25 years and finally…no mortgage!!

Well it only seems like yesterday that the good Mrs Mundane and my self moved into our new house. Nothing lavish nothing ostentatious just a bloody huge mortgage on our little salaries.

The neighbours seemed nice, the village was nice and provided we could manage the monthly payments then hopefully we could stop!

Well its 25 years later now…the mortgage was backed by an underperforming endowment policy, the children came along, we lost our jobs  through illness and redundancy(ies), and we went to university and lived the life of students,. Somehow, we managed to keep afloat, heads above water and even though there were times of despair and anguish we made it to our last payment. True, the aforementioned endowment under performed by approximately 33%, true, it was taken out at a time not covered by the miss selling act or whatever they call it, and true, we had to make up the shortfall. BUT!!!…we did it!!!

So, now I am older, wiser, and marginally better off, what have I learnt?

That the Government, Banking, Insurance, Financial advisors and Building Society’s of this country and probably the world, are nothing but a bunch of money grabbing, lying cheating bastards that if I had my way would be put to death in a slow and inhumane manner for all the time-wasting, cheating methods that they have dealt me with in the time period of my mortgage!

Can I clarify please?

• Think back over the last two years, look at the banks bailed out by the government using YOUR money.
• Indeed look at the money they have paid themselves in bonuses knowing they are going/have gone bust!
• Look at the amount of interest on your current account
• Look at the ammount of interest on any of your accounts
• Look at your endowment policy…has it short-falled, was it miss sold to you?
• Which government do you want to blame? The Tories and the Maggie Thatcher years when if you had a job you were ok, or if you were without a job you were up shit creek without a paddle!
• The Labour years when all seemed to go wrong for the working man, we went to war(s) that frankly have now looked to be for no real reason. (Except the oil!)
• The loss of the motorbike industry, why?? Triumph at Hinckley have managed to make a go of it!
• The car industry…all gone, but for the ones owned, that were ours, by countries that try to make a go of it!

So, you see why now, at just turned 54, I am…well, a grumpy old man!

I met Tony Blair once, he said all the right stuff but he hasn’t done enough to save our country. His successor…well I would not buy a second-hand car off him and whats a Scot doing ruling England? Give them devolution and send him back home! Better still if you want a Scot ruling the country get Billy Connolly to do it…he couldn’t be any worse!

Oh, and don’t think I like the Tories and/or other parties, I hate the lot of them! Some more than others! All they do is slag each other off like school kids in the playground, get themselves elected and then give themselves a pay rise! THEN….they make a bigger mess than the last lot!

If…IF….they are all so clever, why don’t they all get together, pick out the best “bloke” or “wench” from any party for the job and between the bunch of buggers make one party that works for this country and this country alone…(I mean the UK presumably) then and only then, can we possibly move forward.

Now I don’t know if its me but my Dad, he’s coming eighty, thinks the country is going to ruin. My mates in the pub and at work think its going to ruin and every where I go/look it seems others think this country is going to ruin. So….logic says if its going to ruin now, it must have been better “back then” when ever that was?

So…lets get some manufacturing going, stop the population expanding from those that keep “appearing” on our shores. Lets bring everyone back from the war zones we like to frequent and then all pull together and build a few good schools, hospitals and PRISONS! Then fill the afforementioned buildings with the appropriate people and start to make things better for the rest of us…like the good old days when there was less crime on the streets, drugs were not every where and life seemed oh so much nicer…or, am I overdosing on rose tinted spectacles?

See, its easy innit!??!

Have a nice life…

Moriarty

The Greasy Spoon…a tale of a “BEST” Sandwich!

I recently decided to go and buy a new satnav. Nothing new in that but the weather was atrociuos, as the UK had been blanketed in snow and I sensed my journey would take longer than usual. I called my mate “Big Al” up on Skype to see if he fancied coming along for the ride as I knew he was “well up” on Sat Navs and could probably advise me best in my choice. On top of that he is good company to have along!

Well it was quickly evident, just going to pick up Big Al, that the driving conditions were not ideal to say the least. The snow was all but gone, it was all slush and we were experiencing heavy rain, the car was misting up inside and traffic was slowwww!!

