different capabilities and levels of achievement.

The elephant in the room is that genetics does play some role in individual's IQ, motivation etc.  Parents who are low achievers are likely - in general, not in every specific case - to have children with a lower potential for achievement.

It's really not fair for the high achievers to be highly taxed, and then for their children to be deprived of a fair - i.e. equal - share of the education pot.  Could say the same thing about wealthy pensioners; they've paid in all their lives at a high level and the left wing whingers want to deprive them of their well earned state pensions so that those who have contributed far less (or have contributed negatively) can have more.

Can the more rabid socialists get it into their minds that if you contribute to society, you need to be rewarded or there's just no incentive to be a contributor.

Meaning of life

Must write this down before it seems too stupid.

I'm somewhat of a pantheist - there's a bit of god in everything.  I believe in god as an ordering force rather than some guy with a beard sitting on a throne (OK an ethnic minority woman with a disability if you prefer).

The thought that struck me was that the ultimate reality must be something pretty simple at base.  Rather like the simplicity of an algorithm that creates complex fractal patterns.

So why can't we see it?  Simplest explanation is one of scale - the basis of our 'system' is either so huge or so tiny that it's outside our limited comprehension.

That makes '42' as the answer a lot more plausible.  Cue Vogon destructor ships and my brain being diced.

Pleasure of shopping

No names, but recently bought a new laptop for my son and a tower PC for the home office.

WHY is it so difficult for a major chain store to operate a decent stock system and simply sell you what you want.

1.  Select item to buy.
2. Find staff member.
3.  Check item is in stock - no it's not.
4. Go to next store where they have stock.
5. Repeat steps 1-3 ( it is in stock, but is reserved)
6. Select alternate item.
7. Repeat steps 1-3 then 6  three times.
8.  Walk out of store and buy item cheaper in a non-specialist store.

When you can buy what you want there is then the the hassle of persuading the staff you really don't want support, insurance, any other items.  Just sell me the damn thing please.

Most of the staff are trying their best to be helpful, but are caught in the inflexible systems.  I had a wonderful explanation for the item being out of stock.  Apparently I was selecting the best value most popular PCs 'which keep running out of stock'.  I thought a basic stock system should identify fast selling lines and ensure they can keep selling them.

I know I'm not the only individual who's been put off this particular shop - it takes too long to identify out of stock items which is just so frustrating.  No discount is given if the display model is all that is left, and I was told it can take three hours to re-initialise the disk and memory before sale is possible.  They're not even particularly good value.

Progress?  Bah Humbug.

7 Billion people

OMG to use a detested abbreviation.  How crowded is SE England going to get?

Nature is sure to have a few tricks up it's sleeve.  If we don't limit our population or destroy it with wars, some disease or something totally unexpected will do it for us.

Just hope it's not too nasty for my own family.

Being reasonable V. enforcement by law

Following on from my last post, it's been suggested that in many cases it's OK to break the law if you're 'reasonable'.  I understand the logic behind this - it can't make any difference travelling at just a few mph over the speed limit, throwing a biodegradable item down can't be littering, cycling on the pavement is OK if you're careful of pedestrians rights.

Yes, fine.  But everyone has their own standards of what is reasonable.  Indeed if we were all reasonable, there would be no need for any laws at all.  It's not reasonable to take things that aren't yours.  It's not reasonable to drive a car without well maintained brakes or without the means to compensate a victim of your driving errors.

Laws are there to establish a minimum level of what is reasonable behaviour.  You may disagree with some of them, but if you break the laws you dislike you can't complain with others breaking laws you do agree with.  Going back to my bugbear of illegal cyclists on the pavements, many of them start out meaning to be responsible and careful of pedestrians, but familiarity and 'getting away with it' leads to increased speeds and risk taking.  Same with car drivers speeding I suppose.

I'll just repeat that.  Laws are there to establish a MINIMUM level of what is reasonable behaviour.  To create a pleasant environment for all of us, decent citizens need to go far beyond the minimum and be polite and considerate to their fellow human beings.  Remember that car you're cutting up to reach your destination a few seconds sooner contains a person just like you who is going to be stressed and annoyed by your behaviour.

If we lived at a density of one person per square mile you could do whatever you like without upsetting anyone.  I seem to remember experiments in the seventies where rats were put in overcrowded situations resulting in stress and aggression - very similar to what is seen in overcrowded urban environments now.

We need to either shoot half the population (the mathematical solution) or realise that we are ultimately harming ourselves by indulging in selfish, inconsiderate and possibly criminal behaviour.  In a crowded environment your every action affects other people.  Play nice.

Facebook friends

Just been defriended by a guy on facebook because I disagreed with his views on Dale farm.

He posted on a contentious issue, in my view (I live quite near the site) he was very misinformed about what was going on there.  He dismissed several people posting views opposed to his own as 'gypsy haters' and told them to 'p*** off' with use of the f word elsewhere on his posts.

Seems to me he thought his views were 'good' and therefore could not be challenged by mere facts.  This way leads to prejudice, bigotry and intolerance of others' views.  You see the same thing with animal welfare fanatics, eco-warriors and indeed pavement cyclists.  Their idea they are doing 'good' things seems to blind them to any rational arguments that they may be in the wrong.

Swearing and name calling have no place on any public forum, it's simply crass rudeness to all who see the posts.

The higher the density we live at, and the greater the ease of mass communication, the more important it becomes that we all 'play nice' and are polite and tolerant to each other.  Hostility and a refusal to consider other peoples rights harms us all through increased levels of minor stress we have to constantly bear.

Smiles, please, thank you and sorry cost us nothing but give both the donor and recipient a better life.

I do my casual jobs well and often receive spontaneous thanks and have even had the occasional round of applause.  While I need the money the jobs bring, I value the thanks higher than mere cash.

The truth is out there

The truth may well be out there, but the important answers can be learnt by seeking within ourselves.

After living in the woods for a long weekend, I end up sounding like an aged hippy...

Life is simple

You're alive or not.

There are some grey areas however....

Banks

OMG (if you'll excuse the textspeak)  The government is talking about separating the investment banking  from the high street retail bank bits.  Where do these idiots come from.  Businesses decide their own terms of reference, it just is not possible to legislate exactly what types of business a company does.

The government wants banks to increase their tier one ratios (the capital they keep as reserve) and want them to increase the amount they lend.  These aims directly contradict - come on, get real.  Are the banks supposed to be conservative in their dealings to keep themselves solvent or are they supposed to promote growth by lending in a rather reckless manner.

MPs can't have it both ways.

Box ticking

Job interview to be a casual ad hoc hours employee.  The guy interviewing had the grace to look rather embarrassed as he asked the HR box ticking inspired question ' What do you see yourself doing to increase the excellence of our organisation'.  Must say the rest of the interview was entirely sensible.

I'm NOT free

Discussion on another forum about charities asking for things to auction.  Basically the participants are saying their work isn't being properly valued and is regarded as a 'hobby' - after years of practise, apprenticeship and the direct costs of materials etc.  We're talking the world of art here, and yes, some people do paint as a hobby, but many others try to make a living and are constantly undercut by the hobbyists.  Art works have a value and even hobbyists should recognise this and ask for appropriate payment.

I'm an ex IT professional and get a similar effect.  Anyone who knows me think it's fair game to ask for advice about their PC problems.  I don't mind a quick query, but some individuals expect me to go away, research an answer, and if they can't fix it to actually do the work for them - all for free.  I know I'm retired and no longer make a living from this activity, but I left this work because of the stress so don't want to get involved, and the work HAS A VALUE which they should be prepared to pay.  My normal response is that, yes I can help, but my rate is £x, x being dependant on if I actually want to help.  There's a similar thing with free software being made available on the web.  Personally I think anyone using free anti virus software (or any other free software come to that) is taking a huge risk.  If someone gives you for free something that takes many hours of hard work to develop, why do they want to give it away?  You really need to question their motivation.  I like to see how someone is making money from me on any trade, if I can't, I do get suspicious.

Another related subject is the army of social organisers and club committee members who give their time free. Here my views contradict the previous paragraph.  These people are giving up their time and organisational skills to benefit themselves (without them no club or activity) and also all the others who enjoy the fruit of their labours.  At this point I'm not suggesting they should demand payment from the other members but would plead with club members to be a bit grateful.  It's ALWAYS the members who've never organized anything in their lives that moan and grumble if anything doesn't run perfectly.  I have in the past organised social events at workplaces and been on the committee of clubs.  What made me give up was the hassle from these ingrates and the experience of 'going pro' when I was made redundant.  Paintball, kart racing etc. organisations will pay organisers to bring along full groups of participants as it saves them the advertising and admin loads.  While people were happy to let me do the work for free, once I was doing it for money the attitude was that they wanted a discount (equal to what I would get paid) or they'd do it themselves - despite the fact they would then have to do the organisation and still get a worse deal from the companies.
The moaners and groaners just don't get the value that the organisers are adding.  If you go to any club, do make a point of thanking any committee members you have dealings with - genuine thanks are one form of payment that won't cost you a bean.

