Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Ramblin Rich]

Thanks Andy for allowing my diatribe to stay.

And apologies to Edwardian for waving a bit too vigorously. I will continue reading, agreeing and mostly enjoying but maybe not being quite so vocal.

[Edwardian]

4 minutes ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Thanks Andy for allowing my diatribe to stay.

And apologies to Edwardian for waving a bit too vigorously. I will continue reading, agreeing and mostly enjoying but maybe not being quite so vocal.

 

Well, you did give me a moment of anxiety there, Rich

 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

15 minutes ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Thanks Andy for allowing my diatribe to stay.

And apologies to Edwardian for waving a bit too vigorously. I will continue reading, agreeing and mostly enjoying but maybe not being quite so vocal.

If you use Chrome, this might help things a little. Especially funny when I occasionally forget its there and think "wow The Guardian really hates Boris especially  bigly today."

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/boris-johnson-adject-fail/ccpedeeofedgpccniliogiddmfeapbgl?hl=en-GB

 

Read today that the UK is running out of Carbon Dioxide or something and so there will be a Nandos shortage among other things.

 

Things do seem to be getting weird there.  Too many bloody trees, theres ya problem.

Edited September 23, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, Ramblin Rich said:

I've stayed out of this for a while but there comes a time where just writing it out might help express the anguish I feel about the situation we are in.

Please skip over if a rant offends. If I'm straying too far into politics, @AY Mod feel free to delete.

Bozo is just an immature schoolboy with absolutely zero self awareness and even less ability.

Yes the EU situation was always going to be tricky to resolve, but crashing us out of free trade and movement has only satisfied a proportion of the electorate & allowed the Tories to gain their majority - but at what cost to the country as a whole? We've scared off any chance of getting migrant workers to come in, so we're left with not enough people to gather the harvest, not enough people to distribute the food (or fuel!) and not enough health / care workers to prop up the ailing staff who're on the brink of collapse.

Decades of relying on cheaper labour from abroad, instead of investing here, is coming home to roost. And it's not starlings coming in, it's flippin' great vultures.

Allowing everything to fail, or just portraying something as failing even when it's doing a very good job (Channel 4, NHS etc) is probably a back door way to bring in privatisation, with all the inequality of access and cost that entails.Then he makes puerile third rate attempts at 'humour' at the expense of those he's upset already - Franglaise 'jokes' about the French giving him a break, when he's been party to an absolutely underhand and degrading back room deal to cut the French off. I dread to think what kind if welcome we might get when we try going to France next year.

I really need to see if I am eligible for Irish citizenship as I don't like being part of this UK anymore. The idea of going to New Zealand is dwindling as all the mega rich seem to regard it as a potential bolt hole now.

Thank you for letting me unburden myself. If I get banned - so long & thanks for all the fish....

 

 

I share your pain in so many ways Rich.

 

I remember vividly 1.2.2020.  It was the day for the AGM of our committee for festivals.  As I was walking to the meeting room I met the mayor who informed me that the Prefect had asked her to inform me that I had now lost my rights to vote in local elections.  I know I replied.  Yesterday I was a European.  Today I am just a foreigner.

 

 

[Edwardian]

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

If you use Chrome, this might help things a little. Especially funny when I occasionally forget its there and think "wow The Guardian really hates Boris especially  bigly today."

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/boris-johnson-adject-fail/ccpedeeofedgpccniliogiddmfeapbgl?hl=en-GB

 

Read today that the UK is running out of Carbon Dioxide or something and so there will be a Nandos shortage among other things.

 

Things do seem to be getting weird there.  Too many bloody trees, theres ya problem.

 

Glorious.  

 

Mad, but glorious.

 

''Man raised by puffins Johnson ....'' ?!?!

[AY Mod]

16 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, you did give me a moment of anxiety there, Rich

 

 

 

 

It felt like the headmaster walking into the dormitory to the sound of inappropriate magazines being hastily stowed out of sight. One knows these things go on but it's best not to look too closely.

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

It felt like the headmaster walking into the dormitory to the sound of inappropriate magazines being hastily stowed out of sight. One knows these things go on but it's best not to look too closely.

 

''But Sir, it's only BRM!''

 

Which reminds me of when a Brigadier made a surprise visit to the tent where I was reading Paperweight in my sleeping bag.

 

''Reading, I see''?, said the Brigadier

 

'Yes, Sir'', I replied, ''I'm all tucked up nicely with Stephen Fry''

 

I swear the man harumphed as he left. 

