Today has been warm again with a blue sky and fleeting clouds, although mostly viewed from a hospital window. I did take a brief walk around the grounds to the onsite shop for a fresh bottle of chilled water, only to make a mistake and find that it was tinted with lemon and lime, pleasant but now what I was seeking. My mother was awake for almost the whole of my evening visit. The roadway and car empty car parks were damp from some rain with more forecast overnight although it will continue to be mild
The length of the Sunday Times has involved a week's reading and thinking, since as long as it grew into sections, when was that? and its headline story, the public reaction to Northern Rock being given a guaranteed borrowing facility by the Bank of England will greatly affect the future th future role and prosperity of the UK over the decade, and that of Gordon Brown's government and his tenure as a Prime Minister. The Sunday Times also gave prominence to what happened to Madeleine McCann which is the headline front page and feature article of the Mail on Sunday. If one is to have an independent view on both subjects it is essential to have an understanding of how the media, the law, and capitalism works in the UK, in Portugal and in the USA, and studied all the available factual information provided by independent assessors. In England we like the adversarial system to enable a judgement based on documentation, memory and interpretation, in which competing interests present their position in the best possible light, usually attempting to discredit and undermine the interests of others. It is a system that is not based on establishing the truth or the facts as such but whose arguments and information do you believe more. Even the official inquiry will governing terms of reference, and perhaps the most trustworthy of all, a scientific study based on methods which if anyone else uses the same tools will make the same judgements and conclusions, can only be said to apply to some subjects, and less to others.
This is not a criticism of a good system which is used effectively, and with good intention, by most practitioners in England, but an attempt to establish a reality which any reader should agree with. The third Sunday Times front page story is the statement of Alan Greenspan that the Iraq war was essentially about oil rather than other issues. The timing of the statement enabled all those opposed to George Bush and a Republican administration to shout, 'I told you so,' although I have no idea what motivated Alan Greenspan to choose this moment as the next Presidential election gets into full swing. Because of his status and experience he cannot claim that he did not know what he was doing. The problem is that Mr Greenspan is right in that economic power, dependent on energy, has to be the priority of all governments. I could equally say that the war was about the need to establish capitalism, or Christianity versus communism, socialism and the Muslim faiths, and that it is more likely one can achieve these goals in an open democratic, pluralist non sectarian society than in a closed singular one. The USA and the UK are two of the most effective and influential capitalist colonial powers in the history of the world, one at its zenith and the other struggling to avoid relegation out of the a premier division in which there is no return, unless the other members decide to let us stay in. We are trying to achieve such a situation by allowing China and Russia to invest in money, and in our buildings and land, by being regarded as a helpful and supportive relative to our US 'cousin's, by acting as a buffer between France and Germany and the rest of the EC countries, and achieving a special place with the former Eastern bloc new arrivals, and by acting as a buffer, with the US between the open capitalist middle eastern countries and those which wish to go in a different direction whether socialist or spiritual or both. It is what any capitalist government Conservative Tory/ Labour socialist New Labour, Liberal Social Democrat Liberal Democrat party in the UK must do, and will, as its first economic priority, interwoven, as it is, with national security and stability.
One consequence of this necessary and fundamental approach to economic survival is that we need to produce more for less in every sector of economic activity and this will have consequences which will affect lost of lives and impact on communities who do not like rapid change. Today for example the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire has been pointing out the additional consequences for her county as loads of economic migrants from former eastern countries are employed to do jobs for wages the locals prefer to claim unemployment and associated benefits. What she understands only to well, me thinks, is that without these workers there will be less economic activity in her county and more policing problems as unrest spreads. Sorry folks if you don't like it you will have to get on a bike as there is a long queue in various parts of the world waiting for their piece of pie.
The problem for any system where you have more than one political force is that in giving the people the ability to switch their allegiances between the potential governing and power holding groups you also have to give the people the idea that they can have a direct say in the day to decisions taken by those that put into power which is evidently nonsense as is known by anyone who has ever served on a committee of more than one.
We also have the ludicrous proposition that if you have three major parties competing, it is undemocratic if the one who wins only has 30-40% of those voting. However I do not blame politicians for tying to pull this one or sections of the general public who do not think too much especially if the prejudice appears to be supported by the paper which in general agrees with their other prejudices and inclinations. The journalists have to eat and look after their families and are hardly likely to point out the king is not wearing clothes too often. It is obvious that if you want the majority political party have over 50% of those voting you have to reduce the number of major political parties to two.
I have been listening to Amy Winehouse dying 100 times while her actual real boyfriend went back to his actual former girl friend and Amy then decided she would get him back and marry him to secure her position, which she did.
