Modern day Collective Nouns are more graphic, provoking imagery that relates to the principal matter. With a Billow of Smokers and a Pomposity of Professor – a picture forms, but the older, more conventional ones are perplexing beyond the telling.
Anyone fancy a small contest? You’ll win a virtual certificate – a Brenny to applaud your imagination and wit. I know you’re already intrigued. Come up with a collective noun for MPs, Managers, Men and Women - where the ‘collective’ part allows you to visualise the group. The LOL ones will be declared winners. No bad language please.
My entries are: a Kindergarten of Managers,
a Corruption of MPs, a Waist of Men, a Trouser of Women. When was the last time
you saw a woman in a dress? This used to happen. I have photos.
It seems that Samsung’s new smart TVs spy on
you, as do your phones and tablets. They listen to your utterances and record them
on a remote server so that a Big Brother-style organisation can know what
you’re up to. Why is anyone surprised? We live in a digital age.
Two points, (i) when data can be recorded in
a series of ones and zeros, how difficult is it to access? Yes it can be
encrypted but this is a comfort only to those ignorant of computers and
hackers. As the news shows every day, encryptions are broken as fast as they
are developed. Nothing is safe.
Before PCs, in the early-80s, we learned as
Internal Auditors in Ford that where there is a system to protect something
there will be three groups that can defeat that protection. The people who are
authorised to use it can make mistakes or just misuse it. Secondly, there are the
people who want to beat it for personal gain. And lastly, the people who want
to beat it just to show how clever they are. It is constant Ping Pong between Dastardly
and Muttley.
Apparently these devices listen in on you
because… The Samsung TVs obey voice commands and therefore recognise what you
say. Isn’t that a great new toy? Offering an even lazier way of changing
channels (because using the remote is such a hardship). But - this means that
they are always listening. The interesting part is that when you buy such a TV (or
a phone or a tablet) that uses voice commands, you sign up to the idea that any
data being collected in the use of the product is passed onto third parties to
provide the services of which you are taking advantage. They then can do what
they want with it.
That is offensive enough but also consider: (i)
it is still listening (recording) when you are not talking to it but when you
are talking to your friends or family (or lover), and (ii) if you’ve switched
that feature off, it can switch itself
on. It doesn’t need your permission to listen. So for all of you who love your
new toys, be aware that your privacy is – oh what’s the word…? Non-existent.
This is not new though. We had phone-tapping
soon after phones were invented. And today, as the papers report on a slow news
day when they want to scare us, GCHQ monitor our every word. Who cares? Industrial
espionage, CCTV everywhere, phone-taps, email accounts and voice mail accounts being
hacked by journalists - this is life today and has been for a long while.
Had a fabulous day yesterday; I sorted out
two boxes of cables. The ladies amongst you will know that your men will have such
collections. We don’t like to bother you with these technical hoards of what
to the untrained eye may seem like toot, but it’s important we keep them in case one is ever needed.
While I agree, this has never actually happened, it might. Our loins must be girded against all eventualities. Life brings enough regret without encouragement through the casual discarding of seemingly-unnecessary obsolete cables.
While it would be ungracious to invoke the
label - ‘Hoarder’, I declare two such boxes of these cornerstones of home
maintenance. I admit it took some time to remember what some of the cables were
for and three had to be ditched when I realised I no longer had the equipment
that they fitted. For the most part though, the remainder are now filed in two key
repositories entitled “Current Cables” and “Spare Cables”. It was a satisfying
day to bring order to the world and contain it in two clearly-labelled boxes.
There are also a few spreadsheets listing
where things are held, called inspirationally – “Where It Is” or some variation
of this idea. As well as CDs and books, these spreadsheets list infrequently-used
objects from everyday life such as my ‘Camera to PC’ cables and occasionally
used items like the satnav, binoculars, wrapping paper,
software, instruction manuals, that sort of thing. Then you have the tedious filing
that is essential to home admin: bank and insurance docs, details of Royal Horticultural
Society membership, National Trust, English Heritage, and so on.
