Trainee Geriatric

Juice direct from the tree.

2006-10-24T21:23:00.000+01:00

Belize in October is not the coolest place to be but the Mayan Mountains do provide the occasional breeze that makes some attempt to cool the human torso otherwise dripping with perspiration after every little effort.

Three cheers for OrangeX, a simple though powerful way to extract juice from citrus fruits. The story of how this particular specimen found its way here is for another time.

The orchard is begging to be picked, oranges and lemons, lime and grapefruit. A sackful of the former was sitting there waiting patiently for some tlc. In half an hour, the fruit enough for a gallon of juice was cut in half and squeezed, tasted, and stored in the fridge ready for breakfasts and/or glasses holding a modicum of rum to add to the juice. No shop-bought juice resembles this nectar.

We have arrived back in this small corner of heaven.

Kung Fu Shu

2006-09-25T14:34:00.000+01:00

Confucious, he say:

Man likely to put foot in own mouth should bite tongue instead.

Browned off and irresponsible, a pop-u-list view.

2006-09-25T11:29:00.000+01:00

That deeply-revered politician, Gorgon Brown, has just set out two new doctrines in the same breath:

There must be more accountability to Joe Public for public services and,
There must be formed a new body to take responsibility management of the National Health Service .

So while the PM and his subordinate clique will continue to lord it over the NHS, they will cease to be responsible for any of its failings?

Does anyone apart from me view this ploy with the darkest cynicism? If government ministers are to cease being responsible for anything, perhaps it is time we got rid of the lot of them, it would certainly save us a huge wodge of taxes.

They don't like it up 'em.

2006-09-20T14:46:00.000+01:00

Dad's Army's Cpl Jones had a way of describing fundamental but unpalateable truths that conveyed succinct meaning.

Our own dearly beloved Home Secretary tried the same thing on a selected sample of the Moslem 'community' in London, yesterday. He had the temerity to suggest that if the 'community' paid more attention to the ways they were raising their children, they would be doing the 'wider community' a service by detecting and disarming earlier, signs of terrorist inclinations.

To judge only by the howls of recriminatory indignation that followed his speech, one could be led to believe that young Moslems had no part in the London bombings, the shoe-bomber was not a Moslem, and those currently charged with terrorist planning were merely victims of mistaken identity.

At a time when the 'wider community' is clearly failing to discipline its own family members (probably because a succession of hearts-on-sleeve do-gooder governments have made it illegal to apply corrective pain upon transgressors) and cure the prevailing disinterest in overcoming spiralling lawlessness, to see the Moslem 'community' so determinedly in denial is but one more example of the rottenness that pervades our society.

National Service was recognised as an excellent way to instil discipline into the recalcitrant and law-abiding alike. Perhaps it should be reintroduced and the newly-tamed sent to bring order to Afghanistan and Iraq? Killing two birds with one stone?

Crackers?

2006-09-18T14:33:00.000+01:00

Biofuels, don't you just love the wealth of expertise that flaunts itself as often as possible on the telly?

So we decided we had better have a bash at making some.

What better place to start than with the cohune nuts that are abundantly strewn all over the local jungle? The things are so oil-rich the Mayans reputedly used to make a hole in the nut shell and use them like candles.

The 'experts' tell us the process is simple:
Collect the nuts,
Crack the nuts,
Remove the kernel from the shell,
Crush the kernels,
Collect the oil,
Break the shells down and use as a mulch,
Convert the oil to biodiesel.
Use the nut kernel residue to feed livestock.

So as all thirsters-after-knowledge do, we went on the web to find out what machinery is around the place to do all that (except the feed-to-livestock bit).

Plenty to convert from oil to biodiesel, plenty to crush the nut kernels and produce the oil, absolutely zilch to deal with the nut casings. So we could do everything except start at the beginning after collecting the nuts. Shame, really, but nil desperandum.

So we looked again and all over India there seemed to be firms offering equipment of various sorts able to sustain small-village-level techniques and volumes. So we asked them. No replies. So we asked the Indian Trade Office. No replies.

