DutchEnery

Most of us here in the UK have a bit of a frowned eyebrow about the BBC. There is their political bias, their insistence of righting all the wrongs about gender and colour and finally the travesty called ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. I watch it because my wife is glued to the TV set and I cannot watch anything else or have to leave the room. Why do I think it is a travesty? A travesty of pulling the wool over our eyes. That program has been choreographed from the very beginning. They have set the scene from week to week and know who will be going. The judges are obviously into that to some extent but what about the public vote? What public vote, does anyone think it matters? Despite what they say about it being a competition, forget it it is nothing of the sort. It is just a very colourful longish running soap opera. I hasten to add you may differ in opinion, well why not? It is still a free country. But I do think it is quite clear how it all fits together. The one other thing that bothers

What a load of tosh politicians come up with. You have heard I hope the slogan - Keep the Earth alive and keep it to 1.5. Meaning to keep the temperature increase to no more then 1.5 degrees Centigrade. Well, may I tell you that this will be problematic? It pretty means well to abandon great swathes of Africa and basically all tropical regions. The temperature in general can already top 50 ° Centigrade in places. In Britain the temperature can top 40 ° C on occasions with the result that some crops will dry out and fail. More so the strange hot/cold springs that have been already around ruined my grapes in the greenhouse due to grey mould. It was unstoppable. So, to hear politicians joyfully say we will keep it to 1.5° is just claptrap. There is no way that will be done because of fear of collapsing economies. Just listen to the clamour from people who want to go on a Spanish holiday. They simply want to ignore the problem.  That is the way it is all over the world. I think that we ou

Us humans get worked up about almost anything. Reading newspapers or listening to TV news bulletins will show you quickly the latest ones. At the moment we are going to host the Glasgow UN extravaganza where we will discuss how to curb environmental damage. So it will mean build more, as my favourite journo, Rod Liddle said, bird mincers. Or in other words wind turbines. If you think these are environmentally friendly, quickly think again. The other thing he mentioned, sewage. Yes, our effluent from close to 70 million people goes into the sea. Where else do you think it goes? Not in my back-garden. My neighbour’s cat sees to manuring that. I have been thinking how to get rid of it but you know what? I like the beast. He sprays wonderful scents on every wall and then alluringly stares at me before coming over for a petting session. Lovely, won’t be long before I find it sleeping on our bed. Water companies face heavy fines when they are caught pumping raw sewage into rivers but there a

The latest BBC blockbuster ‘Universe’ with the great hairy science promulgator Prof Brian Cox is full of controversial exclamations. Well, that is my opinion of course, I just loved his morose ‘end of the Universe’ talk. I admit I was crying. Although come to think of it, it is something like a couple of trillion years in the future. Every time I see Prof Cox the television screen fills with incredible images. Colourful, big explosions and planets I want to live on. But may I just point out - what is the meaning of all of this? The point I am trying to make is that we know the Universe is going to end, the Sun will stop shining after it has swallowed half the solar system and we will have been served up like an Aussie BBQ. And the big U will be a dark void full of floating cold rocks. Now is that the end? No sir, it is not. I believe that the Universe when the lights have gone out, a force will be missing and another force namely ‘gravity’ will take over completely and over time (coul

Although I subscribe to Twitter I only follow my grandson’s school efforts and obviously read some of the stuff that other people put on. But me taking part? Never in a million years. Twitter is mostly a cesspit used by Neanderthals. Same for Facebook. Recently I read a tweet written by someone who seemed to have inside knowledge of PPI (the clothing and other paraphernalia helping to combat or prevent Covid-19) and the government’s handling of the purchasing and storage, and the issuing of same. Now to be fair we have to remember it was a strange time. No-one really knew what was coming. This was not only the view in Britain but in the rest of the world as well at the time. You know it as ‘herd immunity’. It simply was the view that as it was a rhinovirus it would be no worse than a cold or at the worst a bout of flu and therefore the more people caught it, immunity would develop quickly. Obviously we were proved completely wrong. We have to remember this is all hindsight now but in t

Many times I have asked myself why world leaders do talk so antagonisticly towards other world leaders. Take Macron when he talks about Boris. Or Rutte from the Netherlands pontificating about Brexit. Having a go about fishing. Ask yourself if ordinary people feel like that? I am surprised at the continental opinions about the UK. The Dutch in particular have a big opinion about what Brexit has meant here in the UK. Most of it is utter rubbish. If they just listen to the Scottish leader, the (in)famous Nicola Sturgeon then you surely will not understand what is happening in the UK overall. The case about fishing rights is simple, there is hardly any fish at all. So it is quite understandable that local fishermen want to fish their own waters without big competition from foreign trawlers. The French have a big coastline too and I am not sure why they want to come all the way to Scottish waters.  But the overriding consideration has to be conservation of stocks. For sure the old adage us

As an avid reader of two newspapers, one a bit of a sea-side joke type, the other a bit more serious insofar daily happenings, I worry about the mental state of human beings. When a simple dance programme on BBC (not naming names) has people in all sorts of frenzy. Whole pages about someone a bit thick calling a contestant ‘a chubby little thing’. Now in my mind that doesn’t mean anything but in today’s woke society it will ensure an absolute backlash of gigantic proportions. Looking at a picture of the ‘thing’, I will immediately paste that on my bedroom wall. And on top of that, she is pretty good at dancing as well! The guy who sent the woke brigade into apoplexy now faces the sack. Well hang on a minute, is what he said so incredibly bad? I am chubby although no-one will call me a ‘chubby little thing’ I’m afraid. Probably more like a ‘chubby little idiot’. People, please get a life! As it is there are bigger things to get steamed up about. We all are by now pretty aware that huma