Lastly, Mum’s things (Mumorabilia) and Dad’s
things, including Parker pens, lighters from the days when smoking made you James
Bond and not a leper, plus Dad’s tools from the 40s, gauged in Imperial rather
than Metric, that I will get rid of on eBay – one day.
With this organisation of life’s minutiae safely
ensconced in one spreadsheet or another, I can sleep in peace. Anything I need
to find, I turn smugly to a spreadsheet. One small snag, I have to remember which
spreadsheet it was - and then what I called it when I recorded it.Ever tried meditation? How hard is that?! Emptying your mind for an extended period is the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted - and I’ve attempted it many times. I can manage it for all of about ten seconds, then the world intrudes. The pace of today’s life brings a churning brain which doesn’t accommodate mystics. BUT, there are Halfway Houses. I managed it to some extent today when I was retrieving my photos from Camera Club competition entries. Bit of background here…
The prints for these competitions are 10” x 15”(almost A3),and mounted on card with a window. The mount board is 20” x 16”; industry standard in camera clubs. You hold them in place with lashings of paper tape. Once the comp is over, what do you do with the entries? It’s easy to accumulate an ever-growing pile of mount boards embedded with your favourite photos. So I started retrieving/ dismounting those photos.
This is where the meditation came in, with
iTunes playing a recent purchase (Little Big Town), my mind got to as close to empty as it has been in ages,
concentration being directed at nothing more than removing a bit of masking
tape as delicately as poss. from the back of a board.
Linked with this, I found on Amazon an A3
folder with 20 clear plastic inserts (less than a fiver), for storing the salvaged
photos. I can now look at my 10” x 15” favourites in a book. Result! And I
managed to empty my mind for a while from the kaleidoscope that is its normal state.
Talking of the swarms of bees that is my default
mental condition, we have a General election coming up. Anyone given that any
thought or will you just be voting as you always have? I’ve never understood
that as a reason to vote for a party – “I’ve always vote Labour/Tory/’Don’t
Know’ (a.k.a. Liberal Democrat).” – makes no sense. Just because you’ve always
voted that way, what has that got to do with what’s on offer today? Seems
ludicrous to go with ‘habit’ as a justification.
I won’t be voting – and before you say “Well
then you don’t have the right to complain afterwards” – what nonsense. Who made
that rule and when did I agree to it? I won’t vote and I will moan about
the next govt. Count on it. Firstly, there is no such thing as rights. They are
just the theoretical fantasy of people who want something for nothing. Rights
are what the people around you allow you to have at that point in time.
Let’s look at the four main ones that get
bandied about; the Right To Life, Liberty, Justice and Freedom of Speech. Realistically,
no one has ANY of these. If someone comes up to you, sticks a gun in your face
and pulls the trigger, what good did your Right To Life do you? Pretty
ineffective ‘Right’, huh?
Your Right To Liberty – does it keep you out
of jail if you break a law or even if someone mistakenly thinks you have broken
a law. The law aside, does it stop you getting kidnapped?The Right To Justice is as weak as the first two in that the justice system is not about justice but which lawyer is better at arguing. Laws are made poorly so that they can be exploited and keep lawyers in business. Tell me, in what other walk of life do you see the words ‘loophole’ and 'technicality' used so freely? Look at the people currently complaining about Savile, the Hillsborough Disaster and police cover ups of sexual abuse of children around the country by people in privileged positions. What good did their Right To Justice do them? Apart from a few ageing has-been ex-celebs, I haven’t seen anyone prosecuted yet and when we do get a few, how many people of power will be allowed to remain in the shadows because of friendships and influence? So much for a Right To Justice.
Lastly, how does your Right To Freedom of
Speech stop me talking across you till you give up? Link this with the above para
and the fake D notices that were employed by the police to obstruct people from investigating parliamentarians in
the child abuse scandals of the 70s and 80s? As you see, ‘Rights’ are a nice
theory but as substantial as mist on a Yorkshire moor.
