Social – Page 3 – Fooyah

June 5 2022June 5 2022

It Looked Amazing

It’s been a windy few days here in the south east of this funny island. It hasn’t rained much, or at least not when I’ve been awake, but the wind has been a consistent feature of the “jubilee” days. Yes, it’s been the queen’s jubilee and I’ve been mostly not-interested. I’m not a monarchist by a long way, in fact I think that the royals embody all that is wrong with this entitled country. Anyway, the wheat in the fields out the back of my house are young and have bendy stalks still. The wind gusts were creating lovely wave patterns in the fields and so I tried to capture what that looks like. To be honest I don’t think I succeeded.

In respect of all other things I’ve [once again] deleted Twitter and Reddit from my phone. I don’t think they are good for mental health. I do like knowing the things that I see mentioned on there but there’s only so much shit in this world that I can cope with and along with the knowledge that the entire environment is going to collapse soon I’ve decided to try and focus on what I can do from afar and stop worrying about the end of the world. There isn’t really anything I can do to try and change what’s going to happen. My area of focus needs to be more on the things I can affect. I will occasionally check Twitter but Reddit is likely not to be looked at much.

If you read the news or listen to the radio [I don’t watch television news] then you will notice the, almost daily, warnings from scientists about the collapse of the climate and environment. Those warning signs have been there for most of my life time but no one has really done anything to try to change what’s going to happen. The current economic and political systems do not allow a decent long-term plan that will help the future generations. I am convinced it is all going to be utter shit.

Through my life I had thought that the country and world was heading towards a more liberal approach to people and life. I had thought that society progresses to be more accepting of social norms as they change. But it turns out that I was wrong. The current UK government are fucking horrible people who are liars and self-serving assholes. They have been brought up to believe they are entitled to the power. The problem is they are morally bankrupt racist liars. I honestly can’t believe some of the headlines I see where people are “I’m almost at the point where I won’t vote conservative“. What the fuck have you been watching for the last decade? I honestly despair at the level of cognitive dissonance these people have.

I’m not claiming to be perfect or to have the answers. I honestly have no idea how to change the current to fix the future. But I do know it’s not what we are doing now. The way we treat some aspects of society is horrific. My central tenant is “be nice”. It’s the easiest thing to do. I think I’d also have to say that we should use evidence to improve and help people along with doing out best to look after the planet for the future. We are nowhere near doing that yet. It’s a real shame. So, now I’m going to head off and be selfish for a while along with donating money to organisations that are working to change our current world in the best of ways so we can be the best for the future.

May 8 2022May 8 2022

Tweeting About Sunk Cost

There’s been quite a lot of people leaving Twitter because Elon Musk has decided to try and buy the platform. I’ve been thinking what to do about this and whether I care or not. I’m no fan of Elon Musk. I’m pretty sure he’s a disingenuous fool who says lots of things but it’s all self-serving promotion. I don’t even think he’s a business genius. So, when all the news broke about him buying Twitter I did have a few thoughts about whether I should stay on the platform. But then, what’s the difference between him owning it and a bunch of faceless investors owning it? I don’t think it will make a difference to me and my uses of twitter.

Then there’s the concept that he’ll allow “free speech” on the platform. Well, that’s interesting because in my experience that just means racists will be racist. As a private company Twitter can set whatever rules it wants given the current status of “things being said on the internet are not the responsibility of the platforms on which they are said”. Can you imagine having to moderate all the gigabytes of data that gets sent to these platforms for dodgy content? Who would be doing the monitoring and what would the rules be? At the moment Twitter is like advertising in the UK. It’s fine until someone complains about it. There are rules but you only have to follow them if someone raises an issue.

I’ve got quite a lot invested in Twitter in terms of this website. If I delete all my data then every tweet that I’ve embedded over the years on my communications will be removed and to be honest it will change the look and feel of this site. If there’s an option to download all my tweets and images and try to then re-link every tweet on this site then that’s something I could look into but the time and challenge to do that might make it not worth it. I am invested – time wise – into twitter and so removing that would bother me. I am aware that this is the “sunk cost” fallacy. It wouldn’t matter to anyone but me if I left twitter. That place has been a rabid discourse of racists and arseholes for over eight years now [everything went shit in the middle of 2016] so leaving now wouldn’t change much.

April 3 2022April 3 2022

Only Two Hours Sleep You Say?

It has been an interesting few weeks. I recently met up with my good friend Jamie from Cornwall and had a nice meal with him and Smith. When I returned to my car and started it all hell broke loose and it sounded as though the exhaust had fallen off! I turned it on again just to see what would happen and – BLAM – still the same [sexy for a race car] noise. There is no way a Toyota Prius should sound like that. So I had to call the AA for Bora Horza Gobuchul. Now, being a male and having broken the car in the leafy Surrey suburbs I was not top of the list to be helped, but that is perfectly fine. It makes sense that women and vulnerable people should be helped first. We shouldn’t live in a world where that discrimination is necessary but as there is a very clear problem with male-on-female violence I’m happy to wait.

The AA man turned up and I described what the car sounded like. He grabbed a torch and looked underneath the vehicle. “Your catalytic converter’s been nicked”. In the couple of hours I was with my friends people had come and jacked up my car and sawn out the catalytic converter. This was a bit of a “bugger” moment as I was hoping he could just do some bolts up and I’d be on my way back home. Nope. The AA man called for a flat-bed truck to come and get me. Again, I’m down the list of priority so I had to wait until 0230 for the truck to arrive. I was slightly terrified of having to start the engine to get the car onto the truck as the Prius can only be put into neutral with the power system turned on, if the battery is low the engine will start. It turned out there was enough juice in the hybrid battery to run the car on EV power for a short while. It was loaded onto the truck and we headed off to Kent.

I had Bora Horza Gobuchul dropped off at an exhaust centre a couple of miles from my house and I got home a little before 0400. I went to bed and got up after not sleeping particularly well to organise work things and getting to the exhaust centre to explain the car dumped outside their workshop. I had already planned to cycle to work for a few days this particular week and so I had all my shower kit and spare clothes at school. So, I just had to cycle a few more days. Fortunately the weather was good and quite warm. Hopefully it’ll be similar the next time I cycle to work. The ride is about thirty minutes and as the majority of it follows the Medway towpath is actually really pleasant.