Both Al and I had the same thought…food and a cup of tea! “Where’s the nearest “Greasy Spoon?”

Big Al used to be trucker, amongst other things in life and he knew of one not far from where we were heading and being not much of a diversion… off we went!

Ten minutes later saw us in the aforementioned “GS” and having ordered we sat down to await our respective “nose bag”.

So, whats a Greasy Spoon I hear some of you ask?

Its a cafe, caff, sandwich bar, call it what you will, nothing more, nothing less but, originally made to serve truckers on the UK’s old A roads, it is a place of simple fare, usually fried sausages, bacon, fried bread, chips etc with the obligatory mugs of strong tea. Hence…”Greasy Spoon!”

So what did we order and what was it like? We both had a “BEST” with a mug of tea. Big Al being er…well, big…made himself bigger by ordering his “BEST” with Black pudding on it.(Cringe…I hate Black Pudding!)

Now, I have travelled all over the UK and it always surprises me that in most places, particulalrly down south (read London) they have absolutely no idea what a “BEST” is! It’s simply an acronym for Bacon, Egg,Sausage and Tomato…served within three slices of thick bread in the commonly known form of… “A Double Decker!”

For those of you thinking yuk! Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!

I suppose it is a local saying but when you have asked for a BEST and the guy (in london) says we dont do ‘em mate! Wot is it? And then looks at me as if I am “a plonker” as he points to Sausage Bacon Egg and Tomato on the blackboard menu you really that the City that gave us the humble BLT has missed out on a major sandwich!

Mobile phone rip off….?

Is it me or am I the only one who feels ripped off by mobile phones? I am just looking at a phone for my youngest son, an offer by “3″ for ten pounds a month with unlimited texts and 75 minutes per month of calls. In itself a good bargain? It seems so but, I wonder how much profit is involved within that cost?
I decided to try and find out!

Texting…

Now this is the maths bit…nothing too difficuly but lets keep it as simple as we can.
A text message has a character limit of 160 letters, numbers or spaces as a space is, by definition, a keypress so its a “hidden” character. Each letter is 1k of data so ergo a message is a max of 160 kbs…that bit was easy.
Now 1 megabyte is 1024 kbs or 1024/160 = 6.4 text messages. For this purpose we will call it six to keep it simple.

Nowthere are 1024 megabytes in a Gigabyte so for ONE gig we can make 6 x 1024 texts or…6550 texts per Gig. With me so far? So where is this going…
Well I have a download limit with Talk Talk of 40 Gb’s per month which they charge as an extra on the bill of £6.99 over and above my line rental and calls. So for £7.00 I can have 40GB’s of data transfer.

So 40 x 6550= 262000 texts for seven quid! Or as my calculator works it out to: 2.6717557251908396946564885496183e-5 per text!! Which means nothing to me!

Now rummaging around on the net I can see pay as you go texts are around 5p to your own company eg Virgin to Virgin, Orange to Orange, but that doubles to 10 p across companies.
Using the above “262000 texts for seven quid” scenario our 262000 texts would cost us, at the 5p rate… 262000 x .05 =£13,100 now I think that that is a tad expensive!

So lets go on holiday and see what it costs to text home to the folks saying “Its nice here, suns out, beers nice, food great, see you in two weeks!”
Looking on the net again I can see that it can cost up to 49 pence per text from abroad to home…so thats….262000 x £0.49 =£128,380 for my 40Gbs of data…NOT £7!!
So now we know how they make there money! I wish I knew what it was from calls but it will be similar I am sure.

Now before you all rush to the keyboard to have a go and say but this, but that…I know that they have an infrastructure to build and maintain, employees and equipment but that was just on 40 Gig…now how much is it when you extrapolate that over all subscribers to a network?

I suspect the final figure would make the National Lottery seem like peanuts!

Moriarty…

BBC Top Gear – Past its sell by date?

 

Going down hill?

