Now I'm Not One to Complain, But...

Indeed I am not a complaining type, I usually just sit and bubble quietly while the world walks all over me, however I have so many things to catch up with here, caused by illness with no sympathy, too much work and a great deal of sloth - I have no idea how he got in, he was too fast for me - and now things have got worse.
Yesterday meant a long day at the museum for the latest Exhibition Day, which went very well thanks for asking, thousands came,or it looked like thousands, and all left very happy indeed.  Several wee workshops were put on and the kids and adults loved them!  Not one grumble through the day bar my stomach about 1:30 but that was expected.

This Mad Scientist had the kids in stitches and the place stinking with burnt substances.  From balloons flying about to melting things, great explosions and flashes of flame she had the kids eating out of her hands.  It was fun, laughter filled the place and the mums and dads learnt almost but not quite as much as the kids.
Next door they experimented with smell, taste, and senses.  I ma not quite sure what was in the wee plastic containers they all took away so I stayed well clear, I don't trust these people.  The main hall was filled with kids learning how to digitise stuff on the laptop.  If we had not been so busy we all wanted to join that one and none of us could, but we didn't complain.... 
However I arrived home, knees aching, having missed the football for the most part and discovered we had lost three nil anyway, burnt my dinner, discovered the microwave giving problems and then it died before I had finished making my dinner!  Grrrr!
However luck was in as my dinner survived with a bit off mucking around and I found Raith Rovers playing Hibernian on BBC Alba!  How lovely to watch a game in which the commentators do not irritate with meaningless words!  BBC Alba is the Gaelic channel for the north of Scotland and as the commentators are speaking thus it merely fills the background and allows the viewer to view uninterrupted by codswallop!  It also helps if wee Hibernian lose by two goals to nil!   Oh joy!  
My Hibby mate has not answered my tweets I hope he has not done anything silly...?

Today, as I nursed my weak knees and rested my brittle bones I managed to find a decent football game in the Dull, Dreich Dundee Derby Day game at half past twelve.  This was far superior to the dreich Manchester derby.  The sooner Van Gall goes the better I say.
However I suddenly thought Sainsburys sometimes do microwaves!  It was quiet so I rushed up there hoping they had one as they were close by and a cheap microwave would be easy to carry home from the shop.  Of course they are quite heavy and in the box heavier but Sainburys are only five minutes up the road.  
I rushed slowly up the road and discovered their cheap microwave, the same as my old one, they are all the same no matter what name appears on them, I discovered their one was £40!  Blow that as I had checked the more distant Argos had one at £36.However I wandered on to Tesco and found a heavy box there full of cheap microwave oven for £35.  Good enough for me I say, the last one lasted about four years and if I remember right cost £29.  
However after lugging it home from Argos that day, unpacking it, starting it up I discovered the blessed thing was bust!  I lugged it back, slower than I brought it, and dumped it somewhat heavily on the desk while panting my complaint.  As I recall the lass did not refund or replace but encouraged me to spend a pound or two more on a 'better' one and so I did while looking in her eyes all the time.  Then I again lugged the even heavier one back down the road.  
I am not fit I said to myself, and I as always, was right.
Now heavier than then, me not the oven, as fit as a corpse with lumbago I paid for my treasure without which I would starve and clambered shakily down the steps towards the door.  Why do they have an escalator upwards but not downwards I ask?  I trudged past the stares from the drunks at the pub on the corner, ensuring I walked upright and briskly as I did so.  Round the corner I changed position and began to wheeze somewhat.  As I passed Sainsburys people began to look and having reached the corner opposite I heard one man ask where that steam engine was.  
Home was reached just before the defibrillator was called for and I sat for a while aching and wondering how some time in the past I used to lug things like this up and down stairs in all sorts of houses.  Heavy goods were easily shifted and now I struggle to open bottles of Lucozade!  
If the muscles allow I will once again begin exercising tomorrow, unless the knees still play up from Saturday let alone today.

