DutchEnery

A lot of the questions I read on the boards are to do with elements of the Universe. Questions like - Is it expanding/contracting – when did it begin – was it an enormous explosion – did God do it – what was there before the Big Bang – and so on. It is all enveloped with much semi-scientific jargon, probably spoken by students of the subject. Some even prattle on about G R and QM, and for the uninitiated these acronyms stand for General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, when they tried to put these together they failed. Interesting train of thoughts. I applaud because to be very frank no-one actually knows anything about the Universe bar that there are lots of stars and it’s pretty empty. OK let’s assume for a minute we want to travel to the stars. At the moment that’s not possible with the present technology. We went to the Moon but only just and at great cost. Even Mars is beyond the reach of humans. Gathering knowledge is great if it can be aiding our existence and here is the poi...

A lot is said about being safe in the Web world. And yes, I suppose the Internet is a bit like the old Wild West, everyone carrying a gun. But some are more adept at using it than others. Should we protect our tech? Sure we should. Our personal data is as said, personal! If I want to buy something and search for it using the Internet then I don’t want cookies being stored on my system that record my preferences (I like scantily clad ladies) and worse share that with other sellers as well. So, indeed it pays to be vigilant. I discarded Windows long ago and went over to Linux. Safer but it depends how you use your systems. Clicking on everything you see will soon get you into trouble. Firefox now can give us total cookie protection, locking them so they cannot be shared. Personal info recorded by the site you visit cannot then be used by other sites building up a profile of your preferences. But even better is to combine Firefox with another search engine. Duck D uck Go is good but Star...

Well, well, well, it is sad to see a government slowly disappearing in front of your eyes. Yes, the rot has set in. Perhaps Covid-19 has not helped. Loads of people have been under quite some strain. I suppose I have been lucky, living with a large garden. At no time, even during the strictest lock-down have we felt marooned. The local supermarket quickly moved into home delivery albeit for a small charge. But we managed. I have been horribly aware about those people in cities living in a one-bed flat on the middle floor of a tower block. That is not much fun. No balcony, just open the windows. Yet it is the price we have to pay for having 67 million citizens and rising! This can only get worse. And so it is very worrying to see a government thrashing about rudderless, making one gaffe after another. I supported Boris and to some extent still do but I am afraid the way he is dealing with upsets shows he is not capable immediately to deal with problems. Boris likes to think he is modell...

Some news coming through, Welsh football supporters not wanted in good ‘ol Mark Rutte’s country. Yes, Holland that is. May we ask why that is? Oh, our rising Covid infections. The Delta variant. But I have heard it is the same, more or less over on the continent. The Delta virus is virtually everywhere! The Danish supporters are apparently OK, some 70,000 will be cheering on their team. Might it have to do with something called Brexit? Hmmmm. Nice job Mr Rutte, you are a worthy prime minister. You seem to like foreign countries. Hungary for instance.Oh I forgot that Mr Rutte is a very woke liberal promoting heavily the LBGT+ faction in Holland hence he is anti-Hungary's laws. Obviously he forgot it is nothing to do with Holland how an independent Hungary deals with its own internal affairs. But Mr Rutte aint happy and wants Hungary out of the EU. Ah, that will go down well in Brussels then. No more goulash for the Dutch! However, if I was Mr Rutte, the woke Liberal, I would worry...

It was when one of my friends said to me, ‘The world is stark-raving mad, we cannot fly to Spain, we are stuck in this idiotic country’. It was then that I started thinking – ‘What’s gone wrong with our society?’ When quite sane people, yes my friend is sane, cannot see the portents. We have been given a brain, we can think about the future, even better we can think of the future by looking at happenings today! It is the same almost everywhere. I am a Christian but until very recently I have never heard a sermon telling us about our responsibility for the planet. In Genesis God says - ‘Here is the world, I have given you dominion over the birds of the air, the fish in the seas and the animals on land’. The word is ‘dominion’, it did not say ‘Kill everything you can get hold of’. It means taking responsibility, responsibility for the world, the planet we are part of. It sounds simple but it comes with an enormous load of side-issues. Because any living thing, whatever it may be, make...