In a world with no shortages of experts, actually doing something surely shouldn't be such an impossibility, one might think. Pity our workshop facilities don't (yet) run to messing about with hydraulic crushers. Meantime, if there are any practical geniuses out there???

Politically incorrect thoughts R us.

2006-09-17T10:41:00.000+01:00

According to Tom Lehrer's song, 'the whole world is festering with unhappy souls'.

I am not a professing Christian, not an adherent to Islam, not to Hinduism, Buddhism, nor any other religious 'ism'. I am, however, interested in and concerned by the historic and current mass-movement reactions to events, real or imagined, in the name of one religion or another. I am also interested and concerned by the actions of demagogues who whip up frenzied mobs in the name of religion.

In the good old days of Genghis Khan, it was considered not unmerciful to offer 'death or the Koran' to conquered peoples. As a way of converting the hearts and minds of the masses, this was a considerable success. The conquering Conquistadores covertly made similar offers of conversion to Christianity to those they conquered. Nebuchadnezzar didn't bother, he merely carted off some of the Israelites to slavery. Communist revolutionists pretended not to be driven by such fervour but their requirements for slavish subservience to self-appointed oligarchs bore most of the trappings of religion, with the mystical 'state' taking the place of the deity as something above question.

The recent attempts at genocide in Ruanda seem not to have as its root cause the religious beliefs of the murdering hordes. However, it seems to me that the overwhelming majority of today's oppressors use religion as an excuse for violent action. Those that protest they are not doing so make overt references to 'terrorists' instead. But nobody I know pretends the genocide being perpetrated in Sudan is anything other than under the auspices of the 'Islamic' government of Sudan.

One thing common to all the attempts by the promoters of violence to gain control of others seems to be the wish to establish hegemony over others with different professed religious beliefs. To do this, the fomenters need to discover, or invent, recognisable differences. Hence, in the past, the wars between differing sects of what had started out as one religion, such as those between Catholics and Protestants, both of which vehemently insist upon themselves being sole practitioners of the 'one true' religion; and those between Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.

Now we see mass hysteria being whipped up by Muslims against recent remarks by the Pope without the tedium of considering what he actually did say. In order to demonstrate how non-violent Islam is, they killed a nun and burned Christian churches.

That I do not have a mandate from any god to speak as his earthly representative does not inhibit me from condemning all those who claim to have such a mandate while they do not themselves constantly, utterly and unequivocally condemn those looking to them for leadership for the bloodthirsty actions their own preaching foments.

A good 'ole boy.

2006-09-15T14:48:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across an .AVI file today of an address to a virtually-empty USA Congress by one Congressman Ron Paul from Texas. It was refreshing to hear an American who not only had a feel for world events but who was prepared to develop a quite persuasive argument linking the current aggressive Bush Administration's policies to oil-producing countries wishing to be paid in Euros or gold instead of US Dollars.

A Google search on Ron Paul Texas brought up a multitude of references, regrettably none to the .AVI file.

Anyone wanting the tedium of downloading a 110-MB file to listen to his arguments, via BitTorrent, please say and I'll post the reference.

Poor Clare's Short of a party. I'd vote for her.

2006-09-15T08:47:00.000+01:00

Tony warned them all not to tell the truth, or they would not be re-elected, but here is Clare deliberately showing them all up. So it's only a short while before she gets kicked out.

She has written in the Independent that she is to stand down as an MP after 23 years and accused Tony's personal creation, New Labour, of arrogance, a lack of principle and "incredible" incompetence.

In her article for yesterday, she said she was "profoundly ashamed" of the government, and that Tony Blair's "craven" support for the United States had made the world a more dangerous place.

Nothing new there, then, but she'll have to go, won't she? We can't have honest politicians publicly acknowledging their leaders to be charlatans.

Labour's 'less' is the real world's MORE

2006-09-13T14:52:00.000+01:00

Having told the Trades Union Congress yesterday that there would be a drop in unemployment announced today, the right and honourable Tony Blair, MuPpet, must be a very surprised spinning machine today because when the official number of unemployed was actually announced, the number had reached a six-year high.

