DutchEnery

Not being an avid reader of the Guardian Newspaper, nevertheless I do read its articles on the web from time to time. One took my immediate interest. It reported something about Technology written by Edward Helmore about Jaron Lanier. Jaron is an American comp u ter scientist known for coining the term ‘Virtual Reality’. The article reporting about using Social Media and its effects. Jaron warns about the dangers of a world over-reliant on the Internet. Something I have alluded to many times as well. Being at the mercy of these top people who run them, although not naming them. We know their names anyway. But to be clear he must have meant the likes of Messrs Musk, Gates, and Zuckerberg. Perhaps we should include this failed politician Clegg amongs them. He is Global Affairs President (Meta) . It might be a great name for what is basically a fall-guy position I think. Something he is well used to. Well, Jaron continued by saying ‘ We’re putting that fundamental quality of humaneness th...

This year’s Halloween has been a rather quiet, low-case affair. No-one knocking the doors showing off hideous masks and sounding curdling screams that made your blood run cold! Now, I am not at all certain why we celebrate that as I don’t believe in such manifested portrayal of what is supposed to be evil. At least the kids like the rumpus. But it is funny that humanity has this what seems to be inborn, an inborn idea about evil. You will notice this as well in the films showing wonderful evilly aliens. Films like ‘Alien’ with Sigourney Weaver et al. Big money spinners, we sure like to be frightened. It raises a few questions in my mind, notwithstanding my religious background as a confirmed Christian following the Anglican brand of what they call Faith, I ask myself – Is there something about aliens, real or not that we equate with evil? And why would that be? First of all, I have always taken the point, as I explained in a much older post, that aliens might well exist but we will nev...

We have mentioned energy a lot in previous posts. I suppose we would as it permeates all our lives. Certainly does so in the western world. I suppose the war in Ukraine does not help but that is not the only thing about energy. In this country VAT (Value Added Tax) is levied on bills. The rate at which it is levied varies but homeowners should pay 5%. Even that, when your bill is approaching £2,000 annually, it r e presents something like nearly £100 in tax. That would look better on my bank balance. I must be honest I am aware we need to pay tax but I am also aware that it is not always spent wisely! Let’s look at wind turbines. You might know I am opposed to them on land simply for two reasons, environmental problems and misuse of crop growing land or grazing land or even recreational land. The problems they cause to birds are already well-known. Besides all that, these monstrosities produce thousands of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through production of the metals and plasti...

Does anyone, perhaps all across the world, ever think what it costs to have a government? Take the government in the UK. There are 650 MPs in the UK Parliament. Each receives a stipend (salary) of £84,144 per annum. That’s a cost to the taxpayer of £54,693,600. Yes £50+ million pounds. But that’s not all, they also receive payments for certain items like stationery, subsidised drinks amongst others. Other costs like the Standard Office Budget is some £27,470 per MP (some get more because of their extra workload, like ministers etc or are living and based in London). That is a whopping £17,855,500. And yet again that’s not all. There is the upkeep of the Westminster Palace which has cost so far billions.  To cut a long drawn out calculation and trawling the Internet I can just go with the Institute of Government which stated that during 2018/19 the cost of running both Houses of Parliament in 2018/19 was £560.4 million which was nearly 8% higher than the previous year. If that would...

Is virtue-signalling the new art-form in the UK? You might know this if I put it like this - Virtue signalling is the expression of a moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character. But is that right? I don’t think so, at least not completely. Like everything else, it has a good side and an equally bad side. It depends entirely what you think about the words – moral viewpoint. For instance, I am certain that those youngsters who glue themselves onto the road surface or throw tomato soup onto a valuable painting in a museum, think of their moral viewpoint as the only one that counts. But then I would say, what about my viewpoint? I can tell you right now, it is NOT the same as theirs! Then we have the debating societies in Universities across the land. I recently heard a new word I had not heard before – ‘perma-offended youth’. What does that mean? It was mentioned in an article from the Telegraph and referred to a debate that took place at the Cambridge Union. You can ...

