1996 DIARY EXTRACTS

Thursday 4 January 1996 – In Kate Bush’s book (Whole Story), saw on one page she didn’t use drugs & on next page, that she took tobacco. I remember recently a girl died after taking an Ecstasy tablet, media was full of it but an average of 300 tobacco addicts died that same day & nothing mentioned. The difference? – Government had sanctioned latter deaths due to pecuniary gains.

Wednesday 26 June 1996 – On A14, passed by “fat cats” in company cars & I thought they were like at work: up each others arses, as they drove too close together.

Good with death

2009 & 2010 DIARY EXTRACTS

22 December 2009 - Jury Summons? I thought summons sounded like they were calling in a criminal, especially with a £1,000 fine for not doing it without good reason. It should be an invitation. Why do governments have such heavy handed ways of doing things?

Monday 25 January 2010 – In “The Simpsons” (Simpsons Bible Stories), showed Homer and Marge as Adam and Eve but they were wearing fig leaves before eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which I thought strange.

Sunday 9 May 2010 – Doppelganger – Told Louise about someone who has collected my medication before I had. He’d used my name or had same name as me. He must’ve known my details. If someone they didn’t know goes in, they usually ask for address on prescription so that man must’ve known that too. Earlier, I’d wondered if it had been my doppelganger again. He would know all I know.

Friday 9 July 2010 – In July 2009’s “H & E naturist”, in Francois Harley’s “Holistic health corner”, was about loving yourself. It said that everyone was exactly as nature had made them. Most humans on this planet aren’t exactly as nature intended. We weren’t made to live a sedentary lifestyle, over eating and becoming fat and unhealthy.

"GENERAL IGNORANCE"

I've been thinking lately about stuff that everyone, including me, isn't taught at school.

Great Britain
There's a lot at the moment about Great Britain but no one seems to know what the word Great is there for. Everyone is just caught up with the idea of being called great.

I remember years ago a series on BBC where people were given a camera to record anything to go into an archive. A foreign university student spent his time ranting & asking why Britain was being called Great, when all he needed to do was look in a dictionary.

If he looked in a dictionary he’d find it was simply a geographical term for the largest island of the British Isles. I've seen road atlases of Great Britain which show the Isle of Wight on the front cover, which isn't part of Great Britain.

It should really be called the United Kingdom.

Judge’s gavel

I have often noticed that British judges are portrayed on TV using a gavel? People are so used to seeing them being used on American TV or in films, so that when they act out the part in a British court room, the gavel is quite often included. It's a bit strange. If you asked them they'd be convinced that they were used in Britain.

Pronouncing flaccid correctly.

There are only 2 ways to pronounce a double c. It is either as in account or as in accident, and it's the second way - flaksid. This is worse when a doctor or other medical professional doesn't know!

Distinguishing between a pillory & stocks.
A person stands up with their hands and head in a pillory. In stocks, they would sit down with their ankles through the holes. Stocks are like someone wearing wooden socks or stockings.

The short billion.
The French came up with the billion (million million) but for some strange reason they also invented the short billion (thousand million).

What was the idea behind that? I can understand the normal billion, being a million followed by second (a bi-million) but a thousand million makes no sense whatsoever. I refuse to use it myself and I am mystified as to why everyone else does.

The stand by on electrical equipment.
I never use this button but everyone else appears to use it. I have been in people's homes where a room would contain numerous appliances on stand by. How can everyone complain about their electricity bills when they have left everything switched on for 24 hours? The electricity companies and governments regularly speak about meeting the future needs for power, but if everyone switched off, power consumption would drop considerably. Of course the electricity suppliers are quite happy about helping with their profits.

Some mistakes: Someone saying a woman has bosoms when they would usually only have one bosom! Calling a woman a chairman! Using hero instead of heroine; ambassador instead of ambassadress.

Political correctness

This makes people paranoid about what they can do or say. And also those who are supposedly in charge overdoing the enforcement of that paranoia to a ridiculous level. Those who they are worried about offending are not generally bothered by it.

Using a £ sign as an E instead of an L.
An advert recently showed the word STR££T which would be STRLLT.

In this town's Co-operative Travel, there's a poster showing this:
TRAV€L MONE¥ MAD£ EA$Y
When it should have been this:
TRAVE£ MONE¥ MAD€ EA$Y

No one now seems to remember that it stands for Libra. In pre decimal times the money was Libra Solidus Denarius, or pound, shilling and pence (£ s d). A solidus is a /, which was used as a symbol for a shilling (1/-). For shillings and pennies it would be 2/6.

