A Statue of Arthur Lowe
It is being unvieled today in Thetford according to the California Chronicle. The reference shows how far the much-loved TV series, Dad’s Army, has penetrated the world’s pysche.
Perhaps, the UK and especially England’s beleaguered sportsman could learn a lot from Captain Mannering’s ragbag collection of heroes.
Don’t buy a Nokia X6 if you’ve had a stroke!
I have one of these phones and for my situation, they are designed all wrong.
My biggest problem is that I have had a stroke and I drop things or knock them on the floor. If I dropped my Nokia 6310i, it just carried on working. The X6 falls apart and you need to reenter date and time. It is totally unfit for my purposes.
It is a bit of a pity really about this lack of robustness, as I liked a lot about the phone.
I have just phoned O2 and they have agreed to swap the phone for something hopefully more suitable. So that at least is a positive thing and a couple of stars at least for O2. But they are generally very good over the phone and I’ve stayed with they for nearly 20 years.
SIngle Click Unsubscribe
I get masses of junk from all over the world and as I have two main e-mail addresses, it is often difficult to unsubscribe.
The best companies have a single-click unsubscribe, which is coded with the e-mail address.
Others however ask you to type in the e-mail address. I then have to check to find out to which the errant e-mail was sent. before typing it in.
All unsubscribes should be like the first. How about a £10 fine for every e-mail sent that didn’t have a single click unsubscribe? Governments need revenue and this would raise a lot of money, cure a problem and the only payers would be unprofessional companies. They could always get their act together to avoid the fines.
Incidentally, I’ve just unsubscribed from the Sky Player. It was one click to get the unsubscribe page and then another to actually unsubscribe. That is acceptable, as I didn’t type anything.
A Mallard with Twelve Ducklings
Mallards can have up to 13 ducklings, but I’ve never seen this many where I live.
There is no cat around here, but I hope the foxes don’t find them!
What a Waste of Money!
The Saville enquiry cost £200,000,000 and didn’t find anything that most right-thinking people didn’t really know. Read the statements of sensible politicians like say John Major, and they would probably have predicted the findings about ten years ago.
The population of Northern Ireland is just under 2,000,000 according to this report on the BBC. So that means the report cost about £100 for everybody there. Wouldn’t it have been better to have given the money directly to the people, especially as about 11% are pensioners?
We must move on and even some of the most controversial characters from the depth of the troubles have done so.
Take Glenn Barr He is still a controversial character to both the British and the Nationalists because of his involvement with the Ulster Defence Association and politics. Now though he has retired from active and conventional politics and devotes himself to community projects in Derry, often concerned with high unemployment.
This is also in his Wkipedia entry.
He has also worked closely with Paddy Harte, a former Irish Government minister, on promoting awareness of Irish Catholic participation in both World Wars.
I first saw Glenn Barr on a BBC Panorama program in the 1970s. Asked by the interviewer, what would happen if the British pulled out, he said that the Protestants and Catholics would probably fight for a couple of days and then realise they were all Irish and had a lot more in common. He was also asked if he had any regrets. He said that he couldn’t watch Derry City, as he wouldn’t be safe. I hope he can now!
In about 1980, I heard report on BBC Radio 4, about a guy called Paddy Docherty, who had found an abandoned coaster in Derry harbour. He was filling it with Irish cast-offs like hand sewing machines and was going to sail it to Ethiopia, where such would be appreciated. The trouble was that they couldn’t get the Deutz diesel engine repaired. So I sent him some money to help, as did aot of others. He sent me details of what he was doing and he was running the YTS in Derry. His major supporters were Robin Eames, Cardinal Daly and others I knew to be on the right side. His number two was Glenn Barr. Iremember, I phoned Paddy up and had the most enlightening hour with one of the real heroes of Northern Ireland. Years later, I met Jim Prior and he spoke appreciatively of Paddy.
Just thing what £200,000,000 would have done in the right hands in Northern Ireland, rather than in the hands of expensive lawyers.
I’d love to know what happened to the coaster.
Onshore Oil Extraction in the UK
They’ve just talked about this on the BBC. I once discussed this with one of Britain’s foremost experts on natural resources. He told me that the most promising area was actually Surrey for oil, but they would meet lots of opposition. On the BBC they were talking about Dorset being very promising.
His solution to the opposition was very simple. For each barrel of oil or tonne of mineral ore, there should be a local extraction tax paid to the local authority. At present all goes to the Treasury to waste, but just imagine how an English county could be tranformed with the revenue, spent according to the needs of the local people. They would welcome the inconvenience and jobs, but on their environmental and contractual terms.
Adoption
They are talking about the problems of adoption on BBC Radio 5 this morning. I feel I must comment.
C was adopted and for most of her working life, she was a barrister dealing with family matters, like divorce, money, care and adoption.
In her view most of the times, things worked out well provided that you had good professionals involved. What worried her in the last couple of years of her practice and life was the cutbacks imposed on court and social sevices by government, which meant problems got worse rather than better. Surely, it is better to get problems properly sorted earlier, rather than have a child grow up to be a drain on society.
But to end this on a happy note. Several times she was acting in an adoption case, where at the final hearing, the new adoptive mother had got pregnant. So instead of one new child, they had two and were twice as happy. It must have been the relief at it all.
It’s a pity she’s not here now, as being uniquely adopted, a mother to three and a barrister working in the field, she would know exactly what should be done.
She was also involved in a unique case, where a black 18-year-old girl, who had been in long term care with a white family applied for her own adoption by them, when the care system expired. The judge and my wife both said that it made being a lawyer worthwhile.
My Walk-In Digital Shower
Two years ago, I installed a new shower. It has no doors and you just walk in.
The floor is uncluttered and there are no doors to open.
The Aqualisa control couldn’t be simpler. It’s just two buttons and a large knob to set the temperature.
The top button switches it on and off and the bottom one is a high-pressure boost. The system remembers the temperature from when you last used the shower. If it’s two hot or cold, you just turn the knob.
So all I do to take a shower is press the top button, wait perhaps a minute until the temperature is correct, undress and walk in.
It has been a real boon since I’ve had the stroke.
As the shower is effectively double size, you have plenty of space for a helper or perhaps to put a fold down seat on the wall. The onlt thing I might do is put a vertical hand rail on the back wall. At present, if I need support, I use the vertical pipe that feeds water to the shower head.
The Juice Carton Spanner
I have a weak left hand due to a stroke and find opening the plastic cartons for things like Innocent smoothies, a little difficult. But I’m getting better and I had no trouble a few minutes ago. However, there must be many others who do, as perhaps their hands are worse than mine because of arthritis or missing fingers.
But all the caps are the same and it should be possible to create a small plastic ring spanner that mates with the cap perfectly. Companies like Innocent might even give them away free with an advert on them, as they’d only cost a few pence each to make.
There are still so many things that need inventing!
I always remember my father had a wonderful pair of round-jawed pliers, that were always being used to open difficult bottles at home. I’v never seen anything like them since.