And message to wife - stop volunteering me to help people.  If I want to, I'll volunteer myself thank you.

Be nice

And people will be nice to you.  Simple.  Been away for a few days to a wedding.  The Bride was overwhelmed with how lovely everyone was being to her (and her new husband).  It really was that she herself is a lovely helpful  good natured person.  You get back what you give out.

Part time

Ummmmm.  Just got back from a one off job where the main requirement is to stay still for an hour.  Has very interesting effects.  Eastern mystics go off into a trance or meditative state - and use total physical stillness to induce this sort of mental state.  I just think I've achieved something similar on the second hour of this job. Try sitting absolutely totally still for just ten minute and it might give you an idea what I'm going on about.

Shamanist:  Ally animal fox:  Reach your animal instinctive level:  Die and be more alive:

Moral society

Things are quietening down on the riot front, some interesting thoughts are emerging from the various commentators.

Chavs are adopting black culture.  Odd that nobody seems worried about the derogatory term chav being used to describe the white skinned individuals involve.  It does seem that the'benefits' of a multicultural society don't always work positively - here it seems the worst aspects of the various cultures present in London are predominating.

The state prevents me disciplining my children.  I've seen interviews with parents who claim they have been charged with assault when trying physically to prevent their children going out with gangs.  Kids rights overrule their responsibilities, and the ability of either parents or police to make them kids stick to responsible behaviour.

I'm not responsible for my childrens behaviour.  Simultaneously with parents claiming they're being prevented from applying discipline, there are other parents (the ones under threat of eviction) who claim their older children are simply not their responsibility.  At what point is a child a fully independent individual?

It's taken me by surprise the swell of opinion in approval that rioter and their immediate families should lose their 'rights' provided by the community they're destroying.  I thought I was running against the flow thinking that anyone who criminally rebels against out social order should not benefit from it.  It seems obvious to me (and many others apparently) that if you wilfully destroy the communities resources, or wilfully refuse to contribute, you shouldn't expect to be supported by that community.

The Police seem in disarray.  The British system is policing by consent, i.e. the police are working with the community rather than as an authoritarian force compelling obedience to the law.  I do think this model is now failing - not because of the riots but because too many of the public fail to obey traffic laws, litter laws.  B****y cyclists.  It's not the offences themselves but the attitude of the offenders that they have a 'right' to break the law without punishment that makes the policing by consent model unworkable.

Political will to protect the law abiding public has been pretty much absent for maybe twenty years prior to these riots.  Suddenly the courts are in action 24 hours a day and heavy punishments are being handed out.  Bet that has come as a surprise to many of the looters.  It'll be interesting to see if the momentum keeps this going, or if the heavier punishments will be quietly watered down.

Cameron has used the phrase 'slow moral collapse'.  The guidance of the various religions has certainly been lacking and declining over the last couple of generations, to the point where the CofE is seen by many (most?) people as an irrelevance.  Our government is secular, moral guidance is supposed to come from the nations primary religion, but in my opinion the church leaders are spectacularly failing in this function.

You can't go back in time.  The faiths and beliefs that held society together in the past are questioned by science and materialist society.  It seems to me that is individuals don't perceive themselves as part of a larger whole, or under the control of some omniscient force, there is little to prevent them acting purely in their own selfish interest without regard to others (or their own long term good).

People content to live on benefits need the occasional reminder that they're not contributing to the pot they're drawing from.

The super earners content to demand ever higher amounts of money need to consider if they're really worth that amount.  They may (or may not) be contributing large amounts to wealth creation, but they're certainly alienating the rest of us.

Politicians, and public servants (police included) need to remember they're there to SERVE us - us being every single member of the population; not dictate to us and/or treat us as idiots.  Cuts are obviously needed to balance the books, but how about cutting out the politically motivated quangos, initiatives and minority interest grants and get back to basic needs.

Local repair

Bought some new bits for my camera yesterday.  Fiddling about changing lenses, there came a click and tinkle.  A strange plastic bit had fallen out and a metal frame was hanging down.  Look in the manual, it was the focusing screen had somehow been released and had fallen out.  A lot of the basic information seems to be assumed in the manual, so getting it back without having noted where it came from wasn't too simple.

Looked up the web for a local repairer/expert.  The only camera shops now are the chain stores - the little local shops where local expertise resided have all gone.  Phoned the shop where I bought the bits.  They were very helpful and phoned the manufacturer's distributor, but without a decent picture of what I needed to do I was still stick.  Looked on the web - here there were several 'home brewed' instructional articles.  The main difficulty here is knowing what to trust, and again the instructions assumed I was starting off replacing the screen, not dealing with one that had fallen out!  Finally more by luck than judgement, I pressed it in the right direction and it clicked back into place.  By this time dust had entered the viewfinder area and a fragment of the non lint cloth I was using had worked it's way into the sensor.  Getting too het up is no way to deal with a DLSR camera so I put the lot away until today.  A good search of multiple sites on the web provided the solutions I was after - properly researched the job looked none to difficult, so I had a go.

My point here is that with expensive equipment, I'd far prefer to whip it down to a local technicians and get them to sort the issue out, or at least discuss it with them.  I couldn't find anyone local, so would have had to send the camera off, losing it for several days at least and letting myself in for an unknown bill once they'd assessed the problem.  With PC equipment, there do now seem to be plenty of small shops providing this service, but this doesn't extend to cameras.  There's an alternative source of knowledge on the web to replace this, but you do have to provide the fingers yourself, and sourcing spares may not be simple.  Thinking about this, our dishwasher is missing a small spring - we've been unable to source a replacement and resent paying call out etc. for such a small (and optional) repair.

Incidentally, the sensor clean worked fine, also got the dust out of the viewfinder area.  Only problem is the focusing screen got a small scratch when it fell out, which I've made much worse trying to clean it off!  Screens not available at the shops, so I'll have to buy on the web or special order from a shop.

2012 - End of civilisation...

... as we know it.

Riots in London, international financial system breaking down.  Many major countries spending beyond their means.  Lack of political will in the west to maintain law and order, reform bureaucracy or rein in spending.

If the (legitimate?) killing of one drug dealer can serve as an excuse for the amount of rioting going on, are the Olympics going to provide another flashpoint.  I see the building of the Olympic arenas as an extravagance with little benefit for the man in the street.  How are the individuals who are rioting now going to view the privileged few with access to limos, special traffic lanes and the best seats for the Olympic events.  The stark contrast between the amounts spent on these events and the conditions in some inner city estates provides a lot of justification for envy and a feeling of unfairness.

The political systems of most western countries are coming under considerable pressure.  The electorate are so used to governments overspending and bribing them with their own money (plus borrowings) it has become nigh impossible to rein back the benefits and services the governments are providing 'on tick'.  Surely the most stupid voter can appreciate that there's a limit to national borrowing, and only so much 'family silver' that can be sold off to finance over spending.  The more anyone borrows, the more of their income is spent on unproductive interest payments.  In any case, where is this money coming from that's being borrowed.

While the finance markets are confident that repayments will be made, no problem.  Governments can just borrow even more to pay off the loans coming due.  Eventually the markets will get a bit worried that this can't go on forever, as is happening in Greece and several other countries.  This forces a re-examination of what's going on and a sudden shift in confidence can result in governments no longer being able to borrow.  Result - governments are forced print money (quantative easing or similar weasel phrases) and their currencies collapse with high inflation.  I think I need to spend my savings quick - which is probably what the governments want to stimulate the economy into growth ???

With more money going on 'social' spending, the necessary spending on infrastructure, policing and national defence get cut right back.  Potholes in the roads, a spread on minor anti social behaviour and the possibility this country won't be able to defend itself (Falklands?) don't seem to worry our ruling classes.  Unlimited immigration also doesn't seem to affect our MP's - the lack of social cohesion it causes is maybe too far down the social ladder to affect them.

Several factors seem to be coalescing for next year.  Throw in a major natural disaster in the US - earthquake or eruption of a volcanic caldera, and a flare up in the middle east cutting off oil supplies, and the collapse of western civilisation as we know it doesn't seem so far fetched.

Run for the hills!

Buying lottery tickets

When I'm content with my lot I don't.

When I'm fed up with life and want to change things I do.

Education, purpose of, part two

Yesterday's blog has squirrelled round my brain for the last day.

After consideration, it still seems right to me that the very basics of education - reading, writing and 'rithmetic need a disciplined rigorous approach to their teaching.  There is an added benefit to this - even the youngest primary children need some exposure to a formal working environment.  Take the kids out of their informal friendly classroom for short periods of strictly disciplined rote learning.  This will not only teach the subject, but also get them used to an 'adult work environment' for initially short periods where quiet and concentration are the norm.  It won't hurt to introduce periods where the teacher is supreme rather than the kids' interests.