DOPPELGANGER 3

Some time ago I went into Sainsbury’s on my way home to do some shopping. I removed the black woolly hat I was wearing and I put my shopping into a back pack at the till. As I left the shop I went to the toilet as a large number of shop staff came out of the door. Leaving the toilet, I was followed and stopped outside, where I was accused of shoplifting. I was told that I was seen in the drinks section picking up a bottle although I hadn’t been anywhere near that section. At the till, it was noticed that I didn’t pay for the bottle, which I didn’t have.

The “leader” of the group was a bit of an idiot and let me go after I’d said that I didn’t have a bottle and showed him my receipt. I carried on but the mob returned, this time with a suited man who told me again of what I’d apparently done. He then searched me but, of course, he couldn’t find a bottle. He looked a bit confused, as if I’d just performed a magic trick to make the bottle disappear in front of him. There was a bit of a mumbled apology before they returned to the shop.

I’d have liked to have seen the CCTV images of “me” taking the bottle. Nowadays they have security men that would have stopped me as I left.

GOVERNMENT

The anarchist, Emma Goldman said that, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." How true that is about governments and their politics. Another saying I’ve heard is, “Whoever you vote for, the government wins.”

Politics and government were created by the rich for the rich and those who work for the government are servants to do the bidding of the rich. Below them are the police and armed forces to do the dirty work.

In the past, government served the establishment such as the monarchy, the nobility and religion to make laws to keep the peasants in their place. In some ways it still does, except that their powers have been lessened. A few centuries ago the monarchy wielded a divine power over their people, giving them the right to kill anyone who dared to think differently. This included blasphemy against the established religion.

There are still parts of the world that use such methods, under the control of dictators.

The peasants can’t be kept in their place with that type of force as used in the past, although the establishment wishes they could. Public protest is safer without the organisers being arrested, tortured and executed. In the past, those who took part in any activity were regarded as unthinking followers of their leaders.

For example, when the nobility began to enclose land by taking over public land and expelling the common people who had farmed there for centuries, any resistance could be quelled by military force.

Now the government works for any individual or organisation that possesses wealth which still includes the monarchy and nobility. The police find it easier to concentrate on small companies and individuals who evade paying taxes. At the same time, wealthy individuals and large companies can find ways to escape paying many millions, quite often using loopholes in the law. These companies can do as they please, with the governments backing.

DOPPELGANGER 2

There have been a few times when I have been seen by other people when I know it couldn’t have been me.

When the film "The Most Fertile Man in Ireland" was in the cinemas, I'd thought about going to see it. One Friday I looked in the local newspaper cinema guide but it wasn't there. I was going to town and wondered about visiting the Tourist Information for a cinema guide. I was to go to the library on the Saturday morning and so I didn’t go that far into town.

On the Saturday, I went in the Tourist Info and browsed looking for a guide. I could hear the woman behind the counter talking and a woman near me said that she thought that it was I who was being spoken to. I was told that the new guides were in now. Apparently I had called in on the Friday afternoon. I had stood at the door and asked about a guide. I was told that they would be in on Saturday. She recognised me as the person who’d come in.

Television of the future, now?

A couple of days ago, I was watching BBC 4, which was showing the group Slade at the BBC. But I was watching on Freeview and the signal was bad. It kept disappearing or breaking up, with the sound stuttering. It depended on weather conditions and so didn't happen all of the time. When it did, most of the digital channels vanished leaving a No Signal sign on screen.

I commented to the friend I was watching with that when I'd watched Slade back in the 1970s, I didn't think that the televisions then would be better than what I was watching 40 years in the future on digital. I'd thought that the television of the future would be advanced and sophisticated but in reality it was worse.

PILGRIM FATHERS

I have recently learned something about the Pilgrims who left England to sail to America.  They left because of religious persecution but it wasn’t to seek the most obvious sort of religious freedom. Apparently England had too much religious freedom for their liking and they called for less freedom. They were too much for the English people to bear and were persecuted for it. That does explain a lot about the USA, where I have heard that some schools still teach creationism instead of natural selection.

Those Pilgrims could be described as religious fundamentalists. That’s somewhat ironic now, when the USA has so much trouble with other religious fundamentalists from other parts of the world.

HOMELESS

I heard about the number of humans being made homeless has increased as more of them lose their homes, being unable to repay their mortgage.

This again shows how money is more important than humans. The money lenders are quick to remind everyone that they will lose their homes if they can’t keep up the repayments. If they can’t, they are chucked out on the street and the property is sold to get the money back. The money lenders couldn’t care less about those who have ended up sleeping rough on the street. The government cares even less about them.

This is a ridiculous situation, in a ridiculous society. Why do humans put up with this? Could it be because those who are still able to pay would rather ignore the plight of strangers? They don’t want to be reminded that it could be them if their circumstances change.