GRRRRrrrrr....

I called someone a 'snowflake' today!  
This worries me.  
I am becoming a 'Daily Mail' reader!
I was irked, annoyed and put out by his comment and reacted without due care and attention.
This is of course not unlike me.
However I sit here fuming at my stupidity.  That ought to be one thing I am used to but no, I am surprised at how grumpy I am these days, grumpy at 'Daily Mail' levels and that is a worry.  
This anger arises easily as I look around me and see importance poured on things that are not important, celebs, adverts, stupid comments from a TV/pop/film star for instance.  Little things magnified out of proportion and now I am doing it also!
This generation is not easy to understand, their priorities are not major, minor things appear important and I suspect this is as a result of both they and their parents, and probably grandparents being brought up in a life of comparative wealth.  The middle classes, those who power the movers and shakers, have never worked in the real world and the following generations have nothing positive to aim for except the 'self.'  Me first has always been the way of the world but now many have the ability and expect the right to do anything even if it is absurd.  (At this point I would deviate (get it) into a rank about 'trans' but I will spare you this but it shows the point well)  Previous generations lived for the day as they were paid so poorly they had nothing spare, today this is less common.  The 'chattering classes' appear to be heading nowhere and this, like almost everything else, annoys me.
I am of course aware there are over a thousand foodbanks and many suffer under the austerity that leaves poor George Osborne struggling along on £2 million a year.  A friend of mine helps run the local one and meets some very hard cases but they are not the people who anger me.  It is the ones who do not notice and do not care.  The false dawn of the Hippy years saw many wish t make the world a better place, today people only seek self enjoyment, not a wrong in itself but they appear oblivious to the real world.  The PC world has raised a generation with a false moral outlook, 'if it feels good, do it' has become the value, the result is a mess.  An inability to know right from wrong and replace this with a false morality kills.
There again of course I could be, as my friend Wendy has often informed me over the past forty or so years, just a 'Miserable git.'  Maybe she has a point.
However I do see myself getting angrier, is it age?  Is it the generation around me, or is it I am just a git?  

          
Talking of drunken Twitter users I note that Trump has decided to shout at Turkey.  He has threatened them, a NATO ally, with repercussions if they don't do what he slurred.  Now the cynic in me says he has lots of money from Putin's friends, which means from Putin, and Turkey is a front seat for NATO on Russia's border.  Now could this be one of the ideas the Kremlin has put into his head to lessen the threat from next door I wonder?  I am convinced this could not be the case, he is after all a President and the US would not elect a stupid man as president surely?

Angry

I got angry today.  Not irked by small things that annoy, but I was beginning to feel real anger, and not for something done to me.  I was at the 'Work Programme' up town this morning, a frankly laughable attempt by government to get folks into jobs that do not exist.  Not only are the private companies that were daft enough to take this role on losing money one at least has closed down adding their employees to the dole queue!  The lot I visit have already been 'threatened' with similar themselves.  There are just NO JOBS available and what angered me was the sight of some of those at the place today.

It is well known that a crude method has been used to examine those claiming Invalidity Benefit,' a benefit designed for those too sick to work.  The private company responsible checking claims has ruled, on a 'tick box' scheme that many claimants are 'fit to work!'  Some 60 percent, at least, have appealed this decision and been returned, after much grief, to the benefit under its new name.  Many are still appealing and only a few have refused to appeal.  Those deemed fit have included men unable to stand, people with serious diseases and sometimes limbs missing. The papers, not so much the 'Daily Mail' mind, contain many such stories of totally unfit people thrown of the benefit and told to 'find a job.'  Ian Duncan Smith, the millionaire who has never had a real job, is the man who encourages these people 'back to work' because it is good for them to work.  Indeed it is, but Ian forgets there are well over two and a half million unemployed at the moment and only around four hundred thousand vacancies.  The loss of benefit is merely to save a few pounds, whatever the cost in human life!  Indeed some have committed suicide after losing benefit.

What angered me was the sight of an old man at the programme.   I never spoke to him, I know nothing about him, but I got angry looking at him.  Gray hair, over 60 at least, walked with a stick, and a bit unsure of himself in that place.  He clearly appeared to be one on Invalidity Benefit who had been forced onto the dole.  I could be wrong about that, but either way who would employ him?  A enfeebled old man with a stick and dodgy walking.  What job Ian?  Warehouse work?  Driving, although he doesn't appear to see that well?  No doubt you have some idea of work he could do you selfish bastard!  Anything that stops you paying a halfpenny on tax would do, not that you pay tax like the rest of us do you?  

The 'Work Programme' is filled with the long time unemployed, some through injury, lack of skills or mental problems.  Some ex-prisoners, some desperate for work and others not interested.  They all know who is looking and who is not. Few get work, even when good advice and help is given.  Fifty applicants and most of the slow, dodgy, physically unstable, or just old folks on offer don't appeal to the employers, many of whom are struggling to survive themselves.  I get angry at Smith and his tax dodging government friends decrying the unemployed and assaulting (for there is no other term) the disabled!  Many do wish to work, many struggle desperately and are treated with contempt by an uncaring government containing around nineteen millionaires. 

I passed the old boy having a snack of Diet Pepsi in the park as I left.  It was a sad, indeed pathetic sight I thought.  He might have a family, he might be happy enough, but that was not the image that stuck.  Just another dumped on the scrapheap with little care from any government.  These people should be made to read the Book of the Prophet Amos and see how God cares for the poor while the rich lie back and enjoy themselves.  Believers or not judgement falls on them one day. 

 Vote Conservative - and be considered of no account! 

Agitated

Early this week all was good. The last 48 hours have left me agitated and 'gun toting!' This really annoys me! I start by wanting to do the best and a thought, a song, or just too much coffee enters in and "I DON'T CARE ANY MORE" about anything and find myself allowing people to notice this, usually when I throw a supermarket trolley at them. This is not what I want but it leaks out before I am aware of it. This annoys me, being annoyed. Then, when annoyed at my annoyance I allow my annoyance to annoy me and that annoys me more!
I'm annoyed now.

Once more I have spent the day scanning pictures of KOSB's from the past. I find myself beginning to identify with these men, becoming part of their group, a comrade with them. That surely is the most important part of any army unit, the comradeship! Pictures of the march from Poona made me sweat in the hot sun, and I swear, just like they were wearing those packs, that this have given me blisters on my feet. This picture however brought to mind the old, somewhat sarcastic, cry of "Why should Britain fear?"

Because this is what is defending you in 1930 folks, that's why!