A Glimpse Of The Morning Star
A few days ago, I saw a lady reading The Morning Star on a bus. I hadn’t seen a copy for many years.
The lady was reading the television programs and I wondered whether they carry the information for channels not very well disposed to the left.
Perhaps the funniest story about the paper, was that many years ago, their racing tipster was doing very well in the naps table carried in The Sporting Life, that gave a prize for the best tipster after the season. Their sales went up a couple of notches.
Jury Trials In South Africa
I was just listening to reports of the Oscar Pistorius case on the radio and was surprised to hear that there are no jury trials in South Africa. This explains, why much of the evidence against the athlete has been fully discussed in the media, as the case will be decided by a magistrate.
There’s more about juries in South Africa here. Juries were abolished in 1969, in the apartheid era.
Saving Babies By Breastfeeding
I don’t know much about breastfeeding babies, but this report on Sky has a lot of sense to it. This is the first bit.
The lives of 95 babies could be saved every hour if mothers started breastfeeding their newborns in the hour after their birth, a charity has said.
Receiving a mother’s first milk within an hour will kickstart the child’s immune system, making a newborn three times more likely to survive, according to a report by Save the Children.
I should say, that as someone, who knows about breeding racehorses, that you always get the new born foal to have the first feed as it’s the best.
My stud groom would also milk the dead mare and give that to the foal in a bottle, if she had sadly died in the foaling.
Am I Finally Solving My Childhood Health Problems?
I wasn’t the healthiest of children. We lived in a very cold part of London a few hundred metres from Oakwood station and to say our house was cold would be an understatement.
I seemed to spend at least one term of each school year off sick with a problem that my doctor had no idea about. I’m not particularly sure which term I had off, but I do know in my first year at Minchenden it was the Spring term, as no-one could understand why after a good first term, I deteriorated in the next.
Other memories of the time, are saucepans of cotton handkerchiefs boiling on the gas stove. As after all there weren’t any tissues in those days.
I can also remember panicking at times and having fights with my mother as she struggled to clean my ears out, as they were rather full of wax.
But it all seemed to disappear, when I was thirteen or so, and I can’t remember any problems after my first year at Minchenden. Perhaps that was after, my grandmother died and I got to have the big sunny room at the back of the house, which was much warmer. This death may be more significant than I think, as it finally gave my father control of the business and finances in the family were much better and we started to have longer and more holidays. Soon after we bought the house in Felixstowe, where of course the air was fresher and it wasn’t quite as cold.
Going to Liverpool was probably a good move, as it faces to the west and for a city in the 1960s, the air was probably pretty good.
I met C in 1966 and really since then I didn’t have too many health problems until after she died in 2007. When I was diagnosed with coeliac disease in 2003, i thought that would be the explanation of my my childhood health problems.
I should also say that I’ve always said that I liked being at altitude and seemed to feel better in places like Denver. I also flew light aircraft a lot and loved going up high.
But it wasn’t as after C died, the runny nose started to return and I put it down to hay fever. But tests have shown it is nothing of the case, but just rhinitis and a very runny nose.
So are there any other factors that might come into it.
My grandfather died of asthma and pneumonia in his forties and I suspect he carried the coeliac gene, like my father probably did. I have no proof of that except that none of the women in that line of my family have ever given birth and undiagnosed coeliac disease is a cause of failing to conceive. My father definitely had breathing problems and suffered badly from catarrh He was always taking menthol tablets and he used to give them to me, but they made little difference to my problems. So perhaps, what my father and I had were different, but the older I get, the more I think our problems were similar. But of course, he was never diagnosed with coeliac disease and he smoked a pipe.
When I met C I was just 19, so for forty years of my life I lived with her and it was if she warded off the rhinitis. That is really a silly idea to even think it. But last week my GP suggested I get a Sinus Rinse to wash the muck out of my nose.
It got me thinking. C was a great lover of deep hot baths and usually had one every day. To save hot water, she’d always leave it for me afterwards and I would get in and often wash my hair. Now she laid back into the water to wash hers, but I knelt and put my head forward under the water. Afer she dued one of my first actions was to put a proper shower into the bedroom.