After speaking to insurance people and various garages it turned out that if I needed a courtesy car then I would have to get Bora Horza Gobuchul fixed at their choice of garage. In Ashford. The guys at ATS couldn’t fix the Prius because they can only replace the exhaust with OEM parts and they don’t have a deal with Toyota. So I had to get the car fixed in Ashford. After calling them I had to wait five days before they could get to me! Five days. I phoned them on the Friday, they couldn’t get the car picked up until I had uploaded a photograph of the car showing it can’t be driven. This was an amusing piece of administration as I couldn’t take a photo of the bits of the car showing I couldn’t drive it because from the outside it just looked like a normal car. While they understood this they also said that they can’t proceed until I upload a photo. I was at work. My car was thirty minutes bike ride away. So, I had an old photo of the car, cropped the background out, removed the meta-data and uploaded that. The garage said they would be able to get to me for Tuesday morning between 0800 and 1300.

I managed to borrow a friend’s car for the weekend and to run small jobs and the sorts of journeys you take for granted when you have a car. Even so I was mighty pissed off that I was expecting a speedy service and all that happened with me was delay and delay. So, I am currently in the position of waiting for Bora Horza Gobuchul to be fixed. I have a courtesy car which is ok. It’s a car. I don’t like it, but it’s a car. It’s nice to be mobile. All the money side of the admin has yet to be completed and I’m hoping to get the Prius early next week. I have no idea whether I’ll get a cat-lock fitted next time it’s in for a service. I suspect that if people want to steal my catalytic converter then they will.

March 27 2022March 27 2022

Deepest Darkest Essex

While driving with my parents to a restaurant/café for lunch I noticed this strange thing by the road. It seemed pertinent to stop and tell my children of the punishment methods of the past. People I give you the Great Canfield Stocks and Whipping Post.

The sign explains that the stocks were replaced to commemorate the start of the third millennium. I’m quite curious to know what was in this position before these and the history of them. The sign explains the stocks were last used in 1860 for a case of drunkenness and also that this site was where Elizabeth Abbott was burnt as a witch in 1693. The sheer terror I feel with how we used to treat people is only masked by the general terror I feel for how we treat people these days. I’m not sure we’ve moved on that far.

This is comms#2023 and I’m still trying to work out what to replace my “events each year” thing. Give me some time and when I get a chance I will figure this out. Things have been a little busy recently with work and also my car being off the road because some cunts stole the catalytic converter. I’m currently waiting for it to be towed to be repaired along with getting a courtesy car.

December 29 2021December 29 2021

The Set Up

It’s been just over a week that I’ve owned the PS5 and after the initial joy of cabling and getting it in place I have been messing with some of the settings to get the best experience. The good thing about modern appliances is that they can “see” what they are connected to and output the correct formats for whatever gear you have. So, the PS5 is outputting 7.2 sound into the amp. I did have a problem with the picture format though!

The above picture shows a real mix of technologies and brands. There’s a Logitech G29 steering wheel, an Nvidia Shield Pro, the Sony PS5, a Sony AV amp, a Sonos unit, some Bose speakers, the Philips TV, a Sony speaker and a Sony PS camera. I think it all works together pretty well and even if people freak out about it they should realise that audiophile types are rare and most people can’t hear or see the difference between many basic makes and low end cables! I used to think that expensive cables were a thing that could improve your experience, but the answer is “no” they do not. Most of my speakers are connected by quite think mains cable. There isn’t a need for expensive cables.

So, back to the picture output from the PS5. I tried selecting a 4K HDR output but the PS5 was adamant that the receiving device wouldn’t be able to handle this. The PS5 wanted to downgrade the signal to 1080P for HDR rather than 2160P. Well, if I have to choose resolution over HDR then it’s the resolution that’s going to win every time I reckon. Every couple of days over the last week I would remember this issue and I played with the TV settings trying to find the magic button that would clear the way for these signals. I was pretty sure that 4k HDR was possible on the television. I couldn’t find the correct combination of settings.

I once again tried messing around in the PS5 settings to see if there was a thing I could do to fix this. I even bypassed the PSVR thinking there might be a thing inside that unit that meant it couldn’t bypass a 4k HDR signal. I also tried plugging the PS5 directly into the television but this didn’t change anything – I am aware now that this is because only one of the HDMI inputs to the TV is really set up for the best quality signal. I tried googling again and found a Forbes page which looked promising. The page suggests setting an input device to “enhanced”. This seemed like some kind of BladeRunner reference but I decided to go ahead and see if I could find this setting. Then, I remembered the AV Amp.

Why an amp needs to have a HDMI throughput setting set to “enhanced” I am not sure. But there it was, in the amp settings. The option to allow the HDMI bypass to be set to “enhanced”. I switched this. Then I restarted all the devices, because it seemed sensible to do so. I headed over to the PS5 and it was in “screen set up” mode. It wanted me to set up screen size and some HDR settings. I was reasonably excited and once the settings were made the PS5 is now outputting 4k HDR. It took a week of not-really-worrying about it but also knowing in the back of my mind that I could improve the look of the games.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Don’t You Walk Away From Me (BRONZE)#PlayStationTrophy #PS5Share, #RatchetClankRiftApart pic.twitter.com/9ZMbOTAT0j
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 27, 2021

I will say that once I’m engrossed in playing a game I don’t really concentrate on what the graphics look like. I don’t really notice the little details. It’s something I’ve always been conscious of. It’s the gameplay that makes the difference for me as a player. I know there a people out there who quite like just watching games and I understand that the graphics can really make a difference to them, but, for me, if the game play is good enough then you don’t really notice the rest of it?

This is communication number 2003 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

Space Shuttle Columbia breaks up over Texas.
Massive protests against an illegal war in Iraq. Governments do not listen. This is the start of my realisation that governments do what they want, not what we want.
Two people [not Musk] start Telsa.
China launches people into space for the first time.
Concorde makes its last commercial flight.

December 26 2021February 19 2022

Playing A Numbers Game With Death

It’s been reasonably frustrating to see the current government be so utterly terrible at managing the country. I guess it makes sense in some ways, people who are good at being elected to represent the population of the country don’t really have to be good at project management. They just need to be good at getting elected. Mind you, in most constituencies they just need to be good at being selected to run in those areas. When you look at it you have to wonder why people vote for Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson. They don’t vote for those people do they? Otherwise I’m pretty sure they would have to agree that one is a puritanical prick and the other is a liar. People vote for selfish reasons and the tories seem to offer the best deal for selfish people. Politicians are the worst people to have in charge of the massive projects this country is running. We need project managers and people who understand risk.