Oh la la as the French say from time to time. The debate in Britain is getting hot under the collar. Well yes, so it should, you may want to know what it is about. It is about the language used towards politicians, by politicians and others, yes including me. It is a strange thing and I can only speak, write of my own experiences of course and that it is too easy to descend into vitriolic outbursts simply because there is no break. You sit behind the keyboard feeling upset in some way about something a politician has said or done, particularly a politician of a party you do not support and off you go. As you type the words spew out and you do not stop, out it all comes. Your frustration about your station in life, your salary level. The argument you had with the partner. I am sure there are many who then put all of that in a single line on Twitter. And what have we got? An expletive laced death threat you probably would never dare say face to face. And that’s the problem. When I have s

Right then, the latest interesting woke bit reported. Some plonker asks for a battered sausage (for the uninitiated, this is an English lower class delicacy consisting of some low grade pork meat laced with fat and dipped in a mix of water and flour - Persons eating this on a regular basis can live to 55 years of age). Anyway, the man asks for a battered sausage and was told ‘Sorry, can’t do, too busy at the moment’. Now any normal person would accept this and either buy something else like an un-battered sausage or go somewhere else. Not this plonker, he goes onto social media complaining about customer service being appalling blah di blah, di blah. Most shopkeepers or in this case chip shop owners, would just shrug their shoulders and think the world is full of prats (A prat is an idiot in our vernacular). But not this one owner, he politely tells the plonker to stick the proverbial sausage up his backside (ass in the vernacular). And don’t ever bother to come back. I just love this

Terrible news today, yet another MP has been killed. As I have said before one may have differences, even dislike some other person but that is never a reason to kill, or should be. I have a problem with some politicians and believe they should be doing something else with their lives but they do believe in what they are doing. Most have a great personal affinity with their areas of responsibility and a great public feeling of service. I also believe that lots of politicians, MPs in particular or Assembly members in the devolved countries such as Wales do not always agree with their respective parties, or even are opposed to them. In Wales Plaid Cymru favours independence from the UK. As does Scotland but their politicians are as divided on the issue as are their respective populations. The other issue that really bothers me is the vitriolic language now frequently used on social media. I know from my own writing that it is easy to descend into and use language that could be termed ag

Has anyone ever thought how everything seems to be linked? I often note how people, generally speaking, are disassociated from nature. The way they act, the way they live. Truthfully I am the same although I try very much to limit my destructive behaviour. Destructive in the way I use things, buy things. Like plastic packaging. What we humans have seemingly forgotten is that we actually are part of nature, we are not outside of it. We need to be IN and part of nature. It is also why I think space travel is an anomaly. We cannot live anywhere else but Earth. Oh for a short time we could exist in a metal tube called a spaceship or even for a year on desert Mars but what would it do for our mental health? Mental health is the new 21st century disease. Prior to 2000 I had not heard a mention of it. Mental illness was something called in Dutch ‘krankzinnig’. ‘Insanity’ in good ol’ English. But talking about how everything is related, putting in a lot of CO2 in to the atmosphere has the ef

Despite all the usual problems facing us, such as the energy crisis, the home building crisis, the mental state crisis, the China seas crisis, the grocery rising prices crisis, and my nightly waking up crisis, things are not so bad. But it is funny to look all around and see your environment changing and it is now happening faster than ever before. It seems we are at a crossroads and we don’t really know which way to take yet. We are dithering in the middle of the road trying to look beyond the horizon and not noticing the fast cars coming towards us. Watching the BBC Channel this morning, yes I know I am an idiot, the talk was about labour. Not the party but foreign labour in the UK to pick fruit and other things. I have always wondered why this was necessary? I do take it that employers, if it was unregulated, would love it as cheap labour would increase their profit margins. Even though government tries to regulate, it is quite obvious that in many cases it does not work. But takin

You know we need less of the grandstanding and empty promises politicians make. Especially in the party manifestos and particularly so during the annual festivities called the Conference! Taking a point here, first Boris states that we will issue visas to foreign HGV drivers and some 5000 will arrive. Ehh? Anyway, the practical Keir countered by saying if he had been in power he would have issued some 100,000 such documents. Oh mama, get me home, what a load of bull! Is this politics today? Is this what they teach at Eton? As it stands two or three drivers have appeared. Well you can see how politics in general is today. It is called grandstanding and if you tell ‘m a lie ensure you do it often so people will believe you.  Grandstanding also is a tool the Chinese love. We are now in World War 3 territory. A few ships, war ships to be sure, through the South China sea and immediately heavy talk ensues. That the Chinese have sailed through the English Channel (la Manche to the Frenchies

Has anyone noticed the sort of language now used by reporters? Words like ‘ Bills have rocketed’ as one said glumly in front of a Manchester building during the Conservative Conference. Rocketed is more interesting than 'Gone up' or 'rising' I suppose. Words such as ‘massive’, ‘incredible’, and talking about the fuel ‘crisis’ you might ask what crisis? Then there is the word ‘calamity’ you hear a few times, although I must say if we are talking about the volcanic eruption on the Canary Islands, yes that’s a calamity. The facts are that in choosing these ‘strong’ words it makes reporting much more volatile. More ‘bone-jarring’. You may ask why? Is there a need to jazz up incidents? Simple reporting should be enough, it should not be about attracting more viewers. Surely we now have reached an impasse because we are now so used to the language used, it does no longer register. Personally I am just put off and only watch the news early in the morning. For the rest if I wan