As I scoffed toast I watched an episode of “Drifters” in which our heroine couldn’t decide if she was psychic or psychotic. I think it fair to say that the jury is still out on that one.
I then sparked up the lap-top. The Facebook “Upstairs Downstairs” group had a minor squabble going about how unfairly the servants of the upper classes were treated a hundred years ago. It amazes me how many people are discovering that TV show for the first time after so long. I suppose I’m discovering all sorts of things through Netflix, but when “Upstairs Downstairs” first came out there were only three TV channels.
Apart from being bombarded with begging posts about dying children (this seems to be a “thing” on Facebook right now) I also had several posts from some odd-looking woman who seems to make money from spouting meaningless management-style catchphrases to people who lap up that sort of old bollox. Apparently her mission is “to empower others to get to that soul-centred business they crave” but how you get empowered from paying her to spout silly buzz-words remained something of a mystery.
It was still rather dark as I left home. I wasted a few minutes going up and down the road collecting tridents, beach towels and gnome hats (it's a Munzee thing) before being rather pleased to find that my car started right away.
I drove past the filling station in Brookfield Road to see they were open but had no queues. Was that no queues because the fuel stupidity had stopped, or no queues because of no fuel? With four-fifths of a tank of petrol I didn't bother looking to find out but kept going.
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the next shortages to come - Christmas stuff. Christmas puddings and turkeys are already flying out of the supermarkets, along with pretty much everything else Christmas-related which has a long shelf life or can be frozen. Apparently the French are planning to blockade the ports and the Channel Tunnel soon because of whatever it is that they have got the arse about this week. On re-reading this does appear to be somewhat patronising and maybe even xenophobic, but any student of history will realise that Anglo-French relations have always been strained at best, and the French seem to block the ports and the Channel Tunnel at the drop of a hat. As I know only too well finding my journey to and from work seemingly constantly being stuffed up by "Operation Stack" and "Operation Brock" and "Operation What Are They Sulking About This Time".
There was also a lot of talk about how the Prime Minister wants to transform the country's economy into a "high wage" one starting with a rise to the living wage. He has called on employers to increase the wages of all staff... but as yet seems rather reluctant to raise the wages of the public sector employees. This strikes me as something of a daft move. From my own experience why would anyone spend years to get post-graduate qualifications and then spend years gaining experience to become a senior blood-tester only to find that a train driver gets far more money after a few months.
Where's the incentive to get on?
And Facebook are facing no end of aggro from the American congress amid allegations that what they provide harms children and weakens democracy. "Weakens democracy" - it was claimed that Donald Trump got elected on the basis of a whole load of lies that were posted on social media. As I've said before democracy is a flawed concept. It assumes that the electorate are capable of making rational decisions. And if they are swayed by the half-baked drivel they read on-line then clearly they are not. Democracy - the process by which the considered opinion of an educated person is equal to the whim of a half-wit.
I've done this rant before, haven't I?
I got to work and parked up... wondering if the car would start again at home time. I went in to the early shift. As early shifts go it wasn't too bad at all. No cake, but there were biscuits. Whilst I prefer cake, I will happily scoff a biscuit (or two). And rather than working, I probably did spend far too long watching the antics of the resident flock of goldfinches who were spuddling about in the puddles on the flat roof outside the blood bank window, And was that a woodpecker in the tree out the other window?
With work worked I went back to my car which started right away. And having collected the dogs the car started again when I drove to the woods, and it started again when we drove home again.
No comments:
Post a Comment