Still here

I am not blogging on here much because I have started another anonymous blog (which only friends can see) on which I am recording the events during the last year in my job before I retire.

I notice that Priti Patel wants the borders closed and says they should have been closed in March 2020.

I wonder if she reads my blog. SEE HERE!

Christmas 2020

I woke at 0630 and opened the few presents I have had. At least it is a case of quality and not quantity and those who bought them are from people who love me and I love them.

In previous years, Christmas Eve is the night when vegetables are prepared: not this year. I have not been to midnight mass for many years and it is a service I would never have gone to had I not been an organist for many years.

It is a very different Christmas this year. I have not had a tree for 5 years as it is not worth bothering with just for me. In many ways it is just another day to get through.

Herd Stupidity

Before I begin, COVID-19 sounds like a horrible illness and I hope I do not get it.

It struck me that people are like sheep. Essentially stupid and easily influenced. I was walking down the street yesterday and could smell tobacco smoke. Walter Raleigh brought tobacco to England in the late 16th century (1586).

Consider how smoking took the world by storm. Even in my youth it was widely done and I spent many a Friday evening (after bellringing) in the pub with friends secondary-smoking the fog with which smokers had filled the room. Even when I started teaching there was a smokers' corner in the staffroom: terrible!

I accept that smoking is addictive because of nicotine but I also believe people took up smoking because it was the thing to do. The weakness of humans is that they want to do what everybody else does. This creates a social group and folk like to have an identity and sense of belonging.

All clothes fashions are the same. Flared trousers were once all the rage: you get my drift. It was once the fashion to go to church; but they say that died out in the 1960s with the Forsyte Saga on TV.

In 2020 the new craze is to wear a mask. It is now a fashion item. I am not going to debate whether it is, or is not, necessary to wear a mask; I will leave that up to others. I will say that people are stupid and follow a trend: we even have a label - FOMO. Getting the newest phone or whatever status symbol is current is what people love to do.

This may be a ramble, but I suspect there is more than a grain of truth in it.

The inmates are running the asylum

 Oh dear oh dear.

House Building

Continuing my theme of things I believe are wrong I should like to cite house building. In my area far too much farm land is being given over to housing. Also, new road building leaves pockets of land which cannot be farmed and which will ultimately be filled in with housing.

I realise that the are very recent new regulations aimed at revitalising town centres and I hope these work. I doubt they have been brought in because we cannot go on importing food (food miles etc.) and letting down farmers in the UK who - let's be honest - have had a very raw deal.

Not everyone can live in the countryside.

Covid-19

I am not sure how long the video below will remain on YouTube but it is excellent. (URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=motIW2Y42vQ)

From the comments it has attracted I agree with these points:

• Why were facemasks not brought in at the start?
• The Second Wave. Prepare for the Final wave, where the British wave goodbye to their country.
• The only second wave coming is what the migrants are bringing across the channel.
• Concerts and sporting events and even outdoor cookouts and parties with more than 10 people were not allowed but BLM protests were okay.

Such a lot wrong with the world

Everything spewed out at us by the media is really depressing. The world has changed. Honesty and integrity are gone. Recent events include...

• Statues being removed by yobs (irrespective of the rights or wrongs or an individual statue)
• Paramilitary [FF] marches (when such things are illegal)
• Illegal Immigration and accommodating these illegals in 4 star hotels! No doubt they will not be returned to the country of origin (if it is even known) and will get all the health and other benefits (hand outs) of living in the UK which are not available to native people who have paid their NI and Tax for years.
  
• The handling of Covid-19 and the way some (too many) people seem not to care about distancing and wearing a mask.
• Halal Certification - what's all that about and why?
• The slaughter of animals according to Halal rules wuth no stunning: what is the RSPCA doing about this?
• Choirs closing because of the need for 'diversity'.
  

We are f*cked as country. People who break laws do not seem to be brought to account unless it is some minor law or regulation that a normally law-abiding person has infringed.

Trust in the BBC is at an all time low too.