Are the media outlets that regularly lie about the Brexit benefits and the competence of government ministers to be at all trusted on what they publish about Harry & Meghan?
Is it coincidence that they are, almost without exception, right wing media outlets.
Having recently replaced my faulty old laptop with another, less faulty laptop, I was going through the data I've accumulated since 1997 in the hope of being able to somewhat reduce the 92.2Gb storage.
I alighted on a PDF file containing the history of the local area and saw the word 'assarting'. Not having a clue what this word means, other than vast tracts of land hereabouts were subjected to it in medieval times, I looked it up.
It's the felling of forest to create arable land. This whole area, like much of Britain, was covered in forest in Saxon times.
I poured some porridge oats into a bowl and then poured what I thought were frozen blueberries over the top before I would have adding milk and chucked it all into the microwave for 5 minutes.
They were bloody frozen chips. The packet colour is exactly the same. Had to fish them all out, but I bet it would have tasted fine.
Must get an eye test soon - these spectacles are awful.
I recently changed my WhatsApp notification sound from an annoyingly long one to a single camera click, mainly to lessen the impact of notifications on Hay during an interesting TV or radio programme.
There are some annoying individuals who seem incapable of sending a complete WhatApp message and split it into sentences, each one of which is sent separately, resulting in my phone constantly interrupting some activity or other.
The other day I was performing my morning ablutions, naked, in the bathroom and heard a camera click. I thought; "WTF?" before realising it was my WhatApp notification. Mind you, anyone wanting to take a photo of me naked would have serious mental health issues.
Here's an idea I had recently.
You buy a battery powered picture frame containing an LED screen which is connected via the internet to a 4K video camera focused on an original paining in a museum. What's displayed on your wall is a livestream video of the original artwork.
OK, you can't touch it, but you can't touch an original in a museum. For a small monthly fee you are permanently connected to whatever artwork that its owner facilitates with a livestream feed.
A print of an original artwork is disconnected from the original, whereas what you're looking at via the livestream is the original itself, so it's as good as being at the museum, but without the crowds.
You're also performing a security service for the owner of the artwork.
Talking of art, the Cambridges released, through official channels, a painting by Prince George.
Fans of the Cambridges have been cooing over it and complimenting George on his artistic skills; however, before releasing it they should perhaps have checked whether he copied something with a copyright on it - a Christmas card, perhaps.
I think this could get them into a plagiarism row with the original artist. There again, it might bring him some additional money through the adverts.
Kids,eh? Especially Princes....
I heard Matthew 2:6, on the radio yesterday morning as part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols; "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel."
Now Matthew was paraphrasing Micah 5:2 and 2 Samuel 5:2, both of which were prophesies. However, it appears the events were adapted to fit the prophesy, but not quite, and Jesus never became a greatJewish leader.
It struck me that this was much in the manner Brexiteers search for things that support their sunlit uplands prophesies for Brexit, despite the obvious carnage lying all around their feet.
So, are Christians (and the word Christians here represent all those relying on prophecies) and Brexiteers cut from the same cloth - seeking out things that bolster their claims while ignoring the obvious facts and logical inconsistencies that require mind-bending faith to believe, let alone proselytise?
A friend sent me this photo of a gate he came across and, knowing my penchant for upcycling, thought I'd be interested.
That is one cool gate!
Merry Christmas to those who get as far as this.
I spotted this Tweet from John Redwood on Friday about NHS managers.
I'm not sure whether he meant it such, but it's an admission that the NHS is not stuffed to the gills with layers of management, as many believe and many never fail to tell us, especially politicians of a certain bent.
There are over 1.2m full-time equivalent staff in the NHS and 33,000 is 2.75% (I believe the ratio is actually closer to 2%), which is a ratio that's far smaller than the 10% plus in large corporations.
I have no problem with the opinion that many of these managers are responsible for mismanagement and inefficiency - every organisation has its fair share of incompetents; it even extends to the upper echelons of government itself. The NHS is not immune.