The good news that Ian Duncan Smith has walked out of the government because 'Cutting benefits off the poor and disabled while increasing tax cuts for the rich was not acceptable.'  Such warm words which we all agree with.
Hold on, this is the man who put through all these benefits cuts over the past six years.  The man who's department sent letters to people unable to leave their bed since birth 18 years before that they must report for work or lose money!  Some say 2000 have been told they are fit to work and died within a week!  Other claim thousands more have died or lost great sums of money, affecting their food and trapping them indoors because money has been taken from them.  The man who thrust through the 'robbing the poor to pay the rich' was Ian Duncan Smith.  An item in the 'Telegraph' indicates Prime Minister Cameron and Chancellor Osborne had encouraged IDS to mail everyone telling them to continue with the cuts and therefore put the blame on him, so IDS waked out.  Stories in the papers are of course planted by MPs and who planted that one?  So many tales and so many lies.
However this has blown Chancellor Osborne out of the water.  His decision to cut benefits again will have to be changed, Cameron is desperate to separate himself from anything that makes life difficult and both and in real trouble now.  Good isn't it?
This of course has lots to do with the EU referendum!  Politicians playing games with one another while Rome burns, if that is the right analogy, and we have to read between the lines as to the truth. Here of course the fun is the Conservative Party, the one determined to eliminate all poor, weak. sick or any other people who did not attend Public School and go horse riding with David Cameron from the nation.  Now they are riven in two with a divide growing daily.  Political enemies are never on the other side of the chamber, they are always behind you!

   

A Welcome Sight

A closed door!
Four pm and the door was slammed shut!  It was time for home.  My one half day a week has been somewhat disturbed recently with so many missing in action.  Tuesday I was there all day as I was much of yesterday as a school came through the shop as I was running for home, I made it by 3:30!  Today the two girls were off and I held the fort uncomplaining in spite off it all.  Now in times past a three day week would have been welcomed but now I find it tiring.  Worse still I canny get anything done at home, as they stour in here will tell.  The 'to do' list for tomorrow & Monday is quite long now, anyone fancy cleaning an oven...?

Having managed to cut the benefits received by the disabled the Conservative government that comprises at least nineteen millionaires now wishes to cut the cash given to the disabled to buy much needed equipment.  Is there any individual in this nation who cannot be attacked by these people?  The disabled, the elderly, anyone bar those who fiddle massive tax demands can be chosen as the one who pays for the national debt.  How will this help?  In no way but after receiving an increase in MP wages, making extravagant claims on their expenses and accepting cash form anyone who offers this party continue to claim benefits are too high, their papers are full of evidence for this apparently, so the poorest must suffer.  You will be next if nothing is done.

PR Stunts and Emptiness.

Cameron is at it again I see.  With UKIP folk making a fool of themselves in 'Bongo Bongo land' the PR man has spent much of his holiday in PR stunts attempting to win back the favour of his lost voters.  The Conservative Party has apparently shed thousands of members during his time. He has turned up in the paper almost daily spouting 'vows' and 'promises,' each one assuring that 'he will...' or that 'something is done.'  Lies, all lies.  He is very into 'Fracking' today so I suspect he is suffering 'dropsy' of some sort, a terrible disease.  Asking people in the south of England to think of the 'good of the country,' and accept his friends 'fracking' is pushing it I say. I understand the councillors who allowed this project in the south to go ahead may have connections with the company involved, allegedly.  Cameron of course lives in the Cotswolds, far away from the work.  
Those phone in programmes dominated  by the lonely, the desperate and members of parliament seeking attention have also drawn him in.  He has called in to earnestly support gays in Russia, yet would not withdraw from the athletics there obviously, rebuke Spain and spout about any subject of the day.   Did it make a difference?  Only to his party members, or at least to those in his office. The Norwegian PM took to driving a taxi to meet the people, I canny see Dave following suit, he would get a fair idea of what the public really think.  I suspect they would be less genteel than the friendly Norwegians!  Today the PR was attacking the weakest once again.  Ian Duncan Smith, that cretinous worm of a man, once again wishes to point out that all the welfare budget goes on scroungers!  He does this by finding 4000 who he claims are earning £23, 000 a year from handouts and he will end this, his figures are of course disputable.  Total baloney but the Daily mail reader is happy enough.  He claims his policies have saved million from the welfare budget but does not show how, nothing new for IDS that.  He still claims all the expenses he can doesn't he?  IDS once claimed a £39 breakfast on expenses, and a £9 cocktail while still in opposition. Sadly this was rejected!
All this is to win back the Tories ready to defect to UKIP, the party the Tories claim is full of 'swivel eyed loons.'  While they are not wrong they are not really in a position to criticise are they?  I suppose it stops questions arising re tax dodging friends and the latest news that the recession (is it called this?) will last at least three more years or until 750,000 are taken from the dole queues.  Fabulous!  By the time so many have got jobs or retired there will be a million more on the dole, the futures bright eh?
Where are the opposition while this is going on?  Not to be seen anywhere!  One Labour female, who got her job because of her sex, waffled on about something the other day but I cannot remember what she said.  She will go far in the Labour Party.  Ed Milliband is writing his speech for the conference which follows the holidays.  It is make or break time for him. If he fails to deliver he may well be ejected, and that will be no loss, but what will replace him?  There is nothing left in Labour's box, merely a collection of middle class Oxbridge types with less idea of what the world requires than Cameron has.  The future is indeed bright, but not here.  What a mess we are in and no-one knows what to do.  The truth however, is out there!

