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29 dicembre Man made Global warming shmawming!Ah.. a new year approaches. One of the subjects I've had a good rant about this year was man made global warming. I've said from the beginning... it was absolute rubbish, and now it finally does seem to be the case. Carbon footprint shmutprint I say! lol Here is an excerpt from the article I'm linking to, "First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century." And another part... Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artifact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions. Ahhh... it's nice to see such things from the
Daily telegraph, one of the most respected newspapers in the Uk! Go read the
whole article it's HERE 26 dicembre Xmas day Well.. we had fun. Christmas Cracker consisted of Robbie Coltraine series 1, pub was welcoming and friendly, xmas dinner was Lamb Madras for me, Dal Gosht for the lady! New xmas jumpers came with us to the bar, and all was well with the world! Was simple, and relatively painless, lol. And now for today.. a football fest! So i am away again... but not without adding a couple of pictures for you to click on! enjoy!!   24 dicembre bah! Well... this is my 3rd xmas in Holland, and 4th away from the uk in total. Looking back at the pictures on last years blog it seems it was colder then than it is now. Must be global warming? lol. Having not long come back from the gym my left leg is poking me and saying.. "Oy.. Wiseman.. go easy on me!" Grrr.. its not the boss of me! Had pheasant for tea t'other night! Yum..! It was suitably demolished with relish.. (no not the sauce kind either), leaving a very sorry looking carcass behind. The Speckled Hen and Tanglefoot went down well too. We're heading to the Uk on 10th-12th Jan, couple of things planned for there which should be a giggle. May see a few people, nothing is confirmed yet cept the travel n hotel. Must remember to check in online from the Uk somewhere! Shouldn't be a problem though. I did enquire of Anne about hotels in Bristol Swindon area a few days ago, but heard nothing from her so sticking with what we know instead. G has a working pc again now, so there is more contact via msn. Good Good. E has a dodgy thumb, so i can catch her score on Geochallenge n there's nothing she can do to stop me.. lol. First Geochallenge, tomorrow.. the world! Right... book is calling me. Nothing much on over xmas so am glad i've a few hundred pages to play with. 18 dicembre Old Woyano Blog entry This was written last year for a site... but am slinging it here now too, as a lovely back up! It's that time of year again. The time kids look forward to it, cos of the presents, the single adult males cos of the lasses in Santa suits and stockings, and the banks because they know parents everywhere will buy things they can't afford so their kids don't feel like crap when they go back to school and have to say they got an atari 2600 instead of a playstation 3! Oh yes, a time of joy indeed. But... lets look at it again, from a different perspective. I remember last year, there was a teacher in the uk, fired from her job, for telling the kids there that Santa wasn't real. Fired! Dismissed. Livelihood gone. And what for? Telling the truth! These were not 5 year olds either. They were 9! So... in teaching the kids about the real world, rather than going along with the lies and deception peddled by these children's parents, this person was punished. The parents of the kids involved were obviously outraged that this teacher could have said such a thing to their vulnerable babies. And why shouldn't they be? They'd rather that their children discovered for themselves the silliness of the idea and then chastise themselves on their own gullibility, rather than have it pointed out to them that their parents have lied to them all their lives about what they perceive as the happiest time of their lives each year, while quietly laughing at them with other adults, cloaked in superiority. What happens when you find the only people you thought you could trust unequivocally... turn into tricksters and deceivers? Interestingly.... it would appear what happens is, kids hit the bottle and hard drugs, and then start ravishing each other! Starrman's dazzling topic entitled "Having children", cites that, "As many as one in 20 children aged 10 and 11 admitted taking part in a heavy drinking session in the past four weeks", presumably some neglected to reveal their own involvement, so that makes for quite a startling statistic. Kids are far from stupid, and having just found out that the presents don't actually magically appear, they then have to think about where they DO come from. The thought process may well go something like this.. "1 : Dad / mum doesn't make enough money to be able to afford this cos they're always arguing about money. 2: Yet i do have this. 3 : they bought me something they can't afford, and are arguing still about money. 