Having put his foot in his mouth, he is holding his tongue.

Tool idle, tool ate

2006-09-11T15:26:00.001+01:00

Mr 'I won't talk to terrorists' Blair, the bloke who spent years talking to that benign group, the IRA, whilst pretending not to, is trying to climb on the bandwagon of praise for talks about talks between Israel and Palestine.

The URL following encapsulates my thoughts, so why reinvent the wheel?

Too little, too late

2006-09-11T15:26:00.000+01:00

Lies, damned lies, and statist hicks

2006-09-10T11:10:00.000+01:00

So, now it is official from Tony Blair - if the members of the Labour party keep telling the truth about the differences between their warring factions, the Great British Public won't elect them next time, so in order to become elected, stop telling voters the truth; in fact, stope telling them anything , except No.10 Downing St. spin-doctor regurgitations.

We happy band of brothers who have always looked at Blair and his pseudo-socialist party spin with a jaundiced eye may not previously have realised quite how sick these awful politicians have made our governance.

Now Bair has gone to Israel to pretend he wants the Israelis to resolve their differences with the Palestinians but because he is handcuffed to the 'I won't talk to you myself, so THERE, but you'd better do what I say, or else!!!' US doctrine, he doesn't have the guts to go to Palestine himself and say the same thing. Something must be done? This is something, so obviously it must be done.

Power Brownout?

2006-09-09T12:32:00.000+01:00

No knowledgeable person, surely, would argue that Charles Clarke's description of Gordon Brown as, amongst other things, a "deluded power freak" is in any way an exaggeration. The grapevine has it that many of the current members of the government's cabinet concur with such a judgement. Those of us, mere powerless and ignored citizens, who have been saying the same sort of thing about several of that awful clique for many years past, will be pleased to see these observed truths being admitted by those fellow-conspirators at last.

It comes as some pleasure to reflect that many of them will be out of power in short order. The matter to regret is that the mob that replaces them, again without our being consulted, will probably be just as bad, there is no obvious alternative of merit standing by in the wings.

What occurs to me is I doubt the revelation by Clarke has suddenly burst upon him, he knew first hand that his diatribe was merited ages ago. That being so, why did he - indeed, why did the lot of them - fail to act honourably and expose him to public ridicule when they first realised it?

None of the above.

2006-09-07T19:32:00.000+01:00

Tony Benn provocatively said that the five questions leaders must be asked are: "What power do you have? where is your power from? in whose interest is it exercised? to whom are you accountable? and how do we get rid of you?"

In these days of the overdue and now thankfully generally waning popularity of Tony Blair, whose party was given power to form a government despite only attracting a third of the vote, we know the answer to the first two questions.

The answer to the third is increasingly obviously not 'the British people'. Misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to depress the nation, the result of a foreign policy of subservience to and unquestioning support for American parochial interests; mute disengagement over the callous invasion of Lebanon; public services increasingly a bitter and incompetent joke. On the home front, lawlessness, lack of education and a rationed health service for which we pay too much make for further depression.

To the fourth, the answer seems to be 'to nobody outside a self-perpetuating clique', despite many loud protests to the contrary. Propaganda has taken the place of action.

To the last, 'you cannot, you were not consulted about his appointment and you cannot dismiss him'.

Democracy in action? Nothing like it!

'OUR' community

2006-09-04T11:39:00.000+01:00

Every day on the news or in broadcast interviews, some real or would-be head honcho claims to speak for or about a 'community'. 'Community' seems to me increasingly to be becoming another mindless blurb word.

So what does the dictionary say?

Quote: A community is a set of people (or agents in a more abstract sense) with some shared element — in particular a group of people who live in the same area is a community. The substance of shared element varies widely, from a situation to interest to lives and values. The term is widely used to evoke sense of collectivism. Unquote.

So the honcho-babies (are pretending to)(know of the existence of) a 'sense of collectivism' amongst these myriad 'communities'? That seems to me to be the impression they wish to create. They can then engage in deep and meaningful dialogues with 'the leaders' of 'the xxxxx community' and go on to misrepresent their interpretation of the results as being binding on that 'community'. That then raises the question in my doubting mind as to how those 'leaders' were elected, what functions they were elected to perform and how those who feel the 'leaders' are failing in their proper performance of those functions can be replaced.

