I have just watch a new US press briefing at the White House with Dr Anthony Fauci now working for President Joe Biden and although the Covid-19 crisis is severe and will likely get worse before it gets better. One refreshing ray of sunshine in this briefing is that the US administration and Dr Falci have a plan and are very much up for this battle.
Dr Anthony Fauci
With day after day and bleak report after bleak report it can sometimes feel that nothing is changing and you just don’t know when something is going to change, but back in the beating heart of western democracy and the free world, there are people with plans who will hopefully greatly assist in the battle against covid-19, against the damage to the global economy and against the competing crisis of also battling climate change and saving or reestablishing our wilderness areas.
Heather Smal – Proud
Mr President it really does feel like the USA has once again rejoined the battle to try and save this world from itself.
Does Trump have an angel or a devil resting on his shouder- well sadly your view of him might only be shaped by the TV channel you watch or the newspaper you read. It seems free thinking and an ability to interpret truth from lies or fact from fiction are dying arts, well for now anyway.
For many mere mortals living is hard & life is not easy, so when someone is put into a position of power to have a chance of make our lives better, less dangerous or fairer. You hope that they will have the strength of will and ability to do so. But if they make things harder, cost more lives or even sow seeds of doubt into the very systems they were elected to up hold then I tend to judge them harshly. If they make matters worse than prior to when they took up the power of leadership that they had craved then they have surely failed on any measure of what makes them a good leader.
Donald Trump stated on January 6, 2021 in a speech on the Ellipse outside the White House:
“We won. We won in a landslide. This was a landslide.”
A crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters later stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, wearing and waving Trump-branded paraphernalia and flags as they sought to overturn the election.
There is no credible evidence that the crowd was infiltrated or led by antifa activists in disguise. Specific individuals held up online as antifa activists turned out to be Trump supporters.
Trump had encouraged his supporters to come to Washington to protest the election. He spoke at a rally hours before the violence erupted and urged those in attendance to march to Congress.
It takes a certain type of leader to have the balls or to be completely incompetence in order to state or preach information that they know not to be true to their supporters knowing that the consequences of what they do will hurt and potential incite violence and bloodshed.
Trump and his minions have continued to do this on such a regular basis that his supporters must not know if they are coming or going. When the people of the land and the courts and political institutions all unanimously agree that Trump has lost the election and Trump has ZERO evidence to the contrary that does not stop him bleating to his supports that he won and it’s all a hoax. What kind of delusion or lack of principles motivates a man to do this?
He damages his countries own political stability and this has also cost many lives. Historians will have a fiercely negative reading of Trump as they learn more of the consequences of what he has done and continue to interpret his so called facts to fiction and truths to lies.
There is nothing good about Trump, there is nothing theologicaly Christian in his views. Those that perceive him to be some kind of angelic political messiah really need to have a great deal of facts checked and lies revealed to them.
Trump should bare the burden and responsibility of the lies and fiction that he has created about himself, his policies and his lack of principles.
Trump supporters are coming to town, Tump supporters are coming to town
You’d better watch out you’d better not run’ I’m telling you why.
Trump supporters are coming to town, Trump supporters are coming to town.
Trump supporters are coming to town.
Their making a list and checking it twice, there goner find out who votes for Trump or allegedly stealing their rights.
Trump supporters are coming to town oh yea
You’d better not vote, you’d better not be elected, you’d better not follow the rule of law I’m telling you why, Trumps crazy supporters are coming to Capitol Hill.
Trumps time is done, for his chickens have come home to roost.
A truly disgusting day of many disgusting days in the time of Donald Dead Duck President Trump
It was the worst of times but we have seen the best of many people. A time like we have never known or wish to know again – but how can we ever learn any lessons from times like this and if we do learn what will those lessons be?
I wonder what will be written about how 2020 unfolded when people look back. Although there are lots of ways and reasons to see the bleak black clouds of heartfelt hurt and disappointments I wonder what will be the silver lining of goodness or positivity that might come through this. A little like a blanket of snow drop flowering across a woodland floor bringing in with them the signs of a new season and rejuvination of life after a bitter and harsh winter.
Sometimes how we view and react to a life event shapes how or even if we can move forward from the event. Although at other times it might be the very events themselves that force us to be re-shaped and review our view of the world or how we see ourselves within it. Coronavirus is very much an event that people have had to react to and or been reshaped by.
