Category: Uncategorized

While I was searching around for some info for the previous post, I went to the home page of the Labour Party and to my amazement was greeted with a picture of ‘Dave the Chameleon’. This is a reference to a recent Television advert which I only saw part of about David Cameron, the new leader of the Conservative Party.

My understanding is that this is the Labour Party having a ‘dig’ at the Conservatives for trying to ‘reclaim’ the political ground that the Labour Party has moved onto over the past few years.

It is local Council Elections here next week and with the public opinion of Politicians already at an all time low, I wonder what people will think of this latest ‘negative’ campaign? To my amazement, there is even a spoof website with a Blog ‘of sorts’ that has been set up on the Labour Party home page, supposedly tracking ‘Dave’s’ progress on some sort of journey!

I like a joke anytime, but with so many things ‘seemingly’ going wrong in the UK at the moment you would think that the Labour Government would like to be taken a bit more seriously. It is truly pathetic.

Just for balance here is the link to the Lib Dems who at least are focused on one of the real issues of the day.

Technorati Tags : Labour, Chameleon, Conservative, Party, Council, Elections, Government, Liberals

Great headline on the Front page of the Daily Telegraph today which really tells the tale of the calamities now hitting the current Labour(this is a very interesting front page to have) – UK Government.

On a more serious note, I don’t think that Charles Clarke will last much longer particularly with the release of yet more convicted criminals that should have been deported, being let free into the UK community, still I suppose that they do have ‘Human Rights‘ that have to be upheld!!

I do wonder what ‘parallel universe‘ version of the UK the current Government is governing? It can’t be the one that I live in! Perhaps they really do think that it’s not important to look after the safety of the population as a whole and just let these people ‘float’ away to god knows where. Are they living near us?

I seem to remember a politician (now I wonder who that could have been?) once saying that they would provide more ‘joined up government‘!

Well, it seems very plain to me, that the current set of ‘lego-bricks‘ seem to be beyond rebuilding!

What a total shambles!

Technorati Tags : Human, Rights, UK, Government, Lego, Parallel, Universe

This post has been created using the offline Qumana blog editor. I’ve moved over to this for a number of reasons.

The stupid Ctrl+S (is it just me?) combination in blogger.com is used to ‘post’ not save! I have become so used to using Ctrl+S whilst I am typing (in just about every application that I ever used) to save any file, that I found that I kept posting half finished posts on to my Blog! So annoying… I had started to use some of my text editors, but then of course you have to cut and paste into the blogger editor.

Another reason is the spell checker in Blogger, not the very good, final reason, could not seem to get the text style to work in my blog consistently, maybe that is me…

So we will see what this editor is like. Since I found this two days ago, I came across some more Blog editors, but will start with this and move on to others if they seem better.

I recently pondered this thought and it set me thinking as to what the answer might be.

Today I was searching for some info relating to a time-server story I saw and came across this BBC news item (interesting how the style has changed over the years) which dates back to 1st January 2000. I suppose aptly relevant in light of the millennium just having happened.

But there must be older pages that this! I wonder where they are…

I recently set up some new web sites, one relates to the current Job Losses in the NHS. I was amazed to find that there was no single place on the web that showed a running total of the ever increasing number of job losses.

The web site, NHS Watch which has only been running since the beginning of April has attracted quite a number of visitors, but as yet, despite heavy effort (press releases, direct emails etc.) no links from any of the UK daily newspapers/online news agencies, which as it relates to a current and very topical story seems somewhat strange to me.

Maybe Alastair Campbell still ‘does’ control what the media says about Labour related news!

The other web site I set up SeniorNet UK is aimed at helping Seniors with their online IT experience. Seems again that there was not a specific site in the UK dealing with these types of issues.

Now working on a few other site ideas, using my improved my web skills (XHTML+CSS).

Spent one day last weekend clearing out a lot of winter rubbish from the Garden and this week we were rewarded with the opening of one of the potted camellias buds.

What a very nice flower, of course typical England, the following night it froze to -2°C and the following day the bud had pass on and fallen on to the patio! Such is this ‘Gardeners World’.

We were also visit yesterday by the a bird that I have not seen in our garden before, a Jay, what a lovely bird, not a serious twitcher’ myself, but its always nice to see birds around the garden, they all seem to be very late this year

The today, we had a return visit of the Jay with its mate.

The joys of spring!!

I recently stood in the Election of Council of Governors for the Royal Berkshire and Battle Hospital (RBH) NHS Foundation Trust. However, I was unsuccessful in being elected, but that is not the point of this post.

What concerns me is the small number of ballot papers that were returned! Is this just another example of the apathy and generally low turnout that seems to surround all type of elections here in the UK?

I cannot believe that this was just down to ‘low-turnout’ as the election papers were sent to electors homes and all they had to do was to complete them and send them back in a free post envelope.

So it must be down to apathy! Which is strange, as I was under the impression that with a rising number of ‘member’s’ joining the RBH trust with a view to ‘being involved’ and the Government telling us that they are ‘giving the NHS back to the people’. Why then did so many ‘members’ not bother to vote?

Some examples of this apathy:

RBH Staff Vote – Forms sent out: 4,010; Ballot papers returned: 1,076
Reading Public Vote – Forms sent out: 2,061; Ballot papers returned: 709
Wokingham Public Vote – Forms sent out: 920; Ballot papers returned: 389

Producing an overall figure of 31.09% return of ballot papers!!

I wish the newly elected members of the RBH council of governors success in their new positions, but urge them to take as a high-priority task to try and find out why so many ‘members’ of the RBH Trust did not bother to cast their ballots in the election.

In the coming months, I wonder how many people will complain about the Trust, only to forget that they themselves did not even bother to vote.

If you have a vote, use it.

Gene Pitney is dead!!!

He was one of the great singer-songwriters, what a great loss

Click here for the full story, it just happend.

Just been catching up on some magazine reading…

Another very good article from Joe Klein on the third anniversary ramifications of the ongoing Iraq ‘war’. I have followed his writings for a number of years and while not always agreeing with everything he writes, he does have a very succinct way of stating the obvious.

Talking of anniversaries, on the 23rd April, its 442 years since the birth of Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights of all time. As usual there plenty of celebrations to mark his birth. But what about other playwrights of old? Have a look at Thomas Middleton, could he be the hidden Shakespeare?

See Declansbizblog, just run for three hours today at the BBC Breakfast program, fascinates me that it gathers so many comments in such a short time. Shows the power of Blogging.

I heard about this today…

In the UK on 4th May 2006 at 2 minutes and three seconds past one o’clock in the morning, the time will be 01:02:03 on 04:05:06 or 010203040506, this will occur again in 3006, that is if the Earth is still around!!

For USA readers (dd/mm are typically reversed to mm/dd), this event will occur on 5th April 2006 (tomorrow) at 2 minutes and three seconds past one o’clock in the morning and the time will still be 01:02:03 on 04:05:06.