The government and the right wing press simply don't seem to understand that if you tell the truth whenever possible, you have far less chance of being called out as a liar when you do actually lie, as people will be more inclined to believe you. However, if you habitually lie, you have great difficulty getting anyone to believe you when you do tell the truth.
I realised yesterday that it will be The King's Speech on Christmas Day this year and not The Queen's Speech. I wonder, however, who will give The Alternative King's Speech though?
Here's a possibility.
Found this walking stick in our local 2nd hand emporium.
It's a tad foreshortened due to the angle of the photo, but it's ideal as a Christmas present for a plumber.
I was listening to BBC R4 at 6am on Monday morning, as is my usual habit, and heard the news announcer talk about 'the Men's World Cup'.
It suddenly struck me that it's no longer THE World Cup, but the Men's World Cup; however, when I spoke to Hay about it, I still used THE World Cup.
Unconscious gender bias exists, and even among women, as I later heard a female interviewee call it THE World Cup.
There again, there are also other World Cups - rugby, for example - so there's unconscious game bias at play.
I immediately recognised Jeremy Clarkson's Game of Thrones Reference in relation to what he said about Meghan Markle (or should we not call her Meghan Windsor?), but then I saw Game of Thrones. It was nevertheless still vile and condemned by even his daughter.
There are decent people; there are people who may be decent, but are paid to stir up hate; there are those who hate purely because they allow their opinions to be formed by those who are paid to stir up hate and there are people who are consumed by hate due to their own inadequacies.
"Because no one's opinions are quite what he wills them to be, no one's beliefs are quite what he wills them to be. In other words, our opinions and beliefs are formed by something more than what we consciously decide." That was said in 1486 by Pico della Mirandola.
We have surely reached a stage where a runaway free press, especially the gutter press, needs a proper regulator with teeth.
Elon Musk, a vociferous proponent of free speech, is playing with the controls of Twitter and curtailing free speech when a Tweet turns on him.
Hypocritical? Certainly, but then he's merely following what any proponent of unrestricted free speech does when the tables are turned on them. What they want is unrestricted free speech for themselves, but not necessarily for others who criticise their position. It's only natural, as we all have egos. The greater the desire for unrestricted free speech, the greater the ego and the more they want to curtail the free speech of others, in my experience.
I've noticed some strange happenings on my Twitter feed of late; I keep seeing posts from people I would never dream of following, such as Kelvin MacKenzie, Darren Grimes and Piers Morgan. Yes, I do follow some right wing characters, merely to observe their antics and thinking, but not the three aforementioned individuals, who post contentious stuff merely as part of their job and they're paid to. They are probably quite affable people face to face.
I tried following them and then unfollowing them to rid myself of them, but their drivel still appears on my feed.
We use IKEA Fenomen candles for night time lighting in the living room, which naturally produces rather a lot of waste wax. I thought to reuse it and so have been collecting all the wax from burned out candles.
I began by adding small amounts of wax to existing candles, but this had the effect of extinguishing them from having too much wax and drowning the wick.
I struck on the idea of using the moulds from my resin lampshade making as candle moulds, buying wicks from a local craft shop for 20p each. The wax was melted in a pan, poured into three moulds and the wicks added as the wax was solidifying.
However, the wicks can bend slightly half way down the candle, resulting in a lopsided burn and a very short candle life. Also, then the wax is setting, a concave dip appears in the centre.
To over come this, I let the first pour solidify and then added more wax to top the mould up. Once set, I removed the candles from the mould and drilled a thin hole down the exact centre, threading the wick down the hole.
Success! I made a whole bunch of them.
In respect of public sector pay, why not link increases to inflation? Better still, link public sector pay to the pay of MPs? This would surely eliminate the continual round of pay demands and negotiations.
However, that said, MPs can better weather foregoing pay increases than someone on minimum pay, so perhaps it's not such a good idea to link to MPs' pay. However, it could be an encouragement for MPs to limit their pay increases.
On the NHS - the population is getting older and living longer, thanks to new procedures that simply weren't available 10 or 20 years ago, let alone when the NHS was originally set up. This is heaping huge costs on the NHS, which are unsustainable for much longer without huge increases in taxation, which are not a vote winner.
