Tag: Life

Talking about money

I went out with a lovely woman once for a time, who did not have a lot of money, but when she would get drunk on our way home from a night out, she would give money and spend time with the homeless on the streets of Exeter and talk to them. I though it to be the cutest and most revealingly thing about her true personality and absolutely adorable.     

This decade has been a weird one so far if I am honest and this year in particular when people talk about inflation rocketing up, I and many others are really feeling the pinch this year. Cash goes out of my account these days quicker than I dare to imagine it ever could. I am fortunate in that I have a reasonably steady job on the highest wage I have ever been paid and they plan to hopefully continue to increase my wage year on year, it just takes the bosses and unions a long time to each agree what that pay rise will be. But I am finding things a little challenging and costs come into your life that you were not expecting and things have to be bought.

I had someone come back to my house after an evening out a local bar back in July and it made me feel a little embarrassed about how old and tatty my lounge furniture is, I have had it all for about 12 years and the furniture was second hand from a charity shop when I bought it new to me, so I have been thinking of getting rid of it for a while.

So I finally bit the bullet and splashed the cash and I am getting rid of my old sofa and chair this week and having a new one delivered next week. The following week will feel weird having no sofa or lounge chair to sit until the new one is delivered. Also my dad is moving to Taunton to live with his partner in October and so I am always hoping my place is welcoming enough and clean enough for family to stay here when and if they need to. So it’s a sofa bed that I have bought that hopefully friends and family can occasionally make use of if they need to stay.

As well as the odd unexpected large item to buy, I do really notice this year more than most how utility bills and food bills have just rocketed up this year. Some of my friends are on benefits and out of work for a variety of genuine employment and health reasons and I do fear for their finances more so than my own. The government is not nor has it ever been geared up to help and support people in any great capacity it merely assists many that cannot work through employment or health reasons to survive and not actually live.

I will always do my best to stay in work, maintain my own health as best I can and look after myself and my work colleagues due to the simple truth that I cannot afford to be out of work. I am so privileged to have a housing association property that keeps my rent down, but there are many bills that we must all pay the same for. If I was on benefits and out of work I have no idea how I could pay for both a mobile phone and Wi-Fi at home. Both very much staple necessities of a modern life but how you pay for them on benefits I just have no idea.

The idea of being in my home 24/7 with no work, phone or Wi-Fi really is a scary poverty fearing potential reality for me if I ever were to become unemployed in the future. Both my parents love me very much but neither are in a position to financially support me if I were to get in trouble and so I very much do my best to support myself.

Though this should in no way be a poor me post, I have my health, a job that I enjoy that pays enough to keep the wolves from my door and a little bit more.

Money’s To Tight (To Mention) By Simply Red

China and back again a Jacket sale!

Not quite an epic Lord of the Rings tale to tell more of a searcher of the shops internet sale. I ordered a coat back in January 2023, and somehow it turned up on my door step today for the second time! I had been searching for a good, waterproof winter style coat in my size. How hard could it be to find something like that you might think and say. Well I’m a big feller and so my size for a coat is a UK XXXL that not a Chinese size or American or European size but UK. I have been this size for over 8 years now and though I would love to shift some weight I am also struggling to try and make sure I don’t put any more on.   

So I had been using the digital ecommerce unholy trinity of Amazon, Google and Microsoft to try and search and purchase a new coat, again waterproof, warm and the right size and my efforts resulted in me purchasing what I thought was a US made and sized coat that looked nice on the advert and also allegedly on sale for what I thought was £70 so not cheap but not too expensive either.  

 When the coat arrived I knew straight away it was sadly too small and also not great quality. So was either going to donate it to a charity shop or return to sender? After discussing the issue with my ma we both though I should send back to supplier. So I emailed them and found out how much it would cost to send back to them and the address I needed to send it too.

I posting it back to China for £26 and including the £19 I was charged for postage and insurance originally this venture has cost me about £120 so it was not a not unusable coat to purchase for me. But I would be prepared to pay that amount if I could actually wear the darn coat in my size and not have to post it back to get my £70 back.

I posted it back to China with a very exact and detailed postal address and also a small letter inside stating my name and address and order number so as not to avoid any confusion to ensure I got my refund. The item was posted international royal mail and arrived in china within a week or so but then sat in the depo awaiting collection buy the business that I had purchased it from. I contacted them sending evidence of where the coat was in China and by April this year I got my £75 refund for the coat. Job done I thought and that was that.

Well that is until this morning when I get a knock at the door from the postman and he has a parcel in his hand for me from China, it’s the exact same parcel I posted to them back in February this year with a little Chinese label on it saying it had been refused to be accepted by the people that I had purchased it off. So it looks like it is still going to the charity shop as a donation after all.

It just so happens I have a charity collection here this Friday to pick up some clothes and a chair so they will be able to have the coat at the same time, its unused and should make someone a nice gift (so long as it fits them!) Even thought this coat has yet to find an owner it has already done more travelling around the globe than me, travelling from China to me and then back to China and back to me, in its short little lifetime its done quite a few miles. I’m a little jealous of its ventures but also quite impressed.

