Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Compound2632]

11 hours ago, Ian Simpson said:

 

Ah, yes, that would be this Jacob Rees-Mogg:

 

I'm sure he considers himself well above mere work.

 

There may well be those though, for whom graft, suitably dressed up, may pass for the work of government. I mention no names but the upper house is no more immune than the lower.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Compound2632

[Hroth]

We'll be back to brown envelopes being passed hand-to-hand next...

 

[Caley Jim]

2 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Presumably has to be roomy enough to throw the odd party.....

The size of ditch required depends on how 'odd' his parties are! 

 

Jim 

[alastairq]

For me, life now is all about 'survival', given the hand we've been dealt with. [I've been dealt with??}

Which means I need to get on with some welding on my daily driver, for its next MoT!

Which won't alter, no matter which conservative clown is going to be prime minister!

I need to really start splitting all my dry logs for winter heat, regardless of what the economy is doing.

Luxuries? Who [really] needs those? All I hope is, my aching body can withstand swinging my big axe long enough to re-fill my two log stores.

I have a log splitter [bought with aching body getting worse as time passes, in mind]

But that uses electricity.

So does the welder, so I might get my tree surgeon pal to look out for a small, second hand portable genny for the occasional leccy needs of other tools?

 

Food won't be an issue really...[yes, I do eat]...as long as I don't go a whole bundle on any of the gucci fancy stuff society has tried to get me to delve into for 70 years....Veggies like carrots , cabbage, and such stuff is cheap enough.....and, by carefully reading labels, I can buy only British...[I have no interest in supporting french or spanish farmers.....]

Meat I buy from a local farm butchers....I've said hi to next Christmases' beef joint already...Even then, if I spend 20 pensionquids in a week on meat, that's a lot [I do feed two of us, on & off]

But I do look askance at what some pensioners [either they're pensioners, or very unfortunate-looking 40 year olds?} in Lidls have in their trolleys..lots of gucci this & gucci that, with fancy furrin names...and I think, ''why are you wondering whether you'll be able to afford heating this winter, when you eat stuff like that?''

 

Went to my local farm shop this lunchtime....[it's a 10.5 mile round trip, country lanes..I measured it today because I found out how to zero the didgy-wotsit trip meter on my daily]... for my  'lunch'...[hungry-time, really] I trett myself to a Laveracks sausage roll, [short crust, not flakey..who do you think I am??]  and a coffee [ Grumpy Mule, I quite like it....] the ladies who make my coffee make mine nicely ''off-black''.....

Out in the car park, I counted 43 cars parked..the farm shop has a popular caff as well....Of those 43 cars, a lot had folk sat in them eating n drinking....lunchtime....good take-outs of sarnies & stuff from farm shop too...

Of all the parked cars, 18 were sat with their engines running, driving the air con [I presume?]....

All very eco-friendly and pollution conscious, I don't think!

I can well remember being sat in a car park, 50 years ago now, with the engine running....getting roundly abused by certain passers-by for not turning it off.....[the battery was poor, I dare not turn it off for the short while I was there...a 6 volt VW beetle]

 

Now it seems it's all OK, fine n dandy to sit there with engine idling, pumping out fumes, for half an hour or more, just to run the air con so the occupants can keep cool? [It never really was steaming hot in these parts recently.]  Yet, sat in a queue of traffic we are expected to turn our engines off?

 

We have a country and a society which believes everything is OK for as long as it suits! As soon as it doesn't suit, all hell breaks loose.

Edited August 22, 2022 by alastairq
ruddy google thinks it knows better than me!

[monkeysarefun]

Meanwhile, to show that new leadership  can bring fresh hope so all is not lost over there - we've been  Under New Management for the last couple of months and the results are starting to show.

 

“It’s not uncommon for a new government to enjoy a honeymoon period where voters are hopeful for change under the new management,” said Resolve director Jim Reed.

“But the size of Labor’s vote gain is more than that. This is a relieved electorate affirming they collectively made the right choice.

 

“Labor has used its first 100 days to get runs on the board on wages, foreign affairs and climate, set up a social agenda and manage expectations on economic issues.

“In doing so, they’ve reassured and converted a segment of around eight per cent of the electorate, taking that support from a new opposition that nobody is listening to yet.”

 

Labor won the election with a relatively low primary vote of 32.6 per cent but has gained a powerful endorsement from voters over the past three months on its core performance as well as major policy issues including national security and the economy.

 

While the Coalition held a lead of 10 percentage points on economic management in the final Resolve survey before the election, Labor now leads by 9 percentage points on the same issue.

Edited August 22, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Hroth]

I'm just waiting for La Truss to suddenly announce once elected to the Leadership (assuming the Tory Sheep vote for her) that the economic situation is more dire than she imagined and that all her promises on tax cuts, etc will have to wait until the economy is more stable.  Or until six months before the General Election, whichever is sooner...

