I recently heard about a faction of the Labour Party who call themselves Blue Labour. Well, it turns out those Blue Labour people can go fuck themselves.
I don’t understand why we want to blame DEI for things that might be going wrong. Actually the bigger issue is why should Labour attract people who are voting for Reform. People who vote reform can get in the fucking sea. If you are convinced the reason you can’t get an NHS appointment is because of asylum seekers or DEI hires then perhaps you should fuck off. Maybe it’s the fault of the more than a decade of austerity caused by the Tory government. Chronic underfunding of all services in the country have led us to where we are today. Blaming asylum seekers is the racist thing to do. Blame those tory fuckwits who failed to invest in the country.
Labour shouldn’t be paying any attention to Blue Labour and they certainly shouldn’t be proposing policies that agree with the political right. If anything, Labour need to go harder to the left. Start offering people real hope. Let the racists vote for the racist party. Let the bigots vote for the bigot party. Let them slowly die in their own hatred. Labour need to move further to the left. Become a caring party. Become a helping party.
I had spent most of my life thinking we were progressing socially and becoming more accepting of others. But it feels like the last ten years have been a slide away from being nice. It feels like we are heading to fascism and war in ten years. I’ve never felt this way before and I grew up in the 80s when nuclear armageddon was four minutes away. It depresses me how little I look forward to the future. And I’m not even thinking about anthropogenic climate change as part of this.
Some Godforsaken Underground Walkway
All I can do is concentrate on the things I can control and do my best for the people close to me. I can also give money to what I consider good causes and I will do so as long as I can afford it.
Well, what to say about this film? We can start with the formalities. I went to the cinema at Rochester, the tide was very low. I could see all the mud banks at the edge of the river along with the dip at the end showing the main channel. We were late getting to the cinema because the junction on the motorway was closed so we had to go to the next junction and then return back. I didn’t mind being late because we missed most of the adverts. We did see a few trailers though. The trailer for F1 managed to make the film look as boring as fuck. So, back to Mission: Impossible. I rated this film on IMDB and there is a guide to my rating system here.
MI – Final Reckoning IMDB Score
I really didn’t enjoy this film. Had I not been with other people I would probably have walked out after the first half hour and overall the film is 2 hours and 50 minutes. I turned to JCBFan after about half an hour and asked “do you understand any of this?”. The reply was “no”. Maybe there were loads of references to MI films I haven’t seen? Maybe I needed to learn a bit more about the characters but the first half hour was really disjointed and made zero sense. I think it was meant to be a “getting the team together” thing, but it was really badly done.
The rest of the over two hours of film was really just two large set pieces of action. Some submarine stuff which was done better in Hunt For Red October and The Abyss and also some flying stuff which was alright I guess. At least I now know how to punch someone piloting a biplane when I’m holding on to the side – the move was used twice and it annoyed me – although why change something that works. The set design for the submarine was pretty special and the way it rotated was impressive. But the story part of this was shit.
The general plot seemed to be that the internet is bad and it is going to kill the human race. This I agree with and if it was deliberate to warn of the perils of social media and untruths then that would be a good part of the film. There’s an AI going to destroy the world and is slowly taking control of nuclear weapons – which hilariously is shown on a giant map on the wall inside a mountain. WHILE at the same time people push little models of ships around on giant maps in the room which was very WWII. So much of this film was just stupid. I didn’t understand what they were trying to do and why.
The American Navy was scared of the Russian carrier but it’s a heap of shit so that wouldn’t really bother them. The USA also have a LOAD of carriers. I don’t think the naval tensions were really worth it. Did you know you can fly a DC3 from the Bering Straight to South Africa in less than twelve hours? Those DC3s are notorious for transcontinental journeys in no time. Oh, and they are super comfortable. Also, people seem to have normal volume conversations in loads of situations where the actual noise would be consuming. If you’ve ever seen pilots in little planes they wear headsets. There’s always noise.
