Tag Archives: wisdom

A “disingenuous grifter”

10 Replies

Owl Sculpture – Harlow Carr

I started writing a post about the Gladstone family yesterday, but as usual I became bogged down with diversions, wikiperigrinations (yes, I just made it up, though it wasn’t difficult)) and trying to trace a lost reference. It’s in my head but I can’t retrace it on the internet – I should have made a note at the time. It will involve upper class privilege, grave robbing and the end of Empire. Hopefully, I will have it done in the next couple of days and keep it down to 500 words. That of course, is the problem, it takes a lot longer to write 500 words on the subject than it does to ramble on for 2,000.

This reminded me of Mr Gladstone and the “tax on knowledge“. Gladstone, who passed a number of measures to help the working man, believed that an educated working class was better able to vote and to help themselves without government intervention.

How very different to events in the USA where Mr Trump is involved in a battle to steal truth and keep voters in ignorance.

We have the same here. We have just had a by-election where Nigel Farage, a political charlatan of the highest order, faced off against a comedian dressed as a waste bin. Farage claims the victory, which is true, because in the absence of any other major party he polled the most votes. He uses this to back his claim that voters support him as the anti-establishment candidate who really doesn’t deserve to be investigated for trousering £5 million donated by a crypto-currency billionaire who lives in Thailand.

However, a lot of people, over 9,000 voted for Count Binface. He’s a joke candidate, but a substantial number of people preferred him to the snake oil salesman.

It’s not really a resounding slap down for Farage, but, of course, the enquiry will go ahead again. It makes you wonder if the election stunt was to allow things to be tidied up behind the scenes.

This week’s political question is which word from “crypto-currency”, “billionaire” and “Thailand” is the most helpful one in establishing the confidence of you as a voter.

And just for the record, Nigel Farage, the anti-establishment candidate was educated at a top private school, worked as a commodities broker in the City and had a bank account at Coutt’s bank. These are not generally regarded as marks of a man who is not part of the Establishment, though many, including a member of the Coutt’s Board, consider Farage to be a “disingenuous grifter”. That’s pretty strong for a banker.

And just to show that I’m not biased, here are some poll results quoted on his (lengthy) Wiki page –

“YouGov found that overall, 73% believe he is “very” or “fairly sleazy”, the highest figure among party leaders (51% for Keir Starmer, 42% for Zack Polanski, 36% for Andy Burnham and 34% for Kemi Badenoch). Even among recent Reform UK voters, 40% believed that Farage was sleazy.”

Sorry about the politics, it just happened . . .

Owl carving – Sherwood Forest

I added the owls to inject a bit of wisdom into the post.

 

 

A Disaster Averted

13 Replies

I’m giving myself ten minutes for this as I have other things to do.

I decided I would make us brunch this morning as I was up late and Julia was already busy with meetings. The menu was welsh rarebit (using up some poor quality grated cheese from ASDA), rye sourdough toast and scrambled eggs. It sounded quite sophisticated to me, and goes some way towards redressing the meat which has been creeping back into our diet. We never intended going fully vegetarian, but we were going to cut back. Lockdown has seen us eating quite a lot of sausages and bacon, so it’s time to cut back a little.

The problem came with the sourdough. I often cut it with a sharp carving knife rather than the bread knife as the crust can be a bit tough. This loaf was a few days old and was tougher than normal. The bread knife, allied to my poor grip, didn’t make much impression and I reverted to the sharp knife, using both hands to press down at the end and cut the tough bottom crust.

Obviously it wasn’t the best way to treat a foot long blade and it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the bread and breadboard slipped and I found a sharp knife approaching my abdomen at high speed. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Old age and arthritis seem to have dulled my common sense. Just like the time my grandfather nearly severed his thumb cutting kindling or my grandmother stood in the kitchen sink to change a lightbulb. It’s a worry, though it’s also nice to think I’m taking my place in a long line of family stupidity.

Julia, alterted by the clattering and bad language, came to complete the cutting.

That’s the ten minutes, so I’ll stop there. The description of my scrambled eggs will wait.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Blue Iris

I selected the owl picture because we all need wisdom at the moment and the iris because I like irises.