 

On another tack, I believe the thing to do is to ask politicians which policies they will follow in order to make Food Banks unnecessary.

[Edwardian]

8 hours ago, Hroth said:

I'm just waiting for La Truss to suddenly announce once elected to the Leadership (assuming the Tory Sheep vote for her) that the economic situation is more dire than she imagined and that all her promises on tax cuts, etc will have to wait until the economy is more stable.  Or until six months before the General Election, whichever is sooner...

 

So young and yet so cynical?

 

8 hours ago, Hroth said:

On another tack, I believe the thing to do is to ask politicians which policies they will follow in order to make Food Banks unnecessary.

 

The vilification of the scroungers who use them via the Daily Mail ought to do it.

 

You know by now how this works.

 

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

The vilification of the scroungers who use them via the Daily Mail ought to do it.

 

You know by now how this works.

 

Yes. But now that hardship is reaching into the Daily Wail demographic, that approach might not have the desired impact.  There will be nothing worse than the Middle Classes realising that they have been betrayed by those they thought to be their friends.

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Do t underestimate the power of vilification as a distraction technique, even to distract from genuine difficulties. It has worked very well for numerous demagogues over time.

 

In a teeny, tiny way, not I hasten to add to be compared with really serious stuff, I currently feel the hate as a cyclist, because, something non-cyclists probably haven’t even noticed is that the four-wheels-good DM has a long-running campaign against us two-wheels-bad people, which is currently being stoked as part of the Leadership Contest (Shapps, Sunak and Truss have all been at it). What it does is to legitimise aggressive behaviour by some drivers. A teeny tiny flavour of how the whole vilification process operates, so that in the really serious cases victims end up getting murdered by people with worm-eaten souls who take it all to heart, at which point newspaper editors, columnists, and gobby shock-jocks claim “Nothing to do with us gov; just some lone nutter.”. Power without accountability, exercised to foment loathing. Not good.

[alastairq]

I cannot understand why rubbish journalism like the daily mail, et al, survives these days?

{Deliberate refusal to use capital letters , largely out of disrespect]

Is it that, the reality is, there are a lot of folk out there still with more money [than sense?] than they know what to do with?

Who still buys newspapers these days?

Who still pays money to 'subscribe' to online news?

Or is it that, the support for the media actually stems from folk continually mentioning them?

[Edwardian]

Yes, I was about to answer "deflection" as I saw Kevin had replied.

 

Populist press and politicians are adept at finding the "other" to blame for something affecting you.

 

It won't be something they've done, like BREXIT, or decades of chronic under-funding of everything we actually need as a society, or the entire structuring of our economy, laws and regulatory regime, social norms and institutions to favour the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a Neo-Liberal or Tory elite.

 

No, it'll be those ghastly immigrants, activists and benefit scroungers.

 

Not to mention that lycra-clad, pervy leg-shaving mafia who infest our countryside and towns, who deliberately block the Queen's highway for motorists in their arrogant hubris and their thin, fit and tiny-bottomed sociopathic Day-Glo smugness, and who bring swift and silent death to the innocent foot passenger, generally from behind like the dishonourable swine they are.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

10 minutes ago, alastairq said:

I cannot understand why rubbish journalism like the daily mail, et al, survives these days?

Because we all have a baser beast within us, and some people enjoy feeding their baser beast, fattening it up, until it has consumed a significant part of the better beast that cohabits with it, and anything people enjoy is something other people can make money and power from. Drug Barons, some Press Barons, and too many wannabe big politicians operate on exactly the same basis: find a corrosive little human weakness, serve it, and exploit the people it inhabits.

 

In short: human beings have a nasty side, that’s why.

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

No, it'll be those ghastly immigrants, activists and benefit scroungers barristers, doctors and teachers.

 

 

[Phil Parker]

25 minutes ago, alastairq said:

I cannot understand why rubbish journalism like the daily mail, et al, survives these days?

{Deliberate refusal to use capital letters , largely out of disrespect]

Is it that, the reality is, there are a lot of folk out there still with more money [than sense?] than they know what to do with?

 

Because it feeds their predjudices. And allows them to blame someone else for their shortcomings.

[Phil Parker]

26 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Who still buys newspapers these days?

Who still pays money to 'subscribe' to online news?

Or is it that, the support for the media actually stems from folk continually mentioning them?

 

The problem is that if you want half-way decent journalism, you have to pay for it, because all that quality reporting takes time and costs money. 

 

And hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Moan about the lack of it yes, but pay for it, no.

 

Whenever anyone bangs on about no longer looking at the "mainstream media", I always like to ask where they will get their news from? Carefully researching from original sources (like one of those proper journalists who they think shoudl work for free) - of course not. It's probably that bastion of accuracte content, Twitter.

