WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Sunray10]

Very low turnouts in the elections for police commissioners - many parts of the country between 10-15 percent. Stoke on Trent was 9.5 percent. One polling station at Newport, South Wales, had no voters at all. You had to look on the Internet to find the names for your area and then there wasn't much info telling what each candidate stood for. As a friend of mine like to say Pffthh.

[Stanley]

Moh, you could be right about the registration fee. I've just spent well over an hour deleting spam and spammers from the site. We are trying to get Doc to act, it's getting too much for us to cope with.

[Stanley]

Got mail from a friend telling me that someone else has claimed in public to be the person who first started a big engine I refurbished. Strange world isn't it..... "Yesterday's Men!"

[David Whipp]

The joy of giving our seven cats their regular worming tablets.

(Now where's that iodine...?)

[Stanley]

Cut the foot off an old wellie and use the leg part as a restrainer. Just shove the cat into it and you can forget about the claws!

[Wendyf]

Someone shooting hares this morning in our neighbours fields. One of the joys of living here is seeing the hares, going about their business and troubling nobody. Then one morning some idiot with a gun comes and kills two of them for no reason at all.

[Wendyf]

Driving over to Leeds this morning I was listening to Ian MacMillan on R4 discovering the people and places behind Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant". It took me right back to student days in the late 60's. If you have 20 minutes to spare have a listen to the original. here.

[Stanley]

The relief of not having to spend two hours deleting spammers! Now that's an improvement! For the information of members who aren't Moderators. Doc has been busy and blocked auto registrations so we are not having to spend hours deleting registrations and topics. A great improvement and now we have to work out a way for genuine registrations possible. It will most likely be an email to one of us which we will assess and deal with. A pain but better than having a flood of crap!
Nice visit by my daughter Susan. Mind you, she forgot to send me the pic she promised! Kids......

[Stanley]

I was listening to a BBC correspondent in Gaza reporting on the stupidity that is current there. At the moment the Israeli navy is shelling Gaza as well as the air strikes and the reporter commented on how surprised he was at the Palestinian's ability to identify what the incoming was simply by the sound. Not surprising to us crumblies who lived under bombardment during WW2, we could tell enemy planes from ours, recognise the V1's, make an estimate of the weight and type of bombs and distinguish between the different kinds of Ack Ack guns. We could even tell if a bomb was going to land near us by the sound (or lack of it), As a general rule if you could hear it you weren't going to get a direct hit but still had to worry about blast, shrapnel and flying debris, particularly glass. The ones we really hated were the 'land mines', obsolete German magnetic mines which were enormous and floated down on parachutes before exploding at low altitude. They were like an enormous hammer when the blast hit and the only way you could detect them was to see them floating down.
It doesn't surprise me at all that the Palestinian's have developed the same skills. It's amazing how quickly you learn if it's a matter of survival!

[Stanley]

Can't get out of my head the fact that the little girl's body hasn't been found yet (Machynlleth). I feel for the parents.....

[Stanley]

The efficiency of Amazon. I've ordered three books over the last week and they have all been dispatched. I realise they are tax-dodgers but you can't fault their service. I wonder if they take on more staff and gear-up for Xmas?



On a cold day in winter there is a lot to be said for a warm house, pot of tea, a happy dog and some broth warming on the stove.

[Marilyn]

Looks so idyllic.
We had 37 degrees with a nasty North Wind today. Makes things so unpleasant, as North Winds are full of dust.
So I spent about an hour stripped off, laying on the bed under the ceiling fan, reading a book. Couldn't even have the window open as the dust was awful, and I hate cleaning the mess off the timber venetians.
A complete contrast to your cosy day.
( hope you don't expect a photo! )

[Moh]

Can't get out of my head the fact that the little girl's body hasn't been found yet (Machynlleth). I feel for the parents.....

I thnk she would have been put in the flooded river and washed out to sea.

[Stanley]

Those poor people....
Maz, lots to be said for cold wet weather, no flies or dust!
What grabbed me yesterday was the stupidity of the traditionalists in the Anglican church drawing on dodgy theology and refusing to support women bishops. The church is in enough trouble as it is without self-inflicted injury.
Brooks, Coulson et al all charged and will go on trial. A civil servant as well who was paid over £100,000 over seven years by Brooks. Others are charged as well, good, it looks as though the system is working. Notable that the Murdoch's have escaped the net.

[Stanley]

Have a look at this LINK for news of the report by Sue Berelowitz, the deputy Children's Commissioner on possible levels of sex abuse of children. Absolutely credible and very worrying. What really upsets me is the immediate response by 'a government figure' saying that the report is hysterical and based on spurious statistics. Who the hell asked him/her? Surely the people to gauge the worth of the report are other professionals in the field and not politicians whose views on disclosure on this matter might be suspect to say the least? My life experience tells me that if you want the safer option, believe 'worst case' and go forward from there. To rubbish a professional report before it has been properly digested is bad policy and I'm amazed that, apart from anything else, the political repercussions of doing this if indeed the report is supported elsewhere are unthinkable.

