The Saxons are coming - again...

There has and still is a lot of talk about people having lost trust in politicians. We hear reports about police having lost control over our streets. Drug pushers trading openly. Moped riders terrorising London’s streets. The reality is pretty stark. When I look at some of the local issues here in South Wales, the degradation of the environment, the rubbish strewn streets, the lack of infrastructure, it is easy to despair. Where are the politicians with ideas? Where are the police? All that seems happening is house building. Well yes but again it is done without any idea about services. Think of a thousand new houses in an area where there are already problems with getting doctor’s appointments and the one or two dentist’s surgeries are already overfull. Where there are schools who have to cope with children that cannot even speak English. Where children sit in classes of over thirty strong because the Victorian school buildings are not fit for purpose. House building in Wales suffers from one problem, it attracts those from England who sell their houses at top dollar and buying cheaper houses in Wales. The ‘profit’ could be as much as £50,000 pending where they come from. It all sounds too good to be true but is the reality. You could ask this question – Why build thousands of houses in Wales where there is very little demand for housing. In fact a couple of hundred cheaper houses in the areas of need would see most people happy. What we see though is massive private estates being built on green sites everywhere but mostly in the main road corridors of the M4 and A55. It has to be obvious that there is something else going on. Wales is being used as an overflow bin. Once again richer English flood in making money with Welsh young couples unable to afford a place to live. Due to the inability of our so-called betters(!) to come up with working policies we are ending up with what can only be called the Second Great Move Westward. The Saxons have never given up, have they? This will be the time that the Celts will finally go under. I know it has nationalistic overtones but if I as a single guy can see the way ‘things’ are going, why cannot politicians do the same? Or is it ‘After me the deluge? I do my five years and to hell with what comes after, that will be someone else’s problem’. Is that how deep we have sunk? It appears so.

Arafwch, os gwelwch yn dda

Un o’r fy nghasineb anwes ydy lefaru a chanu yn rhy gyflym. Yn enwedig ar Radio Cymru. Llawer o bobl lleisiau clicio gyda nhw! A mae gan ddysgwyr broblem gwrando a ddeall. Ga i ofyn – arafwch plís. Dw i’n mwynhau gwrando ar y radio oherwydd mae’n helpu’r dysgu yr iaith (os dw i’n deall beth sy’n dweud yn well!). Does dim broblem gyda fi os lefarydd yn siarad yn araf ond mae bobl gogledd, fe faswn i hoffi deall Gogs wrth gwrs hefyd, mae’n arbennig. Mae Cymru’r un!

Felly, yn y cyfamser dw i’n mynd am dro breuddwydio am Dynion o Harlech a Gofod – Ble mae’r diwedd!

Guilty or not guilty or just nice TV drama..

The Cliff case (a good beginning denoting the issue as far as the legal stuff is concerned) is quite exciting insofar the strange statements made by all and sundry. First of all I saw the BBC report made at the time, using a helicopter to show Cliff’s little pad. Was he even there? Well, the police did not seem to care much whether he was or not. The real implication about all of this, should people be named in investigations or not? Obviously the police has to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. I am certain the Crown Prosecution Service was informed and might have given an indication that sounds like an approval. But the next question is – why was the BBC involved at that time? You do not hire a helicopter in five minutes, so collusion with the police?

I think we need to be blunt here, people under investigation must not be named. Actually it serves no purpose to name persons as it only serves unwarranted intrusion and might even harm the court case to come, if any. In other countries, like Holland for instance, reports are made by just using initials. Such as In the court of London the accused HW (the correct name initials!) faced blah blah blah, he will appear at the Crown Court on blah, blah, blah. I don’t think this will harm the public rights to know what is going on but it will stop persons not found guilty to further harm.

In all of this we need a judicial system that will be above any signs of incompetence, we need a CPS that is without doubt more than excellent. And a police force that works for the benefit of the population. Frankly, that stands at 40%. of what it should be. Like in all cases, it is not just a question of money but of leadership. If donkeys are leading lions then who clears the dung?

Yeah, right!

Trump 1 - May 0

Politicians still don’t get it, do they? You might say – what? They keep on ignoring the people’s wishes. It amazes me we have not heard rumblings of discontent. Except from the the Sun newspaper obviously but two years ago we were asked – In or out of Europe? Result? Out! Ever since politicians of all colours have been trying hard to water everything down. We should ask what does Out actually mean? Partially in? Part of the EU, yes, no, maybe? And who in all honesty thinks that a soft Irish border is going to work? Cameron has left us with one of the most difficult problems to solve, if it can be solved at all. President Trump is right, yes he is also wrong on many issues but here he is absolutely correct. You do not make deals with two hands tied behind your back. Out is out and you have to deal accordingly. As it is the EU has made all the strategic decisions, the UK has and still is miles behind. Frankly Mrs May hasn’t got a clue as how to do this. Perhaps we should swallow our pride for once, kick her into touch and elect a stroppy Churchillian PM. Welcome Boris!

