I have just watched the programme about Swansea market. How humbling!!
This program should set an example to all that if you want to make something of your life there really is no moral alternative to ambition and hard work.
I couldn't help but remember the years I was employed as a Civil Servant. I didn't have to go out each day and justify my existence; I didn't have to walk the streets drumming up business or trade to put food on the table and clothes on my children. I seem to have avoided the laws of the jungle yet still accept a modest pension for my relatively worthless trouble. That's not to say that what I did was without merit. Not at all; but I was protected from the day to day necessity of providing for myself and this promulgates the illusion that separates such as I was from the reality of life.
Featured on the program were traders whose dreams were wrecked by public indifference to their efforts and others who adjusted to market trends and changed their products or marketing. In this cauldron of market forces, subject to the laws of survival of the fittest, I wonder just how many people in the UK are subject, these days, to these pressures. Not many, I suspect and just as well. Not many would survive.
I left the Civil service after ten years to seek my fortune mongst the ranks of the self employed. I don't think I was particularly suited to the jungle but I feel I did alright and justified my existence without making too many ripples on the nation's surface calm.
I would just say, though, to those who believe that success will come to those who persevere, prepare yourself for disappointment. The vagaries of public taste can be cruel to those with talent and favourable to some priveleged few who tickle the fickle public
appetite for whimsy. C'est la vie!!
Thursday, 5 September 2013
Manners in the mobile device age
A new report has warned that good manners are being sacrificed in the mobile phone age as people lose the habit of social interaction.
Yesterday, I watched some of a debate from the House of Commons. On the floor of the House a Socialist motion about falling living standards suffered by the lower and middle classes was being discussed. A laudable subject for debate you might ask and one relevant to many of the constituents of the honourable and right honourable Members?
There were no Lib-Dems in the chamber and only three Tories, one of whom, according to the lady Labour speaker, was asleep. If that wasn't bad enough, the camera covered the Socialist side of the house, populated mostly by women but almost all of whom were toying with their mobile phones.
What did these people do before the mobile device age? You'd hope that they'd listen to the debate!!
Yesterday, I watched some of a debate from the House of Commons. On the floor of the House a Socialist motion about falling living standards suffered by the lower and middle classes was being discussed. A laudable subject for debate you might ask and one relevant to many of the constituents of the honourable and right honourable Members?
There were no Lib-Dems in the chamber and only three Tories, one of whom, according to the lady Labour speaker, was asleep. If that wasn't bad enough, the camera covered the Socialist side of the house, populated mostly by women but almost all of whom were toying with their mobile phones.
What did these people do before the mobile device age? You'd hope that they'd listen to the debate!!
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury
Dear Archbishop,
Recently, you have spoken of the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt and Syria. Indeed you have exhorted them to flee and asked Christians, everywhere, to pray for them.
Archbishop: Mr Welsby: Justin: do you imagine that they have not already prayed. Do you not already believe they have spent every waking moment on their knees praying for divine intervention? Your entreaties remind me of Job wondering why your God seems to ignore his pleas for respite from his troubles. Rest assured that unlike Job, you will not be getting a personal call but take comfort in the fact that, were He to grace you with His presence, God will only tell you that it is not for you, merely a worm, to question the creator of heaven, earth and the firmament. For all your prayers, like the Jews at Auschwitz, there will be no reprieve for the Christians in Moslem countries.
As women are raped, children orphaned and men slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands for their religious beliefs is it not time to think again? You are new to your job; so too the Pope and the recently appointed Rabbi. Can you not dare, along with the Imams, at this pivotal time, to consider that you are wrong and put an end to this madness.
We have just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech. Can I tell you, Archbishop, that I, too, have a dream. Yes, I have a dream that when my grandchildren grow up the world will be rid of religious dogma that has caused so much bloodshed; that all the Abrahamic religions will follow the way of the Roman and Greek pantheons; that the God of Abraham will join Zeus and Mars as mythical characters that have no real relevance in the twentyfirst century.
