I came across this post on a young woman’s blog recently which made me all the more convinced that Instagram is a waste of time, as all it seems to me is a way to look at pictures and click ‘like’ which I have always thought is a pretty inane thing to do.
My preference is for Facebook as it seems to have more content rather than just pictures and the following seems to sum up the situation in a nutshell, it is obviously from someone comparatively young as Instagram is favoured by the young rather than us older folk.
However, I thought it was a fascinating insight into the mind of the youth of today, the words and the strange Emoji are all that was on the post.
1: I like pictures.
2: Pictures are pretty.
3: Creating pictures calms me.
4: I can design even fonts to be pretty pictures
5: Go ahead slap me because I’m about to say it again. I love pictures.
A petition has been launched to get the man seen tied to a lamppost wearing only his socks and sandals to turn on Basildon’s Christmas lights.
The man was taped to a lamppost near Basildon’s Westgate Shopping centre, with several layers of thick, clear tape, apparently this was related to a failed attempt to have his nipple pierced during a night out on a stag do.
The thought also crossed my mind that it could have been some sort of punishment for crimes against sartorial elegance but I believe young folk nowadays do not see the crime in wearing socks and sandals.
I’m not sure if the man was naked as there were reports that he was also wearing suspenders and a thong, luckily from the image it is hard to see exactly what he is wearing.
All this leads me to wonder if the petition is for the man to turn on the Christmas lights fully clothed or if they wish him to illuminate Basildon wearing nothing but socks and sandals, if so let’s hope we don’t have a chilly winter.
It seems fifty percent of managers wish to see the introduction of a jabs for jobs policy should you wish to return to work from being furloughed or from working from home.
This is a relatively new suggestion and already lawyers are saying there is currently no legislation in place in the UK on mandatory vaccinations, and the UK Government has confirmed that it will not introduce mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for UK residents and will leave it up to individual employers.
Apparently under the Equality Act 2010, it is illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of a protected characteristic (these include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation) and lawyers are suggesting that a danger that a no jab, no job policy could discriminate under one or more of these protected characteristic, although I have absolutely no idea how.
I believe that Google, Netflix, and Facebook have already put this jabs for jobs policy into action although many people are reluctant to return to work as they feel they are quite capable of doing their job from home as they have been all through the pandemic.
Their argument being that all they need is a computer and a phone and they can do their job from virtually anywhere, in which case I feel I should point out that there are people all over the world who have computers and phones who currently work in foreign call centres etc who would be only too happy to do the job that people in the UK are reluctant to return too and at a considerably cheaper price.
So to all those reluctant to return to work, I suggest be careful what you wish for as you may end up in a situation where you don’t have to go back to work as someone else is doing it for you.
As if things weren’t bad enough for the hard-pressed motorist already, Highways England have announced that nine sections of Motorways in England will have their speed limit reduced in an effort to bring down the NOx concentrations.
Now I have a suspicion that quite a large portion of drivers will have absolutely no idea what NOx is, so with the help of Wikidodah I have managed to copy and paste some gobbledegook which I’m sure you will find most enlightening, or not as the case may be.
NOx is the chemical name for Nitrous Oxide which is a gas which is produced during combustion of fuels such as hydrocarbons, especially at high temperatures such as in car engines, although I don’t think we had this problem until we did away with leaded petrol.
Now I was a little confused as it seemed to imply NOx gasses are produced naturally by lightning although there was no explanation as to how.
It further stated that NOx is chemistry shorthand for molecules containing one nitrogen and one or more oxygen atom and is generally meant to include nitrous oxide which is a fairly inert oxide of nitrogen and is used as a propellant for aerosol sprays and whipped cream and can have a significant impact on the ozone layer and is a significant greenhouse gas.
The roads that will be affected are the A1, A38, M1, M4, M5, M6, M32, M602 and the M621, most of which will see the limit reduced to 60 mph although even worse a section of the M32 will be further reduced to 40 mph, this will be a trial period with no end date.
For those of you with a long memory you may remember the last time we had a trial speed limit in December 1965 for a 70 mph speed limit which was supposed to last four months but was later made permanent in 1967 and is sadly still with us and largely flouted.
Should you have an even longer memory and be exceptionally old you will know that the speed limit in 1903 was 20 mph but was being openly flouted and by 1930 speed limits were done away with altogether, however in 1935 a 30 mph speed limit was introduced for built up areas.