Another nice mess
So do we thank or blame god?
Curse or give credit to a politician in power?
Tears for the poltical stage
Or will we be grateful for what we have or curse for what we do not have?
Well in time we will hopefully have an opportunity to find out, reflect and move forward.
Today was my last day in work until Christmas. I now have one week off until I log into my work computer again to do some work and even better than that I managed to get all the work that I hoped to do today done. Presents bought and wrapped, Christmas songs playing on Spotify. Though this Christmas is in no way normal for pretty much everyone.
Merry Christmas 2020 one and all
In a normal year in the week building up to Christmas day I would be out on a Wednesday night like tonight listening to music in a bar exchanging cards, gifts and stories with friends whilst getting merry with a Christmas Guinness or two.
I’m afraid I am not a household drinker of alcohol so lockdown drinking does not really happen for me. I still have four cans of Guinness being kept cool in my fridge that I was given from my workplace for leaving my old job back in July. There is something lovely about a social pint in a bar with friends, family or strangers just does not do when drinking at home on my own. Therefore I just don’t drink alcohol at home alone.
They say people forget what they do when they drink (too much). But for me some of my most cherished memories are from times when I was having a drink with strangers, family or friends.
Back to Christmas!
Gabrielle Aplin – Happy Xmas (War is Over)
In a normal year my bags would be packed now and I would be on the first train out of Exeter to visit my mum to stay with her for Christmas. I even booked the day off work Christmas eve to travel to Cornwall. But we all took the decision not to meet up for Christmas this year and have a catcup around Easter 2021 instead or after Mum has had a vaccination against Covid-19 first and is in a better position to be protected against the virus. After such a difficult time the one thing I did not want to give to either of my parents for Christmas is the risk of bringing Covid-19 to either of my parents, so better to be safe than sorry.
Instead I will be spending Christmas with a friend who also would have been spending it alone in Exeter this year due to his circumstances too, so our social bubble is legal and legit for a Christmas day meal together. He is vegetarian so nearly all of the food I am cooking is vegetarian, all bought and ready to cook. I am really looking forward to it. I even have some Guinness flavoured coffee to get me going on Christmas morning.
Slade – Merry Christmas Everybody
So here it is Merry Christmas from Exeter in the UK its just gone 12 midnight and it is now officially Christmas Eve 2020 here. I look to the future now, its only just begun. I hope you do to.
Well I tried to do a survey on my last post and so far only three people have responded so this time I would be answering the questions myself a sort of summary of 2020 and see how this goes.
One of my favourite songs I have listened to this year Song for Zula by Phosporescent
Question 1. Hardest thing I had to do this year.
Making sure I did not have a complete meltdown and go backwards in life after having a severe mental health blip at the beginning of the year. Some time back in March I went to A&E with huge concerns for my mental health I think it was a few weeks before the first lock down started. The thing was I had a chest infection and bad cold/flue or covid-19 thing at the beginning of 2020 and it stole from me my ability to sleep properly at night and I kind of slipped into a non sleeping, spaced out and obsessed with Covid-19 taking hold around the world mess.
I had enough insight to realise that I was unwell, which is why I went to the hospital. I managed to have a good talk to the on duty mental health team there and got a lot off my chest about how to move things forward. After four days off work gathering my thoughts and learning how to sleep again I was able to carry on working and kept ticking over until I had recovered from my mental mess more thoroughly.
Questions 2. Greatest achievement of 2020?
Also back in March I went for a job interview for the council working in environmental health and amazingly got offered and accepted the job. The job did not start until July 13th. This was because I needed to be trained up in office in order to learn how to do the job so was only aloud to start after the first lockdown had finished.
Question 3. Best purchase of 2020?
I went and bought a tree, not just any tree mind you but a book published in 1770 that had a print of Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil (from Old Norse Yggdrasill) is an immense mythical tree that plays a central role in Norse cosmology, where it connects the Nine Worlds.
I did a little research on the print and found out I could by the origianl book with the print in it would cost me less than buying a copy of the print to hang up on my wall straight from a retailer. So I got the book, scanned the image into my computer, then uploaded the scan onto a website that turns scans and photos into pictures to go an walls on canvases and had the picture produced onto a canvas frame and posted to me to go on my wall in my lounge above where I now work for the council when I work at home.
