The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

Alex Hawke, Australia’s immigration minister has cancelled Novak Djokovic’s visa yet again and released a statement saying it was in the public interest and said, today I exercised my power under section 133C(3) of the Migration Act to cancel the visa held by Mr Novak Djokovic on health and good order grounds

We wait with bated breath to see him finally thrown out of the country, I would have thought lying on more than two occasions about catching Covid, lying about his travel destinations on his visa application and generally being a bit of an arrogant fellow would have been more than enough grounds, let’s hope so.

A man has climbed a ladder to reach the Prospero and Ariel statue which was carved by Eric Gill and has adorned the front of the BBC broadcasting building since 1933.

Whilst the statue is rather splendid it seems the sculptor was a bit of a cad to say the least as he is recorded as having sexually abused his daughters for several years leading to a campaign to have the statue removed.

This statue has done no harm to anybody since 1933 and I would suggest it would be a good idea to leave it there, for whilst the sculptor may have been fairly beastly, the statue was not.

As for how to deal with this fellow who has committed criminal damage it would seem there is no option but to let the law take its course, however after the debacle of the Colston four who were acquitted after clearly taking part in a crime of criminal damage I fear perusing this fellow through the courts may be a waste of taxpayers money.

It seems the Colston four were set free as the jury thought their actions were justified regardless of the fact that they had clearly broken the law and as one of the accused compared their actions to those of the Suffragettes claiming their actions had changed things for the better.

Now while I cannot disagree that the actions of the Suffragettes did change history, I would also point out that to do so they had to face the long arm of the law and endure fairly lengthy prison sentences, unlike these modern people who seem to think it is perfectly fine to smash things to pieces and commit criminal damage without punishment at all.

I do believe that anyone who commits criminal damage should be punished it is the law of the land and as they say if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

Destroying or damaging property.

(1)A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence.

(2)A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property, whether belonging to himself or another—

(a)intending to destroy or damage any property or being reckless as to whether any property would be destroyed or damaged; and

(b)intending by the destruction or damage to endanger the life of another or being reckless as to whether the life of another would be thereby endangered;

shall be guilty of an offence.

(3)An offence committed under this section by destroying or damaging property by fire shall be charged as arson.

I came across this topic on Facebook and responded with the following and then thought in my vanity that my reply was better than a quick response on social media so have upgraded it to my blog.

They didn’t do it while I was at school but this may be because it was an all boys school, however I have managed to perfect some signature dishes since leaving school. One of my favourites is oeuf scramble, another is fromage sur toast and also haricot sur toast, these dishes stood me in good stead during my years as a single man supplemented by numerous trips to my local Indian which was luckily within walking distance of my house.

I never learned how to make lager but as luck would have it the restaurant had copious amounts on tap.

So I say bravo to home economics and the ability to sew on a button.

Enid Blyton’s book the Magic Faraway Tree has been rewritten by Jacqueline Wilson to airbrush alleged sexist elements and to make it supposedly fit for the 21st century but I’m forced to wonder, why on earth would you do a thing like that?

The book will still see Milo, Mia and Birdy head to the enchanted wood and meet Moon-Face, Silky the Fairy and the Saucepan Man although apparently it was previously updated in the 1990s to change the children’s names from Dick and Fanny to Rick and Frannie.

Now I rather doubt that Enid Blyton had thought of the innuendo of using Dick and Fanny as character names and I suspect they were used in complete innocence, indeed it wasn’t until years later that Johnny, the husband of the Famous TV chef Fanny Cradock uttered the immortal line, “may all your doughnuts turn out like fanny’s.”

Apparently in the new book comments from the magical creatures mentioning girls helping with domestic chores will see them educated on gender equality, along with new passages to stamp out children adventuring on their own without supervision and the writer has reportedly tried to make the parents similar to today’s, where they are anxious about what their youngsters are doing.

Has the world gone mad, if you wish to write a new book full of politically correct nonsense, then by all means do so but don’t change a perfectly decent and popular children’s classic, never forget the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixing!”

It seems the Novak Djokovic has won his appeal against his visa cancellation, Judge Anthony Kelly quashed the visa cancellation and ordered the Australian Government to pay legal costs and release the Serbian from detention within half an hour.

However, the Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke is still considering whether to exercise a personal power of cancellation of Djokovic’s visa in a process that could drag on for a number of days.

The Djokovic family ended the press conference by refusing to answer questions about his reported positive test on December 16, and pictures of him attending public events in the days that followed.

This is not over by any means and without putting too fine a point on it, it all seems too fishy for my liking on far too many points, he either had Covid and should not have been attending public events, or he is a downright liar, or he has no concept of the rules about self isolating when having caught Covid.

I have to admit I am not completely au fait with the rules as I have made no attempt to leave the country myself since Covid first started but I was under the impression that you needed to have been vaccinated to be able to get on a plane and travel, I certainly wouldn’t feel happy travelling in a plane full of unvaccinated people.

Assuming this to be the case I wonder how he will get home.

What a very sad story this is, an innocent black man goes out for a jog and is chased by three white men in their pickup trucks, cornered and shot to death, now why on earth would you do a thing like that, just what on earth was going through their minds at the time.

I know this fearful event took place in Georgia which is in the south of the Americas and with what little knowledge I have of American geography I imagine this is the sort of area where the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan would have had their stronghold and perhaps still do.

It seems that Ahmaund was initially chased by Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and were then joined in the chase by their neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan Jr who filmed the events on his phone and in a bizarre twist they were only arrested three months later when footage was uploaded to social media.

Arbery’s family said the former high school football star and keen runner was out for a jog that day, to which the judge added, as we understand it, he left his home going for a run and ended up running for his life.

