Not long ago, a post
popped into my LinkedIn feed decrying the Government’s consultation on the
privatisation of Channel 4 as a travesty of democracy, or some such hyperbole.
I easily knocked that one on the head and moved on with my life.
Last weekend,
another post appeared denigrating the Government’s consultation. on giving businesses and consumers more choice in selling and buying
goods in imperial as well as metric units. According to the post’s author and
various commentators, the consultation was a waste of time, a distraction from
more pressing issues, and the questions were fiendishly biased. In fact, it
sounded like the worst consultation ever.
Do you know how difficult it is to find the truth? It seems that for every fact, there’s another one that says the opposite. Even when a set of facts can be agreed upon, there’s probably 101 different interpretations and ensuing arguments that lead to 1,001 sundry conclusions.
As if that wasn’t infuriating enough, being presented with a limited selection of all available facts could sway a conclusion by a million miles either way. The Guardian is expert at such ‘economies with the truth’, but they’re not alone. Last month the Times reported that, “United Utilities, which serves northwest England, paid £296 million in dividends in the past year, the most paid by any water company.”
No. Not THAT one. I’m talking about the funeral yesterday of my uncle-in-law, Hubby’s dad’s brother, who was also his Godfather.
We were at the wake after the service when a friend texted me to say that doctors were concerned for Lilibet’s health. I thought my sister might have more information for various reasons, so I texted her, to which she responded: “She’s at the departure gate waiting for the final call.” Gee thanks, Sis, for the aviation analogy!
Just a quickie and apologies that I’m being rather prolific at the moment, but this topic is too time-critical to leave it until the weekend.
Am I pleased Truss won? I’m more relieved that Fishy lost, actually. He was plotting to bring down Boris and planning his own election campaign when he should’ve been doing his job as Chancellor and managing the British economy. Truss on the other hand was loyal to Boris to the end and did her job, regardless of whether she did it brilliantly, putting her ambitions for the country ahead of her ambitions to be PM, as evidenced by her lack of preparedness when the leadership race kicked off.
Some years ago, Dad’s sister showed me how far she’d got with our family tree. She’d done brilliantly as it was all pre-Ancesty.com. She’d delved into church records, archived newspapers, and local record offices until she was permanently covered in dust. She got one branch back to 1745, when John Brooks (my maiden name is Brooks) married in a tiny village on the Somerset-Dorset border. I later found a local ‘census’ that revealed he was born in about 1715.
Other than ‘John Brooks’, all names have been changed to respect the extended family’s privacy.
I took over the research and was having fun doing all the detective work and patting myself on the back because of the progress I was making, until a friend of mine said she was also doing her family tree and had found a possible connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s private physician, and another to one of the key figures in the Salem witch trials.
I’ve gone on record since before I was weaned that it’s not right for workers to strike. My opposition is rooted in their impact on the general public – the health hazards of uncollected waste spring to mind. In particular, I remember the 1970s’ strikes and the Labour government awarding huge public-sector pay deals that helped to fuel inflation to over 25 per cent (the rocketing oil price was also a factor). Those hardest hit were already the poorest, and the average couple ended up taking home less money in real terms than they had before inflation took off, so the strikes were counter-productive.