4 : Its my fault they are arguing." Kids look for reasons, and being kids, often don't understand certain realities, so therefore attribute blame for things to themselves, and then carry the guilt. This effects self esteem, which in turn leads to alcohol and so on. But wait, lets move back to the Santa mythos. I remember as a kid, my parents (who were, and one still is, religious nut jobs, and i do mean complete fruit bats!) lynched me for using the expression Xmas. They claimed that people who did that were "Taking The Christ out of Christmas", and that was after all what Christmas was intrinsically all about. What with all the symbolism i asked what i thought was a pertinent question. "Don't you think it's odd that Santa is an anagram of Satan?" I got in trouble for that! However, the Santa tradition had been maintained, right down to the leaving out of a couple of mince pies and a glass of sherry next to the chimney for Santa to enjoy after his delivery, for all the years i remember as a child. In fact if i close my eyes I can still see the old fireplace! Curiously, it is illegal to eat mincepies in the uk as a certain Mr Cromwell banned them many moons ago. So, Santa, besides breaking and entering, is also committing an offence, (which in fairness is pretty much thrust upon him by the house owner), by eating the pies left for him in every house. Not just this, however, there is far worse to come. Consider the sherry. With a world population of 66,762,290,000 which, if we divide that by 4 to get the average number of households... = 16,690,572,500 glasses of sherry in one night, split over 24 hour and 39 time zones. Thats impressive amounts of drinking, even for a guy who grew up in a working mans town like Crewe! No wonder Santa is portrayed as fat! Yet this person, obese, binge drinking, law breaking, drunk driving as he is, is idolised by kids across the globe. An impressive role model indeed and one capable of creating quite an impression! Right up until a teacher, who should really be the role model, tells the kids he's just fictitious, and gets fired for it. Which sets up another good example of how the world works! Of course, Santa's lack of abstemiousness will be dismissed as silliness, but i can't help but wonder if some of this does indeed permeate into the psyche of the next generation. The Christmas mythos itself has Jesus turning water into wine in copious amounts at a wedding. And i do mean copious! After all of the wine that was ready and prepared was drunk, which we have to assume will have been roughly estimated as enough to cover the guests, Jesus produces another 180 gallons! That might not mean much to some people, so i'll convert it into real money : 1440 pints, or 818 litres! On top of what was already drunk, which ostensibly has to be 2, 3, or more times more in quantity than the final top up the big J C lavishes on his guests. Again, another shining example for our children, and this one more often than not, is not cancelled out by a teacher doing their job, but in fact is propagated by them! Do I have a solution? No! I merely wish to out this... this... perhaps unintentional, but nevertheless, Hideous subliminal we thrust upon the younger generation at this time of year. What you do with this news is your own business. My work here is done! Ho ho humbug! Telegraph article replyDug this out from an article I commented on about the existence of God back in September! Thought I'd drop it here, as the Santa bit is topical. If we were to start from now, with no concept of religion, just our technical knowledge and scientific knowledge, the concept of religions which involve an Almighty, would be laughed out of believability. The concept of God derives from what we were many thousands of years ago, which is an ignorant, uneducated, innocent species. Peoples need for God is innate in the same way as our fear of spiders is. It's been bred into us, and is now an integral part of our society until, like with said spiders, people go about the task of de-conditioning us. In truth humans are still evolving, and so, like a child is susceptible to to the lie that is Santa Claws, people too believe in a similar figure. Remember all of you who have kids old enough to know Santa doesn't exist? Remember the years you lied to them about it, building their beliefs with elaborate lies how the man who only came down chimneys managed to negotiate central heated houses without chimneys? How you ate the mince pie then lied about how He'd taken it for the reindeer? And how devastated that child was when the truth was revealed, and the realisation that, his/her parents, the ONLY people that child could truly trust, had betrayed that trust for what appears to be just a bit of fun at the child's expense. Transfer that, to us, as a species, but as a species where by only some know/realise the truth. But like an older sister, who knows Santa is dad in a beard, when she tries to impart her knowledge, the younger naive child rebels, so that, the parents, rather than confirm older sister's statements, choose instead to punish her for saying such things! Because.. to destroy the myth, may cause more hurt than living in ignorance, at least... for a while. Again.. transfer that to a global psyche, whereby people want their beliefs to the point of childlike irrationality. In a world where these beliefs are gone, all that is left is the knowledge that you not only have been deceived by all you held dear... you too have been the deceiver, and are as guilty as those who indoctrinated you of propagating the myth! Just as congenital as our fear of spiders, is our fear of having allowed ourselves to be fooled. Or rather, admitting it. 12 dicembre BritishCornerShop Well.. still no parcel and an amount of phone calls later and still it appears that the parcel is at the place it was wrongly delivered. We have had no contact from the britishcornershop either. This is, frankly, disgusting. The package order confirmation was Nov 24th... and we're now 18 days later! The package has perishables in, where by if not kept at the correct temperature they will most certainly go off. 18 days in a none refrigerated will do that! Not amused. The idea of a refund is playing now with me. Ah the best laid plans of mice n women... lol. Seems british beer just hates the idea of being on the continent! 