13 May 2010 (Thursday) - Loadasmoney

Did you know that there is such a thing as a 500 Euro note? I didn’t. Apparently there is, but you can’t get them in the UK. We’ve made a decision not to allow the things. On hearing this, my immediate reaction was one of wonder – why on Earth not? And then I learned something.

There was a chap on the radio explaining the matter. He described the gangster films in which people carry round attaché cases containing a million quid. I’ve always accepted this whenever I’ve seen James Bond and the like, and not batted an eyelid. But when you work it out, it turns out that it’s not physically possible to get a million quid into a briefcase. Using the largest denomination note (£50), you would need four attaché cases to fit it all in.

This bloke went on to say that the reason that we don’t have anything more valuable than a fifty quid note (and the comparable $100 note in the US) is to thwart the very gangsters we see idolised on the telly.

The higher the denomination note available, the easier it is to surreptitiously shift large amounts of cash. On the link I gave above there was a case of organised crime trying to launder 300,000 Euros. I say “case” – in actual fact the cash was in a cornflakes box. A similar value of pounds sterling would need a large suitcase.

As well as pounds sterling and dollars taking up (about) ten times the volume of a comparable amount of Euros, he also gave another reason why gangsters like Euros. Having got a huge value of cash into a very small volume, there are then sixteen different countries into which that cash can be laundered. One lives and learns.

It all makes my dodgy coppers (that I mentioned yesterday) seem very small change.

There’s been a new addition to my ever-growing world of friends. Molly’s not a well dog – she’s diabetic which has left her blind. And she has Cushing’s disease. But she has found some wonderful people who will look after her. And if any other wonderful people would like to give a quid or two to help cover the not insignificant cost of her medications, please click here.

12 May 2010 (Tuesday) - This n That

Last night I was rather perturbed to find a lump in my side. It was about the size of a pea, and was rather tender. This morning I found it was gone. Let’s hope it stays that way.

And then off to work early - I moved my car early because the council said they were going to be cleaning out the gutters. They said that a few weeks ago and didn’t. Again they didn’t. There’s now a sign saying they will do it on Thursday. Perhaps I should phone them to see what they are up to.

Before work I popped into Asda to launder some fake money. I say “fake money” – last night I put a magnet in my pocket (don’t ask) and was amazed to find it stuck to some of my copper coins. Some, but not all. A little research on the internet shows that “coppers” are actually made from copper-plated steel, and so should be magnetic. I wonder what my non-magnetic ones were made from? Or who made them? I took no chances and fed the whole lot into the self service checkout when buying my lunch this morning. After all, that’s where it came from in the first place.

I came home from work to find a very subdued next door neighbour. He asked me to apologize profusely to “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” about the noise of his wife’s piano, and he told me how unfair it was of his wife to play the piano whilst people are trying to sleep after night shifts. From the way he spoke I formed the assumption that there had been some sort of ding-dong between him and someone in our house earlier in the day.

However on quizzing the troops, it would seem that no one of my tribe has had any dealings with next door for some time. Mind you, I can remember him telling me how anti-social the piano was whilst I was painting the house a few weeks ago. On reflection I can’t help but wonder if it’s him who’s got the hump with the noise of the piano, and wants us to complain for him.

I’m not grumbling. All the time the piano is tinkling day after day, they can’t whinge about anything we might get up to. And it’s not that noisy, really.

On going through my post I saw I had a letter from Sky telling us that our HD box wasn’t connected to a phone line. It blinking well is, or so I thought. On closer inspection I found the cable was broken. Ho hum – more expense.

I’d spent the day trying to organise a cycle ride for the weekend. The major sticking point was contacting the putative destination. If you use the internet to search for “Black Horse Pluckley” you’ll get ten thousand entries, all listing the phone number as Ashford 840256. And when you ring that number, it don’t work. So before going to the trouble of planning a route I thought we might pop out there this evening to see if the place has closed down. It’s still open, and over a pint of MasterBrew I got the correct phone number. I told them that the wrong number was plastered all over the Internet. They seemed to know all about it, and didn’t seem overly bothered.

I’ve booked a table for mid day on Sunday. I’ve left the time deliberately vague, as my cycling speed is also deliberately vague. If any of my loyal readers fancy coming along, do let me know…

11 May 2010 (Tuesday) - Little Bit of Politics

Over the last few weeks I waxed loquacious about my postal vote. So I suppose that having bored everyone to death with the pre-election build-up, I should at least (if only in passing) comment on the aftermath.

In the past I’ve been rather cynical about the political process, mainly because of the low turnouts. But with nearly seventy per cent of the electorate voting perhaps the result of last week’s election should be taken seriously. And what was the result?