We need to know a bit about the data transfer rates that work in this film. The “entity” – what a fucking shit name – could “move” very quickly. Even when a thingy was connected to a boggler in the middle of South Africa away from any form of internet connection. Did you know that pick pockets are really good at grabbing something and taking it within a 100 millisecond window? Human reactions are hardwired at best to 190 milliseconds so she wouldn’t have been able to take the dongle out in time. Why was there a woman who speaks only French which most people understand but she also understands all the English being spoken? Who was fighting who in the cave? Who turned up to start that fight? Why do people who live on an island in the arctic know the yield of atomic weapons and detailed specifications about how long you have to run after cutting the wires? God this film was absolute shit.
I think we should consider vertical parking for more vehicles. Imagine the cars you could parking within a certain volume if you could store them vertically. There might be leakage problems I guess but those could be fixed. Oh, hang on – I’ve just remembered the standing seats for aircraft I’ve seen online recently – but, having googled, I think that while they exist people aren’t going to buy them.
As of writing this communication the first page of googled news results for these new “standing seats” are links to poor quality news outlets such as the Daily Mail, Time Out, Daily Express and The Sun. Ryan Air have denied they will be installing the seats. Industry news sites don’t have anything interesting to say. These seats haven’t been approved by the regulators. I doubt they will happen. We are easily in the last stages of the current capitalism model of running the planet and hopefully the world revolution will happen before we need these seats because infinite growth is a stupid thing.
I started this communication with the plan of posting my amazing parking within the game Fortnite. So here it is, very efficient:
In testing for video output and uploads on the PC I decided I would try flying a floatplane in X-Plane. I chose to take off from Rochester, UK and land on the river Medway. This is not as silly as it seems because eighty years ago the Shorts Brothers made seaplanes in Rochester and they slid down a gangway to the river Medway for their first flight. The whole area is now residential but you can still see the gangway which is a historical object. It would have been nice to still have seaplanes and floatplanes taking off from there.
ITs’ another year and another chance to see Combichrist. This was the twelfth time I have seen this band since 2009 and, if I honest, I am starting to get a little bored. The Old School set at M’era Luna last year was amazing. I didn’t know what to expect last night but there hasn’t been any new material from the band for a while. First we have to cover the early bands.
Smith and I got to the venue while Esotrik were playing their set. It wasn’t anything special. In my notes I wrote – OK.
Crimson Veil @ The Underworld 2025
The second band of the evening were Crimson Veil. A band comprising 3 women and a man playing guitars. The drummer was excellent. I liked the idea of the electric viola and harp. The singing was excellent. I struggled a little bit with the beat and the length of the songs. The songs were long. The beat felt disjointed. I suspect this is what would be considered “experimental” sounds. I also suspect it was musically clever, but my ears aren’t good enough to spot that.
Extize @ The Underworld 2025
Extize were great. It was the singers birthday and also the release date of their new album. It was their first time playing in the UK. I really enjoyed their set last year at M’era Luna and I also really enjoyed the set they played here. It was good fun, the band looked like they really enjoyed themselves. I enjoyed myself. In my notes I described this as heavy dance with humour. I will buy their new album.
The headliners were Combichrist. It was a solid set from the band. I didn’t dance or mosh too much as I was worried my back would die again – it died at a gig I played before christmas. So, I stood near the back and observed – this was my standard position years ago before I got pit-hungry. Apart from two newer songs in the middle of the set it was all really really good. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole show. I would still argue they don’t need guitars on most of the songs, but they have moved on from electro and it does kinda work.
Combichrist @ The Underworld 2025
Elliot Berlin is now on his way to being the most seen artist in my concert going career. He used to be with Aesthetic Perfection and is now with Combichrist. Joe Letz didn’t make it to this many shows I’d seen. He left Combichrist a few years ago. It’s interesting that it has taken me this many gigs with Combichrist to start getting a little bored. There are many bands from my teenage years who I’ve seen a few times but really don’t think I’d be that fussed about seeing them again. In music my attention wanes.
The Legend and I recently took a cheeky trip to the New Forest. We arrived around lunchtime and cycled from Burley to a cafe on the old railway. Lunch was had and then a cycle back to the car. Because it was warm and we were dehydrated we chose to make an emergency coffee next to the car park using our emergency coffee kit. It was lovely. The weather was sunny and I might have had my head exposed which wasn’t great and necessitaed buying after sun later on.
