Prelude - Someone To Write To

Recently in an episode of the television programme NCIS, one of the characters needed a person to write to.  She thought for a while and eventually settled on George Washington.  As one of the fathers of her nation he would be the ideal person to whom she could express her weighty concerns.  This seemed to me like an excellent idea; in my case it would be someone to whom I could tell stories, share my opinions, express my thoughts and my emotions and give substance to my aspirations, all the while knowing that there could be no fallout.

Patently George Washington would hardly be the person for me.  But then who would be?  There was a film that came out in 2008 called The Reader starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.  In it the main character, Hanna Schmitz, allowed herself to be sacrificed to exonerate others as she held a secret she would not reveal.

At one stage in the story Hanna was read to by a young man called Michael, hence the title of the film.  Her role is quite passive and receptive to being read to by Michael, and so she seems like the ideal person for me to write to, as when I write I am also reading the text in my mind.  She is also a fictional character so there should be little chance of me causing her offence, embarrassment or distress.  The downside of course will be that I shall get no feedback from the person I am writing to, but isn't this also the point of writing to such a person?

So there we have it - I shall write to Hanna Schmitz.  She will be my sounding board, my muse, my regulator, my inspiration, my conscience and I shall be her reader.  There is so much to write down, so much to tell her, so many questions to ask, so many thoughts to express and so many stories.  I feel the need to do this now as I am getting no younger and have begun to realise that I am in danger of forgetting ever more as the years tick by.

Buy British - You Must Be Joking!

There seems to be a thing in the UK that almost any consumer item made here and British owned is of inferior quality. Take kitchen white goods - well they have to be German or Italian: cars - well that's very easy, they have to be German: TVs - made just about anywhere except the UK: mobile phones - well, we don't make any so that's easy enough - and the list goes on as long as you like.

Curiously though, there are some interesting anomalies that turn this idiotic notion on its head.

Let's start with cars. The British love German cars - after all, isn't their engineering just so superior to ours?! Then of course there's the "Well there isn't a British car industry any more" routine. As it happens we manufacture and export more cars now than at any point in our history. Sad to say nearly all the car makes are foreign owned; which begs the question as to why foreign owned manufacturers are so much more successful than British ones!

In a pub recently the waitress said that she needed a new car, her Audi was getting old. So I suggested she look at the current Jaguars instead of a German make - Jaguar means jobs in the UK if nothing else. But she said no, because her husband says that Jaguars are just Mondeos! Having owned two of the older X-Type models that were originally based on the Mondeo floorpan, I can categorically say that they are absolutely nothing like Mondeos! In fact just 14 components in the X-Type were the same as a Mondeo! The current range of Jaguars has absolutely nothing at all to do with Mondeos! Curiously the Audi Q3 and VW Tiguan were 40% based on the Skoda Yeti (designed in the Czech Republic), but you'll never, ever hear that an Audi is just a Skoda!

This country is so obsessed with German cars that we import 1 in 7 of their entire production - although recently it was suggested to me that it was 1 in 5. Other countries are a little more politically and economically aware and realise that home production brings jobs and prosperity and, more importantly, keeps their money in their country. Ford ceased production of all cars in this country some years ago and switched production to Germany and Belgium, because they know the British prefer not to buy cars made in the UK! We still make the engines and gearboxes and send them to the Continent to be fitted into the cars we buy over here!

Brexit might suggest that we are very Nationalistic, very patriotic to the point of xenophobic. That being the case, why are we so obsessed with products not made in our country. After all, home built products provide jobs which provide prosperity. So buying so many foreign goods has the opposite effect on our welfare and economy and merely supports the other countries. Certainly a very curious way of showing our patriotism!

The Great Selfie Mystery

OK - here's the thing - what is the purpose of selfies?

I really cannot understand why anyone would want endless pictures of themselves, with or without acquaintances, pulling silly faces. Everywhere and anywhere it seems it is necessary to take a selfie - WHY?

A friend posted a selfie on Facebook that showed herself with a number of other people all pulling silly faces. Someone else commented underneath "You all look like you're having such a great time!" How on earth could anyone draw that conclusion from a snapshot of one sixtieth of a second of a bunch of people making silly faces into a smartphone?

On Facebook I was a so-called 'friend' of a good friend's daughter. One day I thought, out of curiosity, I'd see how she was getting-on at university and came across her photos. There were more than 500 selfies and so I asked this same question under a general post on Facebook. Curiously no-one gave me an answer, but I noticed after a day or so that I was no longer a 'friend' to this person!!

Another person I know regularly posts selfies of herself on Facebook and she is always making exactly the same silly face. What is the point of it? Not only 'what is the purpose of a selfie' but why is it necessary to pull silly faces?

This seems to be just another example of the smartphone making complete idiots out of perfectly normal, otherwise sensible, people. And if I lose more Facebook friends as a consequence of this blog, then they really are not friends anyway!

Texting - and driving

When text messages first started they were completely free and consequently a quick and cheap way to pass a message to someone at a time when call charges were obscene. Now they are often included as part of a package and, to all intents and purposes, free again. But at the same time, calls have come right down in price so they are very accessible.

So why do people still insist on texting when an actual conversation is very much more interactive, informative, friendly, civilised and human?