Why not focus the NHS on preservation of life only, relegating procedures that improve one's quality of life to a system funded by a separate insurance scheme. The policy premiums for such a system could be linked to ability to pay. No more hip or knee replacements, for example, unless you've paid the insurance premiums for a minimum period.
Unpalatable, I know, but how else can the rising cost be handled when people tend not to vote for tax rises? Yes, the additional insurance premium is a tax. but a tax you can choose not to pay, while ensuring the one you do pay can save your life.
There is, of course, the attendant argument that such a policy would be the thin end of the wedge and it wouldn't be long before the entire system went to the insurance scheme. The question is, how to prevent that?
There are two rates of inflation, the CPI and the RPI, the former once being called the HCPI, or Harmonised Consumer Price Index, being internationally harmonised for comparison with other countries, specifically the EU.
We have been told that inflation came down in November, but that's the RPI, or Retail Price Index, not the CPI.
As you can see from the above charts, the RPI came down, while the CPI increased, although the rate of increase slowed between October and November, having jumped considerably in October.
So, we must be careful when comparing our rate of inflation with that of other countries, using the CPI and not the RPI.
The RPI is an arithmetic mean; the prices of everything to be included in it are simply added up and divided by the number of items. The CPI is a geometric mean; it is calculated by multiplying the prices of all the items together and then taking the nth root of them, where “n” is the number of items involved.
William Pitt the Younger, who was the youngest ever PM at the age of 24, lasted 17 years in his first administration and 2 years for his 2nd (cut short by his death from overwork). He made many pithy remarks.; the following one is particularly apt in the current age.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
I am reminded of the intended repeal of the laws specifically designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the additional laws being brought in to prevent strikes and protests, the laws on voter ID, which are meant to combat a problem that doesn't actually exist and will disenfranchise many people, and the repeal of the ECHR legislation.
We are in the grip of tyranny.
I have one of those stove top fans for wood burning fires that, when heated up, spread the warm air around a room.
They're not very effective, but I'm intrigued by the technology whereby a heat difference creates a current to drive the fan.
You can't see the fan blades in the photo above, as they're whirling like the proverbial Dervish.
The gubbins of the fan is a Peltier device, which creates thermoelectric energy through the Seebeck effect.
Theoretically, the fan should work in reverse when the bottom section is cooled and the upper section is in hot air, but given the length of the shank, the sucking out of the heat by the cool surface below wouldn't be very efficient. Placing the base on a block of ice, for example, wouldn't produce a high temperature differential at the Peltier device at the top of the stand.
Any ideas from anyone as to how I could conduct an experiment, without dismantling the thing?
Managed to find this calendar of strikes in the next few weeks and thought it might help people with their planning.
On Thursday I kicked the underfloor heating into action, resulting in our electricity usage being the highest ever in terms of cost. However, it was nowhere near the highest in terms of kWh used.
Thursday, for example, when the concrete pad had to be heated from 14 or 15 degrees to over 23 degrees, resulted in 75kWh and £27.08 in cost, equating to £0.36 per kWh. The highest ever power usage was 128 kWh on the 31st December 2020, when I had two sons living in caravans in the drive, but that was only £20.46, equating to £0.159 per kWh, and was in the middle of a period of having the heating on permanently. It has more than doubled in price.
Here's a chart of the daily usage since moving into the house (click to enlarge). The yellow is solar generation and the blue is usage - both in cost. On the extreme right is usage since Thursday, which goes all the way to the bottom of the chart area.
The following chart is annualised usage in kWh by day and, as you can see, it's still plummeting due to not having had the underfloor heating on (and no 20-something kids living in caravans).
Doubtless this will shortly start to increase with the underfloor on. There's no real need to cut back, as I'm currently £1,900 in credit with our electricity bill.