Well, I have been eagerly awaiting the new Top Gear series and sadly….it’s pants! The jokes you can see coming a mile off and they are no longer funny, the “main events” of the program are now becoming quite banal and last nights bits about the flying caravan and the Lancia Stratos replica were just silly! How did we expect the caravan to land…a little like a basket under a balloon, I suspect. As for the stratos? Well, lets face it the Stig has the capabilities to drive really well when he needs too, or really poorly, in the “cheap” replica. I wonder what the manufacturer and the owner thought of their “destruction” of this nice looking vehicle?

A stonking motor if ever there was one...

The original won so much so quickly against “better” cars all mentioned in the program, but, then as normal they just ridiculed

the end of the article. It seems that they can only “take the p*ss” nowadays and not really entertain as they once did!

Nice link to a site though for some very evocative sounds…listen here

 

Mice…are they the sign of a “Dirty Home?”

We had to get the environmental helath in this week as the eldest kiddy wink, (he’s 20) had woken me up at 4.00 a.m to tell me some one was looking at him in his bedroom! It appears we have a “Mickey Mouse” living amongst us! Quite why he would want to live with the “famile Le Mundane” I cannot begin to comprehend…we are noisy, we are clean, we are greedy and eat everything on our plates so nothing is really binned, and if it is, it’s in a plastic carrier and then straight into the wheely bin! So…apart from shelter and warmth what’s he doing living with us?
Now my big worry is he is doing what comes naturally with Mrs Mouse and soon we will have hoards of Mickey’s and Jerry’s running around and worse, probably some Minnie’s too, but, sadly we don’t have a cat! (A Thomas?) So a quick call to our local Environmetal Health and out comes a very nice man who spots the tell tale signs of droppings and soon has little pots of poisoned bait scattered around the loft, garage, launderette and other little hideaway places that Mickey’s like to run and play in.

So…what has happened since Mr Mouse Catcher left us? (They are free around here by the way so that’s a bonus!)

Well in the garage all the food has pretty well gone and so we must assume the poor thing(s) is/are dead…however, we decided to clear up and tidy out the garage today (to get more junk in I think) and I found a neat little pile of poisoned stuff secreted away in an old comfy cloth usually used when we are decorating. So I think the little blighter is secreting it away for another day or…to make us think he’s a “Jed as door nail” as they say around here!

I will avail you of our findings in due course…but as yet “eldest son” has not had any more furry nocturnal visitors….

Have a nice weekend…
Moriarty…

Black Country Woman to be fined for feeding ducks in park…

Black Country Mother Vanessa Kelly’s £75 fine will be dropped along with similar penalties imposed on six other people in Smethwick Hall Park.
Wolverhampton Express and Star (18 Nov 2009) http://www.expressandstar.com/2009/11/18/duck-feeding-fine-is-dropped/

Well what can I say? Doesn’t every mother and father have the right to feed the ducks with their children in the park? I know I did with my kids twenty years ago, as my parents did with me some fifty plus years ago! There may be a long forgotten law that prohibits this activity but, come on…in the great scheme of things does it really make a difference to anyone but “the perpetrators?”

Moriarty the bemused…

Old Peoples Homes…so, what are they really all about?

Sadly, six weeks ago my mother in law fell off her broomstick and had a stroke…she’s eighty-one so, yes, she has had a good innings, I agree. But, nonetheless, what happens now? She spent a month in hospital recovering really well, before they sent her out to an old people’s home, a place that has been the butt of many an old joke. Now, I see where these jokes come from…the endless supply of comic material drawn from stark reality is positively humongous!

The clientele are, by its very nature, in various desperate states, they say and do things that are sad, but can be funny, the actions of many, if it wasn’t so sad, would make an excellent comedy sketch for a tv comedy series…but and here’s the rub, the last laugh is that if we are lucky …yes LUCKY, and have a long life we will all end up there! Now that is sad because so far, the few homes I have had to frequent over the years are run by underpaid people, who work really hard, never have much of a minute to them selves and are on a treadmill looking after the residents.  No one, not the residents, or certainly the offspring of said residents, think they do enough and frankly their working conditions stink…LITERALLY!