[Regularity]

10 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

It felt like the headmaster walking into the dormitory to the sound of inappropriate magazines being hastily stowed out of sight. One knows these things go on but it's best not to look too closely.

Best to retire to the sanctity of one’s own study, and to consult a large format atlas or similar tome: anything basically big enough to shield one’s own reading material…*
 

*BRM, obviously.

 

Edwardian posted the same idea at the same time!

Edited September 23, 2021 by Regularity

[Ramblin Rich]

51 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

If you use Chrome, this might help things a little. Especially funny when I occasionally forget its there and think "wow The Guardian really hates Boris especially  bigly today."

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/boris-johnson-adject-fail/ccpedeeofedgpccniliogiddmfeapbgl?hl=en-GB

 

 

Brilliant idea. Need an add-on for Firefox as I don't like using Chrome & adding to Google's data mountain (he says, typing on an Android phone!)

Although my mind is very good at adding adjectives of it's own, very few of which could pass the forum's filters...

[Edwardian]

In the news ......

 

Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them Haitians movin', rawhide

Move 'em on, head 'em up
Head 'em up, move 'em on
Move 'em on, head 'em up, rawhide

 

 

First Afghanistan, now this.  Why is the US under Biden continuing to disappoint the World's post-Trump expectations?

 

A serious question, the reaction of the US to the various pressures it faces both at home and abroad does not make comfortable viewing.  

 

With an unconscionable and assertive new World super-power (and a spiteful, mafia-run, ex-one) rampaging across the globe, and the planet apparently dying before our very eyes, the continued missteps of an inward-looking US are a concern for all of us.

 

Meanwhile. in the UK, well, yesterday Ramblin Rich said it all!

 

How the Hell we explain what we've done, I can barely make a beginning.  Perhaps, to paraphrase Douglas Adams:

 

Among many of the less thoughtful of the population of the Outer North-Western Islands of Europe, the Nationalist-Populist Buffoon has already supplanted the mature Elder Statesmen as the standard font of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it is self-serving and incompetent and claims much that is untrue, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more competent politician in two important respects. First, it is slightly funnier; and secondly it says the words DON'T PANIC in roguishly friendly tones in its press conferences. 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Can we please, please have a PM who is a bit of a born pessimist, or at least a bit risk-averse?
 

I don’t really mind which party they are from, so long as they look at the future and spot things that could go wrong, and then do things to make it less likely that they will go wrong.

 

Someone a bit gloomy, or maybe simply stolid.

 

Somewhere in a management school I’m sure there a simplistic four-box model, with ‘optimism’ on one axis, and ‘need to be liked’ on the other, and in the box where ‘wildly optimistic’ and ‘craves adulation’ intersect, it has, in giant red script, the words ‘Not Safe to be in charge of anything’.

[uax6]

The problem is though, that someone like that would just not get elected. The few that turn out for elections these days appear to go for anyone who says they won't raise any taxes, but at the same time promises to spend more on everything. 

The better way forward would be to prevent career politicians actually existing. They have no experience of the real world, having basically stayed in establishment from the minute they started to go to school. 

 

Andy G

[Nearholmer]

You’re probably right, but it’s a bit unfair to blame the problem on apathy and/or low-turnout, because even now a fair few people vote - we, the population, are complicit in all of this. It’s not exactly new news to say that we get the politicians we deserve.

 

 

 

A “real life experience” qualification would help, although goodness knows how it would be administered, and without conscription into the military in times of war, which seems to have given us particularly good, young politicians in the 1950/60s, it would deprive us of any youthful politicians, which IMO would be a bad thing - every now and then nature and nurture combine to produce a really balanced, brilliant young leader, whereas age very definitely does not teach wisdom to all.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Nearholmer

[uax6]

In reality there is probably no answer to this. Hopefully some level of common sense* will prevail, and the electorate will eventually work out that the current crop of politicians are nothing better  than con artists, and will start the process of demanding better**

 

Andy G

* Common sense is applicable in all parts of life, except of course in two areas, Westminster and the Railways.

** I have no idea how this will work, maybe a succession of hung Parliaments?

 

[Welchester]

It appears from The Guardian that Our Glorious Leader is speaking bad French in imitation of what he believes to be his hero's style. From the recordings I have heard, I am sure that Churchill spoke French accurately (as you would expect of a man of his time and class), but with an atrocious accent.

 

Bring back Miles (or Kilomètres) Kington.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Can we please, please have a PM who is a bit of a born pessimist, or at least a bit risk-averse?
 

