Bowel Matters Overheard

Overheard at the greengrocer's:

Hay: "Do you want to get some oranges?"

Chairman: "Oranges are not the only fruit! What was that about?"

Hay: "It was a book - and do you know what it was about?"

Chairman: "A story about the greengrocery business?"

Later:

Hay: "You should join our funding committee as a lay member."

Chairman: "Why?"

Hay: "Because we have an opinionated bastard on it who keeps getting his own way and we need another opinionated bastard to counter him."


Received a letter from the NHS this week - now I'm 60 I get 2 yearly bowel cancer tests, which increase in frequency when I get to 70. Seems a lot of money to spend to test everyone - no wonder they need an extra £8Bn. Surely they should focus only on those in high risk categories (perhaps I am...)?

Being of the medical persuasion, Hay told me about the test. Apparently I get a kit through the post, do a Number 2 into a pot, scrape some of it onto a card, and then send it off in the post again. No poo painting allowed. I was wondering whether I need to alert the Post Office with some kind of biological warfare alert. Apparently not.

I was listening to the various parties trumpeting their plans for NHS funding on the radio yesterday morning. The fact is we have an ageing population and fewer workers than ever supporting that growing population of pensioners. State pensions, benefits and top-notch NHS care just aren't sustainable in anyone's calculations and something has to give way or taxes increased dramatically - for all - but it's heresy and electoral suicide to say that. Truth is a casualty in today's politics.

Someone will have to give an unpalatable truth one day, and then all the other parties will have to cave in once their policies are proven the be nothing but chaff in the wind after a disastrous period in government. However, not only are politicians deceiving us, but we are willingly allowing ourselves to be deceived.

I discovered Shropshire Blue last week - well recommended to all turophiles. I don't usually shop at Waitrose (unless I'm out of Waitrose Essential cinnamon and gooseberry yoghurt), but their Shropshire Blue is gorgeous.

Cupboard Love on the A4135

Is it me, or is Milliband increasingly looking as if he should be a character from a Wallace and Gromit film, especially when he grins?

Hay is having a clearout of the coats from the wardrobe:

Hay: "So which coats don't you ever wear?"

Chairman: "That hideous brown one."

Hay: "That's one of mine!"

Chairman: "That probably explains why I never wear it."

Added a compressor and a few air tools to the armoury this week. Nice air shears - can't wait to find something to use them on. Hay tutted when it was all delivered.

Took the hardtop off the Merc this week, but as the engine room is full of tools, I have nowhere to store it.

However, we put the patio furniture out and Hay's dad has his summer house back for the summer.

.....unless I can persuade him to store the hardtop there...

Alighted on a boring, but local, Wikipedia entry yesterday, quite by accident. A page dedicated to the A4135. This got me interested and I found most A roads have a Wiki page - even the A432 outside our drive.

And Now a Party Political Broadcast

BMI Recycling

Chairman: "There's been a meta-analysis of data that shows people who have a BMI of 30 and are slightly overweight live longer. Seems the received wisdom, like the maximum units of alcohol, is nothing more than a guess."

Hay: "As a bloke who drinks too much and is slightly overweight, I guess that's like manna from heaven to you. Who sponsored it - MacDonald's and Famous Grouse?"

Later:

Chairman: "Does the black plastic go in the plastic recycling?"

Hay: "How many times have I told you? No it doesn't!. Your memory is atrocious."

Chairman: "I told you yesterday that my memory is perfect, I think."

Even Later:

Hay: "My colleagues at work can't believe I have a partner who cooks."

Chairman: "You don't know what problems you've unleashed now. There's now a whole swathe of women who will be entirely dissatisfied with their partners, holding me up as a paragon of virtue  - and their husbands or partners will be blaming me."

Taxing Issues on Redundant Cat Food

One is a grandfather, for the 3rd time, That's 3 boy grandchildren now, and I'm only 60!

Been having food issues with Kitty - she's become very picky about what cat food she eats. We alight on something she will eat, only for her to refuse it after a couple of meals. The recycling is littered with empty tins from a plethora of different flavours and brands. We finally discovered she likes Coshida (Lidl) lamb with mint. I ask you - cat food with mint? She'll be demanding Waitrose Essential Ivory Pillar Candles next.

Hay came home yesterday going on about some extra virgin olive oil she'd bought, which made me wonder why no-one has exploited the niche, middle-class market for extra virgin engine oil, or first cold press gearbox oil.

Had to make some people redundant yesterday - not a nice thing to have to do, but they took it stoically. We're getting rid of our UK technical presence, limiting it just to the sales function - i.e. me.

Am I mistaken, or has Blair put the kiss of death on Milliband's chances of winning the election? If we can't be trusted to vote on whether we stay in the EU, how can we be trusted to vote on who the next PM should be? Is it a ridiculous and illogical argument, or the truth. If the truth, should we be ruled by a dictatorship of the political class?

There are many I would not trust to make a sound judgement on anything, let alone whether we should leave the EU. They are no more than air thieves - however, that's the price of democracy.

Getting a tad fed up with the mantra that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the brunt of tax increases. I thought they already did - that's the reason income tax is based on a percentage of income.