I have a dream that all the cathedrals, mosques and synagogues will welcome all people, not with priests but with curators, to celebrate the glory of mankind. Places where the visitors can marvel at the beautiful architecture, wonder at the fine art and thrill to the sound of beautiful music by such as Foure, Gounod and Bach. These would be places to uplift the spirit and offer real hope to those who seek reassurance, not from an absent and negligent (because he really is not listening) supernatural potentate, but from their fellow man. There are an awful lot of good people out there.
Kind regards,
Kevill Davies
Recently, you have spoken of the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt and Syria. Indeed you have exhorted them to flee and asked Christians, everywhere, to pray for them.
Archbishop: Mr Welsby: Justin: do you imagine that they have not already prayed. Do you not already believe they have spent every waking moment on their knees praying for divine intervention? Your entreaties remind me of Job wondering why your God seems to ignore his pleas for respite from his troubles. Rest assured that unlike Job, you will not be getting a personal call but take comfort in the fact that, were He to grace you with His presence, God will only tell you that it is not for you, merely a worm, to question the creator of heaven, earth and the firmament. For all your prayers, like the Jews at Auschwitz, there will be no reprieve for the Christians in Moslem countries.
As women are raped, children orphaned and men slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands for their religious beliefs is it not time to think again? You are new to your job; so too the Pope and the recently appointed Rabbi. Can you not dare, along with the Imams, at this pivotal time, to consider that you are wrong and put an end to this madness.
We have just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech. Can I tell you, Archbishop, that I, too, have a dream. Yes, I have a dream that when my grandchildren grow up the world will be rid of religious dogma that has caused so much bloodshed; that all the Abrahamic religions will follow the way of the Roman and Greek pantheons; that the God of Abraham will join Zeus and Mars as mythical characters that have no real relevance in the twentyfirst century.
I have a dream that all the cathedrals, mosques and synagogues will welcome all people, not with priests but with curators, to celebrate the glory of mankind. Places where the visitors can marvel at the beautiful architecture, wonder at the fine art and thrill to the sound of beautiful music by such as Foure, Gounod and Bach. These would be places to uplift the spirit and offer real hope to those who seek reassurance, not from an absent and negligent (because he really is not listening) supernatural potentate, but from their fellow man. There are an awful lot of good people out there.
Kind regards,
Kevill Davies
Monday, 2 September 2013
Ordure, ordure
Mr Speaker: Ordure;ordure. Charles Fanshawe
Fanshawe (Conservative member for Bustington) : Question number two, Sir.
Prime Minister: We have no plans to personally increase the birthrate of indigenous British peoples in the UK.
Fanshawe: Given the current birthrate of British peoples and that of Muslim immigrants is such that within the next fifty years the United Kingdom ...
Mr Speaker: Ordure, ordure! You must ask a question.
Fanshawe: Belt up you fatuous oaf... within the next fifty years the United Kingdom could become an Islamic Republic, what steps will the Government take to ensure the continuation of our historic culture?
Mr Speaker: ordure, ordure!
Fanshawe (Conservative member for Bustington) : Question number two, Sir.
Prime Minister: We have no plans to personally increase the birthrate of indigenous British peoples in the UK.
Fanshawe: Given the current birthrate of British peoples and that of Muslim immigrants is such that within the next fifty years the United Kingdom ...
Mr Speaker: Ordure, ordure! You must ask a question.
Fanshawe: Belt up you fatuous oaf... within the next fifty years the United Kingdom could become an Islamic Republic, what steps will the Government take to ensure the continuation of our historic culture?
Mr Speaker: ordure, ordure!
Chemical weapons in Syria 3
The head of NATO, Mr Rasmussen has announced that he has clear evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
Mr Rasmussen will know that US troops allegedly deployed depleted uranium weapons during the Iraq war and the citizens of that country are still dying from the effects. If depleted uranium isn't a chemical weapon, I don't know what is!
Mr Rasmussen should keep his mouth shut.
Mr Rasmussen will know that US troops allegedly deployed depleted uranium weapons during the Iraq war and the citizens of that country are still dying from the effects. If depleted uranium isn't a chemical weapon, I don't know what is!
Mr Rasmussen should keep his mouth shut.
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