That said, Friday's usage extrapolated over a month, not counting the feed-in, equates to over £800 a month for winter, but a lot of the usage was expended in the start-up operation. Today, seeing as we only really need to heat the spare bedroom in preparation for some No.2 Son returning from Uni over Christmas, I'm going to revert to the 12.3 kW log burner for the rest of the house, which I estimate is costing us £130 a month in winter.
I totted up the cost in electricity since moving in 9 (nearly 10) years ago and it came to just over £17k. Contrast that with the £13.3k recouped from the feed-in. So, it has cost us £3.7k to run the house over 9.5 years - £389 per annum, or £32 a month for heating, cooking and lighting.
Talking of heating, I have a friend who owns a small car lot and garage. He's recently opened a much larger indoor garage unit where he can perform MoTs and more complex work. I was intrigued by his blown air heating system which, at first glance, burns heating oil. On closer inspection, and after chatting to him about the system, it transpires the boiler burns old engine oil, of which he has a plentiful supply. He even collects it from other local garages who have to pay a fortune to have it removed.
It burns well, leaving a solid clinker residue which he has to clean out every couple of days. It costs him nothing to run and actually saves paying to have the oil taken away, but it isn't exactly the greenest of fuels. It burns some 20 litres of oil a day. The clinker is actually used as hardcore and I'm thinking of asking him for a load to fill potholes in our drive. As it happens, he fortuitously had a pile of Type 1 spade that he let me have for free.
On Friday he did an oil change on my Ford Galaxy - I was tempted to ask for a heavy discount on the oil change as I was subsidising his heating cost with my old oil.....
Just a quick aside before the meat; the pallet Christmas tree I made has been tastefully decorated by Hay, and very nice it looks too.
Back to the subject. Contrary to popular belief, Harry and Meghan have not gone on the warpath against the Royal Family in their documentary, but the gutter press - unless, that is, the next instalment changes tack.
Yes, the Royal Family doesn't come out looking particularly good, but that's merely self-imposed, collateral damage caused by The Firm's insistence on members sucking it up and not reacting to a wayward press.
It's rather strange that the vitriol aimed at them is primarily emanating from commentators who haven't even watched the documentary, preferring instead to take their analyses from the skewed interpretations of the very publications that Harry is taking aim at, which is perverse, to say the least. It's also ironic that Harrys accusations are being borne out by the headlines that came out from those very publications the day after the first 3 programmes were aired. They've damned themselves by their own actions.
The gutter press was all lovey-dovey with Harry and Meghan when they first got whiff of them seeing each other, but the minute an image surfaced of Meghan's mum, the love turned to hate as they realised Meghan was of mixed race and not white/Hispanic, as they'd all assumed. This initiated the Daily Mail headline 'Straight Outta (nearly) Compton' attack.
As Harry explained in the documentary (yes, we watched it), he (quite naturally) wants to protect his wife and children from the scurrilous attacks made on Meghan, just as any normal husband would. More importantly, he wants to be able to say to his kids, when they grow up, that he did.
Much is being made of the curtsey clip and the attackers believing it was a slight on Queen Elizabeth, when nothing could be further from the truth, that is if you watched the clip in context. She was mocking herself, in a self-depreciating manner, for not understanding the protocol when meeting the Queen, bowing and scraping being totally alien to an American raised in a classless system and it being a family affair and not a state occasion. She was totally unaware that the formality carried over into private life.
I went for the recycled junk Christmas tree - an upcycled, wooden pallet. The first photo below shows the outline template.
It was only destined for the bonfire, so I had a go. A simple few cuts with a buzz saw (no accidents), the addition of a base to spread the load and a bit of sanding.
Hay is going to decorate it artistically over the weekend with lights and baubles.
I made a half hearted attempt at making the new, incomplete garage look a bit like Santa's Grotto, but it ended up looking like Santa's Building Site or Santa's Ghetto..
We haven't yet decided on whether we'll have a tree this Christmas, or what form it will take (creative, made from junk, or traditional); however, we visited a nursery in the quaint, local village of Sherston, which has a wonderful display of cut and free range trees.
The free range ones are growing in a huge field laid out as a spacious park and are of varying species and ages. It would be a nice idea, and green, to merely rent one in situ for a few quid, decorate it and go to look at it on Christmas Day.
