DutchEnery

Sometimes the BBC 4 channel broadcasts very good programs. One of these was on Sunday 28th March 2021. Headed by Chris Packham it was about the enormous h uman population explosion experienced within the last hundred years. In 1960 there were just over 2 billion people on the planet, today just 60 years on there are 7.7 billion! I too have said in previous posts that this number is unsustainable, let alone the number expected to be around in 2050 – 10 billion + ! One of the most populated cities in South America, indeed in the world is Sao Paulo – 22 million. The problems already well documented, but there is the water supply. What comes out of the tap you cannot drink. The reservoirs have dried up and the only water that can be found has to be obtained from drilled wells. Chris made a visit to a farm growing soya beans. The owner farmer displayed the usual attitude – there is a market for my produce, it’s growing, I need more land. Chris spoke to a number of people, all were worried...

Living in Wales you will have heard of the word ‘ Independence ’. As I have originally come from the Netherlands, which is also known as Holland by foreigners (Holland is basically the two western sea side provinces) which also has had years of struggle with the Spanish empire and also the French and German empires, I understand the wish to be independent from an overbearing neighbour. Wales has its own language, its own long history. But the Anglo-Saxons and Normans had other ideas (and still do – remember the Welsh knot! ). However, the question really is can Wales afford to be independent? Ever since the English conquest Wales has been used as a backdrop, an area to be profited from by English overlords. When coal was found, English money to dig pits came quickly but all profits went to mostly English grandees. Sure, they build vast houses, castles even, in the Welsh countryside giving employment to some impoverished young Welsh maidens as slaves to the masters. Things do not chang...

It’s a funny world, is it not? We are having the one of the worst pandemics in some time with lock-downs, 2 million deaths, businesses going to the wall, whole families disrupted because Daddy is dead and Mummy is out of work or on stand-by. And on the other side we have those calamity organisers also known as politicians, who have been lovely sheltered in their ivory towers. This time not so much the blubbering wasters in the UK but now in Europe. Grandstanding wizards who are looking over their shoulders to see who is guilty of stealing their vaccines! There has not been a better time to see how politicians can mess up almost anything they get their hands on. They always talk a very good talk, the sweetest words, the best of promises but when it gets to action they fail so miserably. Exactly as has been shown in the capitals of Europe. But now instead of gearing up, to spring into action, to get the supply lines sorted out, all they do is more talk, becoming belligerent, it’s not my ...

Anyone ever heard this adage? "Before opening mouth, first engage brain"? You might think, ah that’s good for other people I am alright, I am well adjusted and careful about what I say! Yes, indeed and so did our esteemed Prime Minister, the famous battle-scarred Boris. He is well known to make some gaffes in the spoken word and the latest one reported is about saying off the cuff ‘Greed is what gave Britain the Covid vaccine first’. That’s a nice one Boris. That must have tickled the German EU bear cub Ursula pink! It shows though that politicians who play for high stakes would be well advised to carefully weigh their words. The vaccine situation in Europe is perilous, taking that the EU was pretty slow out of the starting blocks and appeared to have waited to see what the vaccine was doing in the UK and then came out with some ludicrous idea that the vaccine was not working for the over-65’s! Whoever came up with that semi-illiterate remark should be sent to Siberia for...

Sometimes we can read some funny stuff on Quora, the Question and Answer website. This one really made me laugh out loud. The question posed was – Should Britain apologise for its imperial past? And the reply (abridged): Absolutely right we should. That’s fair. We’ll put it on the list of World IOUs for you. You’ll have to wait a while though because we’re waiting for a monster size payment from Italy for the Roman Occupation. We’re also waiting for the cheques to clear from Germany and Scandinavia for all that business about the Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and so forth. Not forgetting that BIG payout we’re eagerly awaiting from France for the Norman Conquest and the cost of sorting out that little fella, what’s his name again ? Apparently, there is talk of another hefty bill to Germany ( again ) for the little trouble in 1939-45, also naming Russia, Italy ( again ) and Japan for aiding and abetting. Although you could argue that the answer was not really answering the question...

The debate about fake news has not gone away of course, you only have to look at the social media outlets. But what strikes me as somewhat important is the news that most European countries have now halted the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. This for fear of it causing blood-clots. Well, I have had mine and am awaiting the second soon. Please forgive me but has it something to do with Brexit? Or should we investigate where this ‘rumour’ started and why and how? I would not put it past sources in Russia and perhaps China as well to start this in order to benefit sales of their own produced vaccine. Frankly it would not surprise me at all. There is still a Cold War going on but hidden from view. As I have said many times, humans are strange animals, ravenous, and violent to extremes. If someone would explain why there were blood-clots after the Pfizer vaccine (which there have been) and compare those statistics with the normal day to day occurrences of blood-clots then perhaps we can lay this to r...