Texting has become one of modern day's great curses. People walking down the street do it and look like complete zombies. People sit down in a restaurant with another human being and have their mobiles next to them on the table - just in case they get a text or something similar. Conversations are abruptly curtailed because one of the participants has received a text message. You see people - more often than not young women (but not exclusively I hasten to add) - concentrating on texting whilst they're driving a car.

What is this idiotic obsession with texting?

I spent four and a half hours one evening sorting-out a friend's computer as a favour - for free. When I came to leave just before midnight - and I still had to drive home and get up early for work next day - my ex-friend started texting. I pointed-out that I had to leave and she rudely snapped at me - "Can't you see I'm texting!"

I had to issue a smart phone to a work colleague - a nice woman in her late twenties. We were chatting whilst the device was going through its start-up procedure when she received a text message on her personal phone. Instantly I no longer existed and all her attention went to finding her phone in her voluminous bag in a kind of mild panic. When she had finished jiggering about and returned to the world of human beings I said "I hope you don't do that while you're driving!" To which she replied "Well, I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help myself. I just have to look at it!" And there am I just about to issue her with a company device which could only make matters worse.

For some reason texting turns perfectly normal, sensible human beings into complete idiots. What makes any sensible person think that texting while you're driving is even remotely acceptable? A one year ban from driving and a £1,000 fine should be the minimum if anyone is proved to have done it. There was talk of banning even hands-free use of mobiles by drivers in cars: how can they even consider that when they cannot stop f*cking idiots texting whilst they're driving?

Benefit Fraud - the great scam by politicians

Recently I saw a programme on television about benefit fraud. None of the people highlighted as being fraudsters had been prosecuted at the time of going on air. It was plainly evident that they were all long term fraudsters and the 'authorities' had been collecting evidence for some time.

Even though the frauds were painfully obvious, the authorities still felt unable to take the cases to court through lack of evidence. The overwhelming conclusions of the programme were: a) a fraudster was extremely unlikely to be caught/prosecuted; b) there are nowhere near enough investigators; c) benefit fraud is very difficult to prove; d) denial and lying are the best ways to ensure the fraudster will get away with it.

What does this have to do with politicians you ask? Both Labour and Conservative/Lib. Dem. politicians have said they would make it a priority to reduce benefit fraud. Well they are being very economic with the truth. Virtually nothing is being done to reduce benefit fraud because it is too expensive and time-consuming to be viable. But it does sound good if you state categorically that you will be doing something about it even though it's not true. It is what the great British public want to hear and it attracts votes, and for some bizarre reason we believe them!

There is of course another issue that doesn't help: incompetent management within Local Government. Most so-called managers would not last five minutes in private industry; they can't manage their way out of a paper-bag. Most are not interested in dealing with difficult issues that require management decisions and staff motivation - actually, most wouldn't even know what either of those involve!

So what is really being done about benefit fraud? As far as I can see, very little and with the current level of political clap-trap and management dis-interest very little is going to be done. So the naive majority of us will continue to pay our taxes largely because we are scared of the consequences of being caught doing something illegal. So really we have only ourselves to blame for all the money which goes to these nauseating parasites, particularly when we could all be doing it with an ever decreasing chance of being caught!

That awe-inspiring and romantic night sky

Having developed a bit of an interest in astronomy, I have learned a few things you may find a little mind boggling.

When you go to the Mediterranean and look up at the crystal clear night sky and marvel at the size of the universe, you may be interested to know that every single last one of those lovely little twinkly stars is in fact only in our galaxy, The Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy is visible but only as a very feint smudge and in overall size is many times larger than the Moon.

The Milky Way galaxy is some 100,000 light years across. That means it takes light, @ 186,000 miles per second or approximately 6 million million miles per year, 100,000 years just to cross our galaxy. The Milky Way contains between 200 and 400 thousand million stars. Our Sun is a star and it is thought to be approximately 33,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. Recent analysis suggests there may be approximately 200 thousand million galaxies in the Universe.

The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest neighbour and even that is two and a half million light years away. The nearest star to our solar system is Proxima Centauri, and traveling at the speed of light it would take us 4.2 years to reach it. By comparison it takes the light from our sun just 8 minutes to reach us. We are thinking that Mars may be accessible to us in the next two hundred years. The absolute closest Mars gets to the Earth is 35 million miles. I guess we are a long way from visiting another solar system.

So next time you watch Star Trek it is worth wondering where exactly it is all taking place. As for UFO's - hmmmm. You have to beg the question, if they really came from outer space (wherever that might be) how did they ever find us? We have more chance of finding a colony of microscopic super-beings on the back of one particular flea in a herd of wild camels.

CLODs - Centre Lane Only Drivers

OK, here's the thing - Please can someone explain to me WHY so many drivers on UK motorways insist on sitting in the middle lane?

Often the inside lane can be quite empty for considerable distances and these people are doodling along at about 65mph - WHY? WHY NOT MOVE OVER instead of being a mobile chicane?

On the M25 it is even worse, they sit in the third lane - WHY? What is wrong with lanes one and two which are often clear of vehicles?

On the M27 the overhead signs frequently say "Do not hog the middle lane", but for some reason it has no effect - WHY? Please can someone enlighten me?