A neighbour planted a rooted Christmas tree in our garden some 30 years ago, before I moved here, but it grew to such proportions that we had to fell it last year as it was endangering powerlines and blocking a neighbour's light. A few years ago I collected some cones from it and harvested the seeds, which I planted in seed trays. Its progeny are now scattered around the garden, growing nicely, but not yet of a suitable height to use as Christmas trees.
Rather a lot of politicians are announcing that they're not standing at the next election.
I always admire and respect politicians who, when asked what their greatest achievement was on leaving Parliament, respond with something along the lines of having pushed through some legislation that has benefitted their constituents or, if a minister or PM, the country as a whole.
Liz Truss, having being forced to resign after just 44 days in No 10, reportedly reassured teary-eyed staff with the words: “Don’t worry, I’m relieved it’s over… at least I’ve been Prime Minister.” Not a good accolade, especially when her premiership was such a spectacular disaster.
I think Cameron also maintained that being PM was his greatest achievement. It's undoubtedly true for Johnson. Country or constituents don't matter anymore to some.
I think I might follow the marketing strategies of the vitamin companies and launch a few products.
I heard an avert on the radio for a pill that allegedly provides you with half your daily requirement of vitamin D. This is despite a reasonably balanced diet and a few minutes outside in the sun providing you with your full, daily requirement, without the need to spend extra.
So, how about me selling cannisters of compressed air, maintaining they supply you with half your daily requirement of air, or flagons of water that provide you with half your daily requirement of water. Naturally, they will be priced astronomically high.
Have you noticed the complete absence of St George's cross flags on cars? You know, the ones you jam into your car's rear windows, like the one in the image below, although that one is jammed into the driver's window.
Curious. Are people seeing them as a curse on England's World Cup chances, perhaps? I did see one set of flags, although they looked as if they'd been rescued from a long stay in a loft or garage.
One thing that's certain about this year's World Cup is the fact that the playing field has been levelled (if you'll forgive the unintentional pun), which I find very interesting.
The World Cup is a showcase event where international footballers exhibit their skills, resulting in being signed up by the top clubs, where their skills are further honed before they return home to their native countries and spread those skills. The downside is that native talent in the countries that used to be in the upper echelons of international football suffers as a consequence. Those that were poor countries in terms of football improve, while previously excellent countries don't fare as well, due to the replacement of native talent by international talent, if you get my meaning. It does, however, make for more interesting and close-fought World Cup games where the result isn't a foregone conclusion.
Additionally, it's not uncommon to see a national team manager who isn't a native of the country whose team he manages, which must also spread the skills. Should, perhaps, the manager of a team also be a native of the country whose team he manages?
The word eel looks fine in a sentence, but when spelled with a capital e, as in Eel, it looks very strange to me and always has.
What I see is two separate letters, rather than a recognisable diphthong. I first notice this when I heard of the band The Eels and wondered how on earth to pronounce it, before realising it's merely a capitalisation of eels.
Am I alone in having this view?
There are only 18 words in Scrabble that start with ee, and I imagine very few of these would appear at the start of a sentence, so it's possibly just a case of unfamiliarity.
As an aside, the lead of the Eels is Mark Everett, the son of Hugh Everett III, the originator of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory.
When I became eligible for an OAP bus pass I never bothered to apply for one, as I never use a bus locally; however, we do tend to use buses when we go away in our motorhome, so I applied for one a couple of weeks ago, It arrived yesterday.
Free, off-peak bus travel countrywide! I believe some pensioners have used these to travel all over the country for free, using a plethora of local buses and careful planning.
If we go to, for example, Buxton, which is one of our favourite camping spots, and set up shop at the campsite just outside the town, we usually take the bus to Bakewell and back, which is a fair old distance and quite expensive for two. This will certainly reduce the cost.
Also, given I'm starting to have age related trouble with one knee (being X-rayed next week for a full diagnosis) and Hay has the energy of a nuclear power station when walking, I can see the occasions occurring when I would perhaps prefer getting a bus back from a long walk, although I have yet to see a bus stop on the Southwest Coast Path.