This started with me telling you why I won’t
be voting… What are my choices in a two-party system? - and it is. Don’t kid
yourself that the Liberals or UKIP can form a government. The Liberals are
dithering Do-Gooders and while UKIP are very clear on immigration, I am yet to
discover what their policy is on Health, Education, Defence or the Economy.
Labour have shown they have no idea how to
run a country. The last govt. borrowed so irresponsibly, borrowing to repay
previous borrowing, that we need Austerity to reduce public spending and avoid a
slide into bankruptcy. Vote Labour - Go Bankrupt, how humiliating for what was
once the head of an Empire.
Greeks think they can avoid bankruptcy and
yet reject Austerity. But, they haven’t fixed the basic flaw in the way they
operate. i.e. more money goes out in public spending than comes into the
Treasury. They will be bankrupt soon – with the anarchy that will follow when
they can’t pay the police and the army. If they’re not being paid, why should
they turn up for work? Europe can’t keep ‘lending’ money to a black hole.
Sooner or later the ECB will realise that (i) they’ll never get their money
back and (ii) the Germans are paying taxes so that the Greeks don’t have to.
With that in mind, I won’t be voting Labour
as that is a vote for more irresponsible borrowing that will lead to Austerity
again in ten years. They simply can’t manage the economy. They don’t have the
talent. They demonstrated that at their last time in office. Why would anyone
vote for their promised short term panaceas? You know from your own experience
of life that you can’t spend your way out of debt – which is what they’re
offering.
Separately they are so negative. Do you ever
watch their interviews on TV? Appalling. Look at their Leading Lights’
speeches; Milburn, Balls, Miliband, Umunna etc., 5% is generalising about what they will
do if elected and 95% is dedicated to rubbishing the Tories – effectively, just
the old, tired approach; predictable, negative, childish. Like UKIP, they
haven’t really got a plan on how to govern.
Talking of Austerity, have you been out on a
Saturday night lately? If so, you could be forgiven for asking “What
Austerity?” Pubs and restaurants are as busy as ever. In the various sales that
went on in the run-up to Christmas, e.g. Black Monday, working class shoppers were
fighting over big-screen TVs because that’s such an essential for day-to-day,
head-above-water survival. How many houses have multiple TV around the house
and two or three cars outside? In short, look around. The spending patterns of
the masses have barely changed. There is an end-of-terrace house in Cherrydown
in Basildon that has three cars on the forecourt, one of which is a newish Mercedes
Sport. That’s Austerity for you.
Yes there are poor people - but this is not
a new phenomenon. There has always been poverty and resultant suffering in this
country – and this will continue to be true. It is life. What’s different now
is that the media makes a song and dance about it and the gullible think it’s new
because it’s got a new dramatic label – Austerity. Yes, benefits are reducing.
Isn’t that a good thing? We should help those who can’t help themselves but don’t
extend that to those who won’t help themselves.
While
the Tories have halved the borrowing levels, cut unemployment and grown GDP, they
still look after their mates and turn a blind eye to a weak taxation system that
leaks national revenue like a sieve. When Stephen Green led an HSBC bank to
help people evade U.K. tax, Cameron wouldn’t talk about sending lawbreakers to
jail preferring to assert what a great job he did as a Trade Minister.
That cost the Tory Party my vote. They are
the party of burying their heads in the sand. What HSBC did doesn’t seem right.
I can’t understand why Stephen Green and his board didn’t go to jail, other
than the law is indistinct allowing wriggle room - and friends are looking
after one of their own. Now we find ourselves back to - there is no Right to
Justice.
So, I won’t be voting Tory either. What else
is there with a viable prospect of governing?
The real mystery is why would anyone vote in
the first place. What are we voting for? It seems to me that it’s people that
we openly declare we don’t trust. How dumb is that? “I don’t trust any one of you
but I’m going to vote for you to run the country for the next five years.”