As I predicted, my postal vote counted for nothing. In my constituency we had a very high turnout, and the incumbent MP was returned with his majority increased by over three thousand votes. His total of votes received was four thousand more than all the other candidates’ votes added together. So my vote made no difference one way or the other.

In Westminster Mad Cap’n Tom raked in 84 votes, which wasn’t bad going. It’s quite easy to see who got how many votes locally, but from that point onwards it gets complicated.

From various conversations I’ve had over the last few days, it rather scares me that the general public simply don’t understand our political process (Take my nephew for example Or one of my colleagues who honestly thought John Major was still the Prime Minister). But I can’t blame the normal people for their ignorance of the system. For example: given that one party has raked in 36% of the popular vote, why should they then have 47% of the parliamentary places? And if that proportion is correct, why has the party in third place with 23% of the popular vote only got 9% of the parliamentary seats?

Or take the General Election in February 1974 where the party who came second actually got more votes than the party that won.

The system is clearly wrong. If nothing else last week’s election has demonstrated the failures of our current electoral system. I can’t help but feel that despite being widely regarded to have got third place, in many ways the only winner was the Liberal Democrat party, as the whole “Hung Parliament” fiasco has highlighted what they have been saying for years, namely that our system of electing a Parliament sucks fish.

Having said that, there have only been two hung parliaments since 1929, so the system only rarely fails. And it strikes me as somewhat amusing that the only way out of the deadlock it generated is to seriously consider an electoral reform in which hung parliaments would be de rigueur.

And what of our hung parliament? I have a sneaking suspicion that following the election results, the Labour party have tried to be rather clever, but didn’t quite pull it off. In the first instance they sat back and let the Tories and the Liberal Democrats totally fail to form a coalition government. I say “fail” – they may well yet succeed. But with a hung parliament having been predicted for some time, they seemed (and still seem) to be taking an awfully long time to come to any common ground.

So with no agreement in sight and with negotiations on the way for a new leader the Labour Party made a statesman-like attempt to come to an agreement with the Liberals. Had they pulled it off, then Labour could have claimed the moral high ground in forming a government where the Tories couldn’t, and for having saved the country from political chaos. But these talks are dragging as well.

Earlier I said that the only winner of this election was the Liberal Democrats. They are also the only real loser. They have known for years that their first chance of real political power in government would be in a power-sharing hung parliament, and now that it’s happened they have clearly proved themselves unprepared for the challenge.

I’ve voted Dithering Democrap for years. Never again.

And in the meantime, regardless of who eventually forms a government, we will eventually find ourselves dragging along with an “Alliance of Losers” until a serious effort at electoral reform has been made. Which could take months, if not years.

STOP PRESS – FIVE HOURS LATER

It’s now five hours since I wrote the above, and Labour have thrown in the sponge because those who came third in the election have (finally) decided with whom they are going to play nicely.

On reflection I stand by what I wrote….

10 May 2010 (Monday) - Back to the Grind

Back to work – it’s now exactly a year since I took a grade reduction, and in retrospect I feel so much happier for having done so.

Home from work, and then I mowed the lawn. A week or so ago I commented that “the trick to keeping a lawn looking like it doesn’t need mowing is to keep mowing it regularly”. And it would seem that by some amazing chance, for once I was right. I’d not mowed the lawn for eleven days and this evening when I got out the mower, the garden looked like a jungle. I dread to cast my mind back only a few years when I can remember only cutting the lawn three times all year.

And in closing today, I’ll see if I can’t prevail on the kind hearts of my loyal readers. The daughter of some friends of mine is going to Uganda to spend her three month university summer holidays working with the charity 'Soft Power'. She will be working on various community projects such as teaching in schools and helping refurbish school buildings. She is funding the trip with her own money, however the charity request a donation. She is aiming to donate £500, all of which goes straight into the community. Any and all donations would be greatly appreciated – you can donate on-line here. I did (!)

9 May 2010 (Sunday) - Bluebells

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a dog fan. I can’t see the attraction. Even dog owners don’t like other people’s dogs. There are some people who take the trouble to train their dog, but these people are few and far between.

I spent half an hour wide awake from 5am this morning listening to next door’s dogs screaming. They don’t bark – they scream. Eventually, from the grumbles I could hear through the wall, it would seem that the people next door also get fed up with listening to their dogs, and went to stop the noise. After some shouting and some whining there was silence.

The doorbell has returned. Apparently it fell off whilst “My Boy ^TM ” was lugging his fishing tackle out of the house last weekend. Rather than reattaching it (it’s cordless and has sticky patches, so it only needs to be pushed on the door frame), he put it in his car, and has been driving round with the thing all week. He claimed that with us being on holiday, if he wasn’t home, there was no point in anyone ringing the doorbell anyway. I suppose there is some logic to that.

