I'm not talking about the bare faced lies notdistant. I've already said Putin is lying through his teeth and I have yet to understand quite what he is trying to achieve and why. However, I take "how dumb have we got to get before the West get really involved" as an expectation we somehow join in the fighting bit. No problem with supplies and no problem with increased expenditure but I draw the line at sending in the troops. I've heard the call to arms many times over the years and normally it's by people who want to send others but have little or no chance of going themselves. Politicians are often the worst aka Blair with his weapons of mass destruction war. We complain about Putin lying but our mob are pretty good at it as well. The West won't stop this conflict. They will though enable Ukraine to keep it going. I believe it suits western governments to do that and especially America. The only people to stop it are the Russian people themselves when the cost in lives and living standards get too high for them not to revolt.
We certainly cannot send troops. Such things have a habit of escalating and that would risk WW3 and nuclear war. But, we need to draw a line and make it clear we won’t get fooled again (to quote my all time favourite band). Everyone’s favourite grandad Ronald Reagan brought the Wall down by minding his own business while spending sums on defence that the USSR just couldn’t match and Russia is now weaker economically than the USSR ever was. The fact that the dear old F16, very much Top Gun 1 rather than Top Gun 2, completely outclasses the best the Russians have emphasises the relative technology available.
Watched the West Ham game tonight. Thought they were crap and their ball retention was even worse. I have seen better ball retention and passing at Home Park last season. But, at the end of the evening it's the result that matters and they won. Florentina did a load of diving about and feining injury from the kick off. I so hate that in football. West Ham fans will be in trouble or at least the Club will for misile throwing. The Ref took the players away when one of the Florentina players got hit in the back of the head and was cut. What a bunch of morons. The biggest game in their club history in the last load of years and they have to do that. I was so glad there wasn't extra time because I might have been tempted to switch off. 90th minute is a great time to score a winner.
Saudi Arabia's...Public Investment Fund...valued at £514 Billion is becoming a sinister dark version of Big Brother. Donald Trump's Private Equity Firm has benefited by $2 billion from it's investment. It also has it's hand in world sport.....and the purchase of Newcastle United seems to have come about with a threat against the British Government that if they didn't allow the purchase there could be economic consequence ?.....football has been taking the funds (PIF) money in various ways for a long time. Golf was at war....many of the top players where hoovered up by instant wealth....and it has now sucked up by amalgamating the two branches of the sport. Amnesty International has hit out about Saudi Arabia's human rights record....but the big money of the PIF steamrollers it's way forward sucking up all that it can buy with it's untold wealth. The only saviour on the horizon is the demise of Oil use worldwide.....in the meanwhile their wealth is influencing sport and world economics etc and nothing seems to be beyond their grasp.
The south-west is the second wettest region of the UK, after Wales, We had an extremely wet March and April although the last 10 days have been hot and dry. Virtually the whole area is now under a hose pipe ban, The population of the south west grew by 7.8% from 2011 to 2021 alone and Devon and Cornwall also have to cater for a huge influx of tourists in the drier spring and summer months. Nevertheless, SWW has not built a significant dam since 1989. It talks about increasing dam capacity, but these are minor projects often involving the use of disused china-clay pits, each holding less than a 40th of total capacity. They also cloud the issue by discussing how they help farmers to establish storage for their own needs on their own farms, which is hardly relevant to a region wide hosepipe ban. South West Water has just declared a dividend on £112m despite losses on £8.5m, presumably after deduction of their £2m fine for illegal discharges of sewage. The typical shareholder in a water company is a pension fund because the former require a steady and significant cash inflow to match their outgoings and the former can provide just that, provided they don't go spending cash on big investment projects. Whatever you think of privatisation, the difference between the privatisation of water on the one hand and other sectors is that there is no choice for the domestic customer and therefore no competition. There have been no benefits and the industry generally performs abysmally. The regulator is weak: often headed up by a senior figure who's retired from within the industry itself. From 2012 until 2022, the chainman of Ofwat was is Jonson Cox, who before this appointment was... CEO of Anglian Water. Three quarters of AWG shares are owned by pension funds, the largest of whom is the giant Canadian fund, CPP. This cannot go on. How can it be that one of the wettest areas in a nation world renowned for being wet cannot provide sufficient and reliable water supplies for its residents? How can it be that raw sewage is dumped into the sea in a region which is highly dependent on the tourist industry? It's simple: too little investment because of the need to maintain dividends to pension funds.
