IN DEFENCE OF DELIA

I have been reading an amazing amount in my paper about how bad Delia Smith is for doing a TV series and bringing out a book showing people how to cook the simple and easy way.
There have been people writing letters to the editor about it! Are these folks barmy? Just let me tell you a little story----
I have never cooked in my life. Well, I am married and have a woman to do all that sort of stuff.
However since I retired I have thought how nice it would be to cook for the little lady & as for the first time in my life I have some time I would give it a go. But where to start. What do you do to cook. Which pan to use. What to cook. What to add to the meal for extra taste. I had no idea about any of this--so how could I start?
Then I came across "How to Cheat at Cooking" in the supermarket and thought I would give it a go. Cor Luv a Duck Guv---you will never guess---I can cook!
OK so some of the ingredients or out of a tin. So what? Some of the dishes I have made are fantastic--so tasty.
Food snobs may not like it & I do not give a fig (not that I have cooked a fig)
What this has done is made me want to cook more and try new things so I am going to be more adventurous. This would not have happened without this book.
So go away food snobs-I am in my sixties and trying new things all because of Delia.
Delia I think I love you!

PETE DOHERTY AND JAIL

I see that Peter Doherty the singer (as a music lover that is not how I would describe him!) has been jailed for 14 weeks for breaching a probation order. After all the chances he has had I think he has got away very lightly.
Although this case is not in it's self at all important. It has however brought to light a very serious issue regarding how long a prison sentence should be.
In days gone by a 14 week sentence would mean 14 weeks, more or less.
However it seems to me that almost all criminals only do half of this. The public likes to think it is getting protected from the undesirable elements in society and who can blame them? As a result of this a judge may pass a sentence of 6 years on an armed robber in the full knowledge he will probably be out in 3 years. This then avoids an outcry from the public but is in effect letting the public down.
However an even greater injustice is taking place that most people do not realise. Because the government has failed to plan for the correct numbers, jails are now full, and Mr Brown and his gang has come up with a scheme to help with this. They have introduced the End of Custody License which is a cunning plan to get criminals back on the street and avoid them sleeping 6 to a cell.
Under this scheme Doherty may serve as little as a month. Is it worth the bother I ask myself. Why not do away with jails and let everyone do what they want. Well this seems to be the direction we are headed.

Mind you the real losers will be the British public. Because when Doherty is out he is going to start singing again.

Perhaps they may let me in jail to avoid that!
(If there was room)

BUS PASS

Reading my local paper I am amazed to see that once again the government has cocked up.
Although it was in the budget speech of 2006 (over two years ago) that they announced the new bus pass for over 60's here we are with 1 day to go to the new system and guess what?
The passes are not ready!!
How long does it take a civil servant to organise anything. (exclude a cup of tea, they get that spot on)
And this is costing us even more money
Due to the late arrival the passes are being sent out first class post! Give us a break!
If these people worked for a private firm they would be long gone. But how many people have been given the boot by the government? Not a soul that's how many.
Why not. Our tax money is wasted with impunity. And no one is bothered. Where will all this lead us?

At least I see the newspaper article is accompanied by a picture of a top civil servant doing what they do best.

Drinking tea. Well she is not doing any harm at the moment!