Further thoughts have moved into the inevitable huge grey areas any idea like this raises.  Even in non academic subjects (dare I suggest art?) there are formal methods to be taught as well as the fun of slapping paint around.  Many academic subjects - History, Human Geography,  Religious education are open to interpretation and allow personal opinions to form around the base facts.  These are also not critical subjects for future employment in general areas, so can 'loosen up' and go further than currently allowed in personal research and creativity.  Initial teaching of languages and sciences (primary level) can also be more a voyage of personal discovery than formally taught subjects, as I believe is currently practised.  Teaching of ethical/moral subjects at this level is very problematic and maybe should be at the level of discussing what the children currently think - encouraging tolerance and understanding of others views rather than any attempt to impose a 'right' view.  It's a really difficult job for the teachers to put their own knowledge and beliefs to one side and practise the tolerance of views they may consider wrong - kids may have racist or homophobic views - but tolerance is what they'd be preaching...

Education, purpose of

Been out in the woods again for a long weekend.  A few threads of thought have come together, making me question the purpose of our education system.

Discipline on primary schools has been in the news.  There's some suggestion we should go back to the system of rows of desks facing teacher rather than informal groups of tables with pupils facing each other.

A lot of major economies seem to be in trouble at the moment.  There's a need for the workforce to grow the rate of wealth creation to keep up with the amount governments are spending.  either that or educate the politicians that you can't continually spend more than you have.

Immigrants to this country (UK) seem to have better basic skills and a better work ethic than the native population, so they're grabbing a lot of jobs.  I suppose you have to be well motivated to leave your own country to find work, but the situation does seem a bit extreme.

The final thread was meeting one of the bushcraft instructor's sons.  This guy (early 20s) had been mostly home educated - to say he had retained his creativity would be an understatement.  My immediate response wast to think he wouldn't fit in to a normal workplace and I wanted to crush his rather wild attitudes into conformity- and the word 'crush' I think is the right one to describe my attitude.

Bring these threads together and it became apparent to me that I think the education system should be geared to producing productive clones.  The individual's value is to bolster GDP and that is what education must be about.  That's fair enough as the cost of ones education comes from the value created by the businesses and big corporations.  But is it right?  Are we justified in teaching conformity and repressing individual creativity.

I've had a little experience of teaching.  It's clearly impossible to provide enough resources to teach each pupil genuinely as an individual.  Even if it was possible, there is a view from the community and the individual teacher as to what is right and/or acceptable, and this will be imposed on any learner.  There are also limits placed on creativity in that the 'true' view of the world needs to be taught.  Accepted texts and the knowledge required to pass exams is not open to creative questioning, they need to be learnt by rote.  (That last sentence seems wrong)  Moral 'truths' are also not open to question.   It used to be the church providing unquestionable moral leadership, now it's the multicultural dictats of the secular government which may not be questioned.

My experience of school teachers, as a class, suggests they don't like what they are teaching questioned.  There are certainly practical reasons why a teacher can't function if the accepted truth can be questioned by the learners, but it seems to me to go beyond that and the teachers ego becomes involved in their belief that they're always right.  The bushcraft instructors I'm involved with have opened my eyes to this - they're all very open to any ideas from their learners and will question their own knowledge if a good objection is raised to a practise or item of information.

There is then a need for basic life skills and work attitudes to be 'rammed down the throat' of learners for the nation to function and create the wealth that is needed (and desired) by the population.  Traditional methods probable work best here with disciplined rote learning.  Beyond these basics there seems to me little need to force feed information to learners without question.  There seems an idea that teaching methods need to be uniform throughout the system, I suppose I'm suggesting that teaching of the basics needs to be rigorous, but that 'extras' should enjoy a lighter method of teaching, with originality of thought, creativity and questioning of accepted norms all encouraged.  Some real life investigation and research should be good too.

While we're on the subject, I was teaching 16-18 year olds, many of whom had zero motivation to learn but wanted the bits of paper (exam passes) at the end of their course. If I've said it before, I'll say it again, it would be far better for the demotivated students to leave school as early as possible (14?, 12?) and go out to work to support themselves (no benefit payments at this age!).  Make it easy for them to return to school until their mid twenties - most, I think, will return to learning with a better understanding of why they need an education and they'll be properly motivated.  Woe betide any rotten teachers then!  The courses I liked teaching best were those for adults who were there to get the skills they wanted to get a good job - they drove you to teach them...

Norway

It's impossible to stop this sort of thing happening.  It just takes one determined individual with enough skill and luck on their side.

Kids only

Just chatting to the wife about the culture/art event last Saturday and we brought up an interesting point.  All the interactive events were involving the kids.  Almost no adults were actually taking part - some of the stuff like fencing and judo had been organised specifically for younger participants, put crazy golf, drumming and origami stands had no restrictions - yet very few adults participating.
My wife has been involved in setting up a local history archive, and has attended several council meetings to discuss what's wanted.  The main driver is the need to preserve an archive of papers and artefacts that has been built up about the local history.  Yet an awful lot of the council specified requirements if for the facilities to appeal to youngsters.  Provision of a classroom for school groups, making any displays appeal to family groups with children.
The same thing is happening at Belfairs woods, local to us.  A quite large area of woodland has been sacrificed to an adventure play area - there was already an area of swings etc.  There is due to be a woodland centre built and opened there soon, and again a lot of what I've heard is centred around attracting young people.
I do casual work in the adult education colleges.  Even here the focus is being moved onto younger adults gaining work qualifications.  Any leisure courses, even where culturally valuable are being cut back, or at least not subsidised.  The cost gets quite prohibitive for pensioners and the like.

One can only applaud the provision of facilities to attract children, but this should not be at the expense of infantilising what are by their nature serious cultural facilities. Libraries need to remain focused on literature and information.  Woodlands need to remain as havens of nature and peace.  Museums need to retain their archives.  While beeping and flashing interactive displays have their place, they are by their nature limited in what they can present.  There is also good reason for children to be exposed to serious exhibitions and to be taught about how to behave in such environments.
Fine for kids to have their fun palaces.  Can some provision also be kept for adults to enjoy things in an adult way please.

Repeat rant for restaurants and pubs....

Conceptual art(ists)

Just returned from a visit to an event organised by our local 'cultural promotions' unit.  I believe it's getting quite a bit of public money one way or the other and puts on several artistic/cultural events a year at various local locations.
I'm certainly not against the idea of a bit of culture being made freely available to the masses, but I am left wondering who decides what types of culture should be made available.  The local group is predominantly conceptual artists - I take this to mean that they're more into multimedia and challenging works rather than conventional painting and sculpture.
I'm sure I've put this elsewhere on my blog, but my definition of art is something that doesn't have a particular useful function but nevertheless enhances our lives.
Today's event was a bit of fun with public participation, so by that definition today's even works.  What I found rather disappointing was the quality of the workmanship on much of the artwork and many of the installations.  Loads of public money has been lavished on the buildings the artists in residence use, and much of their work (play?) is at public expense.  So why do the mechanics of the interactive installations keep breaking, or not work adequately.  Why do some of the artwork look as if they're constructed with kindergarten level skills and techniques.
I suppose what I'm saying is that while conceptual art with original ideas is fine, it does need to be backed up by the artists having the craft skills necessary to create a good quality artefact from their ideas.  Taking a toy and spray painting it gold, or bodging together a lot of cardboard tubes with duct tape really doesn't justify these artists having superb facilities provided for them - it's sheer self indulgence on their part to think the public must support them for their 'challenging ideas' when they don't have the basic artistic skills to produce the goods.
Lets get back to artists starting with the basics and doing an'apprenticeship' of conventional art before they're considered competent to move on.  And lets have the general public deciding what enhances their lives (and so is art) rather than allowing the art world to completely detach itself from the real world.

Wishful thinking

Fox in my garden has been suffering from mange for a while.  I sent off for some mange treatment, and the honey sandwich I've been putting out for him with the treatment on has disappeared regularly.  Hadn't seen him for a few days, but yesterday the fox turned up at sundown with quite a bit of fur on his tail - still very manky, but not the bare bone of a tail he'd had before.  With just enough light I took a photo and posted on facebook proclaiming success with the treatment!
This morning scruff the fox was in next doors garden - still with his bare bone of a tail.  Closer inspection of yesterday's fox photo shows it's clearly a different fox with a black cast to his back fur.  The amount of fur is very obviously too much to have regrown in the few days I haven't seen him.
So ... we have a second fox with mange visiting our garden.  Question is, how do I tell the foxes only to eat one sandwich each if I now put out two sandwiches a day?

Playstation generation

Seen several articles recently about older people not being very competent with the latest technology.  Maybe that should be 'familiar' rather than 'competent'.  I'm not a believer in using satnavs, ipods, blackberries and the like.  I can't say they're rubbish or anything because I've never tried them - I've just never felt the need or desire to own them.  I am sitting here using a laptop to blog, something I certainly wouldn't have done a few years ago for much the same reasons I don't have a satnav now.
As technologies become more mature, I feel they improve and get easier to use.  At the same time, they can also get more sophisticated and more difficult to make full use of.  I've got a relatively simple mobile phone with camera and mp3 player, but I only ever use it as a phone.  If I need to take a photo it's a case of searching through the menus, despite the fact I know there's a quick button on the outside somewhere or direct access to the camera function.  I'm not entirely sure, but I would imagine over time the manufacturers will standardise how controls like this are presented, just as the major controls on a motor car were standardised quite early in automotive history.  It's still often a problem finding the fog light switch!