 

So, @alastairq where do you get the news from?

[Nearholmer]

As a merry PS: loathing is best provoked by fear, so you will notice that every campaign of loathing starts with a campaign of fear-provocation. Sorry to obsess about cycling, but even that trivial example starts with fear, by putting front and centre of people’s minds the possibility that they, or one of their loved ones, will be mown down by an errant cyclist, something which happens to c4 people a year in the U.K., so is the cause of about 1:150 000 deaths.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Nearholmer

[alastairq]

I have just completed, by email request [I did check first]...my Electoral Roll information.

Online.

 

The provider of the online software made the mistake of leaving a 'comments' box at the end, with a limit of 5000 characters.

I got  there just as I had made myself my second coffee of the day.

 

I managed to use up all 5000 characters!

 

My main 'subject' centred around the dreaded legal warnings earlier, on the 'signature' page.

The stuff that gave the dire warning of legal action, 6 months in prison, etc....if 'false' information has been given.

[For interest, all the information was provided by them......I merely 'affirmed'....IE, ''No Change' in every box.]

 

But I took great delight in pointing out that, if the ER so desired, I would prefer the 6 months' jail time to be over the winter, please.

Then I could receive free heat, free hot food [3 square meals a day, with a choice of menus]...free TV, free internet, free hot water, free clean sheets, free medical & dentistry [important since, outside, getting to see a dentist is often nigh on impossible]...in fact, free everything a discerning pensioner could really want.

As has been noted in Japan?   [Their government tried to stop it, but their pensioners simply became more adept at getting themselves locked up,  for the winter]

Being a mild offender, and over 70, I would be incarcerated in a modern, plush establishment, rather than Strangways. Because that's the way our prison system works.

 

Aaah, you all shout [especially the more moral youngsters amongst you?]   What about criminal records?  What about credit ratings, etc?

Well, once over 70 or so, do all those things that are sent to keep us morally in fear, really matter?

It's not as if anyone over 70 really has much more of a future to look forward to, is it?

 

10 years? 20 years? 30 at best?

Not like the 30 or 40 or 50-somethings in society, who think they have much more to lose?

I care not about passing PRB checks any more. Or being a security risk? [see above about jail time?]

Jail cannot be any worse than State sponsored ghettos for the old [AKA care homes, or those overpriced 'sheltered' villages that are continually promoted?}

 

Then there's the acquisition of debt?  [IE non-payment of near-future fuel bills, for example?}

With the limited future of a pensioner [as well as the limited income],  debt can be dealt with lawfully, without stress to the individual.

Assets, for example, still actually have to belong....If they don't actually 'belong' [ownership rules]....then they cannot be touched.

 

I don't know if I mentioned it, but I responded to a younger person bleating about their 90 year old mother being 'frightened' she would not be able to pay for fuel,so would have to 'choose' between eating or keeping warm...

Plus, how the youngster currently 'pays her bills' anyway?

 

I responded by asking, why was mother worried?

At her age, the power companies cannot 'cut her off'......They still have to supply,regardless of whether she pays her bills or not.

I suggested to him that he just lets Mum run up the bills, in fact, all her bills, if she was financially limited [pensions]....

Then she can petition for her own Bankruptcy!  

That effectively pees on shareholders' bonfires, but...so what?

Credit ratings?

At our ages, who the hell cares?

It's not as if we're going to apply for mortgages, is it?

Or fancy phone contracts? 

[Neither of which, for example, are excluded from folk who are Discharged Bankrupts]

 

Anyway, aside from pain, the advantage of old age [and pensioners], is that essentially, almost morally, we are in fact, untouchable by society.

Or rather, those aspects that society likes to put us in fear of?

 

 

So, what about the forced installation of pre-paid meters?

Well, the supply exists on 'the other side' of the meter! Certainly for electricity. [for penalties, see above for an OAP? In other words, will an OAP really care?]

 

Of course, if one is an OAP with an awful lot one doesn't want to lose, materially, then all the above won't apply.

Simply pay the fuel bills, whatever they come to, and cancel next year's second or third cruise?

I feel I am a moral person.

It is our society that is immoral.

Thus I am happy to stick a  finger up  at it.

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

As a merry PS: loathing is best provoked by fear, so you will notice that every campaign of loathing starts with a campaign of fear-provocation.

 

 

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate...."

 

 

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Sorry to obsess about cycling, but even that trivial example starts with fear, by putting front and centre of people’s minds the possibility that they, or one of their loved ones, will be mown down by an errant cyclist, something which happens to 2 or 3 people a year in the U.K., so is the cause of about 1:200 000 deaths.

 

As ever, the Americans, those masters of restrained and entirely necessary self-defence, seem to have the answer to your fears ...

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Edwardian

[alastairq]

7 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

So, @alastairq where do you get the news from?