Pre-emptive Post

21 Replies

It’s going to be a busy day today so I’m writing a post in the morning to make sure that I get one done today. It’s not quite my Dad’s 90th birthday but we’re having a party today and another one on Saturday. That way we maximise the number of guests without causing any over-excitement. With the average age of the guests, you don’t want anyone getting over-excited. Or having too much sugar.

I won’t be able to go on Saturday but Julia will be going, as will both kids (work permitting).

Snow is forecast, which is worrying my sister as she doesn’t want me driving in dangerous conditions. We don’t handle snow well in general in the UK, but I’ve covered that before. We have an inch or two a year and the country grinds to a halt. We are always caught unprepared and by surprise. Those of you blogging from America, with your eight inches in one day and your own mini snow ploughs, don’t know how lucky you are.

If I win the lottery I’m going to spend the winters somewhere that doesn’t have snow. I’m tempted to spend it somewhere that doesn’t have Christmas either.

Health news is good.

Monday’s blood sample met with approval and my next appointment is now three weeks away. Three whole weeks!

My arthritis has subsided.

Even my face is feeling quite good, though the remaining stitches show no sign of dissolving. This is slightly worrying as I once had stitches that healed into my eyelid. They took some getting out. I’m hoping to avoid a replay of that one.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Pills. These are bigger and brighter and more photogenic than my normal ones.

I’m off in a minute to collect the balance of my prescriptions. They managed to give me three out of the four items last week and the doctors’ receptionist told me that was because I’d only ordered three.

This clearly isn’t true, but I smiled weakly to indicate that I believed her as there’s no benefit in winning the argument and no point in annoying people by proving them wrong.

I think I’m finally becoming wise…

 

 

Out for a Curry

16 Replies

We went for a curry tonight – three shop staff and five customers celebrating a birthday. For reasons of internet security I won’t tell you who was having a birthday, which birthday it was or what the exact date is. I can, however, tell you that it wasn’t mine.

I had a nice mild curry, drank tonic water and only spilt down my shirt once. My days of raucous behaviour and painfully hot curries are over. As my 60th birthday chugs over the horizon I have finally discovered the benefits of middle age.

Life is good/

The only fly in the ointment was that I was late due to a heavily congested ring road, but as the people in the crash were clearly having a worse day than me I listened to the radio and tried patience.

I’m not sure I like patience so I may revert to shouting next time it happens.

That’s all for now.

Learn one new thing a day

5 Replies

Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but someone once told me that if you can learn one new thing a day you will become the wisest person in the world. As a result, I try to learn one or more new things a day. Despite this I can’t help feeling that I’m a long way from being the wisest person in the world. Part of the problem is that the more you know, the more you realise how much you don’t know.

I suppose that’s why they say ignorance is bliss.

On that subject, the farmer is currently showing round the people who will be taking over from us. There are seven days in the week but they need to meet on one of the days that we meet. Talk about rubbing it in. But as I said, ignorance is bliss.

As if that isn’t bad enough, they came and parked near the bird feeders and scared everything off. Humph!

However, back to knowledge.

Gemma wanted to know about baked beans and, as we encourage everyone to do, asked me to check it up on the computer. We covered haricot beans, Boston Baked Beans and Heinz Baked Beans, and during this tour of the net I noticed a link from one of the recipe pages.

The link is to the Boston Molasses Disaster. I’d never heard of it, but in 1919 it killed 21 people. From that page I went to the London Beer Flood. I’d never heard of that either, but in 1814 323,000 gallons of beer escaped from burst tanks, destroyed two houses and killed at least 8 people. I won’t spoil the surprise, so if you are intrigued by the names you can click the link.

Jayne playing at being a farmer
If tail lifts could talk this one would be saying “one at a time please”
Enjoying winter sun at the Ecocentre

The Farmer has now been loaded onto Dave’s van (the cardboard farmer, that is, not the breathing one) and he is off to school too. He was just too tall to fit in the car with Connie, and screwed together too tightly to allow us to dismantle the frame easily. That’s what happens when you ask a mixed group of artists and engineers to make a stand for a piece of cardboard.

Crafting for Christmas
Hard at work in the Ecocentre
Making the Quercus Christmas card

We filled the rest of the day with making Christmas cards and I am now, reluctantly, going across to the kitchen to make jam. I really don’t like using the kitchen these days, with all the politics and unpleasantness that it now involves, but it needs to be done and I have no choice…

Later: Jam making went well – it’s all set and washed up now. 🙂