The very existence of a 'community' is divisive, if one is a member of the community and others are not, an 'us' and 'them' situation is immediately created. The 'thems' somehow generally manage to be in the vast majority and the 'us' group comes across as wanting to manipulate the 'thems' in ways the 'thems' have not approved.

So is not the moral of this story clear - ban the use of the word 'community' by anyone in authority, no matter how appointed or self-proclaimed?

I ran, but who is running what? And why?

2006-09-02T12:11:00.000+01:00

In the good old/bad old/indifferent old days, I was on business in Iran when the Iraqi missiles were making life a bit difficult. ((Hint: Ask me for some anecdotes)). I was also soon after in Iraq when the Iranian missiles were making things not quite so difficult. ((Same sort of hint)). I have a degree of liking for both the Iranians and the Iraqis I met in their own countries and outside. As a sort of balance, I can say I also tend to like the Americans I have met. Having spent a fair part of my life in childhood and, later, working, in the Middle East and Arabia, I tend to pay attention to the news about the area, and to pass this through my credibility filter to try to satisfy myself about what is 'really' happening.

The basic differences that I more or less immediately noticed about the indigenes was that the Yanks were largely ignorant of events outside the USA and they tended for most of the time to swallow whole the spin and obfuscation doled out locally, whereas the others seemed much better versed in world affairs but they also too readily swallowed the same sort of thing.

So, when the USA government started to fulminate about 'Iranian intentions to develop an atomic bomb', (as already developed by the USA, France, Russia, South Africa, Israel, and UK) I wondered why this might be a real problem instead of just another excuse to promote the global world control ambitions of our favourite superpower and in particular to interfere in the Middle East and N. Africa. Then 'Europe' , Russia and China all started to put their five eggs in.

I thought it might be a good idea to read the obligations undertaken by those acceding to the nuclear proliferation treaty and instead of things becoming clearer, more fog descended, and I became sidetracked.

That treaty requires atomic weapons progressively to be destroyed. South Africa manfully led the way and got rid of all theirs. I couldn't find any recent references to any of the rest determinedly getting rid of theirs. The USA clings on to enough atomic weaponry to blast the whole world into atomic oblivion several times over.

I do not count Israel's bombing and destruction of Iraqi atomic facilities before they were producing power as something that ought to be considered as properly furthering the objectives of the treaty.

Despite Iran's repeated protests that it has only peaceful uses of atomic power in mind, who believes that? But doesn't it become more understandable that Iran might feel threatened by the specific threats of Israel to ensure Iran's atomic projects are destroyed, if their (Iranian) efforts are not abandoned, especially given its (Isreal's) previous record over Iraq?

Does it seem plausible that the USA might use Israel as a client state to do such destruction? After all, didn't the USA in the immediate past provide Israel with weaponry, including cluster bombs, which were used to kill hundreds of Lebanese civilians as well as the Hisballah? Stalin and Hitler used the same sort of tactics and we are supposed to have stopped doing such things in these days of so-called enlightenment.

Reports of all the nod, nod, wink, wink politics and the terminological inexactitudes spewed out in support don't make convincing reading to this incorrigible sceptic. How about you?

Some of it seems to be 'really' about oil, some about Israel, some about 'democracy', and none at all about atomic bombs.

All motorways pollute - or do they??

2006-09-01T08:49:00.000+01:00

Everyone knows pollution is a BAD THING. ((Fx:Nod your head here and look sad, wise and judicious. A wry smile adds to the atmosphere of inevitable gloom and despondency.))

But when we pause just a little to cast a critical eye at the spin emanating from government sources, what do we find?

All those vehicles being driven along motorways undoubtedly pollute. The slower the vehicles are forced to go, the more they pollute. If vehicles can travel at cruising speeds without congestion, the pollution they cause is at a minimum. ((Fx:Nod your head again, here, this could be fun.)) It follows that roads which do not permit vehicles to travel at cruising speeds are a direct cause of extra pollution.