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Easter Aftermath

So Easter has come and gone.  The BBC as usual has offered a mixture of bland religious offerings, bar Melvyn Bragg's nonsensical programme supposedly based on Mary Magdalene.  Easter eggs have abounded once again, my collection somewhat less than my teeth hoped for, Tesco's et al will no doubt be offering some cheap tomorrow and storing others for next year.  Rubbish bags will be overflowing with coloured silver paper and dentists waiting rooms soon to be filled with frightened children.

Those same frightened children are also skipping school for a week or so.  This means fathers bring their children into the museum, are seen kicking a ball in the park with them, families meander through shopping centres,and groups of the little horrors are filling the streets, yelling, shouting and blocking the pavements.  While the behaviour in the skatepark is reasonable enough just now adolescents swarm like locusts in buses, shops, and anywhere normally used by decent people.  As I carried my weakened bug stained body through Tescos searching for bread I noticed gangs of wee brats everywhere.  If this is meant to be a holiday, where is the holiday from children I ask?

This man, Ian Duncan Smith, the secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, earns £134,565.  He has been responsible for the amendments to the welfare state and the general oppression of the poor, the weak and anyone who cannot fight back.  Today he claims he could live on £53 a week "if I had to."  Some 250,000 people have demanded via an online petition that he attempts this for one week.  His reply is that he has done it already, twice having been unemployed.  He does not indicate how much dole he received  plus child allowance and other benefits, all of which indicate he is lying in his teeth.  

According to Wikipedia he is not unused to misinformation. Please refer to their tale for details of his education half truths.  His employment record does not inspire and that includes his failure as Leader of his party!  He has certainly been unemployed twice, so have I, and I struggled on both occasions.  The whole idea of publicising welfare payments is less to do with cutting the cost, certainly nothing to do with 'fairness,' but everything to do with encouraging middle England to vote for them by stigmatising the unemployed.  Call them 'scroungers' and the employed 'hard working families' (a Bill Clinton trick) and divide and rule.  Misuse of figures helps here.  This will get worse in the next few months as the Tory Party embarrass Ed Milliband on welfare.

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The Guilty, The Smug and the Suffering.

These are the guilty.
The coalition of Conservative and Liberal-Democrats who have wormed their way into power and smugly go about their business while the nation suffers.  

For instance, Culture Secretary Maria Miller is happily forcing gay marriage on both the nation and the Churches.  While this fascist like approach pleases some, mostly in parliament, she herself is now to be investigated for possibly, note the words, fiddling her housing claims.  Some £90,000 is the money involved.  An appropriate body will investigate and it may well be she is found innocent of all wrong.  We are right to wonder if the 'Daily Telegraph,' who were about to break the story,  claim that a No 10 junior informed the DT editor the running this story may be 'unwise.'  Hmmmm.  Oh yes, Maria is also leading the investigation into the possible new Press Control Commission, if there is to be one.  Two sides dishing the dirt.  Maria may well be innocent of all wrong, others however have been guilty.

Ian Duncan Smith is the Tory hatchet man determined to make the sick work so as to stop paying benefits.   He went to a decent school where he failed well.  Failed academically and ended up in the army.  This used to be where the idiot son of the wealthy would be dumped.  Ian wandered about Rhodesia, which we lost, and Northern Ireland, carrying a bag for the Major General there.  He did not patrol the streets, or see action  it appears.    He spent time on the dole, something he now thinks criminal, living off the state happily enough (and claiming child benefit for all the kids when they arrived) until a state training course (free) enabled him to get work selling arms to beloved tyrants for GEC-Marconi.  Honesty and integrity not required here I suggest.  He then showed admirable understanding and vision by moving to a property firm where the market collapsed and he was thrown onto the street!  He then joined 'Janes,' selling gun magazines and worming his way up the ladder.  He decided to climb on the state employed ladder once again but his attempt to become an MP failed at the first go.  he eventually obtained the job that lines pockets and has wormed his way here into the cabinet.  From this position he is determined to get the 2,51 million unemployed into the 400,000 vacancies.  I mentioned his academic career failed didn't I?  To ensure those claiming sick benefit, under whatever name it is called now, he constantly implies they are scrounging, as he once did, and ensures ATOS claims they are fit to work, even if they are dying.  A man only the Daily Mail/Telegraph reader and the Tea Party could admire.