Isn’t it lovely
At the time you could buy this image on eBay as a print for about £60 but the way that I produced it meant I had the original book that the print came from along with the framed print for half the price. A good deal in deed.
Speaking of Trees and life – The tallest tree in Wales had been damaged by a storm and was supposed to be cut down, but a better solution was found. Natural Resource Wales, which was in charge of the site, ordered artist O ‘ Rourke to cut down the tree. He cameup with the concept of carving what the tree stump and trunk into a giant hand – to symbolise the tree’s last attempt to reach the sky. Once completed, the sculpture was coated with tung oil, a natural vegetable oil safe for the closeness of the riverways.
Question 4. Silliest purchase(s) of 2020?
I bought a box load of DVD’s to sell on eBay to raise money for local Exeter charities. At the time their shops were all in lockdown so I thought I would raise some money for them by having online auctions for them on eBay. What could go wrong, well quite a lot actually? I still have boxes of stuff here ready to give away to charity shops as struggled to sell on eBay.
Question 5. Silliest/riskiest thing I did during a lockdown?
I am not a real risk taker most of the time but it’s those times when I do take risks I think later on “what the hell were you thinking” “just don’t bloody do it again”. Well one of those times after the first lockdown had taken place was joining in a drink game with a bunch of people I did not know in a pub that I very much know and enjoy. It only happened once but the next day I was cursing myself with thoughts of “what the hell were you thinking” “just don’t bloody do it again!!”
Question 6. What did I like about this year?
I love nature but I really managed to rediscover nature on my doorstep. When walking the street in spring and early summer at 6am to head to a shop to get a paper and some milk or other supplies, I found that such a magical time to be alive on a clear day the birds sing like they are giving you a personal performance and I even got a bird table to feed the many starlings, fat pigeons and little sparrows that would hop onto my bird table.
Food for thought
Van William – Revolution (Music Video) ft. First Aid Kit
This year has been and continues to be a revolutionary year and for good or ill the revolution continues to go on day by day. Some will win some have lost, some will survive some will not. A lot will live and many will die. Good things have happened and better may come still.
The fact that I am still here and you the reader are still here is a huge plus for me to.
Happy Christmas to you and yours and best of luck for whatever 2021 throws in your direction.
With over 70 million people in the USA believing in and voting for Trump while the rest of the world looked to Biden with both hope of a new road and feared for another 4 years of Trump this is perhaps a time to not only be looking at what decided the election result but why people vote the way they do.
Amy Winehouse – Rehab
With that in mind I would like to try and conduct a little international political survey asking people what matters to you when you vote. I am genuinely interested in what makes people tick and what issues are high up on your agenda?
Can the USA be a free democratic nation or its President the leader of the free world if its commander in chief can’t even accept he lost an election? He still boasts on Twitter to his adoring fans and voters that he won and they cheated. He does this without producing a shred of evidence for his unstable view points.
It was the right that won it – that’s what Donald Trump would have you believe anyhow. Sometimes there seems nothing worse in life or politics than a sore loser. Well it turns out there is something worse in a democratic state than a sore loser and that’s an American President that after defeat in an election is still convinced he has won. The amount of people that do not condemn his delusional bubble is just shameful and says a lot about American politics and where it is currently at or has come to.
You know something is broken in the world or in a country when good people vote for bad men and let’s be clear Trump is a very bad man, in deeds as well as words. The US President’s actions have exacerbated the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, rolled back environmental and public-health regulations and undermined science and scientific institutions. Just because a President sees a quick buck in relaxing laws designed to protect you and your fellow citizens which then might result in more short term profits for big business you should in no way be fooled into thinking that those stock and shares profits are for your benefit.
Over the past eight months, the president of the United States has lied about the dangers posed by the coronavirus and undermined efforts to contain it; he even admitted in an interview to purposefully misrepresenting the viral threat early in the pandemic. Trump has belittled masks and social-distancing requirements while encouraging people to protest against lockdown rules aimed at stopping disease transmission. His administration has undermined, suppressed and censored government scientists working to study the virus and reduce its harm.
