Hairy Hats

What is it about men who wear toupees?How sad is that!If you have lost your hair or are losing it,why not just accept the fact and keep it short!

You can see the join;the colour never matches and in high winds mate,you are in the shit!

The other one of course is the comb over!

Now come on,who do you think you are kidding!

Nobody has a parting that starts by the left ear!

Donald Trump you are a multimillionaire.........visit the barber!

Just get a hair cut boys,you ain't sex on legs!

Old Books

For those of you who have read my various posts,you will know that my interests spread far and wide.

I've just been looking at some old books of mine that haven't seen the light of day for nearly 30 years,and I came across Folk Song in England by A.L.Lloyd,first published in 1967.

An interest in folk song stems from my deep interest in history and a love of traditional forms of music.The folk song,from whatever country it comes from,tells you a story about real people and the social events that governed their lives,their priorities and beliefs.

In England it was often a vehicle to express oppression by landlords,masters and the law.But it was also a way of letting off steam and being a little risque.

I give you the words of a song collected from the Wigan area of Lancashire;the song is thought to be from the early nineteenth century and is evocative of the feelings of a young working class girl during the Industrial Revolution.

My mother sent me for some water,

For some water for my tea.

My foot slipped and down I tumbled.

Collier lad gat hold of me.

Collier lads get gold and silver.

Factory lads get nobbut brass.

Who'd get married to a two-loom weaver

When there's plenty of collier lads?

Times don't change much do they?Only lasses today want a footballer!

The Island of St Helena

How many of you would care to live in a sub-tropical paradise 1000 miles from the nearest land mass,where outside supplies only come in once a month by ship?

The island in question is St Helena in the South Atlantic,a British Territory with a population of approximately 5000.

An extinct oceanic volcano with a land mass of around 2000 square kilometres,this island may for the first time be acquiring an airport,so that rich tourists can get away from it all.

Estimates suggest that this endeavour will create employment for 300 islanders,but no doubt the better paid jobs will go to outsiders with the relevant 'skills'.

The British Government seems reasonably keen on the idea,purely and simply on the basis that at the present time this community costs money.

St Helena's only claim to fame is that it was the location of Napoleon's imprisonment until his death in 1821 and now Longwood House, where he lived is a museum owned by the French Government.

Tourism is often seen as the solution to self financing for small island communities around the World,but without exception,the culture and nature of these communities is destroyed.

Today I ask you to think how would you help in creating meaningful employment for the people of St Helena,without the infestation of rich folks money and all that goes with it.

An entire culture is at stake here,so please post your ideas on how economic self determination may be achieved.Thankyou.

The Council of Nicaea

Today our view of the Christian Faith is determined by what ever Church we were brought up in,whether it be Catholic,Eastern,Anglican or Lutheran.

What all these institutions have in common is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the literal sense of the word.

This was not always the case,prior to The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 there were many different groups with varying belief systems.

In simple terms we may seperate them into two distinct groups. 1.The Literalists who believed every word in the Bible was true as written. 2.The Gnostics whose approach to the Bible was one of allegory that required interpretation achieved through the pursuit of personal knowledge leading to enlightenment.

So therefore the battle lines were drawn in AD 325 when Emperor Constantine convened the council of bishops to determine the future of a state sponsored religion.

We all know today the outcome, but many will be unaware of the purges that followed the establishment of the Catholic Church in Rome and the Eastern Church in Constantinople.

With the power of the Empire behind them the early Catholic Bishops systematically destroyed the Gnostic Church by persecuting it's adherents and wherever possible destroying their literature.

This did not succeed in total since Gnosticism reappears in different guises throughout the history of Christendom,often in the form of sects or secret societies.

The Knights Templar,The Cathars and The Bogomils are just three examples where the pursuit of knowledge was paramount in achieving Christian enlightenment.

Gnostics have much to thank Islam for preserving within the Koran their own belief of Jesus as a man,prophet and Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense.

The great period of Islamic culture which coincided with Europe's Dark Ages preserved and indeed enhanced ancient knowledge which was later reintroduced into Europe during the rennaisance.Knowledge and learning were greatly revered in the Caliphate of Baghdad when Rome was busy burning so-called heretics.

Not until the Twentieth Century was evidence found for the existence of other Gospels and even then only fragments remain of the Gospels of Mary Magdalene,Phillip and Judas. But enough to suggest that there were widely differing interpretations on the teachings of Jesus.