I don’t really mind which party they are from, so long as they look at the future and spot things that could go wrong, and then do things to make it less likely that they will go wrong.

 

Someone a bit gloomy, or maybe simply stolid.

 

We had one, just before the present one.

[Compound2632]

8 minutes ago, Welchester said:

It appears from The Guardian that Our Glorious Leader is speaking bad French in imitation of what he believes to be his hero's style. From the recordings I have heard, I am sure that Churchill spoke French accurately (as you would expect of a man of his time and class), but with an atrocious accent.

 

I think it's well-established that Churchill was never entirely sober and that's how he coped with the enormous pressures he was under. I fear that our current PM is stone cold sober.

[Ian Simpson]

7 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think it's well-established that Churchill was never entirely sober and that's how he coped with the enormous pressures he was under. I fear that our current PM is stone cold sober.

 

The wartime leader that BJ reminds me of is Lloyd George, not Churchill.  Some of you younger chaps may not remember LG, but he was noted at the time for his cronyism, corruption, adultery and inability to work successfully with the French.

To be fair to the man, he was also a competent politician able to deliver contentious reforms (social security, Irish independence, votes for women) despite opposition from his more right-wing critics.   

[alastairq]

Well, having read avidly through the preceding rants & ''woe-is-me's,'' my first thoughts were, we are where we are, most likely because, we all wanted our cakes, and to eat them as well!

 

But I look at the current mini-crises, and cannot help wondering whether we have all endeavoured to benefit from a modern, more acceptable , version of a slavocracy?

We are bombarded with demands for apologies and denials over the GB's [I prefer GB to UK....which somehow attempts to be inclusive when it really isn't!], roles in the slave trades of the past few hundred years [I still do not see any signs of apologies from the Moroccan arabs, or the Turks, for their part in raiding Cornwall & carrying off hundreds, if not thousands, of Cornish people into slavery?}, Yet we, as so-called 'modern' citizens of the world {I include Europe in this as well].....have the lifestyles we have, and enjoy, because all the fetching & carrying we expect to be done [the picking of vegetables, the care of the elderly, lorry drivers, bus drivers, and all the nasty tasks none of us really want to know, let alone be compelled to work in......]  has been conducted [over the past 80 years at least] by people from less affluent countries, who come here, one way or another, to do the work we ourselves deem to be 'beneath us'....for wages that few of us would even consider getting out of bed for.....!

Now, when those countries finally get somewhere near  to to our own, precious, standard of living, and the migrant workers return home, as there is no advantage to working thousands of miles away .....we all start bleating about government policy, politics, brexit, and every other aspect of life which hasn't gone the way we, as individuals, would have wished it to....!

HAving our cake, & eating it??

 

We have all enjoyed that to some degree or other.....

 

Where has the 'working class' disappeared to?

 

Yup, I reckon we are seeing the end of the modern ''slavocracy,'' and are all bemoaning the fact!

 

Perhaps if we all weren't so in lurve with the idea of sending our kids to UNi after the mandatory gap year......and went back to a school leaving age of 14, we might not have such a shortage of...for example, lorry drivers?

Or, nurses?

 

Maybe we as a country/society would not have to rely on the less-well-off from the far side of the world, to come here to do the work we ourselves deem to be, beneath us??

 

Yup, one step up from a slavocracy, in reality!

[alastairq]

To add, just some 'evidential' notes to emphasise my thoughts above?

Concerning one aspect of work, the current lack of lorry drivers?

 

From the RHA {not a union as we understand it, either]....

 

 

Plus, the RHA quotes the average age of lorry drivers is, 55!

 

More importantly, to emphasizes how far as a society we have drifted,  less than 1% of lorry drivers are under the age of 25!!

 

The last bit says it all!

 

I say, lower the school leaving age. Change the country's work ethic!  After all, all the raising of the school leaving age did, was to massage past unemployment statistics.

 

Another example? The GB's Armed Forces?

 

Year on year for the past several decades, the Armed Forces have repeatedly failed to recruit personnel in sufficient numbers to meet their stated needs. 

 

Why?

 

Youngsters leaving school didn't want to work in the Armed Forces. Or the nursing profession. Or become lorry drivers. Or become bus drivers. Or go into the Care sector! 

The youngsters 'fault?'

Or the parents' fault?

 

Such work being beneath our dignity? Or were there easier, more lucrative jobs to be had?

 

As a result, the Armed Forces were compelled to recruit from the myriad of former commonwealth countries...or, not even former commonwealth countries?  

The NHS compelled to recruit from Indonesia, etc for nursing staff?