Moving swiftly on some 86 years and the motor car has progressed quite considerably with better tyres, anti-lock brake and all sorts of clever gismos and we are still at the same speed limit which seems a little odd as I can tell you from experience of owning a 1935 Austin Seven that the brakes were absolutely abysmal compared to modern cars, one might have thought we could have progressed to a slightly higher limit.
We seem to be going backwards and I have a nasty feeling that as in 1965 it won’t be long before this new speed limit becomes permanent, although one has to ask oneself, as this limit is being introduced on the grounds of stopping pollution will it be put up again when we are all forced to drive electric cars which do not omit NOx and only pollute dramatically during their manufacture and their obsolescence when they are scrapped.
A certain section of motorists will face a double whammy, bad enough the speed limit but if the Government wish to abolish all NOx gasses, I assume this will include the propellant for aerosols, which leaves them driving very slowly to The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, otherwise known as Wimbledon only to find there is no cream for the strawberries when they eventually get there.
When I first saw this story I thought, how odd turkeys voting for Christmas but as with everything there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Philip Morris International, the tobacco giant that makes and sells Marlboro cigarettes for customers outside the US, said that the company plans to stop selling cigarettes in the UK within the next 10 years.
Surely this is business suicide but apparently not as the company is responding to a consumer shift away from smoking tobacco products and is preparing for bans on cigarettes by switching to alternatives, the UK government plans to go cigarette free by 2030.
It seems that Philip Morris is already selling smoke-free products and they account for nearly 30% of its sales in the second quarter of the year and by 2025, it plans to bring this up to 50% of sales.
These products include various types of e-cigarettes, which do not burn tobacco, they either don’t use tobacco at all or heat tobacco to create nicotine vapor.
So the full story is not that Philip Morris wish to ban cigarettes, they merely want to move consumers to its e-cigarettes and smoke free products.
I am lucky in that I gave up over twenty years a go but as a confirmed 80+ a day Marlboro man in my time I am rather looking forward to the compensation I am going to receive now that Philip Morris has virtually admitted they are bad for your health, I shall look for the forthcoming injury lawyers are us advertisements.
The Health Secretary Sajid Javid has apologised after suggesting that we need to learn to live with Covid rather than cowering from it.
Apparently families who have lost loved ones felt his remark was deeply insensitive and had caused deep hurt to them and those who stayed at home to protect society.
Mr Javid caught Covid last week even though he has had his two jabs but made a full recovery after experiencing very mild symptoms.
He tweeted, “Please if you haven’t yet, get your jab, as we learn to live with, rather than cower from, this virus.”
Unfortunately he was criticised by opposition MP’s and later removed the tweet on Sunday which I thought was a shame as I would have hoped he would have had the courage of his convictions and not cowered from a few “woke” MP’s, after all I took his remark to be an encouragement to people to get the jab so they don’t have to be frightened of Covid.
Politicians are not what they used to be, I can’t imagine Churchill if he were in the same situation removing a tweet.
The recent good weather has had a dramatic effect on the numbers of migrants willing to risk their lives travelling across the Channel in small dinghies to get to this country.
Just recently there are approximately 400 a day coming or being picked up halfway by British Coast Guard ships, although there have been suggestions that those found not in British waters should be picked up and taken back to France.
We are a very small country and are pretty full up at the moment without any more people swelling the numbers, everywhere I go I see nothing but new houses being built and I know I’m being a NIMBY but it’s too crowded already.
I believe the British Government has given the French 62 million euros to stem the tide and to find the traffickers although at this rate I think we should ask for our money back under the Terms of Goods Act as the French Police are not fit for purpose.
With 400 people coming over every day, how hard can it be to trace people who are bulk buying dinghies, or to find where they are storing them prior to departure, or to stop and search lorries who may be carrying the dinghies in the back, or even to stop the occasional dodgy looking individual towing a dinghy on a trailer.
All of this seems to me to be basic Police work for the average Plod, it doesn’t require the services of the famous French detective Jules Amedée François Maigret, commonly know in the UK as Inspector Maigret.
Apparently the French have refused to use drones which would seem to be the most obvious thing to use as with night vision cameras fitted they would be able to scan vast areas of the coast and catch the traffickers red handed long before the migrants have left the beach but unfortunately they consider them an invasion of their privacy so will not use them.