The current policy of not worrying about the Omicron variant and letting it run wild through the country relies on a couple of massive WISHES. The government aren’t worried about taking precautions, they are a reactive group of people who don’t have the balls to enact what is right for the country. It’s almost as if being popular enough to get voted for doesn’t make you very good at the thing you’ve been voted to do, especially so with the current bunch. For the UK to succeed we need all of the following WISHES to come true:

Not too many people need to self-isolate due to virus.
Not too many people end up in hospital due to new variant.
The vaccination programme means people don’t end up in hospital.

I am horrified at this approach. This gamble based on WISHES. We aren’t being pro-active. We are reacting. The problem is that the reactions happen two fucking weeks too late, because that’s how viruses work. It appears that the government still do not understand any basic biology. If we are really fucking lucky then hospitalisations will remain low and this works. We are hoping for luck. Fucking luck. We are playing with people’s lives while hoping for luck. Precautions are not being taken.

It's A Numbers Thing — It’s A Numbers Thing

So, Omicron might be less severe. But we didn’t know that until very recently. We kept everything open because we are reactive remember. Let’s go with the best possible number there, 70% less likely to be admitted to hospital. 70%. This seems good. But what this means is that if we were to have a massive peak in infections any gains would be wiped out as the total number of admissions returns to bad levels. This would be bad if the policy had been to keep everything open and say have a massive surge in infections.

Fuck. That’s what has happened.

Now, I’m not claiming to be correct and I’m not claiming that we are fucked. I’m not saying the NHS is going to be overwhelmed. I’m saying the risk of that has increased massively and the government are playing a numbers game. Hoping for the best outcome. They are playing dice with the lives of the vulnerable and the unlucky. They are placing bets on being lucky and making everything look like they were geniuses. Quite clearly they aren’t geniuses. It turns out that lots of MPs are just selfish twats who don’t care about anyone:

We currently have a bunch of MPs who don’t understand science, are willing to play dice with the lives of the country and who maintain a liar in power. It’s a fucking depressing world we live in at the moment and I only have so much anger I can maintain. Very soon it’ll be my chance to ignore the news again for a while. I need to get away from being a realist and play my PlayStation and enter a world of happy aliens I can shoot.

This is communication number 2001. Here are some things that happened in that year:

This is the first year of the third millennium.
UK foot and mouth outbreak.
Race riots in Bradford.
9/11
The war in Afghanistan starts.
The iPod is released.

December 23 2021December 23 2021

The Matrix Resurrections

I remembered going to see the Matrix reissue when it was released and in my head it was about a year ago that I did that. Well, according to my own communication on this site I went to watch it in July 2019. Fucking 2019. Do you remember that? This means I went to see this original film twenty years after its initial release before SARS-Cov-2. Let me just repeat that, BEFORE. I’m not even sure I can remember what it was like in the before-times. Can you remember walking around and doing whatever you want without having to wonder why some cunts aren’t wearing facemasks? Can you remember a time when we didn’t have 150,000 dead in this country from this pandemic. I would ask if you could remember a time before having an incompetent and corrupt government but, they’ve been in power for a long time now and BJ was still as shit then as he is now. All he had to fuck up then was the Brexit agreement and that is going to shit still so we knew how our politicians acted.

Sorry, where are my manners? There are things we need to discuss first. The tide was pretty low as I drove along the riverside road. There are currently road closures in the village and so anywhere over “cinema side” of the local area is actually a bit of a pain to get to. As far as I know the gas people are trying to fix a gas leak somewhere along the main road into the village but someone decided to close the road as the hole is a little big? I’m not sure why it was closed but it is quite an inconvenience to many in the village. After watching the film I rated the film on IMDB and there is a communication from years ago where I discuss how the rating system works.

There are going to be spoilers straight after this tweet:

I rated The Matrix Resurrections (2021) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/B3HA6HF1kS
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 22, 2021

I didn’t dislike this film. I’m not enough into the canon to worry about what the fuck is going on all the time and how it affects the original storylines. To be honest I liked the original Matrix but the two sequels were shit I think. I know they had loads of money to make the films they wanted to make and they did, but I think when you try to narrow down the storylines to the point of making it make sense you end up with something that doesn’t work. Let’s face it, the Matrix looked gorgeous and has been much imitated since 1999.

I quite liked the first bit of this film where nearly every line was taking the piss out of the fact that they were making a sequel to the original trilogy. I thought this part worked really well. Normally I try and remember key points as I go through the film and sometimes [rarely] I write a note on my phone. I’ve not yet resorted to taking pen and paper but that might be worth it in the future. I also interact with a film by wondering what I will write about it on these pages. I don’t think I did much thinking about that last night. I was more concerned about a lot of things that didn’t seem to make much sense in the film.

In the film they talked about how The Matrix [game] Trinity was inspired by how Tiffany looks as Thomas Andersson sees her everyday in the coffee shop. They also explain how the game was released twenty years ago which means that Tiffany wouldn’t have had kids and possibly wasn’t married so Thomas could have approached her. There were a couple of things like this that didn’t quite make sense but you can do whatever the fuck you want with this film.

A bigger issue for me, and this is extremely similar to my complaint with Spiderman, is that Neo is told that going to get Trinity will cause a war and lead to the destruction of Io, the new human settlement. But fuck it, he’s going to get her anyway because Love. No weighing up of the death of thousands in a war, just a straight up obvious decision to go and get his beau. I did not like this aspect of the film.

I will tell you that this film looked gorgeous. It was really well made along with many themes of accepting who you are. This isn’t a surprise given the background of Lana Wachowski, the joint-writer and director. I’ve read quite a bit on social media where the general consensus is that Lana Wachowski created a gorgeous rebuff to the right wing of politics who had co-opted themes from the original film. Good on her. Fuck those people.

This is communication number 1999 and so here are some things that happened in that year, which is a newish thing I’ve been doing:

A fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel kills 39 people, closing the tunnel for nearly three years.
Columbine High School massacre.
British TV presenter Jill Dando, 37, is shot dead on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, London.
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is released.
The sovereignty of Macau is transferred from the Portuguese Republic to the People’s Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese settlement.

Engineers and software people spend a lot of time and money fixing the millennium bug and because of the hard work the threat of mass computer failure fizzles out. But it was because we fixed it. Not because it wasn’t really a thing.