The pass is for off-peak use only and in Liverpool holders of a bus pass are called Twirlies. The reason for this is that they proffer their bus passes around the time peak becomes off-peak and ask; "Too early." Say it in a Scouse accent and all becomes clear.
Colin, our builder, managed to slice into his hand yesterday with a chop saw and I had to rush him to the Minor Injuries Unit in Yate to have it attended to. Luckily there was no damage to tendons and it hadn't cut to the bone.
At least he'd finished the workshop area and had completed the workbench I designed, made from the two roof tile crates and some staging planks.
He now needs to take a few days off work, despite us having already paid him in full and there being only 2 days of work left to finish the garage section. The ungrateful bugger!
In regard of Lady Hussey's remarks to a black charity CEO about where she was really from, I can see both sides of the debate.
This has played straight into the hands of the 'you can't say anything these days' brigade. It doesn't stop things being said though, but they have consequences.
On face value it does kind of back up Meghan, Duchess of Sussex's claims concerning her perception of pockets of racism within the outer circles of the Royal Family. The fact the Palace jumped on this situation shows how damaging and embarrassing they consider the incident to be.
The Old Queen nailed it by using her famous and diplomatic greeting; "Have you come far?"
We all know what a rhetorical question is and that made me wonder whether there was such a thing as a rhetorical answer. To get to the root of this we must first define what a rhetorical question actually is.
The accepted definition is a question asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information. However, that is what we accept as the definition because it's the form most commonly associated with the phrase. The other definition is that of a question used as part of rhetoric, which is the art of using language in the pursuit of persuasion. Using this definition a leading question is also a form of rhetorical question.
This definition of rhetoric leads us to conclude that the rhetorical answer is a device, in the form of an answer, that aids persuasion. Using this definition, just one example of a rhetorical answer would be an answer used to divert attention from a question, the truthful answer to which would be acutely embarrassing, and is achieved by responding with an answer totally unrelated to the question.
When you think about it, it's the stock in trade of many politicians. They start their answer with; "That's an interesting question, but what I can tell you is....," and then launch into an answer having bugger all to do with the question being asked.
Another that they're being trained to parrot is; "I don't recognise the premise of the question," although that's more of a shutdown than a rhetorical answer.
I seem to remember writing something a while ago about tackling the problem of late payment of invoices, which puts a severe strain on small businesses that do work for large corporations.
Well, it seems Labour has a plan to address this, which has the full support of the Federation of Small Businesses.
Under Labour's proposals, big businesses would be required to provide details on their company’s payment practices in their annual report. While being a step in the right direction, in that it warns off small companies who may be approached by a large company for services, many SMEs simply have no choice. I still think swingeing interest rates for late payment are the best way forward.
Starmer has said that he will not support the return of Freedom of Movement.
A very canny pronouncement, if I'm not mistaken. My reasoning:
Apropos of yesterday's post regarding using enormous air-source heat pumps to convert Global Warming het into electricity, a friend of mine pointed out that due to the fact heat can neither be created nor destroyed, such heat pumps would achieve little, if anything at all.
However, I then thought; "Hey - the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics refers to energy, not heat." Energy can't be created or destroyed, but it can be converted into some other form of energy. Witness the nuclear bomb, which converts matter into heat and light and Einstein's famous E=Mc^2. Also the incredibly dense and hot plasma soup of the early universe was converted into all the matter in the universe.
Reverse this notion and you come up with heat being turned to matter via a reverse nuclear device. We simply need a device that accomplishes this task - a device that sucks heat energy out of the atmosphere, converts it to matter and deposits small boulders around its base - an endothermic reaction. Even a small pebble would be the equivalent of a lot of heat when Einstein's equation is used.
Photosynthesis actually achieves this, converting light and CO2 into sugars and oxygen. So, just cover the earth with trees. Oh, hang on, lots of people are actually advocating this already and we're chopping them down in huge quantities in certain countries.