A major reason I don't rush out and buy new technology is the rate of change.  Buy the latest gizmo and it's going to be superseded within a few months.  Give it a couple of years to prove itself - the design will settle down to include all the useful functions and the price will come down and it will become apparent if the thing is actually useful.

A major gripe with technology is the way many manufacturers change things to no real purpose other than to make older versions obsolete.  Microsoft keeps changing the interfaces on its software, 2007 being a complete break with previous designs, rendering a lot of knowledge redundant and requiring re-learning.  Even worse is the recent operating systems not being backwardly compatible.  Much older software doesn't work on the new operating systems, buying new versions is, to say the least, an annoyingly expensive business.  While I understand that at some point the technology has to radically change to make use of the latest developments, it is surely not beyond these mighty companies ability to include a simulator program to allow the powerful new generation PC's to (even very inefficiently) simulate the old operating systems and allow the obsolete software to work.
And then there are the web providers who keep tinkering with their offerings.  Their 'improvements' are often not communicated to the user community very well, they can affect the security of the user, they require effort to relearn the changed functionality, and they often don't improve the user experience anyway.

Maybe I need to stay out of these area fr a decade rather than just a couple of years - wait 'til it all gets properly stable!

Foxes

Guy had a go at me because I was wearing my fox t shirt.
Apparently his rabbits were eaten by a fox.
Still don't know why he decided to have a go at me.  I can see that it's upsetting to have your rabbits eaten in this way, but my shirt only depicted a fox and cubs, there was no slogan supporting foxes rights or anything.
The only reply I could give him was that foxes are vermin and wild animals and they will obey their instincts and do things like this.
What I would have liked to say to him -
It's really cruel of you to keep rabbits in a hutch just for your entertainment.  If you're going to keep a foxes natural prey contained where it can't escape it's YOUR responsibility to keep the animals safe.  If you know there are foxes about the hutch must be fox proof (and then some!)  Foxes are intelligent animals, but you can't expect them to realise your pets are off limits to them.
Not wanting to start a punch up, I refrained from saying this, but it's a pretty nasty type of person who will have a go at a stranger about something that's really their own fault.  However upset they are.

Responsible citizenry

When is breaking the law not an offence and offensive?
Much of the time if you look at the behaviour of many 'responsible law abiding' citizens.  At least that's what they'd like to think of themselves as.
Think traffic act speeding, parking on double yellows, cycling on pavements or without lights at night and you'll understand what I'm getting at.  This type of offence seems to be accepted as OK by many people, plus a fair number of police who think they've got better things to do.  the really surprising thing about these offences is that the perpetrators know full well that they're breaking the law but seem to indulge themselves in some form of doublethink that they're not criminals!  The job of the police is to enforce the laws as enacted by government.  In some of the above cases they seem to want to make the law and allow some of the offences to go unchallenged. Surely even if resource restraints prevent 100% effort to prosecute the above offences, there should be periodic crackdowns to remind everyone what the law says.  A bit of publicity in the local papers beforehand and there would be no need for warnings - immediate prosecution or fixed penalty fines should be the order of the day during a crackdown.
As always the best route is for individuals to willingly obey the law, but if individuals won't comply, enforcement is a necessity in any civilised community.  If any individual wants to make their own laws, they can't complain to the law when someone assaults them for doing something the other person doesn't like!

Another issue is ignorance of the law.  This indeed may apply to youngsters riding bikes on pavements when their parents say it's OK and the police fail to enforce or inform.
The particular issue I'm thinking of here however is public nudity.  Subject brought up on another forum I've been looking at.  It's not illegal to be naked in a public place.  How many people in England would agree with that statement.
"Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 it is not an offence to be naked in public in England and Wales. It becomes an offence if it can be proved the person stripped off with the intention to cause distress, alarm or outrage."  Quote from BBC news item.
I find that quite surprising and would expect to be arrested if I walked down the local street nude.  That word 'intention' in the causing alarm bit is very interesting - I wouldn't have thought anyone could walk down the street nude without realising it was very likely to cause offence and or alarm - it's just not done.

That's enough from me for now.  Today's issue in a nutshell is the difference in what the law says to the public perception of what's OK.

Monday - quiet

Had a go round the shops today.  A lot of my bushcraft clothes were getting rather frayed at the edges.  It's never seemed worth buying new as they do get dirty and smoky.  I recall walking in to Tesco after one course - I'd remembered to take off my sheath knife, but stinking of woodsmoke, covered in mud, pheasant blood and assorted other grime isn't what shop assistants expect in urban Essex.
Anyway, there's a Go Outdoors that opened a year or so ago near me, I've been meaning to visit for a look and this seemed a good time.  Walked in to the store and there was an american style greeter on the door.  I surprised myself by rather liking the experience - the guy did seem genuinely welcoming and not the false 'have a nice day' bit.  Wandering round the store I was again offered help several times - not in a pushy way and I was left alone when I declined help.  Then I found I'd  left my reading glasses at home and needed to ask an assistant for help reading the sizing on packs of socks.  He happily helped and also noticed a bit of the display was awry and stopped to push the display part back into place.  The till girl was also more than willing to explain their discount card scheme.
A good experience - I got cargo walking trousers, a medium weight fleece top and some recommended socks (the most expensive I've ever bought!).  Exactly what I set out to buy, and spending less than I'd expected.  On a Monday morning the shop was practically deserted, almost more staff than customers.  I was still impressed with the staff though.  Is that just chance that they were a good bunch, or is that shop doing something right?  Later in the day I went to a B&Q - the staff didn't offer help, the displays were, to be kind, grubby and it was more the usual big store shopping experience I'd expect.
The big point here is that the Go Outdoors staff seemed a lot happier than other staff I've met in big stores.  I'd really like to know if happy staff give good service, or caring about your job makes you happier.  I know I responded to the service by being nice to the staff - and the 64k dollar question, how does management achieve a happy staff corps eager to do their job well?  Feel sure it's not just a case of paying them more.

Celebrity

It's often in the papers about celebrities having their privacy invaded.  The phone hacking business being a main area of discussion at the moment.
Anyone who makes their living from entertaining the public, or who represents the public (MPs and councillors) know what they're getting into.  In the case of sportspeople and entertainers, their income is directly affected by their public profile.  If they're content with a 'normal' pay level, then maybe they can expect a normal level of privacy.  Those who demand mega-salaries have to accept that with that level of pay, they must accept that they're owned by the paying public and every aspect of their lives is under the microscope.
Our public representatives must also accept that if we're going to vote them into power we have a valid interest in their morals, beliefs and way of life.
Personally I've no interest in the seedy details of a lot of these people and can't understand how publishing sex scandals boosts the circulation of newspapers and magazines.  This is one sort of article I definitely won't read.

I still don't get why individuals are paid so much for playing a game, however well.  MPs having multiple jobs also seems to me corrupt - it cannot be possible that they're offered directorships without the employing company expecting some undue influence over government.

Sickies

Just wondering why I and my family don't ever seem to be seriously ill.  Probably tempting fate here, but none of our family have required hospital treatment, excepting childbirth, pretty well ever.  I did go in for one night's observation as a teenager when I fell off my bike, but that's about it.  Oh, and treatment for depression - I'm undoubtedly rationalising, but somehow I don't see that as a physical illness.
Other families I know seem to be taking their kids up to the hospital every other week.  Many of my friends and in laws have a variety of ongoing and one off health problems, some without positive diagnosis.
Some of this is undoubtedly just the luck of the draw, but I do wonder if some of these people are verging on hypochondria, taking their kids to hospital for every little thing, and I do wonder if there's a genetic element in a tendency to either get ill or maybe even have accidents.
This isn't one of those things with a definite answer.  Personal attitudes, lifestyle and upbringing must influence whether we get ill, have accidents, and how we respond to these life events.
There's suggestions in the newspapers that very obese children should be taken into foster care to sort their obesity - and related health problems - out.  It does raise the wider question of whether the state has the right to interfere with our lifestyles where it results in a cost to the state, the NHS in this case.
Maybe a better solution would be for anyone with an unhealthy or risky lifestyle to be required to buy insurance to pay the extra costs.  It does seem unfair that individuals who look after themselves are required to contribute to the care of those who don't.  By extrapolation, others who cost the country cash should also be required to pay - get criminals to repay all the costs of bringing them to justice, compensation to victims (& repay insurance payouts) and their stay in prison.
Just think how complex the politicians could make the systems if they went down this route.  Jobs for the whole population just sorting it all out and chasing non payers!
As always it would probably end up in those with assets being penalised, and the workshy and unprudent getting off scot free.  Another subject for another day, but I'm now defined as 'below the poverty line'... and doing fine thank you.

National debt

Saw in the newspaper (or the daily mail at least) that the national debt, including future commitments is 80K for every family in Britain.
Might wonder where the money's going to come from, but in another article it commented that 60billion has been wiped off the value of the nations savings accounts by the excess of inflation over interest rates available to savers.
The bank crash cost me about half my savings as I worked for a major bank and had been encouraged through various schemes and tax breaks to invest in company shares.  OK shares can go down as well as up, but there's something (probably criminally) wrong when a major banks shares go down from £7 to 10p in a few months.
Lose your sanity with the pressure of working for a cost cutting company, then lose your job at the same time you savings get wiped.
No big deal, it's all only numbers on a statement anyway, until you try to buy something you want.