The Needles Innit
That evening we stayed at a hotel in Highcliff, which is at the top of a cliff, that isn’t really that high but compared to a not-cliff I guess it is. We had a picnic dinner on the beach while looking out across the sea to the Isle Of Wight. We definitely had some cocktails because we were away and staying in a lovely area of the country.
The next day we had a reasonable English breakfast, although the bacon was so thin light was interferring with itself as it passed through the meat. The rest of it was good and the coffee, made with fresh beans, was much much better than the instant crap that was in the room. Our bikes had been stored in the hotel storage space so we knew they were safe.
Fully Loaded – Don’t Tell Jim
After breakfast we drove to a New Forest car park and then cycled to Brockenhurst via the rest of the disused railway line. This route was new for me but it made better sense to the Legend because it linked up two parts of an overall route. This means next time we head down that way we can do a longer route and enjoy the countryside more. Drinks were had at a little cafe in Brockenhurst and we looked at the ford, but the water was so low there was no ford! Upon our return to the car we loaded up the bikes and headed home.
Wave Destruction
Both journeys were fortunately uneventful and although we hadn’t spent long in the New Forest it was lovely to get away and enjoy somewhere else. Now it’s time to look for disused railways and the such around our local area.
There are some things I want to do. But getting the getupandgo is a little harder than I would like it to be. I reckon that also the deadlines are self imposed rather than job related so the motivation is lacking a little. When I say deadlines they aren’t really deadlines. They are just things I’d like to do. Things I want to potter around and get done when I can rather than having to do them and be annoyed at doing it. These are things I want to enjoy doing.
I am working completing more of Gran Turismo 7. I have a few races left to complete in the standard offline race section. Over the weekend I completed an hour race around Spa and now I just have some little races to get completed. The problem with this is “what do you do when you’re done?”. I’ve heard stories of people winning the Big Competition and then they just feel lost because for all their life they’ve wanted to win the Big Competition. Once it’s completed they cry and lose direction. This could happen with GT. What do you do once you own all the cars and have golded every licence test? I think the licence tests will be next once I complete the standard races and I guess GT does have online mode but that can be frustrating. Then, what do I do once I’ve golded every licence? I shall return here and explain some time.
I’ve pretty much completed an excellent build in Minecraft, or at least something I’m quit proud of. There’s a little inside decoration I need to complete but then it will be done. What do I do then? I’d like to show it on YouTube with a voice over but that requires me to set up the OBS software again and that can be a pain. Then I need to script the video and complete the recording. Finally it needs to be edited, possibly, and then uploaded to YouTube. Maybe I will do this over the half term break coming up towards the end of May. Look for new video drops at the end of the month.
It would be nice to upload some new video of the flight simulator onto YouTube. Only to try and drive some more interaction with my channel. This is even harder than a Minecraft video because of the screen output resolutions and then trying to get the PC to record that. It also requires time and a little effort and the plans of what to do within the simulator. I’ll try and come up with a plan.
I keep buying books to read. But then I don’t read them. Books are special because they allow the transfer of knowledge from one person to another. Even fiction requires a transfer of ideas and settings. I enjoy reading. I like the stories. I like learning and having new ideas thrust upon me. I need to create time for me to settle and read a book. I nearly read some pages yesterday but I got side tracked by Fortnite. I was planning to read and relax for half an hour but I got called to game. You gotta play when you can.
I want to get fit. Or at least fitter than I am at the moment. I’ve been hampered since I knackered my back just before xmas. My mindset has gone from pain and lack of movement leading to a kinda – I’m old and these things happen maybe this is the rest of my life now – attitude to where I am now – I need to move and get fit to avoid this causing damage in the future – I think that’s a better attitude. It helps that the weather is nicer over the last month and I think my fitness has been improving with the short runs I’ve been doing. I want to be able to run 10k again without really thinking about it but I also need to realise that isn’t possible at the moment. I have to build up the fitness bit by bit and some is better than none. So I’ve reduced my expectations on how far I can run. My pace is hovering at a little over 6 minutes per km and I’m able to regularly run about 3 to 5 km. I’ll keep working at this and hopefully it will also get easier as I intend to lose some mass.