[Nolic]

Comrade, the statistics quoted in the report are not safe. There is no national co-ordination of police crime figures relating to child sexual exploitation and therefore the Inquiry was stumbling a bit. Rather than accept this poor state of affairs and look to how it could be improved Ms Berelowitz has again gone for notches on her gun and come to the conclusion that 16,500 children had been victims since March 2010. They get this figure by "evidence collected during site visits and gathered at hearing sessions all indicated that many children who were sexually exploited either remained unseen by professionals, or even when known, were not recorded in the call for evidence submissions received by the Inquiry " so they then looked at "children(who) displayed three or more signs or behaviour indicating they were at risk of child sexual exploitation."
This is very dangerous research as the signs of possible sexual exploitation are later quoted as; "Living in a chaotic or dysfunctional household (including parental substance use, domestic violence, parental mental health issues, parental criminality). • History of abuse (including familial child sexual abuse, risk of forced marriage, risk of honour based
violence, physical and emotional abuse and neglect). • Recent bereavement or loss. • Gang association either through relatives, peers or intimate relationships (in cases of gang associated CSE only). • Attending school with young people who are sexually exploited. • Learning disabilities. • Unsure about their sexual orientation or unable to disclose sexual orientation to their families. • Friends with young people who are sexually exploited. • Homelessness. • Lacking friends from the same age group. • Living in a gang neighbourhood.
• Living in residential care. • Living in hostel, bed and breakfast accommodation or a foyer. • Low self-esteem or self-confidence. • Young carers. "
So a child under 16 living in bed and breakfast , lacking friends of the same age and from a family that exhibits domestic violence is included in the 16,500 even when there is no clear history of exploitation.
It is a great pity that the Inquiry has had a go at headline grabbing and also have avoided some of the more sensitive issues around the sexual exploitation of young people. Nolic

[Tardis]

Prezza claiming that the media went to town on his defeat

Even Cameroon lampooned him at PMQ's

[Tardis]

The other thing was the Lib Dem candidate complaining about the voting system, which is quite rich since they are the ones that imposed it from Drowning Street

[Tizer]

I thought I'd better report in to let you know we haven't drowned! Somerset is awash with floods and folk in our village can't remember anything so bad as last night and today, and there's more to come tomorrow. We weren't able to use our car and watched as the flood water rose rapidly in the road outside. I took a stick and tried to clear one of the drains in the lane but the water came over my wellies and the leaves blocked it as fast as I cleared them. Then I got a spade and went across the lane to do the usual trick - dig a trench across the verge to let the water drain into the ditch - but when I got there I found the level was so high in the ditch that the water was overflowing out and onto the lane! It was also flowing down the lane towards us like a river and streams were coming off the fields behind. Now and then some mad fool would plough through in a 4x4 and the bow wave would run up to the front of our garage and, luckily, stop just as it reached the door. We had to help someone whose car got swamped and later in the day, when the level fell, helped them get it started again (they now know about WD40!). We've had builders in but they couldn't come today owing to the floods, either our flood or their flood at home. The plumber tried to come and almost got stranded at our house but then escaped, carrying the young couple from the broken down car. What a day! Meanwhile, my dad's in Exeter hospital (got him there yesterday fortunately), had is operation and when I rang at 6.30pm was `having his tea'. Not much chance of visiting though, with the roads and even the railway lines flooded. A lot of Somerset people who were flooded today have been flooded several times in the last year. I wonder how the insurance companies will treat them?

[Stanley]

Comrade, thanks for that. So good to have a really knowledgeable member. I shall curb my anger and watch what happens.
Tiz, what can I say? Commiserations to you and Mrs Tiz of course. I have often said that there is a lot to be said for living at 550 feet plus and on the watershed! If we get flooded here there is no hope for the rest. I take the point about bow waves. I once crossed a bridge into Cawood, a little village in West Yorkshire during a flood, I was in the milk tanker. The Ouse was so high that the roadbed of the bridge was a foot deep in water and the same in the main street. I trickled through in low gear so as not to send waves over the doorsteps but was overtaken by a Land Rover going like hell. If the villagers could have caught him they would have done him serious harm! Some people are totally unaware of the possible consequences of their actions!

[Tizer]

Some of the railway tracks were badly flooded here and I expect there might have been landslides too, on both railways and roads. The local TV news was almost all about the floods last night and I saw a bit showing a rail bridge in an embankment spanning a main road below. The trackway above was flooded and there was a waterfall at each end of the bridge where the water fell to the road below - and added to the flood on the road. Taunton has been especially bad and the local park and the cricket ground, both in the town centre, are completely under water. All the flood water and mud in Taunton is a startling red colour, like blood, due to the run-off from the red sandstone of Exmoor. The 1 in 100 events are happening every year now!

I've just had my first chance to read Nolic's post of yesterday where he says "This is very dangerous research..." and I agree with him wholeheartedly. Obviously, I don't have the knowledge and expertise of his professional experience but I see the same bad approach to research being repeated in other subject areas and it worries me. It can lead to a lot of misinformation, incorrect conclusions and, ultimately, inappropriate and sometimes damaging actions.

[Stanley]

Colin's post helped me. Just goes to show that partial and biased information can fool even an old cynic like me. You're right Tiz. That's why I keep recommending that people should read 'Healthy or Hungry Thirties' by Charles Webster. Exactly the same syndrome and straight from the heads of the government.

[Tardis]

Today a black mercedes tried to drive over my feet as I stood on the zebra crossing in the road on Gisburn Road

If you have a buckle in your door panel that was my boot,

[Moh]

Anyone in the market for electrical goods - Comet, Burnley are having a closing down sale with 50% of some things and 20% off the rest.

[Tardis]

A note from Ms Eccles of Pendle Council to tell me that the Pendle operatives have fixed the street lights in Valley Gardens

Anyone noticed?