I had a quick look at the Home Section of 64 pages of deforestation and journalistic toil, and which immediately reminded why the paper is only for would be millionaires, There is an advert for an apartment. 27 of them in London N2 with prices from 2.1 million pounds. Of course you need an interior designer so this is an interior design special for the forthcoming autumn design shows. If I could I would have a flat in central London but I would need a view of the Thames, perhaps looking towards St Paul's on the South Bank close to the Festival Hall, the National Theatres and Tate Modern. I did not spot anything available. Hampton's are an established estate agents with has two properties which interested me for only £800000 in Camberwell and Fulham with accommodation about the same as my own, except they will have gardens although one is described as a patio garden. The different dimensions we live in. The others on the same page ranged from £925000 to £2.9million. I was also interest in 4 bed split level property overlooking Mousehole Cornwall where I stayed in a cottage in the fishing village forty years ago is available for £675000.. but when would I ant to go there now?
I have always fancied a Lakes home although the one advertised for just under 2 million and set within 2 acres does not appear to be lakeside or have a lake view. However one at Nantwich Cheshire has 18.25 acres of parkland and a lake for £4.5million. However if I win the Euro lottery in a good win I will go for Devon at Salcombe as the property is big enough to accommodate my work, has its own swimming pool so I can keep fit, and a three bed cottage for the help although finding one couple to cover boatman, two moorings, chauffer for the Rolls, I will drive the Ferrari myself, gardener, chef will be a problem but the asking price is OK at 7.5million but the place will have no connection with the rest of my life and its work.
Although if I suddenly had the dosh and did not want to spend too much time finding the right overseas property in the right location ion the Mediterranean I would head for the Birmingham arena where the largest ever overseas property exhibition, 400 exhibitors, 40 countries and 1000's of property many of them in the former eastern countries with their ancient beautiful cities on the Mediterranean. Michael Palin showed us a few while visiting the countries that have sent over their onion pickers and packers to Cambridgeshire and I loved the contemporary artist mayor of one run down town which he is transforming with Mediterranean colours rather like that advert of paint spilling over buildings.
I listen again for the eight time in two days to Amy Winehouse Back to Back with its parental guidance explicit special edition sticker. The girl has written the songs, some with others. but they tell of her agony and a little ecstasy This all too painfully real and every time she performs she goes through the emotions again. Ok she can afford the kind of properties I want and the fast cars but it is no compensation for the pain relived and willingness to share.
She can also afford the cars of 'In gear' cover cars, gadgets and adventure 40 pages. The cars the Rolls, Porsche's and Ferrari are all price on application so I guess we talking a quarter of a million upwards?
The travel section 32 pages has a mean article about Travel Lodge by someone who does not understand the system. I have stayed in great rooms in convenient places travelling throughout the UK from between £5 and £26 a night by booking ahead over the past ten years. Oh I fancy the USA Coast to Coast train trip 21 days with 41 departures next year for under £3000 flights over included. WOW small ship cruising the Greek Islands that appeals to me even more. Nearly went on such a trip which was then cancelled by the company. Around China 50 days for under £4000 sounds an inexpensive way for a first hand look at the future rulers of the world. I guess the walk and cycle tours of Europe are no longer for me. I travelled on my own abroad for the first time three years ago but this was to an English speaking land which is not abroad abroad. I had feared the ache of being alone but was too busy exploring, photographing, talking to people and recording experience on the lap top. One resident at the hotel commented I always see you writing in a note book so I explained about having a shot term memory problem but if I made notes I could remember everything precisely, the pictures in the mind, how I felt, what I thought and who I met, and see I remember him but not what he looked liked because I did not make a note of that.
Now that the government has abolished automatic retirement at 65 and with equal opportunities, and all that. I could go back to work to earn the money.] necessary for a Sunday Times Lifestyle!
The Football Association want a new Chairman, but I guess being a life long supporter is not a qualification. The NHS for London Programme Director is a possibility but I guess I would have to drop my complaints against London Health services. Both jobs do not state the financial packages. Nor do I think being a Commissioner for the Child Maintenance and Enforcement an arms length new org of the Department of Work and Pensions is for me. I would never do the enforcing. The most appealing is the new Vice Chancellor of Northumbria University, that is the individual who actually runs the show, with 31500 students, 3000 staff and a turnover of £181million as after all I did once manage 4000 staff although the budget was less in real terms as was the client base. Admittedly I have only been a user of education system but that did not stop the health service recruiting vacuum cleaner salesmen when it decided to manage financial resources more effectively, this would be understandable and acceptable if this followed the recent a half billion deficit a financial year back, but guess what they had the bright idea to recruit businessmen with no experience of running the NHS over twenty years ago. No I will support someone with high education administrative experience to be the vice chancellor. The advert is mind blowing because it means that if Newcastle University still has 20000 students there will be 50000 university students in a city of 250000. That is WOW WOW league, especially as Gateshead is spending £60 million on a college campus on the opposite river bank. Why travel with such an exciting city on the doorstep? Guess I will stick with North East Lifestyle after all.
