Month: February 2011

It has now been four years since I started this blog and although a lot has happened in that time it only seems like a few months ago since I started. My first post was on February 23^rd 2007. I have no idea where the time goes but it slips by so quickly. I had plans to be well away from here by now but those plans are on hold indefinitely, or at least until the world returns to some semblance of normality. Judging by the turmoil in the Middle East it may be some time!

The turmoil has affected most people on the planet if not all with the increase in oil prices as fears mount that the supply may be cut off. For my friends in foreign parts petrol (gasoline) is now close to six pounds a gallon and is set to reach £6.50 within a few months and possibly £7 by the end of the year. You can do your own conversions to your own currencies. This will not help to end the recession and the bankers are not to blame for this particular incident although much of the current burden is theirs to share alone, unless…… Yes speaking not so long ago to one who works in a bank he reckoned it was the fault of ordinary Joe Public. You see he reckons that if us lot had repaid the money we owed to the banks then there would be no problem. It is out fault for borrowing so much and not paying it back you see.

There, the answer is clear it is not the banks fault at all. We should have kept our jobs and made the repayments and all would have been well with the world. Bernie Madoff was merely misunderstood and ponzi schemes are fine. Don’t you just hate it when everyone else expects you to pick up the tab for them? A little bit like our own nationals who decide to go and work abroad because they hate the UK and then pay tax to foreign governments until the shit hits the fan and then they start screaming about how the British government should get them home. In other words you and me have to pay tax to mount the rescue of someone who has pissed off on us. Wouldn’t it be nice of the companies they worked for to pay and arrange to get them home instead of UK tax payers?

On the bright side the weather is warming up and the days are getting longer. The blowy season will be here in a few days and then the clocks go forward again. That means the start of the Barbie season, if we have a summer that is. The last three years have been awful with the last two the wettest I have ever known. My chief partner in crime Ted Magnum comes home next week from a tour of Africa and I already have plans for this year’s highlights and events. The smoker is getting refurbished along with a good ole scrub and re-paint in readiness for plenty of action. I have not used it since Halloween and it has since been neglected and like the greenhouse looks a little bit sorry for itself. When the clocks go forward and it is light in the evenings I will be able to start working in the garden again and clear up the storm damage. I may even be able to give Rhonda a service. Without a garage this task is difficult in winter when spanners stick to your fingers because they are so cold and the rubber on tyres is so stiff you can’t lever them off the rims.

When I was in my teens most of my bikes were fixed in the kitchen, the sink was handy for cleaning engines although Elsie never thought so, but Rhonda is too big to get through the back door.  What I want is a garage or a decent size workshop, I have never had one of those in my life and I am starting to really feel the need for one. By the time the recession is over and in my experience these things last about 7 years, I may be able to move to somewhere that has one in which case I will probably be too old to handle Rhonda.  Yes time is flying so fast that before I know it my pension and bus pass will be here.

Yes I have to admit it I am baby boomer, born in the 1950’s. This is not something I had any control over it just happened. So, imagine my horror when I opened several newspapers to read that us baby boomers are responsible for the state of the world today. Yes the entire economic downturn has been caused by my generation with no thought for the past or future generations. We have been labelled as the want it all now and to hell with the consequences brigade. To top it all the youngsters are accusing us of not dying young or fast enough.

It would appear that the first boomers are ready for retirement and the fear is that there are not enough people working to pay for our pensions. This is hardly the problem of people who have worked since they left school. If it was not for the boomers then there would be no schools hospitals or any of the other amenities that people take for granted. It is the boomers that have been working since 1945 that have paid for everything we have today including the schooling and pensions of those born before them and since.

To label three generations as feckless, and self centred because they want a pension after working for as long as the government asked them to is a bit harsh. Maybe it is the fault of those who choose not to work or those who plunder the savings of the prudent in the name of profit that have ruined the economy. Banker’s bonuses are still being paid out in telephone number style. If they can afford to pay so much bonuses they can afford to pay decent interest rates on savings and pay back some of the loans that the taxpayer made to them to bail them out. In fact I have often wondered why people who are against the bonuses being paid out do not simply switch their bank accounts to a bank that does not pay as much.

Around 7 billion will be paid out by the top five banks in the form of shares or bonuses to employees; this is on top of their wages. The top five? According to these people, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/bank-j12.shtml
They are HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds and Standard Chartered. They are making around 200 million per day. Now how much of that is going to savers in the form of interest payments and how much is going into the government coffers in the forms of corporation tax? Sadly not very much but some quarters, including the young and the middle aged are blaming the baby boomers for this sorry state of affairs.http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/227764

I did not ask to be born when I did, I have worked continuously since the age of 21, I have no debts and I consider myself to be careful with my finances. Given this I take exception to the arseholes who blame me and many like me for the state of the world.

For those who do, well F*** you!!

Finally January went out with a whimper and February roared in, quite literally. After coming back from a camping session in Cornwall I stood helplessly in the kitchen watching 50 mph gusts of wind tear my greenhouse to shreds. It also tore down some of the trellis and many of the plants. Sadly the greenhouse is only fit for the skip and the trellis will go the same way, strangely enough the neighbours trees which have blighted me for so long are still standing. (I am sure some readers will chuckle at this)

The bad news on the economy front rumbles along and unions are planning strikes and demonstrations in protest. Even the students have got in on the act bemoaning the end of the EMA. EMA? I did not know it existed; it stands for educational maintenance allowance and is paid to 6^th formers who stay on in school. For gods sake we have been paying kids to go to school. I have no idea how this sorry state of affairs happened or even when but it has and now the new coalition government want to stop it.

At long last it seems as though the Government is standing up to the European Courts. Britain has been told it has to give prisoners the right to vote. Now I may have misunderstood here but if you are in prison it is generally because you neglected your moral duty or just walked over some one else rights. The Bigwigs in Europe seem to think that just because you don’t care about any one else rights you should still be entitled to your own and so you should have the vote.

This seems to me like asking Turkeys if Christmas should be abolished. Anyway our own government has a rebellion on its hands as many backbenchers have said no to the idea even if it is enforced upon us. This could mean us even pulling out of the European human rights act if the courts of Europe reject the UK’s own elected Government in what is essentially an internal affair.

I have never been a fan of the European human rights act and to replace it with something that incorporates human responsibilities seems a lot fairer.

It is not too long before spring arrives and the clocks go forward again. I am sure my old friends the collared doves are hanging around somewhere just waiting to reclaim their old nest in my neighbour’s tree. The mercury is no longer falling and even the snowdrops are poking their heads through the frozen soil. It will seem strange not having a greenhouse this year and I will have to decide what if anything I am going to attempt to grow in the space the greenhouse used to occupy.

As the seasons change another birthday approaches and it seems to have come around even quicker than the last one which was faster than the one before. I am sure that even if Einstein’s theory of relativity was written about the speed of light it was inspired by birthdays as they come around faster each year relative to your age. When you are six years old your seventh birthday seems a long way off, when you are in your fifties it only seems like weeks since your last one and that to me is the theory of relativity.