Zoning out

Just had an interesting question asked on another forum I look at.
They needed to stay still modelling for an art class, and asked how they could 'zone out' while remaining focussed enough to stay in place.
It's something I'm pretty good at - doing wildlife photography I may need to stay absolutely still for an hour or more while being ready to operate the camera at any time.  However, how is it done?
Eastern sects talk about a beginners or empty mind, and it seems to me there is a need to 'switch off' the conscious decision making and critical parts of the mind.  Achieving this state may be the same as the states named 'meditation', 'trance', 'self induced hypnosis'.
I get there by physical stillness and practising a variety of shamanic exercises I've learnt over the last few years on bushcraft and holistic courses.  It is remarkably similar to the state of mind I used to experience while Kart racing, however strange that may seem.  The Kart racing required hours of practise of the techniques of cornering, braking, balancing the kart on the throttle round bends.  Once these techniques became second nature, actual racing ceased to need the concious part of the mind and the instinctive, subconscious mind took over and did a far better job.  I've heard similar descriptions from musicians, artists and combat soldiers.
What's going on?
One of the reasons I took to bushcraft was being made redundant/early retirement from my main job.  While on outplacement training I received advice on interview technique.  A point it made was that decisions by the interviewer are often made unconsciously - The need for good hygiene, neat haircut, trimmed nails, pressed shirt are not to impress the conscious decision making, but the unconscious.  Our logical minds can process just 3-7 pieces of information at one time.  The unconscious processes 2-3 million pieces of data simultaneously.  Just think - every single nerve ending in your body, every cone and rod in your eyes, every olfactory cell, your balance and sense of acceleration is sending information to your brain constantly.  The remarkable barely understood organ has to filter out what's important and present it to the part known as conscious thought.
If you can let go conscious control and trust that the programming you've provided by rehearsing the techniques required for any activity, you instinctive or unconscious mind has far more data at it's disposable, and less inhibiting criticism to get on with the job far better.
There's also the aspect that we are happy to assume animals have evolved instinctive behaviour during evolution.  Surely humans, with their advanced evolution, must also have a store of instinctive wisdom held somewhere in their being.  We can't seem to access this consciously, so again 'letting go' with the conscious mind may just allow us to make use of this instinctive behaviour.

Try this exercise, based on shamanic rites -
Stay 100% still.  Now concentrate on the nearest sound you can  hear - listen just to that sound.  Now move to the furthest sound you can hear - listen just to that sound.  Without allowing your logical mind to criticise, build a mental picture of what the furthest sounds represent.  Come back to the nearest sound - if it's, say, a clock ticking, build a mental image of the workings, whatever, let your mind build a picture of what the sounds represent.  With practise you may find some remarkable results.  To my mind you're not tapping in to mysterious energies or receiving message from god, you're just tapping in to the vast streams of information that are normally filtered out before they reach your conscious mind.
Warning, you may feel strange or dizzy after doing this properly, take a few seconds to gather your wits once back in the room.

Just another thought - how much are the rituals of religions intended to get the faithful to drop their logical, conscious faculties in the interest of belief in the supernatural.

Bushcraft

Just back from four days/three nights living under a basha in private Kent woodland.  I help out on Natural Pathways bushcraft courses.
These events really bring out the best in everyone, in five years of going to these courses I haven't met a single unpleasant person.  Many have not been the sort of person I'd normally want to associate with, but they've all had something to contribute.  This last weekend I've had discussions on anything from the weather to the possibility of a universe with a second time dimension.
We also had the owner of the woodlands grandson doing the survivalist bit in another part of the woods.  The disturbance he and his two friends caused alerted us to their presence, so we wandered down and found their camp.  They weren't there and a bow and arrows, machete, food and various equipment was scattered around.  their shelter they'd built was pretty poor (they also had a tent) and their fire was uncontained and built among pine trees - risking a forest fire!  This somewhat shows the need for a bit of training before being let loose in woodland!  We hadn't been told he'd be there, so phoned the owner assuming they shouldn't be there - somewhat of a relief to find they were legitimate.
During our course we ate some delicious tender young rabbit, shot the day before and prepared by our group.  Another wild delicacy was some jelly ear fungus, fried with wild garlic and herbs.  I must say I eat more and better than I do at home.  The variety of dishes (not all woodland sourced) that I wouldn't consider preparing at home that I eat here is amazing.  The wild cooking expert here blends herbs and spices in the way a fine artist uses colour in a painting.
Everything at a camp like this takes longer and much more physical effort than you'd use in a normal domestic situation, but it's all much more satisfying for that.  You generally don't have a compost toilet at home that needs emptying and the contents burying.
It's a rather tempting option to buy a piece of woodland and live, at least part of the time, a more natural existence.  I've got some good friends from my time doing bushcraft, and a small community of likeminded friends would be excellent.  Living in a real community rather than an amorphous mass of people too big to all relate to each other would be a new experience for me, and I think a good one.  These weekends with a great variety of people provide a small glimpse at how a community rapidly builds from disparate group of people with a common interest.  The altruism shown, with everyone using their better attributes to compensate where others are weaker is wonderful to see.
One of the regular comments at the end of the weekend is "Oh well, back to reality tomorrow".  Before I'd retired, I replied quite spontaneously to this comment "Not really, this is reality here, I'm going back to the hell of commuting, it's just not natural or real".

Bureaucracy

Half a days work this afternoon.

I do casual work, either for local colleges or private groups.  The council run colleges are a nightmare of paperwork and bureaucracy.  While it means your tax gets paid and al the admin done, it can take tow or three months to get paid.  Small wonder that many private organisations just do it all cash in hand - one may even wonder if many of the employees, who only probably earn a couple of hundred a year, bother to go through all the official hoops to declare their earnings.  That would also mean they're probably not declaring their earnings against any benefits they receive.

Personally I run a self employed photography business and lump these cash earnings into this self employment, but for just these earnings it wouldn't be worth my time, or come to that the tax offices time, to process these small amounts.

The government should recognise these small scale earnings and allow them to be declared and duly ignored.  That would mean they're legitimate so that when (if) they grow into a reasonable part time job, they can be merged into the tax system without the earner having to worry about their previous undeclared earnings.  It will always be difficult and arbitrary to set the limits for amounts to be ignored, but if it's not an accepted derogation of the system, these earnings remain 'black' and encourage individuals to remain outside the mainstream system - and to continue claiming undue amounts of benefits after they've finished needing them.  It also removes a fairly reasonable excuse when people are found cheating on a very small scale.

Sun!

Yesterday and today we've seen the sun out, hot and bright.

Nice couple of lazy days - minimum housework and maximum sunbathing time in the budgie smugglers.  Don't know about others, but I don't use sun block.  I just sit in the full sun for less hours and then retreat under the shade of our rowan tree.

Experts never seem to fully agree what is good or bad for you.  A few years ago you were supposed to avoid sun exposure at all costs.  The along came vitamin D deficiency and a bit of exposure is deemed good for you.  Now there's evidence a bit of sunbathing can reduce various cancers.

It's in the paper today that being a thin male can give rise to diabetes - first I've heard of that one.  And apparently thin males are much more prone to serious injury in motor accidents as they've got less protective padding.

Moderation in all things I say, listen to your body's instincts and ignore the experts.  I've been in for five minutes now checking my email and doing this blog, so I'm going back out to enjoy the sun again.

Sunday

Sitting here after traditional roast Sunday lunch.  Kids on PS3.  Wife on PC in dining room.  Washing up done/in dishwasher.  Me on blog.

Maybe I should watch the Wimbledon final if I was interested.

Oldest son went out for a picnic with his girlfriend twenty minutes ago.  They've just come back because the roads are near gridlocked - they going to walk to the park instead.

Next week will be very different.  I'll be out in Kent woodland helping on a bushcraft course.  No traffic, no electronic stuff, no crowds.  Just a small bunch of people living in home built shelters, cooking on a camp fire, and following the bears' lead for other necessities.  Physically much harder than my normal sedentary life, and everything takes much longer, it's all so more meaningful.  If I win that crazy £154,000,000 I can buy a nice piece of woodland and just live there.  Probably end up not spending anything!

The more entertainment and leisure opportunities I have, the less inclination I seem to have to actually do anything.  Reduce life to the basics and I'm eager to be up at first light, seeing and hearing the animal activity, tuned in to the natural world.  Being over-fed, under exercised and over stimulated with drivel is not a satisfying way to live.  Big problem is the need for space:  Living a natural existence requires acres of land for each person to provide their needs.  Uncontaminated water, fuel for heat, animals to hunt, plants to forage from, space to dispose of waste.

Glancing up at the PS3, there's a game set in derelict urban/industrial scenery with various monsters to be killed.  Yup, that sounds like most of the games there are - replace monsters with enemy forces and add cars occasionally.