I remember when the prospects of privatisation of the utility industries came up. The advertising campaign to tempt the ordinary folk into investing in them and the virtual promise that being a share holder would be good for all. The carrot was dangled that people would profit from it and it would all be for the greater good. I did not agree with any of it and said at the time to anyone who broached the subject that utilities we all rely on should NEVER be placed in the hands of private ownership. It was obvious where the shares would end up no matter where they started. The price of shares went sky high and people cashed in. Of course they did it was almost free money. The inward investment was never going to match the money to be made and the cost of it to the user was always going to go up eventually. Why is anyone surprised now that all these problems are happening and the costs of it are as much as people can almost pay. Gas, Electricity and Water. They are all the same and should be taken back into Government control at the earliest opportunity. It won't happen though will it.
We’ve had tremendous benefits from privatisation in telecoms and energy, at least until the regulator forgot that energy trading requires proper hedging. Not in water though. Without competition there is no benefit to the consumer just a free hand for the water companies.
At last we have something to celebrate. Boris quits parliament. Now they just need to stick him in Jail and it will be job done. Oh and scrap his honours list which is cringe worthy.
Donald Trump...trumps the lot of them....storing boxes of sensitive info in his shower room....,years after leaving the White House.....when he shouldn't have had any of it in his home anyway......and of course he is pleading innocent and it's all a witch hunt. .........and then we've got Putin saving Russia from the the Nazis that are running Ukraine. .........and then we have China learning how not to take back Taiwan/Formosa by how Putin has cocked things up. .........and then we have President Biden leading the free world.....that's when he is not stumbling around and falling over. .........and we haven't mentioned Liz Truss who financially tried to destroy this country in her six weeks in charge.
Thank God that clown Johnson has gone but I suspect this may cause a split in the Conservative Party, with a far right Little England rump joining with the Faragist brown shirts. Bearing in Johnson and his crew regard truth as being an optional extra, and their Daily Mail reader audience couldn’t care less as long as they’re told what they want to hear, will we end up with a fascist Trumpian distopia or permanent Labour rule? One thing’s for sure, I’m completely disenfranchised by the current lot, all of them. The unfolding disaster of Brexit and the continued pretence by the Tories that it was other than that killed any support I had for them.
Further to Saudi Arabia's...Public Investment Fund (PIF).....who own Saudi team Al Ahli.... have upped their offer to Lionel Messi to $534 million for a three year contract....but he is probably now one of the few footballers who isn't ruled by only money....and has turned them down and gone to Miami instead. Al Ahli have turned their attention now to Riyad Mahrez and offered peanuts to him at only £40 million a season......how will he get by on only that.
Saudi league champions...Al-Ittihad.....also owned by PIF have offered N'Golo Kante a £86.2 million-a -year package.......talks are also taking place with representatives of Hugo Lloris, Alexis Sanchez, Sergio Ramos, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Angel Di Maria and Roberto Firmino Since Cristiano Ronaldo joined the Saudi Pro League attendance have almost doubled year on year. The old model of bringing in aging stars who would be looking for their last contracts is now turning towards younger stars who have only just passed 30 yrs of age. Having taken over Newcastle they are now looking at introducing major younger talent through such as Eddie Howe's management at Newcastle to develop for the future of the Saudi Pro League. If Argyle don't get their targets this summer they can always blame the Saudi's.