Coding for the Web

A friend asked me - ‘Hey, you do a bit of coding with HTML5 and CSS3, how do you get things onto the screen? Not just anywhere but nicely placed, side by side. Well, that’s the million dollar question, I had to learn, teach myself how things work and I am still learning! But as I said, start with the basics. The problem with computer coding, languages and so on is that they do and can change rapidly. HTML5 is using quite a number of new ‘tags’ as is CSS3. So-called div’s are now not as supremely important.

What I tend to do is draw up a grid of blocks. First the header, this can be a logo, a coloured navigation bar (although with HTML5 we now have the nav tag. Then I fill the blocks with a colour just to see where they fall onto the page and I can size them correctly, even with space between them. You start off with the usual opening tags using a editor like 'gedit' or Sublime Text:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

<title>page.html</title>

<style="text/css"></style>

</head>

Open the <body> tag to denote the beginning of the page you’ll see on the screen.

<body>

Now the header tags and code to position the images or text etc.

<header class="bar">

<img src="images/headerbar.png" alt="header" width="900">

<p class=rightpos2><span style="font-weight: bold;">Discover who we are...</span>&nbsp;&nbsp; <span style="font-weight: bold;">Where we come from...</span></p>

</header>

.

‘bar’ will be part of the CSS3 code. HTML code is used to put ‘stuff’ onto a screen, CSS is used to style it. So ‘bar’ is specifically positioning the header, followed by the styling.

.bar {

float: left;

margin-left: 25px;

}

This means it is positioned to the left and 25 pixels to the right.

The image is within a subdirectory called ‘images’ and positioned as ‘bar’ directed.

There will be some text – denoted by the <p> tag, positioned as directed by the CSS ‘rightpos2’ code. This styles the textual part and puts the words where they are wanted. That can be anywhere you want them, I tend to experiment a lot!

.rightpos2 {

position: absolute;

font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

text-shadow: 2px 2px black;

font-size: 24px;

left: 580px;

top: 30px;

width: 300px;

height: 20px;

color: purple;

font-style: oblique;

}

This hopefully is self-explanatory. I will put some more on at a later date to show the positioning of the other blocks.

You will see the result on the ‘history’ page of my website – dutchenery.net’.

Social rumblings

One of the many problems that society has to cope with is that well-educated people tend to dish out the justice. But the question is – do these people actually understand the level at which the so-called poor have to live? A lot of people would say yes That the low educated poor themselves have not taken the opportunities available to them. No, they were never available. Lack of money, lack of parental support, and even no parental support because there wasn’t any. When you are born in a semi-derelict estate built by those ‘caring’ social experiments of the do-gooders, your chances are already halved. Coming into the schools where the teachers have only one goal and that is to get home as soon as possible, the choices are further diminished by another 50%. And moreover by the time they are of employable age they will be lucky to get a job of the ‘zero-hours’ variety. When you are called at 2 o'clock in the night to fill some shelves. You might think we are in the Victorian era, no this is 2018! There never seems to be a good middle way, it is always the worst end of either social spectrum. Total capitalism or total socialism. We pride ourselves we have freedom – do we really? We also live within quite a straight jacket, think about it. If we want society to change for the better, we first and foremost will have to set up a way to work with children, better schooling, better teaching and teachers. Furthermore we will have to consider how to deal with them when they are ready for work. It is no good educating, as it seems to be today, everybody to university standard and then no jobs available, except more shelf filling! It is also paramount to look at the population explosion here. This island nation now has 66million people, increasing by hundreds of thousands every year. And I am not really talking about immigration although it is one of the underlying causes. We live longer but not necessarily better or healthier. It needs sorting – what do we and how do we want to live in the 21^st and 22^nd centuries? For we are responsible for the upbringing of those who will live then.

World Cup - a pantomime?

Wow, the World Cup, brilliant and idiotic all at the same time. I love football and having Dutch genes (can’t help it you know!) was very sorry to see Holland go out. But hey, England Wales’ neighbour managed to go and that’ll do nicely! Except the team seems to attract other nation’s teams who seem to be playing another game. Something like volleyball or a game with no ball in it at all. Like perhaps wrestling? I cannot believe this is accidental, this surely is and was premeditated by the players and staff. Tunisia, Colombia just to name a few. Mostly South American nations. But it has percolated to other second and third rate football nations. Fall about, obviously clutch face, just wondering when the blood sacks are going to be brought in for a better effect? A good question, did these South American players ever do a course in pantomime but have forgotten to dress up?

It is ludicrous that referees actually allow these histrionics! I think a stand has to be made, even if teams end up with six players and no goalie, well that’s their problem. But I do think we need to tackle this behaviour for the sake of fair play and an improved sport to watch!