Be quite nice to come up with a pre-industrial type SIMs game.  I wonder if the knowledge base still exists to create a realistic set of rules as to how to live in a natural environment.  Could be very educational with good and bad plants to eat, divvying up your effort into the necessary functions in order to thrive.  Be very interesting if it was an on-line, thousands of players, multi player game with restricted resources.  Would individuals cooperate or compete, and could the rules be set to enable either strategy to be viable.

I'm not even going to think about a default starting scenario...

Sunday afternoon - now for me followed by every day holding the option of leisure or working.  Semi retirement provides the options, but it's up to me to provide the decisions and actions.

(Dis)agreement among friends

I've been seeing some pretty rude comments between 'friends' on social networking sites.  It's very hard to tell if they're meant as banter or if they really are being rather ill mannered towards each other.  It does make me wonder at the etiquette of online communication - should it have the same rules applied as face to face, or is a greater degree of rudeness acceptable.

It's always seemed to me that I need to be a lot more careful with emails and forum posting.  Computer text lacks the visual clues to indicate that a remark is banter (emoticons excepting).  It's very easy to offend unintentionally.  Plus, if offence is caused there's, the chance that the sender will never know that offence is caused - any apology for offence caused will also be delayed.  Face to face, you'd soon realise if what you're saying goes against your listener's beliefs and could moderate or explain your comments.

I've had the experience of posting on a forum and using a particular word in a restricted context - another user read it in a wider context and, fortunately, laughed at the unintended insult.  I think they realised what I'd actually meant.

Another time, a friend on facebook that I rarely meet had posted a series of diatribes against the break up of the forestry commission - an organisation I've never much liked.  I either had to bite the bullet and ignore their comments, start an on line argument, or, as I did, just quietly defriended them.  We met up a couple of months later and talked the issue through.  I could see their points, and in a face to face situation, they could amicably see my view.  We remain friends in real life but defriended on facebook.

There's a series of culture clashes online.  The usual demarcations between classes and generations cease to exist.  I have my sons as friends on facebook, something which is maybe needed for safety.  But I really don't want to be privy to their 'playground banter', and I'm sure they don't want me seeing their peer group opinions and language.  It would be good if you could have groups of friends, and interact only with the selected group(s) you want to.  OK multiple accounts would do that and maybe it can be done anyway but I'm not savvy enough.

Text speak / spelling / grammar.  OMG - I think that means oh my god.  How lazy can people get.  It's the responsibility of the sender to make what they send intelligible.  I don't want to have extra effort unloaded on to me by lazy ****ers making me try to understand their sloppy typing.  I know young people adopt a 'secret language' deliberately unintelligible to their elders - that's OK.  I also know it is possible to get too worked up about one or two errors, but for many people there are some basic errors in their efforts which demonstrate they're really too idle to care.  If you're one of these people careless with your grammar and spelling, please be a bit more careful.

If you didn't get the to, too, two, there, their, they're, you're, your usage then swot up.

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you're a teacher, thank the rest of society for providing you with a job and all you need to live and teach.

Form filling

Just had two letter from the student finance people demanding information about my income.

I'm getting quite upset about the amount of information this particular department keep asking for, and seriously question why they're asking in the first place.

My son (2nd of 4) is at university.  He's twenty.  When it comes to child benefit, tax credits and the like he's considered a non dependent adult.  When it comes to assessing his financial position he's still our dependent child.

Because I've taken early retirement, our family income has crashed.  OK, I've asked for current year assessment of our income and given details.  They've now asked for details and proof of my 2008/2009 income - Firstly I've already given them this information as my first son was at university over this time, secondly what possible bearing has that years income got on this years application?

This all comes after the hassle of filling in my annual self assessment tax form.  I've got a very small self employed income and the amount of work it takes to record and fill in the forms positively encourages anyone to cheat and not declare small amounts of income.

This brings me to the big question.  Is the government system meant to be serving us, the people, or are we meant to be slaves pandering to every whim of the government system.

Yes I know there's quite a bit of fraud going on, and I accept that if I 'try it on' the system should come down hard on me.  BUT, I play by the rules and meticulously follow the advice I'm given - I'm still repeatedly hassled for the same information by different government departments, and the threatening tone the take BEFORE any wrongdoing has taken place is completely over the top.

Try chucking your telly out as I did a few years ago and see if officialdom assumes your innocence when it comes to not having a TV licence!

I've come across individuals working for the government who are friendly and helpful, and others who are right bureaucratic pains in the posterior;  I'm not particularly having a go at the people who operate the system but the complexity of the systems and the alienation engendered by the assumption of guilt the letters they send so often have.

MPs are supposed to represent us and serve our needs, as are all the various civil servants.

If they wish to serve my needs, please provide simple transparent systems I can understand.  I don't wish to avoid my responsibilities, but for heavens sake keep it all simple so I don't inadvertently break the law.  I don't earn that much that I can afford (or justify) spending hundred or thousands of pounds on professional advisers.  If I'm suspected of fraud, or for a random check, I'll cooperate with any investigation - up until the point anyone is found guilty of fraud, please treat us with a decent amount of respect.

I also didn't vote for any government to spend more than the country can afford, and certainly not to get us all into debt.

Re the strikes going on at the moment.  15,00 employees going from Lloyds, private pensions decimated by G Brown changes to pension taxes.  Government employees need to have a look at the world outside before they think they're hard done by.

Re Greek riots.  They're not helping anybody, but I can't help wondering why the British people aren't on the streets rioting about things like the national debt, officialdoms attitudes, stupid priorities...

Delivery drivers

Couple of delivery lorries came past me as I walked up to get my cargo trousers.  They were absolutely belting down the residential roads.  Presumably the faster they do their rounds the quicker they get home, but their behaviour was not that safe.  I hate speed bumps and other artificial speed reduction measures - why should I be penalised when I'm not about to speed, but what else can be done with drivers like that.  It's not possible to have speed cameras down every residential road and the chances of a police car being present is very slim.  I wonder if anything would be done if anyone took their number and reported it to either the delivery company and/or the police - and would your word be enough for action to be taken?

On another tack, I took my shoes off walking through the woods.  Excellent experience on muddy and leafy paths, but not so good where the paths had been 'improved' with stones and gravel!

Walk in the woods

Went up to buy some new trousers today.  Nice weather so I decided to saunter through the local woods on the way to the shop.  The council have been actively managing the woods, so there are newly coppiced areas and various stages of regrowth.  During the week it's practically deserted as soon as you're 50 yards from the car parks.  With yesterday's downpour older tracks have been wiped clean, and the soft path surface has retained fresh animal tracks admirably.  Had to keep stopping and examining them.  Squirrel and dog predominated, with occasional fox and badger.  Some other rodents, probably rats and maybe hedgehog.  I've been looking for definite sign of muntjak and roe deer which are rumoured to be in the woods.  Again nothing definite, put one fairly well defined path looked to have been made by hoofs rather than paws and disappeared into a muntjak sized hole in the undergrowth.
On the way out I was going quite fast, wrapped up in myself and not really looking.  On the return trip, I slowed down and became engrossed in the butterflys, the tracks and the different flora surrounding the paths.  Once I'd slowed and immersed myself in my surroundings, I changed a mental gear and dropped back into becoming part of nature.  The bird alarms that had accompanied me on the outward trip ceased as my physical and mental energies calmed.  Quietness allowed me to identify where dog walkers were the distant alarms and circles of disturbance reached me easily.  No animal movement though.

Got back from my trip refreshed and calmed.  The shop I'd gone to is a small independent, and must be about the only shop left in Southend that still closes on a Wednesday afternoon!  I was after cargo rather than camouflage trousers, but still couldn't find any...

End of the scorcher

Another lazy day this morning basking in glorious sun.
A couple of hours ago the birds were singing mightily in the trees at the bottom of our garden.  Not the usual alarms and territorial squabbles, just a loud hubbub of quite musical singing.
Attuned more to nature after spending many weekends in the woods with a bushcraft school, I noticed the pressure was dropping - difficult to say how you recognise this, but you can feel it, it just takes familiarity to recognise what you're feeling!
Insects disappear...  sitting in the garden beetles and flies and jumping things regularly irritate you, but they'd all gone.  Examining a couple of ants nests they've all gone home and battened down the hatches as well.
The a sudden temperature drop, a sure sign of a cold front reaching us.  Faint thunder in the distance which even now is growing louder.  A few gulls and swifts can be seen, maybe looking for insects fleeing the oncoming storm, this front must be moving fast as they move on pretty rapidly.
14:20 now, no rain yet.  I've brought the washing in, cleared my drying tinder into a paper carrier bag (it was drying on the patio) and brought everything in.

I'll update this entry later - it's the first time I've really looked at all the things happening in the garden as a front comes in.  Thunder rumbles continuously in the distance...