It is interesting to see how the world, how people, think and act. Here we have Qatar. Another country on the Arabian peninsula. Mostly sand, a few palms and for some reason bozos of the World Football system called FIFA thought it would be a nice place to stage the World Cup. Obviously knowing these boys are totally straight as far as money is concerned, the voting was all above board and Qatar came out on top. Well, it is a sunny place in summer though! At least the bath water gets to 60 degrees Centigrade if you put the bath out on the balcony. What us in the nice above board western world never realised, is the fact Qatar is not in the western world. We in the western world think the whole planet is the western world. You notice this on the discussions on TV. Here in the UK we get very worked up about the treatment of LBGT+ people, bless their little hearts. We spend hours and hours talking about the why’s and how’s. Like that is going to change things for the better. Let’s be fair...

Now I am a long-standing user of Linux having ditched Windows when it was XP. I must confess using Linux has got a damn lot easier now than it was in the Seventies and Eighties. In fact it now surpasses Windows in ease of operation and security. It is no wonder that most mainframes (very large computers with petabytes of memory) are mostly running with Linux or a variety of Unix systems. If you do not know what Unix is, it is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix from the Sixties. Do not confuse this with Unox, a Unilever company that makes a type of Dutch sausage. Although sometimes I think it is exactly that! Anyway, I have run Linux Mint (one of the varieties of Linux distributions available) because it is very much like Windows in most of its operation. Recently I read the website from ‘Makeuseof.com’, titled “Ten Reasons why Windows is Still Better than Linux”. I thought that was rather interesting but completel...

Is it about time we are waking up to the fact that we, in the western world, are living way beyond our means? For a start, we cannot deny, certainly not in Britain, that we are guilty of fouling the planet with our over-consumption which produces and does increasingly so, enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. It has been known for some time that due to rising sea levels the low lying atolls and island nations of the Pacific are in danger of disappearing altogether! The rise in sea levels is entirely due to melting icecaps of the Poles and mountain glaciers. It is expected that the levels will rise by another 3-5 meters by 2100. I shall have to tell my grandchildren in due course to wear swim vests before going to bed. Well, these things are already known but as per the usual there is a lot of chat, many high-level meetings but no action. At the most very little action. The talk in the western world is still the same, we are worried about economic growth and want more! We do not re...

There are three things that concern people in the UK today. I list them in order of importance. First, a TV program called ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, secondly another TV program called ‘I am a Celebrity...Get me Out of Here’ and thirdly, its lame government. Rather funny that TV programmes outrank government but if you have looked carefully you can easily see why. The first program ‘Strictly’ is a dancing exhibition supposedly carried out by No-No’s. That is to say, by people who have never danced. But as it turns out, it seems that most of the partakers are professed dancers or at least have had pretty good tuition as kids! In my opinion the show has had its day, it has become pretty predictable. The other TV show has become even more boring because of the inclusion of a disliked politician (Mr Matt Hancock). It is not that he is just a politician, he was the Health Secretary during the Covid pandemic responsible for the guidance about staying at home and no social activities and then s...

Some thing that has bothered me for a long time. I have been a school governor for quite a number of years and I have always wondered about something called bullying. From my own time in Amsterdam I did experience bullying because for some reason I did not belong to a small group in the same class. As a ten year old you do not really know why that is but it seems it is about family life and how you are brought up. Meaning how you view aggression. How your parents communicate, rows in the home, have loving occasions. Such as get-togethers with the family. St Nicholas in early December was always a highlight when the whole family sat around sharing presents, drinking chocolate milk and hearing stories about how ‘Zwarte Piet’ (Black Peter) would come if you were naughty! Today, the whole shebang, and here in the UK it is not ‘Zwarte Piet’ but Santa who might not be happy if you are a naughty child, is different. But how many families are still keeping to those old traditions? It seems mo...

A confession from me – I am very sorry because I might be going to upset quite a number of people. It is about this – I am supporting the eco-warriors. Not physically as I am quite a bit older than most of those who glue themselves to the road. But I have been thinking about what is really at stake. At first I thought they are a bit, you know, not right in the head, absolute loons. However, they are right, the climate is in serious trouble. It is unheard of that in mid-November some places experience 15 degrees Centigrade plus! Despite wonderful emanations of verbal garbage by loads of politicians about how they are ‘working hard to ensure we all won’t die from heat exhaustion’, the facts are that nothing is done. Except to build more and more electrical cars but without the infrastructure to charge them. Oh, and build loads of wind turbines on land splashing the cash and ensure through having to anchor these monstrosities in concrete, we also send tonnes of CO2 into the air. The facts...