The Labour government spend a load of money creating the millennium dome. I think it was over a billion pounds. All to get ready for the celebrations of the end of the second millennium and the start of the third but because we have a stupid year numbering system most of the world gets this wrong.

November 14 2021November 15 2021

November Happenings

Sometimes it’s hard to keep finding “content” to fill these gorgeous pages. Often this site requires me to go to the cinema or at least go somewhere so I can then write about the terrible/great experience. Recently it feels that I’ve not done much. I mean I have but it’s just the boring same old.

Last Sunday I helped supervise some of the cadets who are entering a national competition in a couple of weeks, nothing exciting there. This past week I had two days off work ill and actually slept for the entire day for the first one. Then yesterday I ran a weapon training session and range for some of our new recruits. Oh, today I’m heading into town this morning to take part in the Remembrance Parade which I guess is something important but not always something I’ll take photographs at or write about each year.

This week just gone I’ve either been too tired or ill to cope with opening up the editing software and writing stuff here. I’ve actually just reminded myself that I started the album reviews for this exact problem, if I don’t have anything to write about then I can write an album review and publish it easily. So, this week I’ll probably publish a few of those. It also means I get to listen to those albums to remind myself of the specifics.

I do know that I’ve felt ill since the return to work in September. My lungs don’t feel correct and if I go for a run in the cold it really knackers those air bags. Not sure what’s going on, it’s not SARS-Cov-2 as I’ve repeatedly tested with both LFT and PCR. There are big issues with the LFT but it’s the best thing we’ve got at the moment I guess. I don’t think the government should be pushing them so much but they are blinded with their “success” of just under 150,000 deaths so far. Fucking twats. I honestly will not understand why anyone would still vote for the tory party after everything that has happened. They are in over their heads and horrible. Some people I talk to seem to think that voting labour endorses complete socialism or communism and they can’t bring themselves to do it. Happy to trudge along with the stupid cunts we have now in charge instead of wanting to help people. Let’s be clear, the government response to this pandemic has been disgraceful.

I’ve been playing Minecraft a little recently and am trying to give myself little projects in that as time goes on. I’ve just built a bubble elevator for one of the kids so they can build a sky base and we’ve worked on somewhere to attempt to kill the Wither. We’ll see how that goes. The last time we tried it I had to reload the world from a back up as our entire base got destroyed. My next job is to build an underground area in a few chunks a long way away for us to attempt to kill that bastard. We want a beacon. I think we’d also like some elytra but we are working on that. I don’t think we’ve found an end portal yet.

I keep being tempted with buying a PS5 but I will only play one game on it and so I don’t think it’s worth getting for just that. Especially when that game is available on the PS4. I haven’t pre-ordered my copy yet but I will. It comes out around the time of my completion of half a century of rotations around the sun. I’m currently having a go on Assetto Corsa on the PC and it’s ok but I possibly need to connect the steering wheel to the PC and that means moving it from the front room which seems like effort at the moment. Using a PS4 controller works reasonably well given my extensive experience in racing sims.

There’s nothing currently on at the cinema which I can be arsed to see. The only film I could possibly go to is Eternals but I dislike superhero movies so much that I reckon it’s just not worth going. My biggest issue is that the resolution to these films is always who fights better and never a negotiation or discussion. It’s never a cerebral conclusion it’s always fists and I fucking hate that.

I guess it’s time to start doing things to get ready to parade through Maidstone. Maybe later I’ll complete some more album reviews. I know that the Use Your Illusions are coming up and it’ll be fun to see what I think of those albums thirty years later.

This is communication number 1986 and so here are some things that happened in that year of our lord:

Chernobyl disaster.
M25 motorway is opened.
2000 people die in a limnic eruption in Cameroon.
Top Gun is released.
Consensual sex between men is legalised from the age of 16 in NZ.

November 6 2021November 15 2021

Such An Inflating Day Trip

I went to meet a bunch of people in London. The congregation was meant to be part of a stag do. I mean, it was a stag celebration but I didn’t really attend most of it. The plan was brunch, a rugby match and then whatever followed. I knew that the brunch was going to be either outside or in a well distanced restaurant and so I was happy with that but as the time approached to attend a rugby match travelling via crowded trains and being in a stadium I felt unsure about the covid-ness of it all. Now, I had been to a gig where you had to show your vaccinated status to get in and there were quite a lot of people but it felt mostly safe. I didn’t want to be in an England crowd at Twickenham.

Another things that’s been bothering me recently is the pay rises the government has paid teachers over the last ten years. I find this really interesting, partly as I’m a teacher and partly because I can’t believe teachers are not as angry as they really should be. Over the last ten years the government has deliberately followed a policy of austerity. This was their political choice. We now know it wasn’t necessary as when the covid pandemic hit they decided to spend a fuck-ton squared and even then the controls were so poor that BILLIONS was lost. Here’s a graph showing teacher pay over the last ten years compared to where it would be if we had JUST received pay rises in line with inflation.

Back to the stag. We met at a place near Waterloo station but I walked in from London Bridge station which was about a twenty five minute walk along the South Bank. It was a really nice walk and I started on the river close to HMS Belfast and then walked past the City Of London, the Golden Hind, and a lot of eateries. Fortunately I didn’t have to walk past too many of those “people who stand still for money” as they annoy me intensely. The brunch was nice and the restaurant staff were very tolerant of the pranks played on the stag.

Here are some numbers for you wrt the pay. The pay rise over the last ten years amounts to around 13.2% total pay rise since 2010. Inflation in that time has caused an increased in prices of around 37%. For comparison the CPI, and clearly you are going to use whichever inflation measure works best for your argument, has increased 25% in that time period. I used the Office for National Statistics to get my data. If my pay had increased by the CPI it would be around 46,000 now which is still clearly above what I am actually paid. In essence I have had a real terms pay cut every year for the last [over] ten years.

There’s nothing like mixing up all your graph types when you are trying to make a point but I was curious how much MPs have awarded themselves over the same time period. They’ve had a pay rise of around 25% meaning that they are inline with the lower of the inflation measures. So, the people voting to not pay public servants according to the lower rate of inflation have awarded themselves that exact rate. We all know that’s not even the best of it. Over that time MPs have given themselves plenty of expenses to be able to pay for things that they would say are required as part of the job, and I would mostly agree, but I would also argue that many MPs play the system to enrich themselves. This pay doesn’t take into account any other jobs and directorships that MPs take on.