That made me think about taxes. 

1. Increasing taxes predominantly serves the public sector, which does not have as good a record as the private sector for efficiency when it comes to value for tax pound due to the strength of the unions. That said, we still need public services and unions are, on the whole, a good thing.
2. Lowering taxes puts more into workers' pockets, giving them slightly more money with which to buy stuff (which can in turn create demand and more jobs to create more stuff), or enables them to save a bit more (which is lent out to people to buy houses or stuff on credit, or lent to businesses to invest in growth to make more stuff. It needs to be a decent amount though.
3. Low taxes also have the corollary of encouraging the super-rich to put more into offshore instruments, which benefits no-one but the super-rich.
4. Ergo, strategically lowering taxes to stimulate growth must be accompanied by closing loopholes that allow money from the super-rich to gravitate offshore.

It's worth noting that the top 10 low tax countries are predominantly off-shore havens which export nothing and import money from high tax countries.

Sir Bevil's Lawn in Frome

Overheard on Lansdowne Road (near Bath):

Hay: "That monument over there is to Sir Bevil Grenville."

Chairman: "Who was he then?"

Hay: "Someone to do with something."

First cut of the season:

I'm slowly reclaiming the top end of the field, but I think I need a larger ride-on mower (shhhh, don't tell Hay)....

Went to Frome yesterday - a town of contrasts. Here are the nice bits:

Zero Hours Upholstery

It strikes me that the people calling for a ban on zero hours contracts are those who have never been unemployed, who then sit back with a beatific look of smug satisfaction thinking they have proposed something wonderful, without actually considering the consequences. I wonder if it has crossed the mind of Milliband to poll those on zero hours contracts as to whether they actually want their jobs withdrawn from under their feet in the interests of ideology. I have been on zero hours contracts when I was between full-time jobs - and I was damned grateful for them.

4 of the chairs reupholstered. Ran out of brass upholstery nails and strip, but have used panel pins to tack the fabric in place securely till the order arrives. If you're doing this yourself, always work from the back toward the front.

Hoots Mon

Overheard while watching the TV programme, 'Kew on a Plate':

Kate Humble; "... and we'll show you techniques for mastering the perfect pea."

Hay; "Mmmm, by the state of our toilet you need to listen to this."

I opened the BBC News website this morning to discover Bonnie Langford is to join Eastenders. Is it me, or is Eastenders becoming a retirement home for superannuated actors?

Following last weekend's visit to The New Inn at Clapham in the North Yorkshire Dales, Hay has gone all SNP on me and bought grey tartan throws, grey cushions with stag's heads on them and I've been tasked with reupholstering the old art deco dining chairs with grey tartan to give them a new lease of life.

The New Inn is decorated like a Scottish hunting lodge - greys and silvers and covered in grey tartan (including carpets), and I must say it looked very swish, if a bit clannish. However, what a North Yorkshire hotel has to do with Scotland is lost on me, especially when the owner is Australian (clan Bruce? Incidentally, look up clan Bruce and there are a million variations). Here's a photo of Hay inspecting the dust on the blinds at The New Inn, which gives you an idea of the decor:

Here is the original chair:

And here's an artists impression of what the reupholstered chair will look like:

The finished article - which was very difficult due to the thickness of the cloth and some intricate corners:

Now to do the other 5. It seems to be a variant of the Grey Thistle Dubh corporate tartan, but once a tartan goes monochrome it could be anything. I'm doing 4 of the chairs in this grey tartan and the two end chairs in black (I think).

The Baptist church in Chipping Sodbury has had a facelift by the addition of a glass and steel portico. Very nicely done too and brings the building into the 21st century:

It's a bit difficult to see from the photo, but behind the glass facade is the original 19th century front. It must look fantastic at night and almost makes me want to go to church.

Here's an interesting photo - it looks like a conifer, but it's a telegraph pole in Chipping Sodbury covered in ivy:

Family Conditioned Book Club

Hay has joined a book club - the name alone is anathema to me. I could no more read a book because I had to than jump 6 feet. They are a bunch of ladies who visit each others houses in turn on a Thursday evening once a month to discuss their latest enforced read. The men of the households concerned normally hide themselves away in another room, but living in an open planned house, there's no way I can escape. Dreading it.

Overheard while discussion the Book Club:

Chairman: "I wouldn't have the slightest interest in someone else's opinion of a book I had just read, especially if I liked it."

Hay: "You're not interested in other people's opinions, period!"

I hear France has approved a law to ban fashion houses using excessively thin models. Surely that's discriminatory? Surely it's also discriminatory to not use fat models.

Overheard when discussing this:

Chairman: "Why do they use thin models?"

Hay: "They want to show off the clothes, so the model has to be almost invisible, and thin, androgynous models show off the clothes best."

Chairman: "So they wouldn't use me?"

Hay: "The only company who would use you as a model is ScrewFix!"