Just to clarify this before someone says it – no, I am not particularly known to be a royalist. But I do think that the royal family has had a bit of a rough time lately. First of all, as humans they will have to suffer the same ills as we all do. Moreover, as they occupy a position of power, even though it is mostly invisible to us street-dwellers, anything they do outside the daily norm can have an immediate media reaction. Prince Andrew, bless his cotton socks, is a case in point. He may or may not have done the things a lot of people are accusing him off, he might be better off to stand up with evidence. It seems to me this will not go away for some time. Couples will fall out with each other, royals are not exempt. As some in the media seem to suggest, if that is so what is the use of royals? If we are to look up to them as personification of all that is calm and good then they are not a particularly good example? Well, I disagree, presidents can also fall foul of the media? R...

On this bright and sunny Sunday morning it is good to look at the immediate environment. Looking at the quality of the streets when taking a short stroll you cannot help but thinking how do people live, what do they expect from life, their existence. When I see the detritus left behind on the streets, mostly plastics like cellophane from all sorts of packaging, or left-over fast food thrown away. A Sunday morning breakfast for the jackdaws and rats. It is easy to blame it on young people. The problem as always is generalisation. Young people does not mean all young people. When you say ‘people’ it does not mean the whole 7 billion that are on the planet. I have been critical of young people. In fact I suppose I should have said ‘careless young people’ or simply ‘careless people’. But and this is important to understand, it is that particular segment, the ‘careless’ people who set the tone. If 25% of the UK population do not care about the environment then we are in trouble. As a scho...

As told a while ago I built a new desktop computer although the word built is a bit grand. The reality is that basically it is an assembling job. You buy the parts and put them into a box. Job done. No, job not done. The truth is that quite a few things can go awry. Cables from the power supply (PSU) have to go to specific places on the motherboard (Mobo) and pending on type of processor purchased you might need a graphics card (GPU). I purchased a Nvidia card, in fact a nice Nvidia Quadro P400 with 2Gb of memory and which is powerful enough to run some interesting games, games like Minecraft and 0ad. I am not into the violent war games although 0ad can do a bit of bloodletting. However, over time it became an annoying fact that the Linux desktop started freezing from time to time. On my older computers although also with a Ryzen 5 processor and an AMD GPU, there was no such problem. But Nvidia apparently is not particularly good to Linux and support is minimal. There are drivers, thei...

This morning I woke in a country that has become more woke than I am feeling right now. Referring to poor Piers Morgan feeling that he has no future with ITV. It does not surprise me of course because our institutions , the BBC, ITV, the Government, local and national, and all sorts of other society establishments are now so deeply stuck in trying to outdo each other in denouncing words, change everything from white to black, including history and have invented a new way to say you’re not coming to work. You have a problem with mental health! But what IS mental health? Depression? Then I have it. I am depressed mostly by humanity not seeing how it actually is busy destroying the very place it needs to survive. I am depressed by the young people in particular who want to go back to ‘normal’ without seeing what their ‘normal’ is doing. Flying to Spain for a p*ss-up on the beach watching the nude frolics of others is the new ‘normal’? Taking sleeping tablets or sniff nitrous oxide (laug...

I s it just me or are lots of Americans a bit, shall we say loopy? I have been reading the doe-eyed opinions of a certain Duchess and thought – What the......? Here is someone who seemed to have thought ‘Hey, my being a low-ranking(!) two-bit soap star is not really to my taste, what can I do now? And here we are, b ut what did we expect? The American psyche is exactly like this, it’s all about money and celebrity. The preening cockatoos of Hollywood are the example. If you are not ‘bankable’ in the US of A you tend to end up in the gutter. In the meantime the accusations have started flying. But here is the thing, in all families there are problems, the Royals are human just like the rest of us mudskippers. The accusations made are typically American claptrap, all about ratings and of course, big cash! Ms Duchess talked about those ‘nasty’ courtiers but forgot to mention how she was coached before the ‘Interview’. It will be denied but you do not make such programs without preparat...

With the furore about an increase for the NHS staff which the incredible wise and up-to-date Westminster politicians have offered one might think wait, have we suddenly won the Euromillions? How does a country like the UK actually deal with money? Hard cash if you will call it that? Bear in mind that as I said before, a country has no money of its own. However that is not strictly true, they are also in charge of providing the means through policy. Although in the UK it is the responsibility of the Bank of England . T hey supply the banknotes and coins. So by definition they could easily increase the amount of money in circulation. They can do this when unempl o yment is high and growth is low, more available cash in the country will stimulate the economy. The opposite of course happens as well. The central bank can take money out of circulation when things are overheating. Dampening the economy somewhat. You might wonder where all this borrowed money is coming from. There are a numb...

Budget. What budget? Oh yes, the national budget. A great pooha about nothing much really. I often wonder what people expect! I have said this before, who do you think will pay for Covid? Governments have no money of their own, people seem to think they do somehow. Governments spend only one thing, your money, our money! So, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer says he is having to raise 100 billion or more he or she has only two ways to do so. First of all raise income through taxation and secondly he or she can borrow the money. Borrowing is usually through government bonds or saving schemes. Called Gilts but I am not so sure whether today it is such a good investment for investors, banks etc. It is a safe way but safe usually means less interest. Anyway the country has amassed a debt now of over two trillion pounds. For the uninitiated that is £2,000,000,000,000! Pocket money of course but at 2% interest it costs the UK £60 billion a year to service that kind of debt. Tha...