Hopefully, the mother in law is now getting to a stage where she can go home and with the right care package in place try to live a “normal” life. The truth is, she is now really struggling to understand what has happened to her, she cannot read nor write and her speach is…well…awfull at times, to the point of not being able to understand her which, in turn, causes her more frustration and distress…

What have we all got to look forward too?

What is it they say? Lifes a sh*t and then you die!
Have a good weekend…

Are wireless installation companies the new clampers?

Well, we have had wireless installed all over school…brilliant!

Extricom Access Point like we use...

Well, no not really…You see, wireless can be seen by anyone and so to stop them there naughty hackers and freeloaders from using/abusing your network you have to set passwords and encryption setting thingamajig’s.

Now this isn’t quite like what you do at home because you do it once for your laptop or whatever, and it just works…usually, well sometimes. But once you have figured it out then thats it, you just turn on, log on if your posh, and surf. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

However, in school we all have to log onto a network, then we open a browser like IE8 (Yak) or Firefox 3.5 (Superb) which is validated by the server to make certain your allowed on the Internet and this all adds up to a few more settings. Now throw in wireless, encryption, passwords and ssid’s and lets face it its getting harder. Now do it for all the laptops in school, about a hundred….updating all the drivers as you go along and it is a night mare.

Now…why are they the new clampers?

Because they take a long time to install it all, they make loads of promises, they tell you it will work, then spend weeks trying to put it right…

THEN CHARGE YOU A FORTUNE!

That reminds me of a Latin saying…caveat emptor…let the buyer beware!

Although…nil carborundum illegitimi…would be more appropriate!
(Don’t let the bar-stewards grind you down!)

Hello World!

Ok all…its like this, I was finding blogging on Googles Blogger, well…frankly a little clunky! I use their gmail, sites and apps daily at work and think they are wonderful tools that you cant beat for free, albeit, I do, as I say, find them clunky. However, blogger does my head in and having long been interested and admired wordpress from a far I decided to give it a try and import my site. It must have took me all of five minutes and I must say I am well impressed so far…whether I will blog more often though remains to be seen!

So…you want to have a Village Carnival?

I am sure I must have mentioned this before, but, for my sins, I am the current Secretary of the village carnival where I live… I have held this post for about three years and I did a fourth year as a helper previously. Not a massive amount of years, but, I feel it is long enough to allow me to comment on the current problems of the public and its apathy, Bureaucracy and health and safety!

Note: These are my musings and are certainly not representative of my Carnival and its Committee members. (At least I don’t believe so!)

So you wanna have a carnival? Ok, here are the problems as I see it!

No one wants to help!

Only a matter of a handful of people ever want to do the job in hand and give their time freely to help and attend what amounts to no more than ten meetings in the year including the carnival day itself which is a long one. Bank on starting at 7.00 am on the Sunday morning and finishing for a quiet pint in the pub at about 6.00 pm on the evening, totally and thoroughly… knackered!

Everyone in the crowd, on the day, is a professional organiser!

I don’t think so! Generally the crowd that attends is fantastic. There are one or two area’s where they can rub you up the wrong way but, “hey ho” that’s life. For example, they cannot think about safety, they will not follow instructions from stewards and many think they know better. A few are just down right rude and ignorant and one year I felt one should have been arrested!

We have all met “Billy know it all” and his mate “Sh*t fuh brains” at some time in our lives but go to a large carnival and they come out of the woodwork!
I overheard more than one person say…”Bloody hell…it’s the same as last year…nothing new!”

Well let’s analyse that statement…

Firstly, what would one expect to see/hear at a carnival if not a fun fair, local cake and flower arranging, carnival music, street artists, coconut shy’s stalls with tombola’s and the local vicar perhaps judging the school floats and other assorted competitions? To paraphrase John Cleese in Faulty towers… “Herds of Wilder beast roaming the plains or the hanging gardens of Babylon?!!?”
Hmm… it’s a Carnival…that’s what goes on at carnivals, there is a clue in the name!!