So did this daily bath to keep my sinuses clear? And did the shower make it all worse?
I don’t know, but I have certainly felt a bit better since I’ve had a morning bath.
The bath seems to have helped another of my childhood problems that has returned. As a child I used to suffer badly from cramp, when I was asleep. I used to get out of bed and put my foot on the cold lino. This symptom started again, when I moved here.
This post is very much a ramble, but underneath everything there seems to be a pattern emerging.
But at least nothing seems to be life-threatening. And of course I grew out of it once.
A Difficult Man
Yesterday the zip in the front of my North Face padded jacket went. It was ideal for me, as it was warm and had a large pocket, where I could put all the stuff that I carry, like gloves and my Samsung tablet.
So I went to the shop where I bought it to get another one. But they have now deleted the inside pocket.
What Grade A Tosser decided that?
But the shop said, that everybody seems to have removed the inside pockets.
To me they are one of the most important areas, when I chose a new jacket.
Why do I always seem to be out of step with what designers want to give us?
Am I right or just plain difficult?
Are Pound Coins The New Threepenny Bits?
I know pound coins are worth eighty times more than the old brass threepenny bits, but they do have some of their qualities.
I was in Carluccio’s yesterday afternoon having tea and some polenta cake, and after I’d paid my bill early in cash, I found I had a pile of about half-a-dozen pound coins in front of me. I then started playing with them, by doing things like building stacks, just as I used to do the same thing with threepenny bits over forty years ago. After all, they are about the same weight and have the same clunky feel!
Santander: The Worst Bank?
This headline is in the Money pages of The Times.
I can’t judge them, as my only dealings with the bank are the occasional cash machine withdrawal and money sent to my account from people who have accounts there.
But they do fit my great friend’s David’s criteria of someone you don’t bank with! And that is they are not head-quartered in the UK. Or the last time, I looked Spain wasn’t part of the UK.
That doesn’t make them the worst, but it does mean, I’m never ever going to find out.
An Obvious Shortcut
I did chuckle, when I saw this sign outside of a pub.
An Obvious Shortcut
It’s funny, but Π for pie is rather obvious and simple, but I’ve never seen it used this way before.
Getting A Good E-Mail Address
If your name is rather a common one, with a surname like Smith or Jones say and a first name of perhaps James or Susan, you will have difficulty getting a good e-mail address.
My name is not unusual, but by putting the last three characters of my post code after my name, I was able to get a Gmail address without trouble.
As the Post code of 10, Downing Street ends in 2AA, I suspect DavidCameron2AA would be available to the Prime Minister, who is probably not the only David Cameron in the world.
Politicians And Conservative Thinking
This article about Ed Miliband and his tax policies, shows everything that is wrong with politicians. Obviously, the 10p tax rate brought in by Gordon Brown didn’t work, as why would he later have abolished it. Politicians of all parties just can’t get it into their head, that when old ideas fail, it is time to give up conservative thinking and try new ideas.
You could argue, that a Mansion Tax is a good idea, but it is just another variation of the politics of envy.
I feel it would make housing problems worse, as from what I’ve read, it would be better for tax purposes to own six £700,000 houses, rather than one worth £4,000,000 or so.
Thus, those with pots of money would take houses out of the available pool, which let’s face it is too small at all levels.
I wouldn’t be hit by a Mansion Tax, as my house is probably worth just over a million, although I paid a lot less for it, just two years ago. But it is in an area, where prices are rising quite fast, due to the improvements in public transport. In a few years, it’ll probably be within the Mansion Tax rate. So why should I pay more, just because I made a good decision?
I would raise money from housing in other ways. The Mansion Tax would be paid on any property, where the owner doesn’t live in it. And the starting point would be a £1,000,000.
This would mean second houses would pay the Mansion Tax, as you couldn’t be registered in two places. I’ve lived in two houses at the same time in the past and it’s a pain and very inefficient.
So let’s ditch all of the consevative ideas and get really radical with ideas, that create more houses and generate more jobs and wealth.
The Anonymous Widower 