I see Nigel Farage's TV debate statement about HIV health tourism has caused faux outrage among the PC brigade, but he said what every rational taxpayer thinks and most politicians dare not say. Are taxpayers being asked to support and fund an International Health Service, or a National Health Service? There has to be a limit, and it does not stigmatize people with HIV, as one of the contenders posited - just the ones who come to the UK for free treatment, any treatment. Using Farage's figures as a maximum and an independent analysis conducted by the BBC as the lower level, that means between £45m and £105m being spent on HIV health tourism - enough, using the conservative limit, to fund over 500 doctors or three times as many nurses.

I still can't support UKIP, but the man has the courage to say what today is considered unsayable and must be said. I find that quite refreshing a political environment where politicians are afraid of being seen as rational in case it offends someone. In an attempt to offend no-one, they offend everyone.

The BBC reports a poll which says 61% would support a tax rise to adequately fund the NHS. I would guess there's a rider on this - so long as it's not them who have to suffer the tax rise. I do not believe any modern party that campaigns for tax rises will ever be elected to power.

I was listening to Julia Neuberger on the radio yesterday - she was talking about the relevance of the Lord's Prayer to her Jewish faith. It struck me that the only reason she's a Jew is because her parents were Jews - pretty evident in most people's religion, but that made be consider the massive impact of family conditioning on people, a power we should not underestimate. If you want to discover the reason why people do the things they do, or are the way they are, you need look no further than their family.

Bird House II for Putin Debate

After a returned form from the DVLA due to a missing entry, I finally got my 60th birthday present from Hay yesterday. Terribly naff, but I love it!

Spotted this in Bath yesterday - not a patch on my rustic birdy house. Far too twee, precise and Scandinavian - it just doesn't have that artisan touch.

Was reading an article in the Times yesterday about Putin getting bolshie about the Baltic states and using the argument of the number of ethnic Russians living there (about 25%).

There's one flaw with his argument - the reason there are so many Russians living in the likes of Latvia and Lithuania is perhaps that they don't actually want to return to live under a corrupt Russian dictatorship, otherwise they'd have moved back there years ago. There is an increasing number of rich Russians currently moving to the Baltics, precisely to escape Putin's money grabbing allies. Perhaps the Balts should take a poll of the ethnic Russians on the sly to see how many would like to live under Putin.

Watched The Debate on TV last night (boredom alert!).

Can't see why some parties have an issue about profit where the NHS in concerned, Surely the patient comes first and, so long as it doesn't cost more, I can see no problem with outsourcing. Councils (including Labour ones) have been doing it for decades with bin collections and suchlike. Not allowing the profit motive into public service is a purely ideological stance. Let's see evidence, not ideology. If someone can show it's bad on the basis of evidence, then I'd be the first to decry it, but if it's being used to either save money or overcome unmanageable waiting lists, then I have no issue. Not one of the parties suggested that those who can pay for free NHS services do so (like free prescriptions for all over 60s when you can't even afford to retire at 60 - unless you're a public servant), and totally free delivery of services being limited only to those not capable of paying.

Farage, although I'm not a supporter, has a point that mass immigration depresses wages for the uskilled. Oversupply of labour produces lower wages - a simple fact of economics. If you employ more people on lower wages, that's actually quite left wing, but if it's with the sole intent to increase profit with no increase in the number of workers, then that's right wing. An additional fact of economics is that pensions are unsustainable on the basis of the native UK population's reproduction rate. Pensions are a pyramid scheme that require a growing population of working age. Catch 22. What's the solution? I'd say making people responsible for their own pensions and limiting immigration, along with limiting publicly funded pensions only to those with historically low wages over their lifetimes. A bit of self-responsibility wouldn't go amiss.

Free university education - I'm all for it. But not when you lower standards to such a degree and invent Micky Mouse degrees so that 50% of the young get to go there. Limit it to rigorous degrees and the cleverest 10% (or even 20%), and then I'd support free university education. The current situation is an example of the profit motive going drastically wrong - university education has been sold off to the private sector, lock stock and barrel.

I'm wary of any nationalist parties - a common mantra is; "If the population of Scotland votes to stay in Europe, why should we accept at exit from Europe based on the rest of the UK?" But you could make exactly the same argument for Lancashire or Yorkshire. Pedagogues, the lot of them.Sure, UKIP is nationalist, but UK nationalist and not regionally nationalist.

Defence? I have only a few words; 1) the prime duty of a government is the protection of its citizens; 2) what is the biggest threat to the western Europe? Putin!

Zero hours contracts? I was on a zero hours contract when between jobs working as a courier, driver for the NHS Logistics Service and driving cars for garages. I was damned glad of the chance to make some money and would be the last person to want zero hours contracts eliminated.

Milliband - too left. Cameron - too right. SNP - irrelevant for me. Plaid wossit - irrelevant for me. Green - got some good points, but far too idealistic and not grounded in realpolitik (I may be wrong, but did she sound Australian?). UKIP - again some good points, but a suspect following.

I think I'm going to vote Lib-Dem - not because of Clegg (who may lose his seat anyway), but on the basis of our local Lib-Dem MP, Steve Webb, who does a fantastic job in representing his constituency, actually listens to his electorate and acts accordingly. I've never known an MP who communicates so much and so well. They also have the best chance of being a rein on the wilder excesses of Labour or Tory.