Just imagine one day the deserts of the Middle East may give up the actual writings of Jesus,this indeed would be momentous!

Mobile Telephones

Depending on the part of the World you are from,they are either Mobile Telephones or Cellphones and they are a part of every day life for millions of people.

Until recently I had one,pretty much from their inception as one of the tools of my working career and have seen them reduce in size and become ever more complex in terms of functionality.

Those of you who have read my profile will know that I am not in the first flush of youth and as a consequence not overly obsessed with technology.

My old Nokia having given me loyal and faithful service for many years,finally died three months ago and being a dutiful environmentalist I sent it away for re-cycling,receiving £27 for my trouble.

I have now been without a mobile for three months and feel totally liberated!

I no longer receive incomprehensible texts from people using idiotic dehumanising predictive texting.

I no longer have pointless conversations with people I am going to see in five minutes time.

I can enjoy a pint in my local pub without the bloody thing going off!

So ladies and gentlemen I have come to the conclusion that these objects are certainly irrelevant in my life and I suspect the same applies to the vast majority of people in the World.

Freedom is at hand,join this old dinosaur and liberate yourself today and no longer need you answer your phone to listen to some buffoon asking 'where are you?'.

The Madness of Litigation

A strange title you may think,but I have just witnessed a woman on TV who has just received £1 million compensation from the Turkish Government because sadly her parents were killed in a terrorist attack in the country,whilst on holiday.

Unfortunately the World we live in today is full of risk,whether you are just crossing the street or going into hospital for a routine operation,things can go wrong.But why should we assume we are entitled to compensation?

Indeed criminals in the UK can expect compensation if they are injured in the course of a burglary!Why?

I read some years ago about a woman in America who sued Toshiba because there was nothing in the instruction booklet for her microwave to say that it was not a good idea to use it to dry her poodle after a bath.As a consequence her dog exploded!Now there's a surprise!
There are two things going on here, 1)Ambulance chasing lawyers are exploiting loopholes in laws,for justice?No,for money.2)The mass of the population in the words of Gore Vidal 'are idiots!'.

Why should a government,local authority,company,compensate you for your own ineptitude.Granted if you worked in a hazardous industry without proper protective equipment,that is different.

In Britain we have people who go climbing what we laughingly call mountains,and if they get into difficulty,RAF helicopters and mountain rescue squads(all unpaid volunteers)risk their own lives to save these self centred fools.

All of this nonsense is paid for by taxpayers in the jurisdictions it occurs in,so the £1 million paid to this lady by the Turkish Government is £1 million less that can be spent on the welfare of the Turkish people.

In America some 8% of GDP goes on legal fees!

If it were possible to personally sue politicians who create laws that adversely affect us,then maybe we would start to return to a situation of personal responsibility for our own actions.

Lawyers are very fond of the term 'conflict of interest'.Next time you get a chance just check how many of your elected representatives are former lawyers,you will know then what conflict of interest means.

The Twin Foxes

Today in Britain poaching is considered to be nothing much more than a petty crime,the argument being that those who have land enough for game can afford to lose a few pheasants.

But in Victorian and Early Twentieth Century times,when most of the local magistrates were also the landowners,things were considerably different.Indeed in even earlier times it is recorded that poachers were transported to Australia for the offence of taking a pheasant,never to see their loved ones again.

This offence was turned into a fine art by two twin brothers born in 1857 to a Mr & Mrs Henry Fox from the village of Symonds Green near Stevenage in Hertfordshire.Named Albert Ebenezer and Ebenezer Albert after the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Albert Street,Stevenage,they decided at a young age that working their father's small farm was not for them.

They both became crack shots at shooting game in the pitch dark and in the course of their careers they were arrested no less than 150 times,but did not receive their first conviction until 1904 with the advent of finger printing.

How may you ask did they manage to get away with poaching for so long?Their secret lay in never going out together.

One would always be propping up the bar in The Marquis of Lorne,never letting on to the assembled company whether it was Albert or Ebenezer!

They became so notorious they often made national news and indeed an item on their exploits even appeared in The New York Times issue of 9th February 1913.

Both retiring they lived to a healthy old age,one dying in 1926 and the other in 1935.Today they are considered local folk heroes,but at the time the local landowners tried every means possible to catch them and were infuriated that the law could do nothing since it couldn't prove which brother had been arrested!

Sadly today,the World is lacking in such characters.