Oh dear, problems brewing up in Qatar? It is a bit like a cold isn't it? Well, what did the powers that be, expect? Did anyone look into their rationale for living? What I mean is that their attitude towards LBGT+ should have rung alarm bells since the lovely western world is or has now more or less moved to a more accepted view. Worse, the LBGT+ community that have tickets are considering various protests. That will go down like bomb over there. Expect jail sentences of 5 years upwards. By the way, the jails over there probably do not have running water and the evening meal of dry bread and goat blood gravy, is prepared over a camel dung fire! I am somewhat fed up with our propensity to protest. If it is not oil or gas and the climate hotting up or the plastic fouling about every sea and ocean of the planet, all these protests have very little effect except to annoy commuters or just me. Look, if you are one of the LBGT+ brigade which is fine by me, just live life like everyone ...

Perhaps readers would not mind if I said – Does humanity need a reality check? Oh dear, problems? What is reality anyway? I might be doing too much asking as it is but I have been thinking looking at the present situation of increasing prices, particularly in the power sector, how this situation has arisen. Hearing also about the enormous profits being made by the likes of Shell and others, EDF for instance. It makes you think ‘How is this right’? Well, first of all I suppose a market of whatever commodity is based on basic costs of acquiring it, then to manufacture or store followed by supplying it to the market. In the case of electricity it would be obtaining equipment, next generating it and maintaining the supply lines (cabling etc). For gas it is pumping it out of the ground and then into the supply piping system and also storage. T here are costs associated with these activities. T hose costs will be increased by a percentage and charged to the user and let’s not forget tax...

Ah now then, the pigeons are coming home to roost (for my foreign readers, if there are any, it is a British euphemism meaning that the effects/results of someone's actions are finally beginning to catch up with him, her or it). And if you don’t know the word euphemism then have a quick look on the Internet. But I am referring to the escalating disease called ‘immigration’. Disease, you say? Yes, it is a disease. Like all diseases, unwanted. For some reason it is now known that Albania, a two-bit country somewhere in the Mediterranean basin, is emptying because its people are pretty fed up with its government’s failures or something like that. All its young men want to come and meet British girls because they have heard that they are easy. Easy for what I can only surmise. Besides that they are booked on the rolls of the wonderful drugs gangs which told the unsuspecting young flipper-snappers, ‘ D on’t worry, plenty of work in the UK because these idiots are all on drugs’. I have ...

So, do you feel safe? Plenty of local problems? Government in disarray? War in Europe, again? Not enough money? Worried about Trump putting his head over the hedge? Well, it is pretty well the same for everyone. I am afraid that things are getting out of control. People in charge have lost self-control and too many are just like baying dogs. The system of control has collapsed. You can see it in the Metropolitan Police. There are officers who should not even be there. I am nearly 100% certain that it is not different in other forces. I cannot help but thinking we are back in that all-dancing period before WW2. When the moral stance of Europe just went belly-up (literally). Business, personal morality just got lost in a frenzied free-for-all. When a country just waltzed over another one and hand-wringing ‘peace-makers’ bearing letters that more or less said ‘Give us what we want and we will let you live’. We now know how that ended. May I point out we are just in that time again? Wh...

Those politic ians just do not go home and smell the roses, don’t they? Every day has to be a day when they have to try to get one or more ministers on the rack. Or better still, get ‘m the sack! It is as some responsible journalists indicated, once they have the bit in the mouth, watch out. Suella Braverman is in sight people, stop frothing at the mouth. Let’s look at what is happening. First of all in a past post I read that as Home Chief she used emails in such a way even I could have read them. That’s not much good for someone who is supposed to keep some things secret and out of the media’s voracious appetite! But OK, she has been reported as not knowing the rigmarole that purports to be the Home Office. I am sure we will not see that again. Let’s look at the performance, it is really a bit early and coming on the back of a very difficult period but I think looking at the TV reports, so far so good. The problem(s) she has now been shackled with - 1. Migration and 2. woke Police ...