Thoughts Of An Old Codger

As I have mentioned recently I have been building my family tree (slowly!) and this has set me thinking about my own "olden days" not just those of my forebears. Although not quite in my dotage yet I do go back a long time and can remember events from the late 1940's. This may only be about 60 years but we live in an altogether different world now.
I well remember sitting in the kitchen by a blazing open fire making toast on a long toasting fork. It needed to be long because the fire was so hot it would burn my arm if I got any closer. We make toast in a toaster now and it is not the same but what can you do without the open fire.
We also listened to the radio a lot. There was not much choice in those days with almost all the stations coming from London. One of my top shows was Dick Barton Special Agent. Great! You could ofcourse listen to Radio Luxembourg which you could hear well one minute and not at all the next!
There was no such thing as TV (or if there was we could not afford one) but my mum and dad took me to the local picture house at least once a week. The show changed every Monday and Thursday so we sometimes went twice in the week. In those days every district of the city we lived in had it's own cinema and ours, about a mile away, went under the great name of The Sunbeam. I loved going on a Saturday because the manager would stand on the steps to greet the customers in a dinner jacket! I had never seen anyone in a DJ before and this made it seem a special event even though the films had been shown at the big expensive cinemas in the city centre ages before. Another thing that seemed really strange to me was that as we left after the show on a Saturday there was always a man on the steps selling a Sunday paper! How on earth could a Sunday paper be sold on a Saturday night I wondered. The paper concerned was the long defunct Empire News which was also a funny shape, not very long but quite wide. We had no car ofcourse and I would make the long trip home on my dads shoulders. Knowing now how painful that can be I will always be grateful!
When we went to town we went on the tram. How great were those trams? 100% great that's how much. They were double deckers which would sway down the tracks at speed sometimes losing the overhead pole to the power lines if they went round a corner to fast. It would smash down on the roof and everyone upstairs would jump off their seats thinking their time had come! Great fun! These trams were taken off the streets as old fashioned and a dead loss. This was about 30 years before they were brought back as the way forward for public transport! My head hurts! But these sleek modern jobs that tell you what stop you are at do not have the magic of the old boneshakers.
On Coronation Day we went to my auntie's house in Wakefield (24 miles away) as they were posh & had a telly. We caught the tram to town and the Wakefield bus from there. I can well remember seeing the headline on my dads paper that day but it did not speak of the Coronation. It read " EVEREST CONQUERED ". What a great day.
Needless to say it was not long after this that my folks bit the bullet and bought a telly. It was a small black & white screen built into a polished cabinet. It also had doors on, which were always closed when not in use. This may have been for when people came round so they were not aware we had a TV. It tended to be frowned upon in the early days for some reason. (My mum would always tell people "Of course we do not watch it much") However the ariel on the roof was a bit of a giveaway!
I do not want to bore you to death so I will leave it there but it does make you realise how things have changed in a relatively short period of time. What will it be like in another 60 years? Well I will never find out!!
Thanks for reading the thoughts of an old codger!

THE FAMILY TREE

I am in the process of building my family tree.
This is a long and time consuming process but one which is richly rewarding. There is something very special about digging into your past and finding out about people you did not know existed.
And one of the really interesting things is seeing how these people lived. You often read in a newspaper about people being poor but we no longer understand what poor means!
If you go back 100 years or so you find that if people did not work they did not eat. It was as simple as that. There was no visit to the social to get money for nothing ( although M Ps probably could)
I have send for one marriage certificate from my Gran who was married in 1910. But the strange thing is that it reveals she got married on Boxing Day! Cor Blimey I wonder why they would do that I wondered. Then the thought struck me that they did it because Boxing Day was a holiday anyway and they could not work on that day. That would save having another day off work they could not afford.
This is all a far cry from today. When you ask people today where they are going on their honeymoon they may throw exotic names such as the Maldives at you. I think there is more than a fair chance that my Gran and Grandad were straight back to work on December 27th. I see from the certificate that Grandad is listed as a labourer so that would not have been a barrel of laughs. If they saved their money up really hard they may have got to the coast for a couple of days in the summer. But being as they had the cost of my mother 15 months later they would not be able to do that then.
I love looking at old pictures of these days & sometimes think how laid back it must have been at the side of todays stressful life. But I must be wrong. Behind the scenes of the ideal country life there must have been real poverty.
I am certain there has always been stress and worry. There is one thing for certain----the stress is not going to go away!!

All this has set me thinking about when I was growing up & how life has changed over those 60 years. I will tell you about that very soon. Have a nice week.

NEXT WEEK--- My memories of growing up.

THE MISSING LINK

So you have been writing asking where my blog is.
I have been rather busy but am back now.
Sorry about the break

Please log on as I will update at least once a week.

PROMISE

And you can rely on it. I am not a politician!!!

(See below)