Judge Walmsley said footage of Travis McMichael lifting the shotgun to fire at Ahmaud Arbery showed a truly disturbing scene of a man who was hunted down and shot, adding that the father Gregory McMichael said if I could have got a shot at the guy I would have shot him.

Travis McMichael, 35, was sentenced to life plus 20 years without the possibility of parole on nine charges including malice murder after he shot Arbery twice at close range with a shotgun.

Gregory McMichael was handed life plus 20 years without the possibility of parole on eight charges including felony murder.

Bryan, 52, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after being found guilty on six charges including felony murder after jurors heard how he spotted his neighbours chasing Arbery and jumped in his own truck to join in.

The only saving grace in this story is that these evil men who shot an killed an innocent black man and then turned their backs and walked away will now be spending the rest of their lives in prison where every waking hour they will be scared to death to turn their backs for fear that someone will take the law in their hands an exact revenge on them for the crime they committed.

There are conspiracy theories for just about everything nowadays especially about the Covid vaccine and everything surrounding the pandemic.

Here’s one I just made up, it is alleged the Covid pandemic started in China and now I notice every Covid test kit I have seen is made in China, it’s almost as if they unleashed the virus just to sell more testing kits.

This is of course a complete load of codswallop and is not true in the slightest degree but wait and see how many people reply agreeing with me, which leads me to another conspiracy theory which is absolutely true which is; an extremely large percentage of the population are stark staring raving mad!

Novak Djokovic has had his visa to visit Australia cancelled by the Australian Border Force as he has not been Covid vaccinated and is not entitled to an exemption on the grounds that he seems to be quite an arrogant person and is able to play tennis.

Apparently he is appealing against being deported but is currently free to leave at any time should he wish to do so but will know the result of his appeal on Monday.

I await the result with bated breath and hope that this isn’t going to be the second case within a week where the result yet again may not actually reflect the rule of law, we shall see!

I would imagine there are a considerable number of people wondering how these four people have been found innocent of the crime of criminal damage by toppling the statue of the slave trader Edward Colson of which it seems there was clear CCTV evidence to convict them

Now, I’m a simple man and I was wondering had they been accused of murder and there was clear evidence of them participating in the crime and DNA evidence to link them to the dead body would the same feckless jury have found them innocent of that crime too?

There was considerable criticism of Marvin Rees the Mayor of Bristol who was the first black Mayor of African descent of a major European city who has apparently been in the job for some four years and has seemingly ignored a petition to remove the statue and here I have to come to his defence.

Apparently the petition was signed by nearly 18000 people which although quite a considerable number of people it is a tiny minority of the total population of Bristol which stands at 465900, so I have to assume the vast majority of the population were quite happy to see the statue remain in place, I personally favour placing a large plaque on them explaining both the good and bad aspects of the deeds of people like this so people can learn from seeing them.

Some 10000 people took part in the protest but only four were charged with criminal damage, Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, and Sage Willoughby, 22, were caught on CCTV passing the ropes around the statue that were used to pull it down and Jake Skuse, 33, was accused of orchestrating a plan to throw it in the harbour.

An estimated £3,750 of damage was done to the statue which included the removal of its staff and a coat tail and £350 of damage was caused to the railings of Pero’s Bridge.

I’m led to believe that when similar damage has been done by climate change activists the results of the following court cases are similar with none of them being found guilty either, which leaves me to question the intelligence of members of the jury who have a very simple job to do which is, when faced with clear CCTV evidence showing these people committing the act of criminal damage to bring in a guilty verdict, it really is that simple.

What a strange world we now find ourselves living in!

I have just spent the last four days trying to pay on line one of my Barclaycard credit cards, a process which used to take a matter of minutes even for a Luddite like me, however Barclays in their wisdom have decided this was far too easy for me and have now brought in a new “improved” system.

Prior to this new system I would open my bank details on my computer and press the “make a payment” button and select from my drop down list of payee’s the person or business I wished to pay, enter the amount and press pay, which even for someone like me was a fairly simple procedure and could be completed in very little time.

However Barclays in their infinite wisdom have decided this was far too easy and have now removed any payee’s from my drop down menu which are duplicated, in my case it was one of my two Barclaycard credit cards allegedly in an attempt to stop people sending money to the wrong payee.

I am sorry if this is getting a tad long winded but if you think this is long winded you should have seen my attempts over the last four days to reinstate the missing card details to the drop down list, all to no avail until I finally gave in and phoned Barclays for assistance.

It now seems that if I wish to pay my missing card I now have to select the details of the card still remaining on the list that corresponds with that particular Barclaycard and enter the amount as usual and then enter the card number for the card I wish to pay whereupon I am then directed to the PINsentry page, now at this stage I will have to explain what PINsentry is for those of you who do not have a Barclays account.

The PINsentry is a security machine rather like a small calculator which requests that I enter my Barclays debit card into the machine and press “respond” followed by “enter your pin” which then requests that I enter the 8 digit number on the screen of my computer which then generates another 8 digit number which I have to enter in the two boxes on the computer screen which will finally allow payment to go through.

Apparently I am not the only Barclays customer who has contacted them and commented that their new system is fxxxing lunacy, I am living in hopes that the old system will be reinstated as they sometimes do when some bright spark comes up with what they think is an extremely clever idea and those of us who have to use it are left losing the will to live.

I am now going for a lay down in a dark room in an effort to reduce my blood pressure to normal levels and was wondering if there is an award for the most stupid idea of the year for which I might nominate Barclays back room boys. I seem to have to explain everything in this modern age, “boys” is the old fashioned generic way of describing people of both sex, which I assume will nowadays include those of a non binary persuasion and others identifying as something else, a banana for example.

As I said in the title, Barclays you couldn’t leave them in charge of a cocktail party in an off licence.