The length of the Sunday Times has involved a week's reading and thinking, since as long as it grew into sections, when was that? and its headline story, the public reaction to Northern Rock being given a guaranteed borrowing facility by the Bank of England will greatly affect the future th future role and prosperity of the UK over the decade, and that of Gordon Brown's government and his tenure as a Prime Minister. The Sunday Times also gave prominence to what happened to Madeleine McCann which is the headline front page and feature article of the Mail on Sunday. If one is to have an independent view on both subjects it is essential to have an understanding of how the media, the law, and capitalism works in the UK, in Portugal and in the USA, and studied all the available factual information provided by independent assessors. In England we like the adversarial system to enable a judgement based on documentation, memory and interpretation, in which competing interests present their position in the best possible light, usually attempting to discredit and undermine the interests of others. It is a system that is not based on establishing the truth or the facts as such but whose arguments and information do you believe more. Even the official inquiry will governing terms of reference, and perhaps the most trustworthy of all, a scientific study based on methods which if anyone else uses the same tools will make the same judgements and conclusions, can only be said to apply to some subjects, and less to others.
This is not a criticism of a good system which is used effectively, and with good intention, by most practitioners in England, but an attempt to establish a reality which any reader should agree with. The third Sunday Times front page story is the statement of Alan Greenspan that the Iraq war was essentially about oil rather than other issues. The timing of the statement enabled all those opposed to George Bush and a Republican administration to shout, 'I told you so,' although I have no idea what motivated Alan Greenspan to choose this moment as the next Presidential election gets into full swing. Because of his status and experience he cannot claim that he did not know what he was doing. The problem is that Mr Greenspan is right in that economic power, dependent on energy, has to be the priority of all governments. I could equally say that the war was about the need to establish capitalism, or Christianity versus communism, socialism and the Muslim faiths, and that it is more likely one can achieve these goals in an open democratic, pluralist non sectarian society than in a closed singular one. The USA and the UK are two of the most effective and influential capitalist colonial powers in the history of the world, one at its zenith and the other struggling to avoid relegation out of the a premier division in which there is no return, unless the other members decide to let us stay in. We are trying to achieve such a situation by allowing China and Russia to invest in money, and in our buildings and land, by being regarded as a helpful and supportive relative to our US 'cousin's, by acting as a buffer between France and Germany and the rest of the EC countries, and achieving a special place with the former Eastern bloc new arrivals, and by acting as a buffer, with the US between the open capitalist middle eastern countries and those which wish to go in a different direction whether socialist or spiritual or both. It is what any capitalist government Conservative Tory/ Labour socialist New Labour, Liberal Social Democrat Liberal Democrat party in the UK must do, and will, as its first economic priority, interwoven, as it is, with national security and stability.
One consequence of this necessary and fundamental approach to economic survival is that we need to produce more for less in every sector of economic activity and this will have consequences which will affect lost of lives and impact on communities who do not like rapid change. Today for example the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire has been pointing out the additional consequences for her county as loads of economic migrants from former eastern countries are employed to do jobs for wages the locals prefer to claim unemployment and associated benefits. What she understands only to well, me thinks, is that without these workers there will be less economic activity in her county and more policing problems as unrest spreads. Sorry folks if you don't like it you will have to get on a bike as there is a long queue in various parts of the world waiting for their piece of pie.
The problem for any system where you have more than one political force is that in giving the people the ability to switch their allegiances between the potential governing and power holding groups you also have to give the people the idea that they can have a direct say in the day to decisions taken by those that put into power which is evidently nonsense as is known by anyone who has ever served on a committee of more than one.
We also have the ludicrous proposition that if you have three major parties competing, it is undemocratic if the one who wins only has 30-40% of those voting. However I do not blame politicians for tying to pull this one or sections of the general public who do not think too much especially if the prejudice appears to be supported by the paper which in general agrees with their other prejudices and inclinations. The journalists have to eat and look after their families and are hardly likely to point out the king is not wearing clothes too often. It is obvious that if you want the majority political party have over 50% of those voting you have to reduce the number of major political parties to two.
I have been listening to Amy Winehouse dying 100 times while her actual real boyfriend went back to his actual former girl friend and Amy then decided she would get him back and marry him to secure her position, which she did.