I think the problem is that too many of us do our job because we like being a teacher. We feel a “calling” or feel we should do the things that are considered normal of us. I personally don’t think that. I don’t feel the calling and I don’t feel this job is a vocation. This job is one that is bloody hard work and no one will be there to thank you at the end of it. That’s not how all this works. You don’t get a special seat in heaven. You just stop doing this shit one day and it leaves your life. Salaried jobs are bollocks. We should be paid for what we do and in a specific time frame otherwise the organisation is stealing from you.

Comms#1985 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

“Neighbours” starts on Australian television.
First mobile phone network in UK.
South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriage.
56 die in the Bradford City football ground fire.
39 fans die in the Heysel Stadium disaster.
Windows 1.0 is released.

October 25 2021

Bhutan Completed

As part of my around the world trip I have reached the Himalayas and so have visited Tibet, Nepal and now Bhutan. The last of these is relatively small and only has four airports so after landing at Paro International I decided to fly past two of the airports and then land at Yongphulla.

In the above image the black line is the direct route, the pink link a route leg I didn’t activate and the red line is the route I took. I’m flying a little Boeing Saab T-7, it has good feels and has the power of a military jet and so is able to cope with my rapid direction changes and approaches.

Thankfully I now have some time off work! It has been a hard few weeks and I need the rest. As if to let me know I spent all of Saturday lying on the sofa sleeping with aches and pains and general ill feeling. Even Sunday morning I wasn’t great but am feeling back to normal now, nearly, apart from a phlegm filled chest. It isn’t Covid, I’ve done many LFTs and also a PCR when I first started showing symptoms. I did the PCR using a postal service and next time I think I will make sure I go to a drive through centre, the results will be quicker.

My summer of letters has continued with a letter to my MP although nothing good will come from that. Teachers, and many other public servants, have had a massive pay reduction in real terms over the last ten years. My union, the NEU, published some graphs showing how pay had changed over the last ten years when compared to the RPI.

Now this uses RPI rather than CPI and I’ve been over to the ONS to see what the CPI rate has been and I can say it has hovered around 2% over the last ten years being generous to the side of the government. Using that generous rate a teacher’s pay would be GBP 44,805. As you can see even using numbers that flatter the government teachers have suffered a real terms pay loss over the last ten years amounting to a current loss of about GBP 3,000. I am not saying we are more important than other professions who have had a pay freeze and I am not saying we should be given the whole amount now. What I am saying is that the government should recognise these facts and put into action some plan to help correct these issues.

Clearly given the governments we’ve had for the last ten years this won’t happen. They won’t see the unfairness of these increases and they’ll say that recruitment is going well. I would argue that while recruitment is going well it is due to the fact that the rest of the economy is fucked and people are having to retrain after losing their jobs and everyone thinks they can be a teacher. Just as a comparison MP salaries have increased an average of 2.2% per year compared to the teachers increase of 1.2% in the same time. Oh, and they can claim fucking loads of expenses and have subsidised food and drink along with massive benefits like swapping prime residence etc.

I’ve been describing accuracy of lateral flow tests to pupils as part of a conditional probability part of the statistics course and I keep forgetting a couple of the words used to describe how good the tests are. The government likes to bang on about the specificity of the LFTs and that is generally a good high number, around 99%. The specificity tells you how the probability of you having Covid if the test returns a positive result. It therefore seems there’s a 1%, or lower, chance of a false positive result. The problematic number is the sensitivity the LFTs have. The sensitivity tells you the probability of getting a false negative, if you have the disease but the LFT returns a negative result. This is a measure of how sensitive the test is to the disease. Currently, depending on who does the LFT, the sensitivity is running at 40% to 80%. So, LFTs will only be positive on around half the positive cases. This is a massive fucking problem and one the government either deliberately doesn’t mention or is just too stupid to understand. You can’t have a policy of opening up the country when the test you are using to maintain the safety of everyone only catches around 50% of the cases. The government are fucking idiots.

This is communication number 1980 [+-1] and so here are some things that happened in the year of my eighth birthday:

Saudi Arabia beheads 63 people who did a bad thing.
123 people dies when a Norwegian oil platform collapses.
The first 24 hour news channel starts.
AC/DC release Back In Black.
A fire in a hotel in Las Vegas kills 85.

October 19 2021October 19 2021

Seems An Important Leg

I’ve been heading around the world in my Boeing/Saab T-7, just hopping from airport to airport. It started as a round the UK coast trip and I’m now in Nepal so I got distracted by more coastline and then mountains. This is not going to be an interesting communication as it is a list of every airport I have stopped at on this journey. X-Plane keeps a log of journeys and so I am able to write this here, also, I have a bit of paper covered with names of places and that is about to run out of space so I need to get this started:

Manchester, England.
RAF Valley, Wales.
Aberporth Airport, Wales.
Bristol Filton Airport, England.
RAF Lyneham, England.
Lee On Solent Airport, England.
Jersey Airport, Jersey.
Quimper–Cornouaille Airport, France.
Nantes Atlantique Airport, France.
La Rochelle – Île de Ré Airport, France.
Cazaux Air Base, France.
San Sebastián Airport, Spain.
Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport, Spain.
Santiago–Rosalía de Castro Airport, Spain.
Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, Portugal.
Monte Real Air Base, Portugal.
Humberto Delgado Airport, Portugal.
Faro Airport, Portugal.
Base Naval de Rota, Spain.
Gibraltar Airport, Gibraltar.
Rabat–Salé Airport, Morocco.
Ben Slimane Airport, Morocco.
Marrakesh Menara Airport, Morocco.
Agadir – Al Massira Airport, Morocco.
Tan Tan Airport, Morocco.
César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport, Spain.
Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport, Spain.
La Palma Airport, Spain.
Dakhla Airport, Morocco.
Nouadhibou Airport, Mauritania.
Nouakchott–Oumtounsy International Airport, Mauritania.
Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport, Senegal.
Banjul International Airport, Gambia.
Osvaldo Vieira International Airport, Guinea-Bissau.
Conakry Gbessia International Airport, Republic of Guinea.
Faranah Airport, Republic of Guinea.
Lungi International Airport, Sierra Leone.
Monrovia-Roberts Airport, Liberia.
Man Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
San Pédro Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
Félix Houphouët Boigny International Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
Takoradi Airport, Ghana.
Kotoka International Airport, Ghana.
Aéroport de Lomé-Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo.
Cotonou Cadjehoun Airport, Benin.
Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
Ibadan Airport, Nigeria.
Benin Airport, Nigeria.
Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Nigeria.
Ajaokuta Airport, Nigeria.
Bamenda Airport, Cameroon.
Bafoussam Airport, Cameroon.
Ngaoundéré Airport, Cameroon.
Yaoundé Airport, Cameroon.
Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport, Cameroon.
Bata Airport, Equatorial Guinea.
Port-Gentil International Airport, Gabon.
Omboué Hospital Airport, Gabon.
Agostinho-Neto International Airport, Republic of Congo.
Kitona Base Airport, Republic of Congo.
Luanda Airport, Angola.
Porto Amboim Airport, Angola.
Aéroport de Waku-Kungo, Angola.
Benguela Airport, Angola.
Welwitschia Mirabilis International Airport, Angola.
Aéroport de Xangongo, Angola.
Ruacana Airport, Namibia.
Andimba Toivo ya Toivo Airport, Namibia.
Grootfontein Air Force Base, Namibia.
Uis Mine Airport, Namibia.
Walvis Bay Airport, Namibia.
Aérodrome de Lüderitz, Namibia.
Aérodrome d’Oranjemund, Namibia.
Air Force Base Langebaanweg, South Africa.
Cape Town International Airport, South Africa.
Air Force Base Overberg, South Africa.
Port Elizabeth International Airport, South Africa.
Margate Airport, South Africa.
Maputo International Airport, Mozambique.
Beira International Airport, Mozambique.
Aérodrome de Nacala, Mozambique.
Julius Nyerere International Airport, Tanzania.
Moshi Airport, Tanzania.
Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, Zanzibar.
Aden Adde International Airport, Somalia.
Iskushuban Airport, Somalia.
Abdullahi Yusuf Airport, Somalia.
Socotra Airport, Yemen.
Salalah Airport, Oman.
RAFO Thumrait Airbase, Oman.
RAFO Masirah, Oman.
Muscat International Airport, Oman.
Fujairah International Airport, UAE.
Khasab Airport, Oman.
Dubai International Airport, UAE.
Al Bateen Executive Airport, UAE.
Jebel Dhana Airport, UAE.
Delma Island Airport, UAE.
Qeshm International Airport, Iran.
Jask Airport, Iran.
Konarak Airport, Iran.
Turbat International Airport, Pakistan.
Pasni Airport, Pakistan.
Ormara Airport, Pakistan.
Jinnah International Airport, Pakistan.
Rajanpur Airport, Pakistan.
Zhob Airport, Pakistan.
Miran Shah Airport, Pakistan.
Saidu Sharif Airport, Pakistan.
Skardu Airport, Pakistan.
Muzaffarabad Airport, Pakistan.
Chilas Airport, Pakistan.
Hotan Airport, China.
Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport, India.
Ngari Kunsha Airport, Tibet.
Simikot Airport, Nepal.
Jumla Airport, Nepal.
Tribhuvan International Airport, Nepal.
Tenzing Hillary Airport, Lukla, Nepal.

And so this journey around the world continues. I have just flown past Mount Everest after [not quite] landing at Lukla. After passing the highest place on Earth I headed to:

Tumlingtar Airport, Nepal.

I think is almost, kind of, half way around? I have no idea. We’ll have to see what the rest of this journey looks like.

This is comms#1979 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

Sid Vicious dies.
Compact Disk displayed publicly for first time.
The last British soldier leaves Malta.
A human powered aircraft flies across the English Channel.
A dam failure in India kills up to 25,000.

October 17 2021October 17 2021

Nachtmahr – Electrowerkz

Last night Smith and I went out! Out! To see a band! Well, two bands really but it was out and my first time in London since February 2020 when we saw Aesthetic Perfection. We got the train in and booked into our hotel room – proper full on night out! After getting changed we headed to Electrowerkz, which was quite close to the hotel and entered. I had forgotten my photo ID and the security people were very good at sorting that out as I had photos of all my ID on my phone, they accepted me fortunately.

I loved this touch of some old CRT showing a logo as we walked up the steps. It added to the feel of the place. We didn’t see the first two bands as we were drinking and chatting to the merchandise people. I think I bought some dog tags, but I have no idea where I put them, I’ll have to have a look shortly. I liked the few changes that had been made to the building and ambiance, the main floor looked really good.

Before The Crowds - Electrowerkz — Before The Crowds – Electrowerkz

Reaper is a band/person we had wanted to see for a long time as a couple of his albums are really good. A nice split between industrial and EBM. I enjoyed his set although I think there could have been some other songs added to make it greater but I guess you have to trust the artist and the things they want to play might not be what I want to hear.

I really enjoyed the Reaper set. It was about this time that I started to appreciate the new sound system in the room. I could hear all the nuance in the songs, which I knew quite well anyway, and this was a surprise as normally my hearing dies quite quickly into a gig and I can’t tell what’s going on apart from noise.

Nachtmahr - Electrowerkz — Nachtmahr – Electrowerkz

Nachtmahr were brilliant. They played a great set and the crowd really liked it. I don’t think this makes a top ten of gigs, but it’s definitely in the top half. I had a great time and danced quite a bit – I think the alcohol helped a lot with that. Overall this was a good gig. A couple of great bands and really good fun. Brilliant!

This is communication number 1977 and so in keeping with recent tradition I list below some events of that year:

Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam draft dodgers.
The rings of Uranus are discovered.
Optical Fibre is used to transmit phone calls for the first time.
165 Killed in a fire in Kentucky.
Never Mind The Bollocks is released by the Sex Pistols.

October 16 2021October 16 2021

The Last Duel – An Update

I went for a run earlier today and I ended up thinking about a number of things about this film, mostly to do with how annoying it was. I keep wondering if it was genius or shit to have the story told three times from different points of view. I think I have settled on “shit”. I know the film was trying to be clever but as I get older I am convinced it is the job of media to push for equalities of rights and to make the world a better place. All the undertones of modern film should be progressive. Just maintaining the status quo doesn’t do enough. We live in a world where people are treated differently because of who they are and that’s wrong. We also, very obviously, live in a world where there is a pandemic of violence and mistreatment of women. Rachel Parris said it well in the recent episode of The Mash Report.

