Posts

My Hebridean Way Experience

I completed this ride in July 2024. The experience is much more than the ride itself, and for those doing the route from South to North, which is generally the preferred option, it really starts before you board the ferry at Oban for Castlebay, and maybe, if you stayed in the town the night before, then someone you met is also getting the same ferry, (there's usually only one a day) so with the people that you meet, you talk about your plans for your journey, where you plan to stay, and how far you will be travelling. So I met a man from Northern England with his bike, who had taken the train following completing a shift at work, and had a good night's sleep at the hostel I was also staying at. Harbourside, I met a man originally from the UK but who lived on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada and also a young couple from the same general place. There were others also in the bike queue including a lady from Dijon, France. Check in is harbourside next to where the ferry docks, and you

Is the United Kingdom Leaving the European Union - Two Years On

I really do not write that much it seems. This is mainly a therapeutic pleasure, given the humdrum of one's working livelihood (dare I say it). And yet it was interesting that my director said upon the result of the vote that we would have to work harder, because that has not happened, and I would even say that individuals are using methods to look as if they are doing more whilst doing less. There is a loss of control of what you can do, the influence of technology in doing what you do; analysis being almost automated (but that has always been the case - I read a financial report written by someone I used to know at a company where I used to work and it was written in the same way that it was over 20 years ago and that to most people is incomprehensible). So just over two years ago I wrote a short piece about what I thought Brexit as it is commonly referred to meant. Looking back at it I still think it was a reasoned effort although the unrushed move to invoke Article 50 was soo

Brexit, A Different Slant - Short Blog

With a new Government, effectively, and clearly not in any rush to invoke Article 50, with some questions asked and answered about our relationship with Francde and migration, but others being posed unrelated to Europe and thought to be a way of taking this subject away for the centre of everyone's attention, but as far as I am aware, nobody is actually asking why did people vote for Brexit, except for the highly charged migration issue. However, one thing is clear and that the statement "taking back control" had more to it than migration. So here is my views on what Brexit which is actually an erroneous term will be. Firstly, this will not be the pure form of total divorce. It just does not work. The only problem is that both sides are providing people with polarised egos to sit at the negotiating table. So what if they do not negotiate, does that mean that the real work is done elsewhere, and maybe that is the plan, by both sides. What does "Taking Back Control

Nigella Ostentatious But No Common Sense

The court case was lost. Unsurprisingly really. The jury took a common-sense view of the relationship between personal assistants and their pay masters. So the facts are that two sisters were employed by Nigella Lawson and her, can I say it in jest, ex-husband (not sure about the divorce situation but it would seem to be in process), as personal assistants. They were given carte blanche ability to use credit cards and in any expense agreements, all had been signed off by their paymasters. Unfortunately for Lawson/Saatchi, this involved significant spending on other items. So the jury said, that they should have been wary, and undertaken a professional approach, which would have prevented most of this excess. But they did not. So now the case was lost, the bickering continues, the sisters should be unemployable, with their reputations known publicly as well as their names, and life goes on as normal. Whether the protagonists will learn from this lesson is debatable, but people do what

Why You Cannot Trust Football or Soccer to be Fair for Children - A Personal Perspective

Formalities are. I am a parent of a madly loving football daughter, or soccer to those who are not aware that this is the original football. Most children move up with their teams as they grow older, and the size of teams and the size of pitches evolves. This is supposed to ensure that the game encourages skills but also a competitive environment to build on the training sessions that also take place weekly during the season. Teams are put into divisions or sections as they now call them, and between September and December each team should play the other in the league on one occasion to fulfil the league fixture list. Additionally, there were three cup games in a so-called group stage, against teams in the higher or lower section, and I guess that this was also used to see the relative strength of one division against another. She is currently at an age where playing alongside the boys is fine, and that continues until she turns 12 or 13. In general the league is well run, results and

The Legacy of Nelson Mandela

Others more qualified than I can write reams about the life of Nelson Mandela, about the intricacies of his life, and about his political operating abilities. However, all must be taken into context with his life and how he was a well educated person, but clearly had a moral upbringing that ensured he had a political belief that he took into the life he then had and how he retained that modesty in him through the many years of being incarcerated on Robben Island, and then finally when there was a realisation on all sides that the status quo could not continue that he has wise to bring as many people along with him as possible but that his ambition was there for him to realise what was probably a personal dream of becoming the President of the Republic of South Africa. His political wisdom continued in that he set in motion a movement to create an enduring rehabilitation of the population of the country, by also improving the life chances of the black and minority peoples, in education

Google Maps and Spying

I have a statement to make. I use Google maps and the roadmap images to see what houses and areas look like. I also believe that certain members of my family use the same facility to effectively spy on me. The reason that I believe this is that until recently a member of this branch of the family sent occasional correspondence by post to us. However, recently Google has updated their images in this area, they are now showing images taken either in 2012 or 2013 and not 2008 or 2009 as was previously there. Funnily enough there is a vehicle on the driveway at the front of the house. It is not ours, and even somebody who knew us could tell that because the vehicle is not one that we would have, it just would not be one that we would have. The fact is I know whose vehicle it is and can therefore tell on which day of the week this picture was taken, even though I cannot tell on what date it was taken. Therefore, we are not receiving correspondence from this branch of the family (we do not g