There are well-known to arise considerable benefits to wildlife and plant divesity from having all those protected environments along motorway verges.

The argument by the government's Department of Transport is that providing more roads GENERATES more traffic. That is a deliberate scientific falsehood. Reducing their argument ad absurdum, they would 'cure' all congestion by closing all roads permanently. Providing more roads PERMITS more traffic to flow, true, but there is already a huge amount of suppressed demand waiting for government to satisfy the needs of those wishing to travel. It is the further artificial suppression of demand that the government is at present hell-bent upon creating. What is needed, instead, is more roads, not less, able to permit the passage of vehicles without congestion.

The extra pollution caused by the expansion of air travel makes the pollution caused by all road and sea traffic virtually negligible. Reduce the pollution caused by air travel and the 'pollution' excuses trotted out in the current governmental war on the motorist will be seen to be the falsehoods they are.

As crusades go . . . . . . let's go!

2006-08-28T17:04:00.000+01:00

According to a usually-reliable source (which gets me off the hook should anyone prove me wrong), over 40% of the thinking masses in the UK do not trust ANY political party.

Only 11% more to go before we are in a majority! Thank you, fellow-citizens, please continue to broadcast fear, anxiety and doubt about these almost-bankrupt parties. No wonder they all want the taxpayers to provide funding for their nefarious activities.

Panic Over?????

2006-08-26T13:42:00.000+01:00

So the Great Airline Disaster Attempts were doomed to total failure? Just who is kidding whom???

Click here to see if all is revealed.

Surely our Great Protectors would NEVER try to pull the wool over our trusting eyes?

How to cure the body politic.

2006-08-26T04:27:00.000+01:00

Is anyone else out there fed up with being told what to do instead of being asked what needs doing?

How about beginning by replacing the current system, which is nothing like democratic, with the makings of a democracy?

We might begin by curing at least three fundamental flaws in the British system, these being present similarly in most others:
1. the existence of permanent political parties and,
2. the existence of the whipping system in Parliament and,
3. those we elect acting as if they were our masters instead of our representatives.

Abolish the first two and the persons we elect to represent us would hopefully have to start earning our support by actually doing what we elected them for instead of toeing their party line.

What makes things worse at present is the system of unelected Ministers, a self-serving clique if ever there was one. Whenever one of them gets found out, all that happens is they play musical chairs.

It may be necessary to return to this subject before the era of freedom and light dawns.

Aircraft Hand Baggage

2006-08-25T14:52:00.000+01:00

Can anyone please point me to the highly-intelligent individual who decreed that in order to prevent terrorists from boarding an aircraft it would be essential to halve the amount of hand baggage everyone in the world was permitted to carry on with her?

First things first

2006-08-24T19:48:00.000+01:00

The steering conrod on the ancient John Deere ride-on was pushed out of joint when in a senior moment I backed it and the trailer into some garden furniture. Of course chaos ensued, when do I do things by halves? A trusty hammer manipulated with skill and determination recovered the situation, but for how long, I ask myself?

I fixed a shear in the plastic pipe of our central vacuum cleaner system. Being an asthmatic, it pays to keep the place as dust-free as possible.

Rain got into the electrics and the earth-reference-circuit-breaker did an earth reference and broke the circuit. This was not a great help to the pumps used by my home-built hydroponics system which is supposed to be busy growing cucumbers, tomatoes and courgettes, plus a trial potato plant. When in doubt, panic, and all will be well. I did, it wasn't. Much drying and fussing later, and it was. The 15 cucumbers remaining on the first plant gave the system a vote of confidence.

All this, plus the current daily chore of runner-bean gathering diverted my attention from the task I had half-decided to begin, namely SETTING THE WORLD TO RIGHTS, deciding what else to do with the Czar plums now ripening, and making sure the lunch-time medicinal dose of Tio Pepe on the rocks was consumed in peace and harmony. Guess which third of those chores was managed!

I now propose to ponder the problems of the universe and what must be done about them, on the morrow.