If you are like me and a lot of you are then you will have had some thoughts about how we are governed. I had a question, this I posted via email to our MP (Member of Parliament) that was I think 7,000 years ago and I am still awaiting an answer. I have to say the initial answer I had was that the esteemed MP was busy thanks to Covid and she would be back blah, blah, blah. Obviously that was a lie. That does not surprise me as this sort of thing is quite normal for the UK M P s. However, it started me thinking about what in God’s name political representation is all about. Locally I have one community councillor who looks after the graveyard (!), bus stops, pavements etc, but he’s never seen. Then two borough councillors, they are more active but still have very little push. I say this because nothing much changes around here except the normal slow decay and new housing estates. The ‘old’ town is slowly decaying thanks to the enormous increase in cars and lorries. Next we have an ‘Ass...

Question – Is the nursery rhyme ‘Ba, Ba, Black Sheep’ racist? Now as I am living in Wales I thought it best to ask a sheep, we’ve got plenty of them here. They are white, off-white, muddy grey, grey, black, mottled, you name it, we’ve got it. Anyway, the sheep answered ‘Ba, Ba, Ba’ which I managed to translate as ‘Yes, as long as it is an English black sheep’. I take it to mean that Welsh black sheep are not racist. Hurrah! So, where are we now then? The Twitterati (usually London based, ultra liberal woke weed puffing, brain addled, bald-headed, beard stained apologies of humankind) are in an absolute frenzy. I just don’t understand why they are not trying to ban any references to colour, any colour, whatsoever. LBGT+ to be banned from using rainbows. Wonderful! The new News program headed by Andrew (him of the acid tongue, long may he live) Neil is now to take on the ‘woke’ brigade and not before time! The Twitter idiots must not be deleted, no siree, they must be mad...

And so the rot has started. The Conservatives lost the Amersham by-election. A sound 16,000 majority was simply overturned. Despite the government’s great success of dealing with the Covid drama, other factors were seemingly  more important. Factors like the HS2 problem (HS2-HiSpeed Rail), the continuing crap with Mr Cummings, the inability to deal with immigration, rising inflation, this to mention just a few. And so the Liberal Democrats, the ultra-wokists, won the seat. It is rather funny how the political system works in this country. A first past the post system (FPTP) rather than proportional representation. In any case as far as I am concerned I prefer the continental system adhered to in the Netherlands. Now that might be because that is what I was used to but looking at it properly it has a good basis. Anyway, the UK seems to take pride in this archaic FPTP system. Basically you could argue that any simpleton who has £500 or so to spend could stand for Parliament. And ind...

One of the newspaper reports I read was to do with the opinion of the CEO of John Lewis, (the multi-store company). She said in no uncertain terms that the standard of young people looking for work was abysmal. Some had great difficulty working with prices, percentages and more, others could hardly spell their own name. Now, all this has been well known for some time now but it has to be remembered that education per-se is the football of politicians. They take great pride in taking the laurels and continually tinker with the curriculum. For many years it has become apparent that standards have been watered down. Everyone goes to university. But how did this come about? It is all to do with what woke people think children should be learning. The teachers coming out of the education system all have brilliant degrees. Home Economics, Performing Arts, Dancing, Behavioural Attitudes, to name just a few. But sheer science is not on the menu any more. We rather ask children ‘Draw a picture,...

Can anyone in simple words tell me what you mean by ‘Human Rights’. Don’t give me the usual claptrap spouted. Because I begin to think it is just something dreamt up by lawyers to increase their earning capacity. The reality is quite simple. We are born helpless and dare I say it, without human rights. Because if our parents do not look after us we just die. People say we have a right to live. No, you don’t. If you cannot find enough food or proper shelter, you die. So, it boils down to adaptability, and survival strategy. It is also noticeable that only in our western world we talk about human rights. People in Africa and most of Asia have no time for it, they are too busy surviving the rigours of life which we seem to have forgotten. Talking about rights, what then of other non-human life? Don’t they have a right to exist? It is a fact about nature that a species tend to expand as long as the food supply is available. Expand even to the detriment of other species. Precisely the sit...

More and more are we becoming aware of the problems associated with global warming. Let’s be fair now, we in the UK have had some incredible changes. I cannot remember we have had so many floods before nor short heat-waves. Some days in August have temperatures that are 10 degrees higher than normal. I suppose the word ‘normal’ no longer applies. I wonder what Africa is like right now. I think not so nice, drought, heat approaching 50 degrees. It is no wonder I have seen only 5 swifts here in South Wales, whilst once the skies were full of them. My daughter’s farm barn had no swallows this year. No cuckoo heard either. You might think your family holiday in Spain or whatever other country is nice. But did you walk to get there? No? By plane then? Yes, you have contributed to global warming in a big way! Did you throw that bit of cellophane from your packet of ciggies on the street? And you are still smoking tobacco? The price to pay is to be exacted later but the cellophane will be fl...