 Certainly not from any source attributed to the newspapers-as-were. But, do I really 'need' news?

There are sources which are 'free' [providing, often, one puts up with adverts], although I do pay for my broadband.

Oh, and as I have mentioned before, in preference to buying a subscription to BRM, I chose instead to subscribe to Private Eye....

Which I find, sometimes, heavy-going, and quite depressing.....

But, it feeds my inner cynicism.

 

I have no real 'beef' with cyclists, any more so than any other road user...unless the road users are blatantly pushing their luck.

I just wish they'd cease shouting at each other as they pass my house.!

[Nearholmer]

It’s an old technique.

 

There is a museum in Buckingham in the old gaol, a sort of small fortress with twenty or thirty very solid cells, in the middle of the town.

 

One of the exhibits is a long description of an C18th/C19th chap who was always struggling to make ends meet and hated the regime at the workhouse, where it was cold, the food was rubbish, you had to rise at the crack of dawn, and were forced into dull labour for twelve hours a day, and church for most of the rest. He would deliberately commit ‘month in gaol’ felonies in front of the constable in order to get banged-up, where it was dry and warm (the walls are about ten feet thick), you were woken at a decent hour with a good breakfast, got enough money to buy tobacco by doing ‘prison jobs’, and where church was voluntary. Apparently he was a constant annoyance to the magistrates for tenets or more years!

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

The problem is that if you want half-way decent journalism, you have to pay for it, because all that quality reporting takes time and costs money. 

 

And hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Moan about the lack of it yes, but pay for it, no.

 

Whenever anyone bangs on about no longer looking at the "mainstream media", I always like to ask where they will get their news from? Carefully researching from original sources (like one of those proper journalists who they think shoudl work for free) - of course not. It's probably that bastion of accuracte content, Twitter.

 

So, @alastairq where do you get the news from?

 

I miss a good broadsheet, but I never have the time to read one these days. 

 

Consequently, I am over-reliant on a single source of news, but at least that's a good one, Radio 4. 

 

From what I've seen, the Young rely on social media for news, which I have seen lacks standards in journalistic method, verification and objectivity. That, and the way it's structured commercially, must tend it often towards populist polemic. That said, there is also all manner of good stuff out there. I flatter myself that I can distinguish between reliable and unreliable but, assuming I'm even right in that, it would be my background as a consumer of mainstream media that lends me the necessary critical faculty.   

 

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

Because it feeds their predjudices. And allows them to blame someone else for their shortcomings.

 

Much like many RMWeb topics...

 

11 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

The problem is that if you want half-way decent journalism, you have to pay for it, because all that quality reporting takes time and costs money. 

 

And hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Moan about the lack of it yes, but pay for it, no.

 

Since my father and his brothers grew up dependent on my grandmother's NUJ widow's pension*, I have a great respect for the journalistic profession. The problem, as in most forms of employment, arises not from the idealism of the youngsters going into the profession but from management's betrayal of that idealism.

 

*My grandfather was a freelance journalist, making a moderate living in the 1930s, but died in 1940 when my father was only a year old.

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s an old technique.

 

There is a museum in Buckingham in the old gaol, a sort of small fortress with twenty or thirty very solid cells, in the middle of the town.

 

One of the exhibits is a long description of an C18th/C19th chap who was always struggling to make ends meet and hated the regime at the workhouse, where it was cold, the food was rubbish, you had to rise at the crack of dawn, and were forced into dull labour for twelve hours a day, and church for most of the rest. He would deliberately commit ‘month in gaol’ felonies in front of the constable in order to get banged-up, where it was dry and warm (the walls are about ten feet thick), you were woken at a decent hour with a good breakfast, got enough money to buy tobacco by doing ‘prison jobs’, and where church was voluntary. Apparently he was a constant annoyance to the magistrates for tenets or more years!

 

Oh, I can see a whole Daily Hate editorial on the need to make our prisons a more effective means of punishment ....

[Nearholmer]

Yes, and workhouses must surely be due for a revival as part of the inexorable march back to C18th. Not only did they make the poor suffer for their sin (the sin of being poor), but they were administered at a local level, so poverty wasn’t a national

problem, it was no concern of the state beyond passing enabling/requiring legislation.

 

 

[Not Jeremy]

27 minutes ago, Phil Parker said:

 

The problem is that if you want half-way decent journalism, you have to pay for it, because all that quality reporting takes time and costs money. 

 

And hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Moan about the lack of it yes, but pay for it, no.

 

Whenever anyone bangs on about no longer looking at the "mainstream media", I always like to ask where they will get their news from? Carefully researching from original sources (like one of those proper journalists who they think shoudl work for free) - of course not. It's probably that bastion of accuracte content, Twitter.

 

So, @alastairq where do you get the news from?

 

Or worse still - Radio 4....