05 dicembre St Nick's Well.. finally i have had a call back from parcelforce about the kerfuffle over the package. They seem sure it will not take 5 days to redeliver.. but we'll see! I should probably add.. the credit card thing is sorted. Now all we need is for the people to be found guilty and maybe compensation might await, although i have nosied a little at this and seen that the jolly old law people like to say the offence of fraud is only against the banks, so logistically it would have to be a case of identity theft which we could bring? Not that it would be able to be disputed due to them already have being convicted of an offence which could only have happened if our charge wasn't already committed! I have a guitar.. or should i say gitaar! Lord help us all! lol. Actually I've always wanted to try my hand, knowing that I'm reasonably musically minded helps. I can pretty much pick up and play most things, where by play means, get a tune out of it. I have no urge to play chords n stuff... i remember us as kids daring each other to sit with Andrew as he played.. it was an endurance lesson from which I'm not sure any of us fully recovered! However, i am attempting to suss out this whole plectrum thing, mainly because it makes a better sound unless i grow nails.. and i suspect there might be an objection to that from somewhere lol! And.. on that note.. this is going to end... mostly cos my fingers hurt... lol 04 dicembre Parcel Force and Dutch Post Suck! Ah, So i'm a little late for Rabbits n Hares! December is here, it's snowing heavily, and the two puss's are head to head on the windowsill flat out! I wish i was small enough to fit on there! I'm a bit titsed off at the mo. A parcel sent from the Uk to here hasn't arrived. Or rather.. it hasn't arrived here! Having placed a tracking thing on it so as to monitor it's progress you can imagine my surprise when its status was "delivered", when, having stayed in for two days straight, i'd received nothing! Interestingly their was a name on the tracker of the person who'd accepted it, and through the medium of an early morning walk I established their were no people by that name in the numerical 50 houses each way up/down the road! Oh yes.. i was miffed, as you, the reader, might well be able to visualise! So.. no parcel.. what to do, what to do? Call Parcelforce! Which, i duly did! After a 10minute convo whereby in fairness they were quite helpful and I was quite pushy, they established that, it had been delivered into the hands of the jolly Dutch postal service, and I would have to call there! The was gentle disquiet in my voice when i suggested that, it wasn't really my responsibility to be calling them, as the parcel was really their responsibility, but, for expediency's sake utilised the number the lass bequeathed me, more than a little cross that, considering that THEIR tracking thing was listed said parcel as delivered, they couldn't furnish me with an address as to WHERE it had been delivered, or why it was signed for by someone other than either E or Me! So.. call Dutch post people! After another 10 minutes of waffling, it appeared that, for a reason which could not be explained, the parcel had landed about 60 miles north westish of here, at some company, whereby the goods in idiot hadn't bothered to check the labels, and had signed for it! "What now?", i dutifully enquired, as there seemed to be nothing forthcoming from that end of the phone. "Well", the lass replied, "you'll have to call the uk, and get them to send me through the details of where the package came from, where it's being sent to, and a Lost Package report form.", to which you probably see the black cloud and lightning bolts appearing above my delicately halo'd head! Why?? Why should it be me doing the calling? It's a postal service, recorded delivery It's their job. And.. why do i need to anyway? They had the address of the company, they have the signature of the person AT the company, ergo they know it's there! Why not just contact them, send a van... and bring it over! Simple! So... call the parcelforce people again. A different person on the phone then asks me again for the details of the package, this being the package which of course, on each call, I've given them the tracking number so they have the details up on the screen. Why do they need to know the address from where it came from? I don't know it! They picked the damn thing up!! They attached the tracker in the first place... they know where from.. where to... and indeed where it is now, yet the actual (expected but not current) recipient is having to answer questions about a parcel he's never seen!! Eventually I was assured that they would track it down. Oh.. and it'll take at least another 5 days! St Nick's, is tomorrow! So.. what now..? Aha... me being me... I had the name of the company, and town.. and google! Call em! Let em know they have our parcel and facilitate an easy passage (no Vaseline involved) onto the delivery van. so I called them, and explained the situation. I also put it to them that, wasn't it a bit odd that a package clearly labelled as not to them, but to us, one which if bar code scanned or even simply cross referenced at goods in, would've caused them to realise that they had received something in error. The suggestion of, "it appears that rather than bother to check your goods in, the person simply singed for them.", was duly delivered as gently as possible. They said they'd look for it and it wasn't their fault, as it gets "quite hectic" there. And so.. what now.. ? Well... i was awaiting a call before 2pm to tell me the investigation is under way etc etc. It's 2.15pm now.. and the phone is in hand... |
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