I need to get the fence in my garden fixed. Or at least I need to work out if it’s my fence to get fixed. It’s been broken for a few months and now there are new people living next door. I don’t know if they care about the fence. I know I don’t. But I guess it needs to be done. I will have to order things to be delivered and then also spend a day putting them in place. It takes a certain amount of effort and I’m not sure if I care enough.
There are quite a few work related things on my To Do list but I don’t talk about work here. I’m not stupid. This is a very public environment and so work thoughts are kept for work things. This has pretty much always been my space for writing my ideas and thoughts. I doubt people can be bothered to search all the way through this site for the controversial stuff. If they do, I don’t mind I guess. I did once get told to remove a link to this site from my email signature because of my anti-religious views. Ha ha ha ha.
I think I might need to sort out the printer. I have a wireless printer. It doesn’t always reconnect to the network when it comes out of standby and so needs to be power-cycled. This is a minor irritant. I would rather have a cabled network printer but I haven’t searched yet and to be honest I don’t want to replace something that works perfectly well the rest of the time.
I also need to get in touch with EE. I can’t see my mobile account details when I log in and this has happened since I had my new broadband network installed. I reckon there’s some weird thing happening in their system and someone will have to tick a box somewhere. I have already tried their online messaging system to work this out and they told me I need to phone up! This requires a lot of effort and planning and time.
This is a terrible film. There. That pretty much sums it up. I rated it 2/10 on IMDB and although I didn’t leave the cinema before the film had ended I certainly fell asleep and did not care about anything in this film. It’s terrible. Such a shame. They could have made an amazing story, but no. They did not.
A few years ago I met with friends and had a lovely time in Leuven. It was now time to do it again and Belgium is the epicentre of our existence. Actually, I’m not sure that’s true, I wonder if there’s a website that calculates the mean position of things [there are but I’m not sure they do what I want them to do – I might have to make it myself]. This time we met in Bruges. Much to the shame of half of us, the other half had not seen the film In Bruges so the city was a lovely surprise to us all. I had been there once before on a bike trip but didn’t really spend much time there.
Over the weekend we ate frites, waffles, chocolate and drank beer. We visited the Frites Museum, climbed the Bellfry Tower – 366 steps, took a boat tour around the canals, wondered why lots of places smelt of shit, tasted beer, ate in what was possibly a swingers restaurant/bar, bought beer and glasses from a beer shop, ate waffles, took photos, posted a picture of a door to Reddit, watched the world go by, walked a lot, talked a lot, laughed, and had a lovely relaxed time, just four old friends musing on the world.
Grand-Place and beyond, Bruges, Belgium
Daryl didn’t want to climb the Belfry so if you look carefully in the picture you can see him walking across Grand-Place.
Recently the Legend and I travelled to the North to the Lake District. All areas of the UK are designated areas of Low Flying but only some are activated. The Lake District is LFA 17.
UK Low Flying Areas
I understand that within an LFA flying can be at 250 ft AGL and up to 450kts but sometimes faster is allowed. There are three Tactical Training Areas in the UK where flying may be down to 100ft AGL. These TTAs are the Mach Loop in Wales, RAF Spadeadam covering the England Scotland borders and somewhere up north west Scotland. These TTAs are where the good stuff happens and pilots train for more realistic warfare situations.
The trip started not more than thirty miles from Maidstone when the Legend and I experienced the best made Big Macs we had ever had. It was a curious experience because both of us realised we were eating a well made burger but it seemed silly to mention that because McDs. But it was worth mentioning. Then we drove up the M25, M11, A14, A1, A1(M) etc to Wetherby. Prior to this Wetherby was just a services on the Great North Road. We stopped near Wetherby and explored the town. Dinner was an excellent curry and the town itself is very pretty and the planning controls have been suitably employed to maintain the “look”.