He’s getting ready for his fishing adventure in France, and this morning we dug out his old rucksack (complete with his name spelt wrong), and I’ve lent him my old camera.

I had planned to visit a caravan site in Rochester today. I’m getting very keen on buying a static caravan on a Haven Holidays site. The sites are open for nine months of the year, and you can use the thing during that time. And the site management will rent out your caravan for you when you’re not using it. Whilst you don’t make a fortune in profits, most people who’ve done this seem to think you cover your costs by hiring the caravan out to the normal people. You can do a reduced rate for family and friends, and you still get a weekend break half a dozen times a year.

The only drawback would seem to be having to stump up twenty per cent of the price of the caravan up front. With caravans being about thirty thousand quid, twenty per cent of that is a tad out of my pocket at the moment. However a little research showed me there’s other caravan firms that do similar deals on cheaper caravans. Within five minutes I found several within an hour’s drive of home that all look quite good.

I think I shall do a tad more research before committing myself to anything.

We then went to a friend’s wood to look at the bluebells, which are particularly spectacular at the moment. And then we joined said friends for a crafty half in the pub. After the obligatory Sunday afternoon in Lidls, I spent a couple of hours doing two week’s ironing, and then fought with Facebook. I’ve given up trying to upload more than a couple of photos there. Instead, I’ve put my holiday snaps here, and as the slideshow on the blog.

And then I went back to NeverWinter. I wonder what’s been going on in there….

8 May 2010 (Saturday) - Home Again

Up early to pack. Why do I always bring so much with me? What on earth was I thinking when I brought the shoe polishing gear? I probably wore about 30 – 40% of the clothes I brought along.

Auntie arrived, and we all sat down for a full English brekky together. I had this plan to get away relatively early, but by the time we’d loaded the cars, had brekky and washed up, we didn’t get away until after mid day. A rather uneventful drive soon had us back at Fleet services. I fancied KFC, and ordered some. The chap taking my order seemed relatively useless, but was still streets ahead of the girl at the next till who was hollering for “chicken borrox”. I dread to think what “chicken borrox” is, and can only hope that the recipient of this delicacy got what they were hoping for.

And so home to find the doorbell missing, dead fish in the fish tank, no milk, a kitchen full of mouldy bread and the laundry basket overflowing with other people’s dirty clothing. I then spent the evening putting the washing machine through its paces to sort out the holiday backlog.

The holiday’s over… a shame Facebook flatly refuses to take the photos I’ve been trying to upload. In the meantime, I hope my loyal readers enjoy the photo from the gents in The Boot….

7 May 2010 (Friday) - Back into Weymouth

Again I was the first one out of my pit this morning. I switched on the news, and we spent an hour or so listening to the pundits speculating on the political situation. We decided that we were on holiday, and that no actual news would emerge for some days so we switched to CBeebies. Far more entertaining.

After a bite of brekky we left the girls cleaning the caravan (they love it!) whilst we took littleun shopping. Morrisons was scary this morning. A vicar was getting her shopping. I suppose vicars need to shop too, but in their vicar-ing costumes? Uncle Fester was sweeping the floor, and the bearded lady was operating the checkout.

Back to the caravan to collect the girlie types, and we then took the bus to Weymouth. Fortunately there was a major hold up on the road as a caravan was being delivered, and we caught the bus. If aver you find yourself needing to catch a bus in Weymouth, don’t rely on their timetables; our bus was leaving ten minutes too early. As we got off he warned us not to be late for the last bus (6.20pm) as that was the only bus he ever made a point of driving on time.

The plan was to have a decent meal for our last full day. But before we ate we thought we’d have a pint in The Boot. The Boot is a traditional old-style boozer, and I suppose (in retrospect) that turning up with a push chair wasn’t the brightest of ideas. I find myself in two minds over the episode. One the one hand I like having a traditional boozer. On the other, I didn’t like being told we couldn’t bring the puch chair into a completely empty bar.

We downed a quick pint outside in the cold, and made our way back to the Red Lion. We’d been there on Sunday, and they had heaters outside. So even if they weren’t bub-friendly, we’d be OK. And we were OK. I attempted to obtain their Doom Bar beer mat, but failed.

And then we decided we were hungry, and across the harbour we could see the Ship Inn. With a great big sign saying they did food all day. So we went into find the kitchen was closed. As was every chip shop along the sea front.

So we took the bus back to Littlesea and ate in the complex there. The food was surprisingly good. Such a shame their beer selection wasn’t up to much.

We spent the evening photographing the sunset, and watched various comedies on the telly until we managed to blow the fuse on the caravan’s lighting circuit. Woops!