Government or Civil Service, who governs?

In all honesty what is going on in this country? Is anyone actually governing it? Perhaps as I have said in the past, we are governed by the hallowed Civil Service. Elected ministers are side-lined. This was all too obvious recently with the attacks on Dominic Raab, our deputy Prime Minister. Today, it is known with out doubt, the knives were out for him and pretty successful at it as well. The woke brigade who were crying about being ‘bullied’, in other words that you and me would use, ‘talked to sternly’, have won the first battle. This thing is not over yet, me thinks. I believe over the next few weeks some damning evidence will be published as to what really happened on the occasions that these Civil Service mandarins were carpeted. Already we have heard about some incredibly stupid rulings, viz Gibraltar when some unelected twit had indicated it was OK for Spanish police to be added to the Gibraltar force. That would be the same as Russian police being stationed now in the eastern part of Germany when they were the overlords after WW2, in what was then Eastern Germany. It is indeed a strange world we live in.

But it shows a picture of Great Britain that says – weak government, the Civil Service working against the elected. Even though we could all agree that the elected leave a lot to be desired, it should not be up to the civil service people to decide the rules and how these should be administered. One of the things noticeable is government is not stable. It seems rudderless and it is something in this day and age you do not want! The Russian bear is knocking on our door, mapping the infrastructure, gas and electrical pipelines, wind generating fields in our coastal waters, you name it. The Russians are gearing up for a wider conflict which I think will happen in the next five years. The Chinese in turn are happy to watch and intend to pick up the rich pickings. Watch and wait. And all our government and the CS are doing is infighting. This wonder of the Opposition Starmer, who cannot decide what is front or back or even his sides, cannot believe his luck. Anyone even looks at him as a Prime Minister? If you do, please book quickly into the next available insane asylum. For someone as highly placed as him, he has indeed no idea what government is. We need people, yes like Raab, who are not afraid to upset the establishment. Who turn over the apple-cart! What do people think it is all about? A little swim in a nice warm, blue sea and talk to the fish? A nice fat salary to boot for doing absolutely nada? It is high time to hoist the flags and stop trying to unseat the elected government on spurious woke allegations. Get Raab back in government asap! And more people like him as well! Time to say it as it is, a shambles and stop being nice. We, the people are the bosses, not the Civil Service and not even the government. And we are not too happy! So, Rishi dress up in the age old stainless steel harness, go to war on the woke, the ditherers, the imbeciles and put the CS in its place. Thank you and you will have my vote.

To Quora or not to Quora, that is a question...

Looking around on the Internet does give you a headache. I am rather interested in basic mathematics and do look from time on the Question and Answer platform Quora. You will see questions like ‘How many times can you delete 1 from 50’? In fact there are hundreds, if not thousands, of questions like that. I often wonder what the rationale is to ask these? Does one get paid for asking a question? If so, well good luck to them but it makes Quora rather unattractive. People seem to think it is clever to ask such rubbish because the answer can be twofold. Obviously in one way you can only deduct 1 from 50 once because then the question loses its meaning. Although you can deduct one from 49. And all the way until it becomes deduct 1 from 2. So it just depends how to look at the question. A bit nonsensical in both ways. It demeans the art of mathematics. I suppose it might make some people scratch their heads. Again though, looking at the Internet in general terms there is an enormous amount of total cr*p on it. From Russian trolls who seems to live in an absolute Utopia and only wish to invade Finland or some other country as long as it has no army to defend itself. To people who are apparently sex-starved and wish to know if Dutch pigs would do? Just wondering what they meant by pigs? 

Perhaps it is time to weed out this rubbish and maybe AI might be of help here. I am not sure if AI is going to be the saviour of mankind, I rather think it will be the end of life as we know it. Perhaps we could put some safeguards on it. Not sure why the likes of Musk and others are hell-bent of developing this. Microsoft with ChatGPT and the Chinese as well , it will be interesting to see where this will go to. In the meantime we have to weed out all the theses (yes, the plural of thesis!) which are now written by ChatGPT! Come to think of it, maybe these Quora questions are asked by ChatGPT? An interesting aside is thinking of the likes of Einstein and others, especially during the fist half of the 20^th century, could AI come up with E=mc²? Or even a better answer? I am not convinced. In the end I believe AI can be no more than everything humans have done, discovered, thought of and carried out. I don’t think AI could tell us how to break the speed of light or whether we can reach the stars without having to be frozen for eons. Well, will someone tell Musk to get on with it and rather than developing AI, get his Tesla batteries sorted out and sell Twitter.

Are we in the property doldrums? Well, eh...