I had a quick look at the Home Section of 64 pages of deforestation and journalistic toil, and which immediately reminded why the paper is only for would be millionaires, There is an advert for an apartment. 27 of them in London N2 with prices from 2.1 million pounds. Of course you need an interior designer so this is an interior design special for the forthcoming autumn design shows. If I could I would have a flat in central London but I would need a view of the Thames, perhaps looking towards St Paul's on the South Bank close to the Festival Hall, the National Theatres and Tate Modern. I did not spot anything available. Hampton's are an established estate agents with has two properties which interested me for only £800000 in Camberwell and Fulham with accommodation about the same as my own, except they will have gardens although one is described as a patio garden. The different dimensions we live in. The others on the same page ranged from £925000 to £2.9million. I was also interest in 4 bed split level property overlooking Mousehole Cornwall where I stayed in a cottage in the fishing village forty years ago is available for £675000.. but when would I ant to go there now?
I have always fancied a Lakes home although the one advertised for just under 2 million and set within 2 acres does not appear to be lakeside or have a lake view. However one at Nantwich Cheshire has 18.25 acres of parkland and a lake for £4.5million. However if I win the Euro lottery in a good win I will go for Devon at Salcombe as the property is big enough to accommodate my work, has its own swimming pool so I can keep fit, and a three bed cottage for the help although finding one couple to cover boatman, two moorings, chauffer for the Rolls, I will drive the Ferrari myself, gardener, chef will be a problem but the asking price is OK at 7.5million but the place will have no connection with the rest of my life and its work.
Although if I suddenly had the dosh and did not want to spend too much time finding the right overseas property in the right location ion the Mediterranean I would head for the Birmingham arena where the largest ever overseas property exhibition, 400 exhibitors, 40 countries and 1000's of property many of them in the former eastern countries with their ancient beautiful cities on the Mediterranean. Michael Palin showed us a few while visiting the countries that have sent over their onion pickers and packers to Cambridgeshire and I loved the contemporary artist mayor of one run down town which he is transforming with Mediterranean colours rather like that advert of paint spilling over buildings.
I listen again for the eight time in two days to Amy Winehouse Back to Back with its parental guidance explicit special edition sticker. The girl has written the songs, some with others. but they tell of her agony and a little ecstasy This all too painfully real and every time she performs she goes through the emotions again. Ok she can afford the kind of properties I want and the fast cars but it is no compensation for the pain relived and willingness to share.
She can also afford the cars of 'In gear' cover cars, gadgets and adventure 40 pages. The cars the Rolls, Porsche's and Ferrari are all price on application so I guess we talking a quarter of a million upwards?
The travel section 32 pages has a mean article about Travel Lodge by someone who does not understand the system. I have stayed in great rooms in convenient places travelling throughout the UK from between £5 and £26 a night by booking ahead over the past ten years. Oh I fancy the USA Coast to Coast train trip 21 days with 41 departures next year for under £3000 flights over included. WOW small ship cruising the Greek Islands that appeals to me even more. Nearly went on such a trip which was then cancelled by the company. Around China 50 days for under £4000 sounds an inexpensive way for a first hand look at the future rulers of the world. I guess the walk and cycle tours of Europe are no longer for me. I travelled on my own abroad for the first time three years ago but this was to an English speaking land which is not abroad abroad. I had feared the ache of being alone but was too busy exploring, photographing, talking to people and recording experience on the lap top. One resident at the hotel commented I always see you writing in a note book so I explained about having a shot term memory problem but if I made notes I could remember everything precisely, the pictures in the mind, how I felt, what I thought and who I met, and see I remember him but not what he looked liked because I did not make a note of that.
Now that the government has abolished automatic retirement at 65 and with equal opportunities, and all that. I could go back to work to earn the money.] necessary for a Sunday Times Lifestyle!
The Football Association want a new Chairman, but I guess being a life long supporter is not a qualification. The NHS for London Programme Director is a possibility but I guess I would have to drop my complaints against London Health services. Both jobs do not state the financial packages. Nor do I think being a Commissioner for the Child Maintenance and Enforcement an arms length new org of the Department of Work and Pensions is for me. I would never do the enforcing. The most appealing is the new Vice Chancellor of Northumbria University, that is the individual who actually runs the show, with 31500 students, 3000 staff and a turnover of £181million as after all I did once manage 4000 staff although the budget was less in real terms as was the client base. Admittedly I have only been a user of education system but that did not stop the health service recruiting vacuum cleaner salesmen when it decided to manage financial resources more effectively, this would be understandable and acceptable if this followed the recent a half billion deficit a financial year back, but guess what they had the bright idea to recruit businessmen with no experience of running the NHS over twenty years ago. No I will support someone with high education administrative experience to be the vice chancellor. The advert is mind blowing because it means that if Newcastle University still has 20000 students there will be 50000 university students in a city of 250000. That is WOW WOW league, especially as Gateshead is spending £60 million on a college campus on the opposite river bank. Why travel with such an exciting city on the doorstep? Guess I will stick with North East Lifestyle after all.
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