Secondly, the last few years we have tried to introduce live music in the form of: local bands whether they be jazz, folk, Irish or whatever. New sideshows…difficult because most are seen somewhere else by many of the punters attending, like Go Karts, and this year, Rock climbing up a portable wall.

Thirdly, if these people are sick and tired of the same old thing…why don’t they get off their “fat a*ses” and attend the meetings, throw in their “two pennorth” and make a difference? We would certainly welcome them with open arms! Cos they are idle, gobby, moaning bar stewards who are full of cr*p and not a hint of neighbourliness and good spirit in their bodies!

Health and Safety…

Firstly, from the off, we do need Health and safety (Hand S) but do we really need so much of it that it kills the Carnival idea?

Well, they say that what happens in America happens here about ten years later…and we all know how you can be sued for anything in the states and sadly the litigious situation over here in good old blighty is starting to cotton on to this!
If any one thing is blighting a Carnival more than anything, now a days, is the sad fact that H and S is stopping all the fun for the kids and their parents who give up there precious time to make the floats. Lorry drivers cannot drive the lorries now as the tachograph hours add up and stop them working next day.
Insurance is needed to cover all and sundry for public liability and carnival routes by there nature have to pass housing estates to make bucket collections on the day to raise the hard earned funds required to go to the local charities.
Ask yourself… How does a young kiddie walk a mile and a half collecting this money? How does a disabled kiddie traverse this mile and a half? How do the decorated floats and the procession, along with the marching bands, stilt walkers, clowns and jugglers announce that the carnival is on, if not, by traversing this long route blaring out carnival sounds, laughter and general mayhem?
Without the vehicles to transport everyone the procession could die attendance would fall as no one a mile away would know the carnival is on! Less money would be collected if the procession was shortened or died altogether.

Over the years, we have been asked by the appropriate authorities to:

* Have cars at the front and rear of the carnival with flashing indicators and signs announcing the procession.
* Line the procession route with signs. (Difficult as strictly speaking, we are not aloud to post signs!)
* Provide a history of the Carnival
* Provide a full risk assessment
* Provide evidence and documentation for public liability, driving licences, vehicle insurance, individual street entertainment licences, collection bucket licences
* Contact the police and inform them of proceedings
* Contact the local council and do the same for them
* Mark of clear safety zones
* Provide fencing to protect the public…(more like to give the public something to climb over as they can’t be bothered to follow instructions!)

The list could go on but I cant be bothered frankly, as, if you were going to do a carnival this year I suspect by now you have decided not to bother!

So…looking at the short list above what do we glean?
Well, individually, nothing on the list is difficult…no, really its not….IF YOU HAVE THE MAN POWER!!

We have at most about fourteen committee members. Two are over seventy…three are approaching retirement, most are in there late forties or, early to mid fifties and a couple are under thirty-five!
We enlist friends, sons daughters, neighbours the local scouts /air cadets/ girl guides and anyone else we can bludgeon into submission on the day but, generally its about ten people who do all the work.
So…what work do they do?

* They keep records of meetings, invoices, payments and contact lists of anyone to do with the carnival.
* They contact local trades people and companies for donation or help
* produce posters
* organise all the fairs people, entertainers, local press/radio/TV
* Apply for permission for everything necessary on the day.
* apply for insurances
* write all the legal and moral letters to government agencies/officials/councillors etc
* come up with themes for the parade for each year
* circumvent previous / future problems
* Reply to any correspondence or requests of which they can be many and varied…indeed some, like the woman who wanted her money back for a stall she had rented because it leaked in the most torrential rain fall we had on record, are positively humorous!
* Lift every bodies spirits when it rains on the day (except the woman noted above I presume)
* organise the sick when its hot/cold/ just right/to tiring/natural illness
* provide safety services
* erect banners before to advertise the carnival
* take them down again at the end
* arrange performers and artistes
* provide the electrical services
* feed and water upwards of three thousand punters/helpers/hangers on!
* And last but not least…set up and then take down and store everything on the carnival day…

So…you want a Carnival or you think you could do better?

Join the queue of helpers….it’s a short one!!
Moriarty…