Many times we have noted the increasing number of houses bought by English or foreign people for holidaying purposes. In fact we have stayed in such a property recently. No matter what we think about this, one fact remains and that is local people find it more and more difficult to find property to purchase or rent. On top of that it also means that if these properties are close to each other viz. Aberaeron in North Wales, the village or town will be virtually deserted in wintertime. Another fact that has not been discussed widely is local shops have much less footfall and sales have plummeted. Shops in such places find it difficult to maintain their services and some have already closed down. As I have family across the water I heard something recently that worried me. It was overheard in a golf club in Holland where a group of players was discussing having bought ‘cheap’ property in Wales for the purpose of maximising their profits. If this is true and I cannot see any reason why it should not be, foreign buyers are now buying up much cheaper houses abroad thanks to the lower values and standards of Welsh property. Having done a quick look at house prices and levels of salaries in Holland you will quickly note the disparity! But applauding this investment is not the right thing to do, it just exacerbates the problem!

Yet nothing seems to move our various governments, the national one or the Welsh. It does not bother anyone yet the problems will not go away and in reality will worsen. I recently read on the news that at last some councils are taking steps to curtail holiday properties. Meaning I think, curtail the actual number in a locality. Not before time. The other thing that needs looking at is the influx of English people who are simply retiring in Wales because it is cheaper. I cannot blame them for doing that but as long as we understand it will kill off the language and finally subsume Wales into England proper. Forget the idea of independence because the English I spoke to haven’t got the foggiest about it. To them Wales doesn’t have any meaning. Mae’n nhw trio dysgu’r iaith ond methu o bryd i’w gilydd!

The afore-mentioned has also highlighted the exodus of English people to the Netherlands (Holland) for better salaries. In fact loads of businesses have moved there because of Brexit. It may be said that perhaps this was foreseen and if not, our government was pretty lax at the time. I supported Brexit and still do, not because I am anti-European but because of the enormous waste by the European Union thanks to their ever growing attempts to centralise everything. In particular the economy and financial governance. So, many English are now residing in Holland and earning generally much more than their counterparts here. As a result they have seen the possibilities in property, especially in Wales. Frankly this should be stopped immediately. No buyers from foreign lands to be allowed to buy property in Wales. More, I also believe that no-one NOT living in Wales should be able to buy property here and that would include English persons, pensioners included. It should have become obvious that the playing field is not equal! So, let’s straighten it out!

Ed: It seems that government is beginning to think about it. In England at least. Hopefully it will bear fruit, but don't hold your breath!

The holiday blues? Hmm, could be...

Apologies for not having written any opinions, I have been away for a week to sample the seaside in West Wales. The week before Easter is usually pretty quiet, not like the frenzy that we have seen later with hours long delays at Dover, also notable on the motorways. But it does not surprise me in the least, the British are herd animals. They move at the same time, go to bed at the same time, make love at the same time. Well, someone said that, I am not sure if that’s actually true. But yes, come holiday time we all get up, get the car ready, kick the dog and set off. Along with 24 million others. We are also very good at complaining. Complaining about delays because there are so many hampering our progress. How do they dare! It’s basically a sign of complete mismanagement, disorganisation of private and public life. It could be called freedom of choice but I would call it a very poor choice. Even so, I missed the reading of papers, simply because the shop in the village where we stayed had shut down. The owner could no longer affords the whammy of increases, council tax, costs of products, almost everything has become dearer. Gas, electric you name it.

Wonderful and what have our brilliant politicians got to say about it? Ah, pretty nothing as it happens. They are more concerned scoring points of each other. The suave playboy Keir has now begun calling his opponents the irascible Conservatives that they allow rapists etc to go free. In fact he singled out Rishi Sunak particularly. Gutter politics? No, really? This Labour party, the one who is ahead in the polls and tells itself it will form the next government, do we want to be governed like that? It is beginning to look more and more we are just another state of the USA! Gutter politics is commonplace over there, just look at Trump! So many problems in this over populated country and all they can do is shout at one another. Plus when sitting down coming up with the strangest policy ideas. Even worse, sometimes implementing them as well. Like the HS2 for instance. On its own a great idea for France. There is room. Here, you have to uproot half the population. Plus they seem never able to control the budgets. We just like to be governed by buffoons it seems. Perhaps it is better than being governed by rich aristocrats. But don’t hold me to task. It is really time to have a hard look at how we want to be governed plus how we need to vet candidates for office. Surely, we cannot just accept every Tom, Dick and Eva? Candidates must have a proven track of ability or be prepared to go back to college and study something, like politics perhaps or history? In the meantime I do expect the Parliamentary authorities to look at the wording of these Labour advertisements, or for that matter any other political ads that purport personalised attacks on the opposition. The word, opposition meaning adversaries in this instance. In the meantime I am still basking in the holiday mood, kicking balls with the kids on the near empty beach. And oh yes, just managing to locate an ice-cream parlour. Although I had to take out an extension to the mortgage. Damn it.