It might be construed that I am jumping on the bandwagon but the particular issue now being spoken about is pretty important. It concerns the issue of sexual harassment in schools. Highlighted through the splendid work and courage of one lady Soma Sara with her website ‘Everyone’s Invited’. Everyone’s Invited was was set up last year as a place where victims, mostly in schools, are encouraged to record their experiences of sexual assault and abuse. It features accounts from university-age students to pupils as young as nine. They range from reports of people being drugged and raped at parties to explicit images being shared around. Soma reported a "rape culture" is "endemic" within the education system. But how do we think this happens? Let’s look at our culture as shown in the media for starters – newspapers with scantily clad ladies, full-on articles about sexual gratification for women (the Big ‘O’), all in the most widely sold newspapers in the UK. TV program...

Writing about our political problems is easy. But listening to some TV progs like Politics Today on the BBC makes my high blood pressure much higher. Today there was a discussion about the Oxford lecturers (bless their little hearts) refusing to teach the students at the Oriel College. First of all I thought that one of the lecturers might have molested a woman student or such things, as apparently happens in Universities from time to time but no, they were getting on the Woke train! The statue of Cecil Rhodes must die, possibly not a nice man as indeed many men or women from those times were not either, but that statue has to be removed, pulverised and the bits thrown into the nearest volcano. Iceland probably. Then we had on the discussion panel Layla Moron, sorry it might be Moran, not sure though, and Kate Porter, plus good ol’ Richard Madeley. After hearing Ms Moran I now know why the LibDems are in the doldrums and moreover will not get their fingers on the power button any time ...

Writing about our political problems is easy because there are so many. The past few years have been particularly busy. It is true to say that due to easy use of the Web, Bloggers included, commentary and opinions are now worldwide. In many ways that’s good and in other s it’s a bad thing. Us humans have not yet obtained self-control in using the Internet . But despite all of that there is an item that I have not heard of as yet. It is to do with Nature. When I was an ‘ondeugend’ (Dutch-naughty) chappie every summer we could see dozens and dozens of swallows flying and wheeling in the sky above the city. Even more in the countryside. Catching the numerous insects. Since marrying a Welsh beauty (they are all beautiful over here) I have seen a decline every year. But this year is the first year I have not seen any swallows, house martins, swifts in our sky above the Rhondda valley . There might be a few stragglers here and there but the hundreds are no more. What could be the reasons? W...

With the nicer weather the boats are coming again.The English Channel has seen dozens, it has never been so busy. The people organising these trips must be rolling in cash! I think as far as the promises we’ve heard the government making day in, day out I think they don’t know what to do about it. Hiding behind flowery words. Even the competent Ms Patel has been banging her head against the Civil Service wall. I can tell Ms Patel she needs to wield the sword. The Civil Service is not fit for purpose. It is full of the Wokestan and Etonstan nobility! I wish her good luck. Secondly, what we see now on telly is the demands now made by the people we call ‘immigrants’. Not being contend to finally arrive where they have been wanting to go for months and paid huge sums to do so. They now expect first class hotel service, no less! Hot showers, good food and a three bed-room council house in the leafy suburbs. That’s what was promised to them in France. There is a simple question that needs ...

For some time now and in quite a few messages I have mentioned global warming and the how’s and why’s. There should be no doubt that it is humanity’s fault. Yes, you and me! We are very quickly destroying the only place where we can live. If you do not think so I refer you to plenty of web research about CO2. I was astounded by how ill-informed I was. The Carbon Independent.org website shows why. Apparently the Paris agreement (Google that if you haven’t a clue) assumes greenhouse gas emissions of a quarter of a tonne of CO2 per hour flying. So, if you use air-planes to go on holiday and care about children, future generations, and social justice, and want to stay within the personal lifetime carbon budget of 50 tonnes CO 2 , flying is likely to be unaffordable, and therefore need to stop flying for the time being. (The limit of 50 tonnes CO 2 per person is a figure compatible with the Paris Agreement.) A Boeing 737-400 jet is typically used for short international fl...