THE WHITEHALL FARCE

OK I do not like politicians. I do not trust them with my money. I do think they are just interested in Number One.
But the latest developments confirm where the Whitehall Farces got their name from!
You will of course be aware that an inquiry has been called into the way MPs claim expenses. This is because it would appear that some have been rather less than scrupulous about what they claim. (You will notice I am being very kind here)
As a result of this, the speaker in the House of Commons has been placed in charge of the committee putting forward a report to overhaul the system. Almost at once reports came to light suggesting that the speaker himself was also involved in questionable behaviour over expenses. His wife's taxi fares of over £4,000 being an example. As a result of this there have been calls for him to resign as speaker. This job is such easy money he is of course reluctant to do so.
However the scene in the House yesterday was a total disgrace. The speaker was treated like a hero! They let him know they adored him. As he shouted "Order! Order!" there was a chorus of cheers from the Labour benches as if he was a returning God. I even saw one MP get up and tell him how wonderful he was! Yes, really!
I just ask myself if this sickening sight was anything to do with the fact that this is the man putting in the report about their expenses. He holds the purse strings in a way.
Choose how you look at all this there is something very smelly about the whole thing. Because at the end of the day the people that have the final say on MPs expenses are going to be MPs!
There is an easy way to clear this up. Make these people put in a receipt for everything and stop them employing their own family at taxpayers expense.
But they do not want to put in a receipt.

Now why would that be?

GOING--- GOING--- GONG

So where are the top New Year's honours going to this year?
Let me guess--to multi-millionaire's?
Spot on!
And how did I know? Because multi-millionaire's always get them. Indeed it seems to me that the government has a secret plan to exclude "normal" people.
Saved someone's life? Bad luck pal, the top honours are for people who have spent their lives making themselves rich. If you are very lucky you may get scraps from the table. But the real gongs go to the wealthy.
An examination of the 21 new Knights Bachelor tells an interesting tale.
16 seem to be civil servants of some sort. These are of course the top dogs, not the kind of person that gets their hands dirty. And they have spent their lives living off your tax.
4 are captains of industry. These are very very rich people whose target in life has been to earn more & more cash. An example of this is Stuart Rose, the boss of Marks & Spencer. I do not understand what he has done to earn this. He has certainly brought stacks of clothes in from low cost countries at the cost of British jobs but I cannot see how this helps the economy. If M&S were not selling these products someone else would so how have extra jobs been created?
Then there is ofcourse Michael Parkinson. Now Michael cannot be a bad chap. After all, like myself and her ladyship he comes from God's own county. But exactly what has he done to become Sir Michael? He is on TV talking to actors etc. when they have something to sell. Both he and his guests have made an awful lot of money out of this. Great. I have no problem with that. But why does that make him a Knight over the fireman that has saved a life?
Is our society really at the stage where celebrities are more important than life?
I am old enough to remember when the Beatles got an award and old soldiers who had seen their comrades die in battle sent their awards back in protest.
What a long way we have come since then.
But have we come down the right road?
As a nation we should be getting back to basics with the important things in life.
Should not these awards lead us in this direction?

10 CHRISTMAS WISHES

I have a list of 10 things I would like to happen for Christmas. I am certain that none of them will. But we all have a dream. Here is mine--

1) No more adverts for sofa's on the telly. Honest guys I do not want to buy one & I am sick to my back teeth of them.
2) No more adverts for beds on the telly. This is a fairly new phenomenon & I am bored already.
3) While on the subject I am dreading the usual deluge of "Sale" ads and the BBC showing footage on the news of people who have been queueing outside a shop in London for 3 days. We have seen it all before.Like every year for the last 25 years. Give it a miss. Please.
4) I wish for a wage limit on Premier League footballers so normal people could afford to see a game. Come to think of it that might not work. How could the poor dears manage on £50,000 a week. Silly me.
5) I wish my Wyre Forest council would stop the vendetta against Bewdley Town Football Club. They could instead use some common sense & leave them alone.
6) I wish people who are too lazy to re-cycle be fined £100 a week. Bet they would be all for saving the world then instead of destroying it.
7) I wish the council would increase the council tax in line with inflation. Now I really am being silly!!
8) I wish the bin & re-cycle teams would put the bins & boxes back in the proper place instead of all over the footpaths.
9) I wish politicians would learn to say "Yes" and "No"
They should know that when they prevaricate no one believes what they say.
10)I wish it would snow on Christmas day. How wonderful would it be to wake up to a foot of snow. Then it really would be Christmas!

In case you do not hear from me again before the big day---have a great Christmas You deserve it!!