Really, it doesn’t matter if we have a Tory
or a Labour govt in office. Since Blair’s New Labour and Major’s govt before
that - any government we’ve had has only been Thatcher Lite. When have you seen
Old Labour socialism like we had in the 70s? Today it’s all Capitalism-based.
However, my main reason for not voting is
that we don’t have democracy in this country. We’re told we do and
disappointingly, no one questions it. Democracy as I understand it, is a system
of govt. using elected representatives – elected to represent the people. Well, we certainly elect ‘representatives’,
but once elected, by their subsequent actions, do they represent us? Not
really. When has an MP asked his constituents how they want him to vote in an
upcoming vote? There is no mechanism for this, although in this digital age, it
would be easy to set up via phones and TV remotes. Can’t have that though. It
would be too much like a referendum and therefore, proper democracy. So, the
‘elected representative’ does what the Whips instruct and we have government by
a Star Chamber, i.e. the Cabinet – not democracy.
Well, there you have it - my reasons for not
voting. I would be voting for people I have declared long and loud that I
distrust and who have proved by their behaviour in the matter of Expenses and
bribes for influence in the House that they are not to be trusted. Then, having
voted them into office, they do what their masters tell them and don’t ask me –
as my elected representative – how I want them to vote. What’s the point? Your
vote is worthless in the current system.
For those of you who love old people's
music, there is a fabulous video clip of a show to celebrate the music of the
Beatles https://www.youtube.com/embed/RL76v3qoEeI
I sent this around to the people on my ‘Jokes,
PowerPoint shows’ etc. Dist List. If you saw that, this is only the same thing
but people on the Dist List who get a preview of these ‘Letters’, differ from the Dist List of people who get the jokes, photos and video clips.
I am binge-watching Breaking Bad at the
moment. Just about to start Series Four. It got great reviews in the press and
deservedly so. Doesn’t do my Parkinson’s any good at all. With all the
excitement and drama, I shake like ball bearings in a blender.
Do you binge-watch? It seems to have become
a new way of watching TV now that we have DVD series and hard disks to record
what we don’t have time to watch when it’s actually on. I still have the whole
of The Missing, all of the new series of Mr Selfridge, same for Indian Summers,
about 50 films, and a load of comedy including about 50 episodes of early Big
Bang Theory. While I saw them when they first came out, that was so long ago
that I am seeing them for the first time (again).
Trouble is - summer's coming and as the
weather eases TV (a winter sport), will fall by the wayside and golf will
feature more. Then from April, the stately homes and garden of the National
Trust and English Heritage will beckon. Life is too full of
opportunity.
It seems that fat is now good for you again and
there is an App for mobile phones that lets parents know where their kids are. Safety
versus privacy – what a dilemma. Should school-age kids have privacy? Which
leads nicely into the three girls that slid off to Syria to join IS. At the time
there was a lot of noise saying that the police should have told their parents
when they first became aware as they are only gullible, easily-led 15 year-old
kids and need protecting.
Separately, Alex Salmond gave 16 year-olds
the chance to vote in the Independence Vote. That was such a success that there
is talk of bringing the voting age down to 16. So which is it? Are they old
enough to make reasoned judgements about the government of a country or are
they kids that need protecting? There’s only one year in it. Do they suddenly
acquire wisdom overnight on their birthday? And there you see the flaw in a
one-size-fits-all policy.
Well, there you see the sort of things that
occupy my day here in Lincs. It’s been cold, still is, and the house is warm so
I stay in watch TV News and mull over the ramifications of news stories. I do get
out to Camera Club and play a bit of golf but there is just so much you can say
about games of golf. They tend to have a steady conformity of demeanour, which
doesn’t lend itself to witty anecdotes.
Until the weather improves to let me out of the house more, the news will provide most of my entertainment and pondering the fascination that is the wonder of Collective Nouns.
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