14:35
Here comes the rain.  Had a walk round the garden in the initial downpour - very refreshing after the hot weather.  All the wildlife has taken shelter, just one barmy bushcrafter out enjoying the experience.
Boom!  First close thunderclap just exploded and the rain intensifies

Phew, what a scorcher

Nice day today.
I cut half the lawn yesterday, one triangle of grass is now about 3" and the rest varies up to seed heads 3 feet long.
Spent today doing the laundry - major job as our second son has just come back from University with a mound of unwashed clothing.  Then out in the garden topping up on vitamin D.  Lovely to be semi retired and able to just lay in the sun idly doing the newspaper crossword.  Very civilised.
Haven't got any bookings for casual work in the offing, I suppose I ought to send out a few emails out to get a few more quids worth of employment going.
Maybe I'll mow the other half of the lawn now - or maybe I'll just leave it as an eco garden.

Armed forces day

It's armed forces day in the UK today.  The idea is to show appreciation and support for all the members of our forces, current and past.  Our local event is running at Chalkwell park, so I donned cammo shirt with my veterans badge on it and ambled down to see what was happening.  Event was on from 10:00 to 17:00, we arrived around 12:30.

Not an awful lot there.  A Beach boys tribute band was playing, a few tents with refreshments and photo displays, and a couple of tents for help the heroes and other charities.  One field gun and accompanying landie where the only military exhibits.  A couple of dozen WWII veterans were standing around with berets and blazers.

Maybe we were too early and more people turned up after we'd gone, but it was very disappointing at the lack of support - and the lack of exhibits at the event.  I was expecting stands for the local territorial regiments with their equipment on display and maybe regular forces recruiting stands.  Thinking about it there was one small RAF recruiting stand, but nobody visible manning it.

Maybe all the regulars and TA forces are abroad in action.  The lack of commitment by successive governments to keep the forces up to a reasonable size for the wars they want to fight stretches the few soldiers left too far.

There's another event down on the seafront tomorrow, hope this is better attended.

I really don't know enough to judge if we should be fighting in Afghanistan or involved in Iraq and Libya.  If the politicians decide our troops need to be there, they must get the number of troops and all the gear they need to do the job.  It's not easy for the civilian population to be behind the army in these actions as they're not as clear cut as defending British soil from an alien invader.  Even if you're not fully behind the actions they're involved in you've got to support and admire the dedication and professionalism of the individual soldiers in their many roles.

One of those days

We'd arranged to pick up our son from Keele uni today.  Not hearing from him we'd assumed he wasn't ready to be picked up - until a phone call at 9:30 this morning.  Its a good 7 hours driving there and back.  We thought of deferring until Monday, but with various commitments that wasn't on.  So -  we phone him back and his phone wasn't on, left a message that we were setting out to pick him up about 16:00 with an evening run home.  Filled the car with diesel and started the run, he phoned us soon after we'd started to confirm OK.
All worked out OK, but on the M11 on the way back it was dark and raining heavily.  As we passed Stanstead I was doing 70mph, traffic coming out of Stanstead surrounded us, the spray from all these vehicles in close proximity created a sheet of spray over the road surface.  Road markings were invisible, even the cats eyes vanished.  The closeness of the traffic precluded slowing down, so it was hang on to the wheel, rely on the leading cars staying on the road, and everyone else keeping station relative to each other.  The only sure mark I had to ensure I was in the right place was the reflected tail light glow from the concrete central fence.
Madness.
Once out of that situation I slowed down and dropped into the slow lane = the white line at the left hand egde stayed visible, even under considerable spray.
Further on, there was a sports car that hadn't been so lucky - parked backwards into the central reservation with hazards on.  Obviously he'd had  a problem and spun off - didn't look badly damaged, but not a good place to end up in.
Just got home and this is the best idea I can think of for today's blog...
And scruff got his sandwich late.

Armed forces day

Its armed forces day this Saturday (25th June 2011).  I was in the TA for five years driving HGVs in the RCT.  That's the Royal wagoners for the really aged, or the Royal Logistics Corps if you're more up to date.  Royal Corps of Transport  when I was in it.
I'll say to start I've never seen any combat, about the most dangerous thing I did was testing a freshly built pontoon bridge over the river Weser.  The engineers had just finished it and we were the first unit of lorries to happen by - we were ordered to drive across it and back to make sure it worked.  The Weser is a pretty wide and fast flowing river so if we'd gone in it wouldn't have been good.  And of course it was night time, tactical so no lights - just tiny luminous dots on sticks on the edges of the bridge to guide us.  The bridge wasn't much wider than our lorries either.
It was 'wear your uniform to work' day for reservists yesterday, so to join in and show support I wore my soldier '95 shirt and veterans badge when I went out in the evening.   Doesn't seem anyone recognises the vets badge, but the camouflage shirt did cause comments!

Some memories -

End of a 15 day exercise, too tired to care, a group of us went into a quite posh restaurant filthy dirty, still in our combats.  The staff served us without complaint, the best rump steak and chips ever!

Should have been double manned, we were being volunteered by our CO for every job going.  After several days going practically non stop, an officer had to take over driving my Bedford.  Apparently I stayed asleep hanging in the passenger seatbelt as we drove across a ploughed field.

Using up the last of the year's ammunition allocation, blasting away with our light machine guns.

On basic training, on a field exercise I lined up my sights and pulled the trigger on an approaching figure.  The training staff had wound us up that we were about to be attacked.  It was fear and the desire to stop the enemy getting any closer that motivated the action.  Of course they'd arranged that this was our own patrol coming back in at an unexpected time and direction.  A very good lesson why you need to follow procedures and not go gung ho firing on anything that moves.  OK it was blank ammunition, but I really intended to stop the target - one of my friends.

Middle of an exercise - my lorry was out of service (OK I'd crashed it) and I'd been digging trenches.  Totally knackered I was about the only guy left at our location, stopping for a meal I ended up with a huge serving of sponge and chocolate custard.  With a wonderful disregard for fieldcraft I sat out in the sun and scoffed the lot.  Delicious.

Driving west to east through West Germany.  In the west signs in windows urging us impolitely to go home.  The further east you got the friendlier the natives became.  Right up near the east German border we were digging a trench practically in the front garden of one house.  The inhabitant came out, but rather than having a go at us about our activities, he offered a drink from his bottle of whisky.

Driver training.  A smart line up of all the vehicles on camp just prior to us all going out learning to drive our HGV's.  Ten minutes after we had left camp, a smart line up of all the vehicles outside the local transport cafe.

Down near Aldershot our unit were marshalling an army off road driving competition.  I was collecting scores riding round the course on a motorbike.  One of my colleagues reckoned he could ride the bike through a two foot deep swamp that was part of the competition course.  I let him try, the failure was spectacular, mud everywhere.  Next time I delivered the results to the officers I got a very strange look - my uniform pristine but the bike a large mobile blob of mud.

Driver training.  Not me, but one of the trainees proved the lorries could drive straight over a car, in this case a parked Porsche.  The guy passed his test two days later.

Coming back from Germany, driving one of our Bedfords through customs.  Nothing to declare?  Only two SLRs, high powered rifles, two LMG machine guns and the beer for half the squadron.  Presumably someone had done the paperwork, we were just waved through.


Good times, and just enough of an experience to appreciate what the real heroes who are in regular combat operations go through.

Sarcoptic (Fox) Mange part two

Treatment for scruff the fox turned up a couple of days ago.  I've moved the time for putting the sandwich out from mid afternoon to last light in the evening.  He usually wanders through our garden mid afternoon and stops for a sleep if the weather's good, but as it hasn't been the most pleasant weather he's been a bit irregular and the bread was being pecked by the local magpies.
I do wonder if someone else has been treating him - he's not biting and scratching himself anywhere near as vigorously as he was a week ago, and I don't think I've been treating him long enough to take effect.  no problem if he is getting two treatments - the stuff is homeopathic and isn't injurious to other animals or at higher doses to the fox.  I need to keep the camera handy and start taking a series of pictures to detect and record the regrowth of his tail fur.
I haven't mowed the lawn for months now, it's looking more like a small field out there.  Original reason was the lack of rain - the grass stays green better if it's a bit longer.  As it grew the tracks of visiting wildlife became more visible.  It was actually possible to see where the hedgehog had pushed through the grass in search of slugs.  Their scat is distinctive, so I knew we had a visiting hog, but it was nice to track his wanderings round our garden.
Had an unrecognised small brown bird in our garden too.  It came up close to the patio doors.  it must be the young of one of the common garden birds, possibly a blackbird - must look it up.
We had been visited by rats coming in from behind next door's shed.  Not a huge number, but they were occasional visitors to examine our compost heaps.  3 months ago they were fairly frequent visitors, but since then I've seen less traces to the point where none have been seen for some weeks.  The foxes eat the rats, I'm wondering if the mange outbreak is in any way connected with the rats' disappearance.
Scruff the fox is the only local fox we've got a the moment.  I'm assuming White tip (scruff's vixen), Pongo (White tips cub last year), Joe and Jane (recent incoming foxes with few markings) have all died in this mange outbreak.  None of them have been seen now for a couple of months, their regular runs are fading and their laying up spots are unused.  It is looking hopeful for scruff now though.  From what I've read the surviving foxes will quickly breed to fill up the spare territories created by these departures.
Country watch on the TV has been featuring foxes at Pitsea Tip, which is only a few miles away from where I am.  Lovely shots of this years cubs, but they are rather too used to humans feeding them - they're a bit too tame for my liking.  I'll have to see if there's public access so I can take my camera down there.
The charity (query that, no registered charity number) that supplied the mange treatment (for free!), National Fox Welfare Society, has got loads of information on their site.  They're also after members and volunteers to assist injured or ill foxes in your local area.  I'd love to look after and raise orphaned cubs, but I've got mixed feelings about maybe making them too tame and about reintroducing what are after all vermin, back into the wild.
Only a couple of weeks now and I'll be off to Kent for another weekend in private woodland.  Didn't see the foxes down there last time, I'll have to make a special effort to look for them.