James brathwaite

Quangos are unelected bodies appointed by the government whose aim seems to be to spend as much of your tax money as fast as they can.
Yet another example of this is James Brathwaite who is listed as a mere part timer at the South East England Development Agency. We can only assume this means getting foreign firms to invest in the London area instead of where the money is needed in the north,Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland.
The London area is very rich already -- these other places are where the jobs and investment should go.
However to get back to the story--Brathwaite has spent £51,489 on taxis & chauffeur driven cars.
Think about that £51,489 of your tax money.
Bearing in mind that he is only part time this means he has spent £343 a day!! This assumes he has taken no holiday!!
Bloody hell how can he have done any work? He must have spent all day driving about to run up such a bill. He could not have had time to get out of the taxis.
When is this crap government going to do something about all this?
Never. Waste is their middle name.
Perhaps Brathwaite has never heard of a bus that normal people use.
But why should he think of a bus when you are paying for his taxi?
Keep on paying suckers!

PAUL GRAY

Paul Gray has been boss of the tax authority for just 9 months.
He may have been in charge for a very short time but he has one hell of a record.
There have been 2 strikes during that time,it is reported there are hundreds of thousands of unopened tax returns in the offices & he has got rid of thousands of staff that should be dealing with them.
And now has lost 25 million private records of peoples bank details and NI numbers.
One hell of a record in 9 months.
He did not have any control of what was going on and has now walked away from it all.
However not without lining his own nest--just look at this.
His pay in the last tax year rose by 6%. When the government is telling us we should only have a small rise & they are cutting thousands of jobs to save money.
He was getting about £170,000 a year.
He is due to get a pension of £95,000 a year and his total pension pot is £1,786,000.
Made a fortune out of us from being a dead loss then.
I see he also makes money out of keeping sheep.
Well he could do with a good flocking!

LABOUR FAILS

THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES AGAIN.

It seems that a few people in the country thought this government was good & true & honest.
These people were ofcourse locked up in a mad house.

However to confirm the thoughts of the majority they have really pulled off a master stroke this time. They have lost millions of records which contain confidential information such as bank details etc. And the boss has left---just run away. How much of our tax money will he get paid for leaving? I shudder to think.

Could you believe that a government department only has one copy of such important stuff?

This is the government which is refusing to confirm we will get all our billions back from Northern Rock.

At least even the people in the mad house now fail to believe.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The Climate Change Panel (IPCC) has given it's verdict.

WE ARE KNACKERED!

They think the planet is in for a temperature rise of between 1.5% and 2.5%. and this would threaten 30% of animal and plant life. A possible rise of 4% will destroy life as we know it now.

They also say this is irreversible.
The Southern Ocean and rainforests are soaking up less carbon dioxide than ever before.

A lot of recent studies suggest that the situation will be far worse than even this.

We MUST all do our part.
We must re-cycle all possible.
We must re-use all possible.
We must not buy stuff we do not need (Women note this point)
We must use our cars less.

The more we can do now the better life our grandchildren will have. Think of others for a change!!

PEERS RAID THE KITTY

What a fiddle!
According to a new report peers are using a loophole in the expenses system to give themselves up to £48,000 a year tax free.
They are allowed to claim £308 a day to cover expenses when they are at the House of Lords. You think thats a bit of a cheek out of your tax but just wait for this.
They do not need to prove they have spent anything!!!!
Yes you saw right---your eyes do not fool you.
They do not show any bills or receipts--all they need to do is sign a bit of paper and Hey Presto the money is transfered from you to them. It's a great system if you are a peer.
To say this is open to a fiddle is understating the obvious. But when you look at the detail of their claims it is a real eye opener.
359 of the 550 Lords who claimed "day subsistence" (for meals etc) a £78.50 a day freebie, claimed the full amount 95% of the time. Strange that they should spent the full amount.
272 of the 406 Lords who claim "overnight subsistence" (for hotels or B&B) claimed the full amount(£159.50) of the freebie 95% of the time. Strange that they should spend the full amount.
338 of the 514 Lords who claimed office expenses (£69 a day) claimed the full amount 95% of the time. Strange that they should claim the full amount.

How can you trust a government to run the country when they let people claim things without proof that the money has been spent?
After all a lot of these sleeping old biddies are old or failed polititians. Now who would trust them?
And another thing. What is the Revenue doing letting these bods claim anything they want with no receipt? They would not let me or you do that. If the Revenue is saying these Lords are more honest than me I object to that.
Come on Brown--sort this mess out if you want us to vote for you.

