A few days ago IanVisits published (as usual every month) a rather super list of things one can do out of London during the coming month — ie. December.
I love curiosities!
Early on Friday afternoon I had my annual flu jab. By the evening I was beginning to feel meh. Yesterday I was fit for nothing; not full flu but everything except the severe body aches and high temperature. So I spent the day curled up under the duvet, mostly asleep. Not nice, but better this than having full-blown flu.
I understand why this can be a side-effect of the flu jab: basically it is an immune reaction to the (dead) bits of virus in the inoculation which stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies that protect against the real virus. So it is working as designed.
Yesterday’s Independent carried a short article under the headline
Civil servants could cut the cost of government by £70bn in seven years just by making more use of computer technology, a think-tank report … claims.
The ambitious claim … is almost 10 times what the Cabinet Office hopes can be achieved.
The report … highlights ways government departments waste money by using too much paper.
Offenders include the Crown Prosecution Service, which prints a million sheets of paper every day, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency, where “two articulated trucks loaded with letters and paper pull in every day”, and the Passport Office, which prints out forms filled in online and posts them back to applicants to sign.
Oh FFS! I know I worked for a large IT company but set in its ways though the Corporation was even we got rid of most paper forms 10 years ago!
So you bet the government could save £10bn a year, but it will happen only if:
Will all of those happen? … No.
Will any of those happen? … Probably not.
Gawdelpus!
I’m clearly getting senile: I’m getting grumpier in my old age.
No, correction … I’ve always been senile and grumpy.
I get more and more irritated, to put it mildly, by sales droids cold calling me. They ring the landline (which is already registered with the Telephone Preference Service). They ring my mobile. They ring the door bell. They stuff rubbish flyers through the door, or mail them to me.
[Mailing stuff out speculatively like that has to be an obscene waste of resources: paper, fuel for transport, postage, etc. as 99.99% will go straight in the bin. Although at least it does provide employment for postmen.]
None of it does any good. All these people do is get themselves hated and probably blacklisted. I only ever respond negatively to cold calling.
And if you are stupid enough to cold call me … do NOT argue with me. You’re just digging yourself a bigger pit. And you’ll lose. See I’ve worked in sales. I know all the answers and objections. I know why you do it (basically you’re all desperate) and why you’ll tell me you do it. I know all the lies.
The first rule of selling anything is to recognise when your (potential) customer has said “NO” and to take the hint.
If I want a product or service I will know that I want it and will go out and look for it. If I don’t do that I don’t want (or need) it. I do not need you to try flogging me your rubbish that I don’t want.
I doubt I know anyone who actually likes people cold calling them. And I’ll give you 10-1 that most of the sales droids who do it, detest having it done to them. Which surely makes it immoral for them to do the cold calling.
I’ve also seen how destructive it is of salesmen. Few survive very long at it. To me that makes it immoral for anyone to be asked to cold call.
So don’t do it! It’s counter-productive. Remember: Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. Anything less is bad for your karma.
Besides it pisses me off. So you are likely to get a very dusty answer. “I don’t do business with anyone who cold calls me. Thank you.” [click] is the shortest and politest version. Argue and you’ll get more than you bargained for because you’ve made me angry. Which is bad for my karma as well as yours.
So don’t do it!
If you were anything like the kids in my childhood, pea shooters were all the rage. So what better way to relive ones delinquent infancy than at the World Pea Shooting Championships which take place at Witcham on 13 July.
Witcham is one of those quiet villages in the Cambridgeshire fens a handful of miles west of Ely. They will be holding the 43rd World Pea Shooting Championships as part of their local festival and village fête which raises funds essential for the upkeep of facilities like the village hall.
There is more information n the World Pea Shooting Championships and the village of Witcham on their website at www.witcham.org.uk.
As you may have noticed, there has been a bit of a hiatus in my postings of interesting awareness days/weeks, curious festivals etc. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there don’t seem to be quite so many happening in the the last few weeks.
There will of course be exceptions. After all, I make the rules round here!
And I’m open to suggestions as to what to include.
Thank you!
… or more precisely, retired Archbishops.
The BBC reported a few days ago that according to Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, allowing Gay marriage “paves way for polygamy”.
In an article for the think tank Civitas, Lord Carey … argues that the government is effectively seeking to change the definition of marriage to “a long-term commitment between two people of any sex, in which gender and procreation are irrelevant”.
He says he does not want to be “alarmist”, but that could logically be extended to “say, two sisters bringing up children together” or “multiple relationships, such as two women and one man”.
Let’s just leaving aside the fact that this is an absolute load of old baloney — the relationships his Lordship cites have been happening since time immortal, so where’s the problem? But I do worry what school Lord Carey went to when he can clearly think that two women plus one man is two people. Do divines have different arithmetic rules to the rest of us? Or has he actually lost his marbles?
Fortunately others of Lord Carey’s colleagues are more sane:
[T]he Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Rev Nicholas Holtham suggested in a letter to the Telegraph that it was time to “rethink” attitudes about same-sex marriage, as Christians had done with slavery and apartheid. “No one now supports either slavery or apartheid. The Biblical texts have not changed; our interpretation has.”
And in a brilliant response to Lord Carey …
Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill said: “This is regrettably hyperbolic shroud waving”.
You just have to love someone who can talk about “hyperbolic shroud waving”!
The week beginning Saturday 1 June is Volunteers Week — an opportunity to celebrate the amazing contribution millions of people make out of their own busy lives each year.
There are many different ways to volunteer from helping out at your child’s school through getting involved with your local hospital’s radio station to doing VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in your gap year. Whatever your interests, and however little time you can spare, there is a volunteering opportunity near you.
Why volunteer? Well I know from experience that not only is volunteering immensely satisfying in itself, but you can make a real difference to people. Bring some friendship or comfort to someone lonely, help improve the environment, teach children in a third world country (or just here at home). Almost whatever it is there is an opportunity for you in your local community or much further afield.
And as someone who is involved in running two, totally different, voluntary organisation I know that both small local organisations and national charities are always in need for more people to help. And I also know that volunteers really do make a difference.
There’s a lot, lot more information about volunteering, and Volunteers’ Week, over on the Volunteering England website. Find out what there is near you!
Here’s another that I encountered meandering the interweb. It’s something good to try to live up to.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
That was the headline in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.
It seems that China’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, is erecting a brand new HQ building. And as you’ll see from the photo even the least imaginative couldn’t fail to recognise the resemblance to a massive hard prick.
[Cue: Frankie Howerd]
It appears that this is all too much for the Chinese censors who have been working overtime to try to stop people sniggering to the rest of the world and viewing pictures online. I would really have thought that China should be proud of its erection!