So, the concept of telling this story in three parts, two of which are from a male point of view and one of which wasn’t even involved in the rape is bollocks. By focussing two thirds on the film with a male point of view demeans the actuality of what happened to the woman. The fact that we see the rapists point of view as part of this film is shocking and sad. It tries to justify the rape with the emotional intelligence of a fucktard. The c(o)unt doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

The fact that the court trial focussed on the woman’s sex life and things she had said to her friends speaks volumes as we STILL DO THIS TODAY. Women are blamed for the violence that happens to them. Men are excused from being violent sexist pigs because the whole world and rules for everything are designed for men by men.

This film missed the chance to do so much. It could have sent a message around the world, it could have been a commentary on the modern world [same rules as 700 years ago]. It even had it’s own #metoo moment but it got lost in bullshit men fighting it out for their honour. I bloody hate this sort of film and probably shouldn’t have seen it. I thought it would be a good use of some spare time. Live and learn eh?

This is comms#1976

23000 die in Guatemala after an earthquake.
An explosion at an ammunitions factory in Finland kills 40.
Viking 1 lands on Mars.
First known outbreak of Ebola in Zaire.

October 9 2021October 10 2021

We Didn’t Even Ask

Had a trip where we swung by the RAF Museum in Hendon. It’s free to enter so it’s a great place to go. If there was payment then I would have to balance to cost with what is there and so the greatness would depend on the exhibits and the cost giving me a measure “value”. Now, I’m into aircraft and this is free. So it’s an excellent place. Actually, it is an excellent place and not by default.

Short Sunderland - RAF Museum Hendon — Short Sunderland – RAF Museum Hendon – they built 749 of these!

Now, I can’t just swan off to places like this in the work week without actually having good reason and so we did bring some cadets with us to have a look around. You might be disturbed by this but I think the motivation to leave school for some and have a day out of lessons is actually overcome by the fear that they will miss something important and, if I’m honest, we didn’t bring as many as I had hoped. It’s there choice but what have we done to education if children think a day out with friends learning about “other things” is not worth the effort?

This beast is one of the prototypes of the EH101 and it is pretty fucking big. It’s in the corner among all the other aircraft and this one is just huge. We were just hanging around and one of the museum helpers came over and asked if we would like to look inside. Well, you don’t need to ask aircraft nerds twice! So we took up the offer and wandered around the cabin – it was big enough to “wander around” – and then we sat in the cockpit as we were invited to. Really grateful to have had the experience.

EH101 Cockpit - RAF Museum Hendon — EH101 Cockpit – RAF Museum Hendon

Here’s a picture of me pulling a stupid face – I want to point out that I was deliberately making stupid faces – but I guess you can disagree with the deliberate part of that if you want.

Comms#1972, here are some things that happened that year:

The Godfather premiers in New York.
I was born.
A fire in a nightclub in Osaka kills 115.
US Officials own up to the Tuskegee syphilis study.
Apollo 16 lands on the moon.
Apollo 17 lands on the moon.

September 26 2021September 26 2021

Letter Writing Phase

This past summer I have spent some time crafting words and paragraphs into letters to send to various organisations. Some were complaining, some were suggestions. This is a run down of what I’ve done.

The year started and also might end with me writing letters of complaint to British Gas Services. I pay, what I think is quite a bit of money, to British Gas Services to have my boiler maintained and fixed whenever it breaks. I had booked a repair session earlier in the year which kept getting cancelled by BGS. This was rather annoying as every booking pretty much required me to ask for time off work. When this was cancelled I looked a right tit. I think it took about four months for an engineer [actually a technician] to come and fix the boiler. I had, by then, written three letters of complaint and posted them to BGS. The first was quite polite. The second was more angry and “firmly worded” and for the third I just swore. How to you get anger and annoyance across once you’ve done the whole passive aggressive polite thing.

A sample of the writing from letter three:
“I waited for some form of message, a text, an email, something but I heard nothing. So, out of curiosity I looked at the British Gas app and was quite surprised to see that an appointment was booked for 13^th May. I had no direct contact about this. When I got to work after seeing this I saw my boss, booked the day off and organised my Friday around this appointment. A couple of days before the 13^th I thought I would check the British Gas app on my phone just to make sure things hadn’t changed given the history we now have together. Fuck me if the date on my phone had now moved to the 21 May. I had no direct message to tell me this and it is sheer good luck that I found out. Once again, I had to go to work and tell them what had happened and spend MORE time rearranging a day off and musing about what a pissing waste of time all of this has been.”

Apart from the piss poor service from BGS and discussions with a complaints person over the phone, they did come through and offer me some money. I refused their first offer and their committee of “higher ups” agreed I deserved more. They are still on my shit-list as recent communications with them have been . . . . . . fraught.

Private Eye magazine has a column called Dumb Britain and in it they highlight the answers that people give to questions on TV and sometimes radio quizzes. I used to think this section of the paper was quite funny but as time has moved on I’ve realised that if you don’t know something, then you don’t know. I felt a connection to those poor souls being placed in the spotlight as if I didn’t know the answer then sometimes I thought I would probably give the same response as them. I could see how they got to that particular answer and it didn’t seem so dumb.

“As a fan and long time reader of your magnificent organ I felt it was time to defend the poor souls featured in the Dumb Britain section. General knowledge is just that, general and if you don’t know a thing, you can’t figure it out. It has very little to do with intelligence levels. Given the pressure of television or radio show recordings along with associated brain freeze most of the answers seem quite reasonable and not a cause for general concern that quiz contestants are proving how stupid Britain has become. My subscription remains intact,”

I did get a response from the editor of Private Eye but my letter wasn’t included in print which was a shame. It would have been my second such occasion.

“Thanks for your letter. Point noted.” Ed.

I’d like a new car. Who wouldn’t? I would also like an electric car. Not just because as I write this the UK has run out of petrol but more because electric cars are the way forward, a way to the future, as long as we can generate the electricity in a green manner. There’s no point everyone having electric cars if all the carbon production is shifted to some arsehole end of the country where we have coal or gas fired electricity plants.

But, where I live is a tiny Victorian terrace street built as housing for the local brickworks and not built for any modern utilities. Running water, electricity. internet and gas supplies were not in the minds of those who built this housing. Very rarely can I actually park outside my house. If I return home to the street anytime after about 1500 I can be assured of having to park about a minute’s walk away from my house. This doesn’t really bother me that much. I’ve lived here long enough that it’s just the way it is. But, I’d like to be able to have an electric car and charge it. So, I wrote to the local council and asked them if they could fit some charging points in communal areas.