K T Tunstall – Other Side Of The World

Holiday on Ragland Road – Ireland

Me and Dad in a bar on Ragland Road in Tramore Ireland August 2018 I love this photo of my dad, in this picture there is a white sign which reads ‘Parents are responsible for their children at all times” I think we both looked after or acted responsibly or irresponsibly in equal measure on the holiday.  

When we travelled to Ireland for the holiday we stayed in Wexford, Tramore, Dublin and Leopardstown. One of the reasons we went to county Wexford was because it was where Dad went on his holidays by the beach as a boy. We also stayed at the Faye Guest House in Wexford Town and then travelled by train to Tramore and went off to see the horse racing there too.  

Entrance to Faye Guest House – Wexford

It was the first time me and Dad had gone on holiday to Ireland together and there was a little racing, drinking, eating and also a chance to see one of my all time favourite bands called the Waterboys sing whole of the moon on a moon lit night in Leopardstown.

Waterboys Band

It just so happens that it is my dad’s birthday tomorrow the 13th August and when we were in Ireland we planned the holiday so that we were there for his birthday too.

I am such a huge fan of Ireland with the music, the people and company and culture. As well as the food, drink and hospitality. They love to party and enjoy the company of good people as well as a pint of Guinness and a punt at the horse racing – what is not to love.  

Sinead O’Connor singing Raglan Road

When South West Water works or fails!

South West Water was formed in 1989 when the water industry in the United Kingdom was privatised. It is responsible for the supply of the region’s drinking water, the treatment and disposal of sewage, and the protection of inland and bathing waters. You would think something like water would be a great industry to be involved in, potentially profitable for those running it while also being a public good where customers benefit from clean water in the tap, in their rivers and at the beaches.

Sadly that is not the business model that exists and it make me think if a human capitalist organisation can fail to run something as simple and beneficial as the water that you drink then what other private companies also failing to run or do damage to our eco systems when operating. I know that to exploit an individual whether customer or employee is to produce profit, it therefore logical to assume that many organisations do inflict damage on the environment as a means of making money and generating profit.    

Pollution in the UK waterways is a major problem and at a time of increased global climate change and damage and degradation to eco systems, the pollution pumped into our local waterways by the water industries is continuing to cause damage and illness to living organisms.  

Earlier this year South West Water was given a £2.1m fine for pollution offences which is the largest ever fine imposed for environmental offences in Devon and Cornwall. Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) a marine conservation charity working with communities to protect oceans, waves, beaches and marine life. It was created in 1990 by a group of Cornish surfer’s. According to Surfers Against Sewage the issues causing the sewage pollution crisis are that the UK’s antiquated sewerage system is woefully inadequate. Water companies have failed to invest to protect the coastal and river environment. They instead rely on a network of around 18,000 licensed sewer overflows to routinely discharge raw sewage into rivers and the ocean. In 2021 alone sewage discharged into rivers and seas 370,000 times for a total of 2.7 million hours.

Polluters have simply been profiteering from polluting. Water companies have paid out an eyewatering £60 billion in dividends to shareholders over the last 30 years. And CEOs are often granted six figure pay packets every year. And to make things worse, the government are now allowing water companies to self monitor their environmental performance resulting in ever increasing abuses of the system. In 2021, Southern Water were fined £90 million for serial misreporting and the Environment Agency and Ofwat have launched the largest ever investigation of water company behaviour after water companies admitted they may have illegally released untreated sewage into rivers and waterways. The weak enforcement of existing regulation from consistently underfunded and under resourced environment agencies means there is no effective driver to ensure water companies change their behaviour.

And as if the stench of the sewage stink could not get any worse, the current water quality testing regimes designed to protect water users and the environment are set up to fail us. Evidence shows that we have a water quality testing regime that wilfully discounts and ignores the worst pollution events in the country and thus misleads the public about the safety of the waters.

South West Water PR gurus seem to be a million miles away from the reality above while pumping sewage into our water systems they are also pumping out press releases asking their customers to urge to conserve water and save the planet! If only SWW could take their own advice.

One thing about capitalist ventures that often fails an eco system or environment is that you cannot quantify the profitability or loss to an environment when you fail to look after it. There is no loss in earnings to having a failed ecosystem merely ever decreasing resources that you then pay more for. Regulations of a safe and sustainable system is not at the heart of how to run a profitable capitalist good or utility and yet effective regulation in a capitalist venture that ensures effective management, clean waters and the risk of having the ownership of the business taken away if the company is clearly failing to do the one thing it was created to do which is provide clean water. There is a huge risk with capitalist ventures that they merely risk putting into their calculations an amount of money put aside for paying for pollution breaches rather than using that money to prevent them in the first place. This does a disservice to the ecosystems that the water companies have been created to clean and protect and also demonstrates where capitalism is failing at the expense of our living environment.