THE GOVERNMENT IS LETTING US DOWN

Does it pay to be honest?
This is the question people must be asking themselves after a judge said that criminals should have their sentences cut if jails were overcrowded.
O the poor dears. We must not upset them in any way now must we?
Sir Igor Judge (Head of Criminal Justice) says that judges should reduce sentences due to "dreadful conditions". He says judges are justified in cutting sentences if two prisoners are in a cell designed for one.
I am just about fed up with all this namby-pamby stuff.
So criminals do not like jail!

So what?

In case the judge has forgotten jail is supposed to be a punishment. These thieves, murderers, rapists and child molesters are not meant to like it. They should hate it and make themselves vow never to return. How are we going to get them to do this if it is soft? After all they are getting free B & B paid for by the people they have attacked. At a cost to us of up to £40,000 a year. They must be having a good laugh.
Because it's a bit nasty they should be let out so they can commit more crimes?
What on earth is going on here? The people that have been the victims of crime should be looked after not the perpetrators. What is the point of spending millions of pounds on the trials and the police if there is no end product?
If I had my way these criminals would be three to a cell which would make them think "I am not coming back in here"
Even the government has just said that due to overcrowding, offenders due to be given short sentences would only go to prison if there was enough space.
This is a total disgrace. As I said at the start-does it pay to be honest? The answer is no. What is the point if there is no punishment? And with this attitude we are going to have more crime. So there will be less space in jails so more criminals will be on the streets.
Lock up your house! It is at more danger than ever. There is no point in criminals ever being honest.

THE RAPE OF BRITAIN

The government wants to build 3 million new homes!
Where the hell are they going to put them?
Not In My Back Yard thanks.
I see the National Trust is saying this as well.
Three square miles have been built on every year since 1995.
This will destroy our countryside and the very fabric of our country.

We would not need this if we did not let so many foreign people in here.

This small island is just not big enough.
Lets stop being the soft touch of europe.
Lets get all this under control.

FOREIGN CRIMINALS & OUR TAX

Why are we so slow at kicking out foreign criminals?
The cost to us as taxpayers is fantastic.
The average cost to you of keeping a category C prisoner is a whopping £24,000 a year. However the government has now admitted that hundreds of foreigners are being kept in special jails at even more expense to us law abiding folk. There are 154 foreign criminals in Bullwood at a cost of £40,478 a year each and another 284 in Canterbury at a cost of £38,610. Bloody Hell!!
This is more than most of us earn. And to make matters worse I cannot believe these bods have paid any tax on their ill gotten gains. But why should they bother to pay tax when we will pay their share as well as our own? It would be silly really.
Our beloved leader Gordon Brown has pledged to deport all foreign criminals. So where is the boat to put them on?
While these people have a jail of their own our British criminals are being let out early because there is not enough space for them!
1 in 7 of the prison population is foreign (a total of 11,200).This is up from 3,446 in 1993. If these were not here there would be enough room for our bunch with no overcrowding.
Come on Gordon we are waiting.

ENERGY

Energy is one thing I sometimes have very little of but according to new figures from RICS you will have even less of it if you use your own systems.
These guys say it can take up to 208 years just to get your costs back if you install things like solar panels or a wind turbine.
Bloody hell no wonder you see so few windmills around.
This is not good news for the bods trying to save the planet. In the real world no one will even try this stuff now.
If the government is serious about what it says it should give people financial help to bring this down to a more a sensible period of time.
Then we would all try for this to save money.
Come on Gordon show us your green bits.

BOOTS

If there was any doubt about how we are being conned by marketing this will dispel it .
A report in this mornings paper reveals that Boots are selling water for £32.92 a litre!
They have put it in a can and called it Expert Sensitive Refreshing Facial Spritz.
The only people it will refresh are the shareholders.
It turns out this is just pure water. Yes that's right. the thing that comes out of your tap.
You are supposed to spray this product on your face and the world becomes good.
Consumers should be aware of the value for money at Boots.
Will you shop there?

POLITICS

Reports in todays papers say that the government is looking to close 15 women's jails. This is as well as the report last week that the criminal classes will be let out early due to lack of space.
This seems to me to be the opposite of what the government have already said about law & order.
Anyway we should not worry.
After all Gordon said only last week he would not let us down. Or was that an American script writer? Who knows?
The main thing is we can trust him--because he says so.
In the meantime I see the Tories have had Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at their conference.
Why the hell do we want a foreign politition telling us what we should be doing?
Have the Tories run right out of steam? I think we know the answer.
And these bods wonder why we do not go out and vote!