The suffering is interesting.  Note one ex-soldier.
Alex Smith, a Gulf War veteran (once described as 'hero' by the smug lot) has been forced out of work by an infection that has damaged his heart and leaves him '15 seconds from death.'  He awaits a second operation, the first installed a device which pumps blood around his body constantly.  A walk with the dog leaves him exhausted and he is unfit for work.  Until now that is!  Ian Duncan Smith and his ATOS friends have decided he is indeed 'fit to work.'  A man at deaths door?  How can this be IDS?  The result of this is his benefit has been cut, possibly they hope he will die of cold?  It sounds the Conservative way.  Daily we hear of such stories.  The man told he is fit to work who died the next day, the young male paralysed since birth 18 years before told to attend a job interview when he cannot move and is too mentally damaged to understand the letter!  It doesn't stop there does it IDS?

Today we read of Patricia Taylor.  She has been divorced, has developed cancer, lost her job and is unable to pay the mortgage.  The bank, Barclays, claim they attempted to help her but have now reclaimed the house and flung her out onto the street.  Over 50,000 are homeless, local councils cannot cope, the smug cabinet does talk about creating houses - for sale, but does nothing to stop this type of situation, which is increasing daily in this time of austerity.  Even America, the land of the greedy has under Obama refused to indulge in the austerity of George Osborne, possibly because Obama knows how the poor suffer.  Our cabinet neither know nor care.

How long until the next election?  How much government time wasted on gayboys and women bishops when the real imperative is improving the country?  Stop the tax dodgers (they have removed almost half the tax collectors from their jobs and wonder why so many, mostly Tory voters, dodge tax), spend money to save money, show some understanding and compassion, and then you may get a few votes.  I doubt that mind.   

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! 

Friday

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To exercise the bulk that creaks every time I stand on the broken weighing machine I decided to clean the place this week. I cleaned the woodwork, the doors, the bit behind the loo, the cupboards and on and on,  but the glow soon wore off. While the place is unnaturally clean, what a funny smell health is, I soon got fed up with all this and resorted once again to being a slob. Partly this was my fault, in fact most off it was my fault. You see I made flapjacks. Not the sort you would buy in a shop, certainly not, well not unless you want E-Coli or some such, and the problem is I made two lots and then I ate them. They were quite good, almost tasty, which in itself is quite something for me, but they do put on weight! I have added half a stone this week while I was supposed to be exercising to lose that! 

Ian Duncan Smith wandered around Glasgow some time ago and decided that the people on benefits needed hep to get off drugs and into work. Underneath his Conservative image there is a man who wants to help those at the bottom of society. How does he intend to do this? Well he wishes to limit those on Invalidity Benefit and get them 'Back to work.' he also wishes people in Merthyr Tydfil to 'get on a bus and look for work.' There are various other money saving aids to work available from this man. Now a bus to Cardiff from Merthyr takes one hour and possibly (since Thatchers deregulation of them) costs about £4 a day. Those on benefits, of whatever sort, must rejoice at the thought of £4 to spend on a bus not to find a job! Could it be that this man, like the others amongst the millionaire Cabinet are mentally unbalanced? Or will we see IDS in the House of Commons pantomime dressed as Scrooge?

Sad news tonight that Portsmouth may well be extinct in the next few days! This is sad indeed, not because I am a fan of the club but because the fans are true football fans as they ought to be, that is fans of their local side! These are not people who run after distant clubs for glory hunting reasons, they support their side, and this is good! Of course they are not all the type you would wish your daughter to bring home, clearly, but there again all football clubs have one of those somewhere! 


This club has been handled by several owners and some board members you would not wish to be associated with. Various people with East European connections have been running the club, but to what end? Has Portsmouth been a place to launder Russian money I wonder? I ask because Russians have been involved and Heart of Midlothian fans understand some of the problems they might bring. This of course does not imply anything illegal occurred, but something morally wrong has indeed been occurring and over a good few years at that. Portsmouth reached the English Premier League. Under 'Arry ' Redknapp they won the English Cup and found themselves a glorious Euro night against Juventas! 'Arry had of course 'opped it to Spurs by this time and some wondered if there was more than football involved in his departure. No manager would refuse the offer of the Spurs job but did the man realise he could do no more for Pompey, or was he aware the money had run out? The players were on huge salaries it appears, even for the EPL, and debts soon appeared. After much struggle it looked like the team was settling down to a stable future and the former owner, Sacha Gaydamak has demanded an up front payment for reasons of his own.


This may of course all be negotiating tactics, but the clubs fans are the ones who suffer, not those in the money. All may well be brought under control, and some agreement might well be reached, however the way people use football clubs to their financial gain is a disgrace. Other clubs are also in financial difficulty, Dundee are walking this tightrope just now, and even the Liverpool's of this world have problems. However it is not the directors who suffer when clubs go bust, it is the fan of the club. He is the helpless one in these situations, and no-one appears to care about him!


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