Religious rites - does God want them

Genuflecting on entering a church, candles, incense, kneeling all in one direction, hectoring priests.  It all seems a bit much for me and puts me off organised religion.  An omnipotent god surely isn't bothered whether we adhere to church etiquette.  It must be more important that we're just good people.
My personal view is a belief in God, or Gods if you wish to view the various aspects of god separately.  I just can't bring myself to subscribe to any of the organised religions.  Looking back at history, the divisions and wars caused by what are often very minor differences in belief seem plain crazy.
Religion is a great power for good as well.  Having faith in a greater power gives reason for altruistic acts and reason for behaving well towards your fellow people.  It also makes it easier to put up with bad behaviour if you think the perpetrator is going to rot in hell for it!  Don't forget the social aspects either - services can act as a uniting influence on a community, the start of coffee mornings and social clubs and gatherings for a community.

Returning to the original point of the rites the various churches use.  I've been having a look at shamanism - a fairly woolly belief in spirits and energies running through all things.  All things are interconnected through these energies and we're just a part of the system.  While there isn't anything labelled god here, the universal spirit moving through all things isn't that different to a pantheistic notion of a conventional god.  Again the similarities are greater than the differences from other systems.

There's no book of rules, no bible or Koran and there are no laid down activities that are required - so I found it rather unsettling that I started adopting strange little rites of my own.

This started when I was doing a tracking course and we were engaging in 'energy tracking'.  The idea is to engage with the energies laid down with the tracks so as to be able to interpret tracks even when they're completely hidden.  This produced some remarkable results - I'm from a programming background so want everything to be logically explicable.  The leader produced exactly the right atmosphere for this exercise, allowing belief in something that at other times would have seemed quite mad and impossible.
Working in pairs, one student turned their back while the other walked, or did some other action, across a swept area.  The area was then covered with a beach mat and student 1 then had to interpret what had happened.  This is when I adopted my own little rite.  I knelt briefly a couple of yards from the mat (rationale, you can see entry/exit marks more clearly at a shallow angle) before approaching the mat.  I then 'dowsed'  hovering my hands a few inches above the mat.  And it worked.
Looking back, what I was actually doing with the quick kneel and handwork was providing a sop to my concious mind in order to 'let go' and allow instinct and the subconscious to take over.  I've seen on scientific studies the human mind deals with 3-7 items of information at one time.  Now think of the amount of data hitting your brain all the time - sight, smell, touch, time, balance - millions of data items, most of which get filtered out and discarded.  Since then when tracking or in the woods looking for wildlife, I've found these little rituals can quieten your consciousness and allow your instincts to identify clues you'd have no chance of spotting deliberately.

Talking to another bushcrafter, who is similarly put off by the rituals of religion the connection suddenly became clear.  All the ritual activity involved in religion isn't there to worship or please god, it's there to prepare you for worship.  Whether god is a supernatural person, or the sum of the cosmos' natural energies, the way to connect is through instinctive, unconscious though rather than through conscious structured logic.

I'm coming round to the way of thinking that God is not external to us.  Man has developed over tens of thousand, millions of years of evolution.  We have evolved from the chemicals of the rocks, we share the evolutionary path that every living thing has followed.  There is indeed a connection between all living and non living things on the earth and beyond.  We have animal instincts and race memories that are the echoes of our developmental experience.  To hear these echoes we need to listen, we need to drop the shell of our industrialised civilisation for few moments.  We all share the same echoes - whatever rites we use to prepare ourselves to hear are equally valid - lets not squabble about it.

The answer is still 42.  ;o)

Obscene pay

There's a lot in the press about the huge amounts bankers, politicians and some local government managers get paid.  the amounts talked about defy any normal concept of 'earnings'.  How can any one person be that much better than others that the value they add by doing their job can justify so many times the average workers wage.

But hang on a minute.  Look at some of the crazy things going on elsewhere in our society.
Footballers and entertainers receiving vast amounts without producing anything tangible for the community.
The justice system awarding huge amounts of damages to victims of negligence - the concept of a genuine accident without blame seems to have disappeared.  Just being famous from being to the telly seems enough for individuals to demand money for their presence.  As for the after dinner speaking racket with the likes of Tony Blair...

It's hardly surprising that bankers and CEOs of major companies look at the sums being handed out for kicking a ball about and demand similar amounts.  these people are after all running businesses which produce the wealth our societies and nations depend on.  Politicians and local government officials have a high opinion of themselves so aren't going to be left out.

Remember, at the end of the day there is a finite amount of wealth to be distributed.  The wealth is produced by production activities - mining, agriculture, manufacturing and the like, which are in turn enabled by the service industries - the banks, government, distribution, retail and so on.

It seems to me the reward to the productive and service areas should be higher than non productive areas.  Entertainment, the arts, sports are all very nice to have, but cannot demand a disproportionate reward.  Within the productive areas, no individual is indispensable - the guy on the production line is just as essential as the top managers.  Pay needs to relate to the availability of suitable personell -  more people are capable of doing the production line jobs so get paid less, but the top people aren't as unique as they currently seem to think they are.  Same applies to the top entertainers - they're really not that much better than their peers.  The very top jobs should also carry risk - if the management causes the company to fail, then any rewards (pensions, bonuses etc) the management have accrued should fail with the company.  How many managers seem able to ruin one company, then almost immediately get a top paid job in another company - isn't failure recognised at this level? 

Lets get back to sportsmen being (semi) amateur, entertainers doing the job because they love the applause, and managers acting professionally and being respected for it.

Why blog

Today's blog is a bit rushed.

Why am I doing this - I don't anticipate anyone reading it.

So why do I look at the stats so often?

It's great to spout all this rubbish - anonymous - on public view - writing it all down just helps.

Helps what?

Dunno...

End of the world and all that

There's an awful lot of predictions for the world to end in 2012.  I'm happy to admit my ignorance of the details of exactly how this is going to happen.

I must say I'm thinking that it's not the world that's going to end, but maybe our civilisation.  I've read, and it seems entirely possible, that with our intricate network of interdependent utilities, industries, agriculture, finance and distribution, we're always just 4-7 days away from total chaos.  Just take out one element, say electricity, and consider the consequences on everything else!

The natural disasters that have occurred over the last few years - tsunami, volcanic eruption, earthquake have only affected relatively minor areas.

The man made financial problems we're having could well descend into major loss of confidence in national governments' ability to repay loans.  The UK public service unions will really have something to strike about if the government ends up without money to pay their wages.  It always makes me wonder who's actually got the money that's being borrowed on such a massive scale.

Hang on a minute - my pension was due into my account last Friday and it's not there yet - is this the start?

So, consider the scenario - a major earthquake sparking off volcanic activity and tsunamis.  The atmosphere fills with dust, grounding all airlines.  Tsunamis destroy a fair percentage of port facilities as well coastal towns and cities.  Electric storms generated in the volcanic dust clouds could take out all satellite communications and wreak havoc with national power grids.  All this destruction reduces many governments ability to service their debts - assuming the bank systems can continue operation without the data transmission of the satellite and other networks.

Big question - how long does normal life continue.  Would everyone altruistically continue working to provide water, electricity, food to the population without the certainty of being paid for their efforts, and without the certainty their pay can purchase what they need to live.  How soon do people start panicking - hoarding food, abandoning their roles in society and maybe running for the hills with their families.

If, and it's a big if, the utilities cease working and food distribution grinds to a halt, what happens to the major population centres.  Does law and order continue, with equitable sharing of limited resources.  Could an orderly evacuation of the most densely populated areas be achieved - is there enough land to spread out people enough to enable them to survive without the infrastructure of supermarkets and big business?  Would people be able to acquire the necessary skills fast enough?  Can the infrastructure recover if there's a major calamity?

I must say on a global scale, the disasters that we've faced in recent history have not been cataclysmic for the human race, or even our western civilisation as a whole.  There's no reason why much larger disasters can't be coped with in a similar fashion. It's only if something on at least a continental, or even global, scale happens that we're in real trouble.  That sounds pretty callous considering the loss of life in any major natural disaster, but it's the survival of our civilisation, not every individual I'm considering here.

In the long term, there's a need to have a plan how to deal with these things.  It probably won't happen in 2012, but there will be problems, large and small scale, natural and man made, within our life times.  Maybe the ultimate plan B needs to allow for us being knocked back to the stone ages.  I sure as hell don't have the practical know how to smelt iron.