Monday meant driving further north to Scotch Corner and then wanging a left to head over the Pennines. The journey was pleasant as was the weather and the company excellent. Before Penrith I noticed a radar station up on the moors and I needed to know what it was. A little bit of googling and searching and I found out it is Great Dun Fell Radar Station, it’s operated by NATS for civilian air traffic. The UK’s highest tarmacked road also goes to the summit – a height of 848m. Upon arrival at Keswick we went to buy emergency tea making equipment, climbed to the top of Latrigg, and visited Derwentwater. While atop Latrigg we saw some fighter aircraft doing their low level thing and also two Spitfires flying in close formation. An earlier plane which I couldn’t see was, according to trackers, a privately owned L-39 which I would have loved to see. I’m not sure what the rules are on civilians flying through the hills. Dinner was a breakfast at a Turkish restaurant and it was delicious. After we checked in to our room we watch F15s fly overhead and disappear off over Lake Bassenthwaite.
Activities completed on Tuesday included eating a massive breakfast, and driving over the Honsiter Pass towards Buttermere – the slate mine is something to do next time. We walked around Buttermere and had emergency tea, fizzy drinks and tea throughout the journey. It was absolutely glorious. Unfortunately you can’t control other people who disturbed the peace: a child by being a brat and two older men by talking loudly while they paddle boarded over the surface of the lake. The return to Keswick was via Newlands pass and a look at Moss Force. I then rowed us to St Herbert Island in Derwentwater and we had a picnic. I was worried this would ruin my back and arm muscles but it turned out I was ok. I must be in better condition than I thought I was. The last activity of the day was to see Ashness Bridge, drink emergency tea, and paddle in the (very cold) water.
Keswick and Derwent Water from LatriggButtermereHigh Snockrigg from ButtermereFleetwith Pike and Haystacks from ButtermereHigh Seat from St Herbert’s IslandCatbells from St Herbert’s IslandLow Rigg from Castlerigg Stone Circle
Scotland or at least near enough was the plan for Wednesday. We had asked for a smaller breakfast in terms of the number of different items. This did not change the amount of actual food because we just got double each item instead. We visited the Herdy shop and I genuinely think I could kit out my whole house in that style. It’s gorgeous. We drove via Caldbeck and the fells to Birdoswald Fort. It was cloudy and really cold. This was strange as to the west of the M6 the weather was bloody gorgeous. We also went to a Roman Army Museum. There were a collection of coins there including what we think is the world’s largest gold coin. It was also cold and miserable so we left and drove back west. When we stopped in Penrith I bought a coat I had been that cold. During the golden hour we drove to see Thirlmere, Grasmere, Ambleside, Windermere, and then Ullswater via the Kirkstone Pass.
Do not upset the breakfast god. Thursday morning meant that we ate less but this made the breakfast god unhappy so it’s probably best to just eat it all. We walked into Keswick town via the railway path. Railway paths are nice but also a reminder of a lack of investment in our country and transporting people over the last seventy years. The learnt stuff at the Pencil Museum and they gave us new pencils for correctly completing the museum quiz – of course we were going to do that well. We did some souvenir shopping in the town centre and then walked back up to the B&B. We spent the afternoon drinking emergency tea and fighting off ginormous ants at Surprise View, past Ashness Bridge.
During the week we had decided to split the journey home and stay overnight somewhere about two thirds of the way back. This coincided with Lincolnshire which is an RAF base heaven so plans could be exciting. We departed Keswick and topped up the fuel at Penrith. We observed some pretty bad driving across the Pennines and so we found some google reviews of the company and added to the complaints on there. We weren’t the first to complain. There were roadworks at some point and we were not in a hurry so we pulled off the road and headed to the nearest town which was Pontefract. Apparently there’s a thing called a Pontefract cake and that sounded exciting. We found the castle and bought lunch and ate at the castle. The cake is apparent;y a little liquorice thing and that wasn’t necessary to try. The castle was pretty interesting. The town itself was less so. That night we were staying in Buckminster which was close to Newton’s birthplace of Woolsthorpe. We ate food at the overnight establishment and enjoyed the garden and birds.
The final day of this journey meant heading generally south east but only after we had visited the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. It is also where he discovered the “nature” of light, created his version of calculus and invented the cat flap. It was genuinely amazing to see the room where he worked during the Great Plague. There was graffiti on the wall and to actually touch the walls of his self-built library is quite something. I found it all very accessible and just a great experience. Before getting to the south east I drove a little through the Lincolnshire Fens just as a contrast to us seeing lots of mountains. It was very flat, I also saw my first hare in a field.