When Trump became ill with Covid-19 he had no problems with injecting himself with the most up to date cures known to man. He went on to inject himself with using cells derived from an abortion. There are many in the states that think he is some kind of saviour of the Christian right and king of conception laws, upholder of anti-abortion rights. Stopping people having medical care (of any type come life saving treatment for babies or restrictions on abortion rights for pregnant women). All of his medical policies are not in any way enacting some kind of greater wisdom or strongly held principled view they are purely cost cutting exercises lapped up by republicans as moral decisions.
Song – Who would Jesus Bomb – By David Rovics
I really struggle to wonder what the right hand side of the American electorate really want out of a leader. Say for example all abortions were banned overnight or all immigrants no longer aloud to step one foot in your land. What would the medical, societal and legal consequences be. Would women be locked up for wanting abortions or would thousands of children be placed in orphanages or even sold to the highest bidder. What kind of future would these families or lack of family units have, how does that make it in any way morally the right thing to do?
But some would have you think that some voters are more important than others!
Live lounge Allstars – Times Like These
I live in a society that started a new lockdown on Thursday 5th November 2020, the UK is a democratic nation with a Conservative government and although I don’t support all the policies of my government I am grateful for this lockdown. It will save lives maybe even my own and the lives of my friends and family. Then when the economic tsunami that will also hit our country comes I will hope it will be worth every penny spent to save lives. You can’t rebuild a nation with the bones of your dead, only with the strength and will of those who live through these times will we be able to do that.
Trump has and will continue to do very little in the USA to save, listen to or even now count for or allow to be counted the votes of his fellow American citizens. Trump acts like a child having a tantrum in a china shop that happens to have found and unpinned a hand grenade. I don’t know how long lived his damage will be to the nation of the USA.
‘If you count the legal votes I easily win claims Trump’, this is wrong and an incendiary statement; he’s a PR man of spin and certainly no political statesman of substance. If Trump losses and it looks like the writing is on the ballet wall for him then I will thank god and will also thank the US population that voted for Biden. Trump politically spins circumstances and lies about what he does, he does not have the depth or political know how to shape political circumstances or to unite people.
Trump is a man to slander and stop the other guy or opponent he is not a man of conviction or depth of his own views or others. Apart from dismantling and damaging institutions, laws and rights I really can’t tell you and nether can anyone else what he has built for the USA. Apart from a wall built by and paid for by the Mexicans and even that is a half assed blunder.
I am governed by a conservative government because they won the election and I respect that. If you can’t respect a democratic process then I feel a little sorry for you and the damage that view could do to your country.
Andy Edwards – Paranormal Investigator, Father, Brother, Friend and Son.
Song Wings by Birdy
It will soon be Halloween then November and then 1 month from today on November 29th my brothers birthday. Andy loved this time of year when he would do ghost tours down a mine in Cornwall as well as paranormal investigations in old buildings across the county.
He took me on a guided tour one year where we walked around a mine possibly Poldark Mine and then after closing time off to an old pub in Helston for a further taste of paranormal investigating. This really was his passion and on the night that I went out with him a lot of fun for me too. I am sure his enthusiasm for the supernatural and his ability to seek out friends and fellow supernatural enthusiasts did very much help get him through some very dark times in his life and for want of a better description help keep him sane, in a crazy world.
As mentioned already in other posts he was a medium with the gift of being able to talk to the dead and a paranormal investigator intent on proving to us mere mortals the existence of life after death and the supernatural realm.
I don’t share his gifts for the detection of the supernatural nor would I want to. Those gifts that he had would really scare the bejesus out of me, if I could do what he did. I have often believed though that the spirits of the dead can if they choose to visit us in dreams and Andy has been visiting me a lot recently. Mostly just to see what the hell I am up to or dreaming about. Not to pass judgement or haunt me but just sometimes even to play as brothers so often do. And as the seasons turn and the years add up it sometimes feels as if every year I grow older and the bugger that is my big bro gets younger.
This year has reinforced more so than ever a hope and belief in the power of a good God to triumph and succeed where us mere mortals would fail. I would like to think I am more at peace with my belief in and hope for the almighty than I have been in many years. Just because I don’t understand what Gods divine plan, hope and dream is for us little hummies that is not to say that God does not have hope’s, dream’s and plans for us as individuals or as a species or planet.
As for God’s plans for my brother or even my brothers plans for himself I feel this year more so than in others how much good he could have contributed and achieved so much had he still been here. So on the one hand I find comfort in God and in the other there is discomfort and remorse for no longer having Andy in this plane of existence.