Anybody recall the very real recruitment problems London Transport had, trying to get enough bus drivers?  Back in the 1970's???

Look at the staffing issues in the current Care sector???  Where do our working carers come from??

Certainly not from the typical GB family, who wouldn't get out of bed for those sorts of wages???

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Ian Simpson said:

 

The wartime leader that BJ reminds me of is Lloyd George, not Churchill.  Some of you younger chaps may not remember LG, but he was noted at the time for his cronyism, corruption, adultery and inability to work successfully with the French.

To be fair to the man, he was also a competent politician able to deliver contentious reforms (social security, Irish independence, votes for women) despite opposition from his more right-wing critics.   

 

LG = Flawed Genius

 

BJ = Flawed .....?

 

28 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 

 

Subject to the fact that I seem to recall BBC R4's More or Less had some criticism of some RHA figures (not necessarily these) and that the above sample is quite small relative to the numbers of HGV drivers I imagine still exist ....   

 

Nevertheless. the above graph is interesting, because it reflects a lot of what I thought about the likely impact of the B-THING both before and after it happened.

 

Populists encourage a binary view that over time insidiously infantalises all but the most vigilant voters; something is either (all) good or (all) bad. So, Remainers were castigated for "Project Fear"; the B-THING would prove a disaster.

 

Both logic and lived-experience shows us, however, that something need not be a total disaster in order, nevertheless, to be a thoroughly bad idea and something that is only likely to make matters worse.

 

That is how I have tended to view the B-THING. 

 

This example shows how it works:

 

(a) There are a number of underlying causes, unrelated to the B-THING, that were factors in any case. Let's say here they are retirement, low pay, other jobs and 'other' . Together, these are a major part of the explanation for the loss of HGV drivers.

 

(b) Then there is what no-one expected; the Plague.

 

(c) But then there is, in my view, the entirely predictable result of the B-THING.  This is exactly how I see the B-THING working out; whatever position GB is in any area (here the result of a + b), the B-THING will, in 9 cases out of 10, compound the difficulties.  It will make a hard thing harder, nearly every time.

 

(d) Last we have IR35, which is a classic example of a lack of joined-up thinking across Government departments, though the present administration's talent for incompetence virtually guarantees that, faced with a crisis at least partially of its own making, it will doggedly implement measures that exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the problem.  Well done HMG!

 

 

 

 

[alastairq]

What is completely ignored here , with lorry drivers  [ignoring also the fact that there has been a huge shortfall of LGV licence  holder willing to actually work in the haulage industry, for at least 2 decades, if not more??] anyway?], is that wonderful EU thing called the European{?} Working Time Directive!

 

Thus, GB lorry drivers are subject to not just the tachograph rules, but also the working time directive rules!

IN an industry such as road haulage, what is forgotten is that, whilst it's nice that lorry drivers can have a whole weekend off now & again, like the rest of us overpaid, over-bloated workers.....but that the wheels still need to be turning, to keep up with the supplies for us over-bloated other-workers.

Which means, far more[drivers] are actually needed just to do what at one time, a smaller workforce achieved.[ Back in the days before universal power steering]

 

The exodus of EU workers from the driving industry especially, was starting to be seen long before the B referendum!  As I said, when the living standard of countries like Poland, Bulgaria, etc etc started to catch up with our own, then what incentive was there for EU citizens to remain working in an alien country?? Especially when we all wanted cheap prices, so the driving industry couldn't pay the levels of wages a lorry driver was really worth?

Brexit happening was merely coincidental to the exodus.  It was already happening!

Like I said,we wanted our cake, and to eat it as well...and now we are reaping the whirlwind, so to speak.

The biggest issue I see is the lack of a genuine GB work ethic, since the 1960's.

 

 

[Andy Hayter]

But that is just one side of the coin Alistair.

 

The other is that we all (me included) require more stuff.

 

And stuff needs moving from the producer to the store/warehouse and from there to us.

 

More stuff means more trucks means more drivers - except that there aren't more drivers, so in consequence there will be less stuff.

[rocor]

Before any young person decides on a long term career as a lorry driver, I would suggest that they take a deep look into the present state of autonomous vehicle development. 

[alastairq]

21 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

More stuff means more trucks means more drivers - except that there aren't more drivers, so in consequence there will be less stuff.

 Except that this has been the situation in the industry for many years now.....

 

My jibe was at us, actually, 'wanting' more stuff, in the first place.Not just 'wanting', but, demanding, more stuff.

 

Thus 'supply' will always be playing catch-up.