The Loch Ness Monster is in danger. Loch Ness is at it's lowest level since 1990 because of low rainfall in the area and the storage of water for Hydro Power.....this is a concern after below average rainfall over the Winter/Spring period.......with the summer and autumn still to come.
It's 750ft deep isn't it with a relatively small surface area for that much water? Even South West Water couldn't cock that up... could they?
Thames Water are leaking water as if it is going out of fashion.....some leaks are weeks and sometimes months old. Years back we had a leak buried in the concrete foundations....even though I had every thing turned off my street meter was showing that water was going somewhere....Thames came along and couldn't find anything.....they eventually decided something was happening under our hall floorand a coupling of booted navvies' came along and treated our hall carpet as if it was a rag. They got a pneumatic drill smashing away at the concrete and eventually at a depth of 2ft broke through the concrete base into the rubble beneath.....no piping found and no water. A FORTNIGHT later an older more experienced man with his listening gear thought he detected something 5ft away from the original dig near the front door.....along come the navvies again THREE days later and went through the process of digging up our foundations and found a copper pipe seeping water....this was only a few feet away from where the piping came into the property. They spent most of the day trying to solder a repair....without success because there was water still in the pipe that they couldn't get rid of......they then put a coupling on with nuts and olives. Both digs where filled with concrete...not very well....leaving a slightly bumpy finish....and the wooden blocked floor of course didn't go down too well over the bumps. I spent two weeks trying to get it down better...but not very well.....the carpet which had been rolled to one side and continually stood on with their muddy boots never went down very well....especially where the two bumps where. I spent nine month negotiating with Thames Water over the chaos they had caused.....which lasted 30 days. The end result was I got no compensation and had to pay the extra £500 over the top water bill.
Anglian Water were responsible for my first ever speeding ticket. The main road we joined when leaving our house was a 30mph B road. Going south and west, there was a 90 degree bend bounded by a fine old brick wall belonging to the “Old Rectory” a gorgeous Georgian mansion. You couldn’t go round it at 30 never mind faster. At the end of our lane, a water main was leaking gently for months and when the winter came, the flow ran down to the Old Rectory corner and froze. Several vehicles slid into the brick wall. I don’t know who lived in the house but I’d imagine they were well connected. To give you an idea of the scale of the property, they kept 2 ponies in the back garden. So I imagine calls were made and the camera van was there a lot quicker than Anglian Water were to the leak. Because of the road layout, it couldn’t face north and east from where the crashed cars had come but it did catch nearly everyone in the village coming in the opposite direction, which had no connection to the crashes whatsoever. I was one of those: thanks Anglian Water.
We have a turf war situation going on here in NW Kent at the moment. Do we own our garden...or does a Vixen and her two very playful cubs . Mrs Plym has been a plant gardener for all our married life....(coming up to 59yrs). But this year she has had a continual fight with these foxes....who take great pleasure in digging up all her previous days planting....it's probably the nutrients in the soil that their after. We planted a new magnolia last summer....which needed certain extras added to the soil to help its growth....this year recently they have spent the night digging out the soil...scooping it up to 6ft across the grass....the Magnolia is showing signs of not liking it.......this tree isn't cheap to buy. So this year I bought a fox repellent....two sachets in a box costing nearly £12.....end result ziltch.....the foxes aren't repelled at all.......the instructions doesn't say how long the repellent.works for....I'm not surprised....may I suggest that come dusk it's useless. My garden has six different boarders with neighbours....I live in the corner of a cul-de-sac and my garden fans out like a triangle....10ft boarder on the road....fanning out to about 250ft at the far end....I am continually filling in holes that the foxes dig under fences to continue their patrol of the area. We do enjoy watching the Vixen and her two cubs playing in the garden....but they need schooling on how not to upset the garden owner....or do they think that they own the garden....if so why aren't the council billing them for council rates.
im off there soon so will see that for my self , doing the NC 500 road trip never been to scotland and doing the lakes on way back in the vw camper should be fun