Call me a sceptical old bugger if you like but I can’t help thinking the French are not taking this seriously and I’m even tempted to think they are actually quite glad to see the backs of the migrants whilst pocketing our money to buy le grande quantites de vin rouge pour le piss up dans le Police station.
As usual I shall finish with a suitable image and today is no exception for I have managed to find a photograph of President Macron together with French Policemen at the moment they received the cheque from Great Britain for 50 million pounds.
There has been a suggestion to introduce a 20 mph speed limit everywhere except on Motorways although I have no idea who on earth would suggest such a thing.
I believe vast swathes of London now have a 20mph speed limit although whenever I have the misfortune to visit London I find it quite an achievement should I attain the giddy heights of 20 mph.
This ridiculous idea must have been suggested by one of these climate change activists in the misguided idea that it will stop vehicle emissions but on the contrary I suggest it will add to them as one will be travelling in a lower gear and using higher revs.
It has been said that Lord Palmerstone’s 1865 Locomotion Act generally known as the Red Flag Act which required that any self-propelled road vehicle had to be proceeded by a person walking at least 60 yards ahead carrying a red flag, effectively stopped any innovation in powered transport for over a quarter of a century.
The act brought in the first speed limits of 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in town with a £10 fine for speeding, however as motoring innovation progressed these speed limits looked more and more ridiculous until in it was finally repealed on 14th November 1896 where the flag was scrapped and the speed limit raised to 14 mph.
In celebration of this momentous event the Emancipation Run, a car rally from London to Brighton took place, starting with breakfast at the Charing Cross Hotel preceded by the symbolic ripping of a red flag in half by Lord Winchelsea, an event which still takes place today.
Now it seems with this suggestion of a 20 mph speed limit we are trying to put the clock back 156 years which is apparently someone’s idea of progress, how very strange.
Apparently they bring out new Emojis every year and this year is no exception, although I wish it were as the vast majority of them are completely indecipherable and I see little need for them other than a smiley face or a thumbs up perhaps.
I imagine it must be the youth of today who use these things as I would have thought it a little childish for the more mature amongst us but I have to admit I know older people who use them, although I have no idea why and I doubt if they know either.
Whoever designs these things have really surpassed themselves this year with designs of pregnant men with beards and pregnant men without beard, one of which I believe is supposed to represent a non binary person, which leaves me with the question when on earth would you have occasion to use any of these let alone work out what they are portraying should you receive one.
I shall leave you with a few more new Imojis of women and men with beards and leave you to work out quite what you might use them for, as I am completely stumped unless it were for posters for the return of the bearded lady exhibition at the funfair although in this day and age I would have thought it unlikely on the grounds of political correctness.
Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon and the richest man in the world made his first trip into space aboard his rocket ship called New Shepard which was named after the first American into space Alan Shepard.
He was joined on the flight by Wally Funk who is an 82 year old woman who trained for the American space programme but was never allowed to fly as she was female, together with his brother Mark Bezos and an 18 year old student who became the youngest person to go into space,
The entire trip only lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds but was enough to experience weightlessness and to see the Earth through the ships windows which were the largest ever flow into space.
Bezos is the second multi billionaire to have gone into space having been beaten to it recently by Richard Branson and said upon his return that he knew who had paid for all the investment in his Blue Origin company which led to the development and funding of the flight.
He gave credit to the poorly paid workers in his Amazon company and all those who had purchased goods and services from his company which had enabled him to fund this vastly expensive project.
I feel proud myself that I have helped fund Mr Bazos as I both buy and sell on Amazon, in fact as an example my latest book The Case of the Grease Monkey’s Uncle which retails on the site for a sum of £4.99 of which I receive the princely sum of 29p.
Should I choose to advertise the book on Amazon there is of course a charge which means that every book that I sell in this fashion is costing me money and is adding to the fund available for Mr Bazos to play with his very expensive toys.
I wouldn’t want you to think I am bitter in any way for I look at it rather more as my effort to fund the arts by selling a book rather than funding a space programme.
As you may have noticed I usually try to finish my posts with a suitable image but refrained from using an photograph of the spacecraft as it looked somewhat like a penis and I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to misinterpret this as a comment on the man, Jeff Bazos.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 