I had a lovely response explaining the rules of charging points and how the funding is allocated. I doubt very much that my village will be getting one and if I’m honest, I don’t think I can afford a new car anyway. Maybe I should get a fuck-off-big hybrid 4×4 and just drive it over the fields out that back of my house, fields that will soon be not-fields.

Bluewater Logo

Over the summer break I went to Bluewater shopping centre. I can’t remember what for, maybe I just went there by mistake, I probably mention it somewhere in this communication. Bluewater are quite clever with the hoardings they place over empty shops. They put pictures and adverts on them so if you aren’t looking too close the whole place still looks occupied. If you want to know how your economy is doing then have a look around the town centre or shopping centres. If there are empty spaces then your economy is fucked. Anyway, one of the closed shops was covered with an advert for Calvin Klein [I think] it had a man and woman about twenty foot tall both in their underwear. The man’s pose was full frontal, proper man-spreading. My immediate thought was “ooh, interesting choice” but it got me thinking.

Humans have such an obsession with nudity and the human form. The obsession is that we don’t want to see it. We think it’s rude to talk about penises and vaginas. We giggle at breasts. We talk about private parts. I suspect that a lot of this is historically a religious thing as sexual body parts are for procreation and sex. Sex is a private thing and so body parts must be private. Personally I don’t give a shit. All this guilt around sex and talking about body parts means many many people find it really hard to talk about problems they are having or even seeing the doctor about medical issues we have.

Isn’t it such a crazy world where extreme violence can be shown at lower age ratings in the cinema or on TV but sex, a completely natural and everyday part of life, gets a higher rating. We can’t show people loving each other but it’s easy to see images of people being murdered or killed in a spray of bullets. There’s an embarrassment about totally normal bodily functions that, I think, is really fucking stupid. These things need to be normalised. People need to feel comfortable with issues of their body. We need to change society to make these things acceptable to talk about and stop the shame people feel when discussing these things.

So, I wrote to Bluewater:
“While walking around Bluewater and looking at the empty shop hoardings that you have I wondered whether you, as an organisation, should be adding to either social justice or general humankind with images instead of the ones you have. I understand that social justice might feel a little “political” and so maybe you could have some images that normalise the human body as a campaign to try and make people feel more comfortable about their bodies and talking about them.
It is a big issue for many people to talk about parts of their bodies either in public should they be so inclined or to the doctor. There is a lot of shame and embarrassment incorrectly associated with various “private” parts of the body. This causes issues when talking about them or even downright mental stress for some people.
Perhaps you could have some shop hoardings which attempt to normalise the naked body? Perhaps with images of parts of the body like those in science books? You already have massive posters of people in underwear but I think the next step is to show there’s no shame in openly talking about our bodies – especially to health workers.
No doubt there would be some press attention for a shopping centre to have pictures of naked people, but I doubt it would be a negative thing for footfall.
I’m not a social scientist or an advertising specialist. I thought I’d pass on my idea.”

The reply was a lovely, thanks, but no thanks, passed on to management etc. But I felt I had done my bit.

Comms#1964. What happened in that year?

US Surgeon General declares that smoking might be dangerous to health.
100 deaths in Calcutta because – religious riots.
Protests against de facto racial segregation in New York.
The last death penalty sentences carried out in UK.
The XB-70 makes its first flight.

September 7 2021September 7 2021

Not Sure How I Feel About This

The village in which I live is under attack. The attack is probably the thing that is needed for the country. But I don’t like it and it’s raising lots of horrible feelings and selfishness. Part of the local council plan involves adding 900 houses to the village where I have lived for almost twenty years. I wrote about this before in this communication. 900 houses. Right outside my garden. It makes me angry while at the same time I know housing has to go somewhere and I’ve always thought that people who protest should accept progress for the greater good.

So, first I want to recognise the need for new housing. Apparently there is a need for lots of homes for people and they need to go somewhere. I suspect it is easier to build on fresh ground than to rework brownfield sites to make them habitable. We all know that the housing developers and land owners are in the back pockets of many Tories and probably lots of other MPs too. Where I live is like Tory world centre and most of the local councillors are that way inclined too. So I do believe that the housing companies get the easier route for more financial security rather than actually doing what is right for the environment and local communities. That said, there is a need for housing.

I live in Tonbridge and Malling local district. I live almost at the northern tip of the district. I live in the relatively poor part of the district. The southern area is much wealthier. Do I think there’s a correlation to where the new housing is going and the relative wealth of the area? Of course I do. The wealthy have the ability to fight these things or at least bribe their way to not having the new houses nearby. It’s always the poorer people who get fucked over by those in power because for the powerful it’s about power and money and nothing else really.

The Medway Gap area has had masses of housing development over the last twenty years and it continues. The company that owns the land, Trenport, I’ve written about before. They like to think they are doing good things I suspect but ultimately don’t care as long as they can make themselves more powerful and more wealthy. Here’s a picture of what land is going to be developed:

As you can see in the picture Eccles is the blob of housing just right of centre and the pink land is the area going to be developed. I’m pretty sure you can see that it’s all fields. Arable land for growing crops to feed this country. Now, to be clear, not all that land is going to be housing. Some of it will be made into recreational land along with a village car park and community centre. We already have a community centre, it’s the church and hall which can be used by locals. Parking is utter shit in my village but the new car park won’t be big enough, they never are. I think there’s a new shop involved there too but what happens to the current village shop?

All the land heading SW from the village of Eccles is my current view out the back of my house. I don’t really want that to change. I can see for miles. I can see fields and trees and the woods in the distance. It’s a calming positively enduring view that helps my mental health. It’s one of the reasons I bought this house.

I’ve looked at the “consultation” online and the questions are clever. One of them asks what I use the field for currently. Well, in reality I walk or run or cycle on the footpaths. The developers are going to keep the footpaths so that should make me happy but it doesn’t. The reason I walk along those particular footpaths is that the outdoor experience is best there. Wide open spaces in the middle of a barley field really make you feel good. Just having the footpath there through houses isn’t going to be the same.

I’m stuck. I don’t want this development. For mostly selfish reasons. I like my view. I like the fields. I like the ambiance of the village. It feels “country” while entirely surrounded by massive urban sprawl. I know we need houses. I just think there’s somewhere else they could go.

This is communication number 1956 so here are a couple of things that happened that year:

IATA finalises the phonetic alphabet.
96 US congress members sign a manifesto against de-segregation.
The last British troops leave Egypt.
The world’s first industrial scale nuclear power plant is opened at Calder Hall in England.