The UK is littered with failed utilities and public goods from the 1980 and 90’s selloff and cull of public services we were peddled the view and principle that profits are good and ownership by the state bad. If these water companies were still run as a public owned utility what is happening today would be a political scandal but seeing as its a private company, the morality of the situation is just written off as a fat cat boss profiteering at the expense of its own customers and the environment, it’s what capitalists do so who really cares.  

The Waterboys – This is the Sea

What’s up

So I went to karaoke last Thursday and sang some songs that I had never sung before, I also sang a song that I had sung before but did it much better this time. Due to a number of reasons I had a mixture of emotions while singing but I hope I did the songs justice. Sadly Sinead O’Connor had just passed away a day before, so I tried to sing ‘Nothing Compares to You’, a song in honour of her passing.

Two of the most empowering and awesome female singers in the world and from Ireland are now no longer with us that is Dolores O’Riordan former lead singer of the Cranberries and also of course Sinead O’Connor, they and their sweet sounding musical talent will be sorely missed and I also sang for the first time ‘No Need to Argue’ by the Cranberries which went down well too. The bar was quite, which I like when it is like that I feel like I’m singing to friends on nights like that.

I never got to see the Cranberries or Sinead O’Conner sing live, I assume that they have not sung in the South West of England that often or if they did it would have been at Glastonbury in a year I was not at the festival. With regard to Irish bands that I have seen though I got to see The Waterboys briefly sing at a race course on the outskirts of Dublin once, they even sang ‘Whole of the Moon’ with the moon out and visible, it was a really special time to be there too.

Amy Macdonald – What’s Up? (Amazon Original) (Official Video)

This day is done

I’m still here got through the working day, I have had a wobble or three and can’t say it has not been hard. But I am ok, had been very busy, lots of responsibilities, trying to do the right thing, say the right thing and act in the right way. Emotions been a little all over the place today too and still are tonight with things happening outside of work which I am trying to process too, about how I am feeling and why I feel like I do. Tonight I’m doing my best to keep it all together, chill, recharge my batteries and prepare for tomorrows storms too.

Imagine Dragons – Demons (Official Music Video)

Wish me luck!

So I have had a much needed wonderful restful weekend after a busy week. Yesterday I also attended the wedding night of one of my colleagues. What a great time with good people at a lovely venue for a celebration of a wonderful couples union.

Tomorrow gets busy though and more complicated, in work a great deal of staff are either on holiday, have left permanently or are being trained up to assist in supporting team members more. I need to try and reach out to others to get help tomorrow as I am well out of my depth with having too much on at the moment, but there are kind people that should and can help out if I ask.

I think I might have slept too much today and have too much on my mind tonight to sleep well. So much is going on in life at the moment and the world is certainly spinning madly on. I get nervous at times like this, reflective and anxious but try to enjoy the good moments as well as fear what might go wrong while hoping to work towards what could go right too.

The Weepies – World Spins Madly On

In the heat of the moment

Philosophical questions from a non Christian, god fearing, eco thinking Christian values taught human. I am more fearful of the possibility of god not existing (which is a possibility of course), than I am of god existing and me not expressing my love, obeying him/her or showing my obedience in the correct and most appropriate way.

I try to do right by god or my fellow men and women, but I don’t truly know sometimes what is the right thing to do, what is a sin, is there even such a thing as a sin as opposed to simple doing right or wrong by god or other living creatures including how I treat other humans of course. I also make mistakes or deliberately do things wrong for my own personal reasons or again unaware of the consequences sometimes of what my actions will be.

So what’s got these thoughts rolling around in my head in such a metaphysical way tonight. Well in a kind of roundabout way, it’s what going on with global warming and environmental climate chaos and what is being done to prevent it and what I and others should do.

Ever since as long as I can remember from when I was a child, mainly starting in geography lessons, there has been an educated and scientific view concerning the fact that we are losing biodiversity and decrease in species across the globe year on year and also the fact that the world is heating up and that this is manmade and exceptionally dangerous.

Switching on the TV tonight on a number of channels and you hear that Asia has set the hottest land temperature in the world ever recorded (so far), Europe is going through its second heat wave this year and in the US excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined. Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless.

When I was young I hoped and almost expected that I and all of us were born in a special privileged time in the time of this planet, where a great deal of good things would, could and will happen. A global village awakened on a huge scale across the planet with the aim to help and support each other and create and express many great things and witness the dawn of a new age in which man, planet, god, life and spirit would be closer and more balanced and this would prove to be of great benefit to this world and the universe and not just for our generation but to assist and help future generations too. I don’t think I was just naïve to have such positive views but I was an optimist too.

But with a world that looks to being on the brink of being on fire that totally addicted to its own petrochemicals and false prophecies and the untrue promises of capitalism, where greed is good and might is right, still being taught and believed to be the only way to govern and control a populace and society on earth by governments across the globe. I fear we still have a lot to learn if we are to stop this madness that is killing us and all those around us (global warming and destruction of biodiversity). I don’t think we can technologically invent our way out of this problem and what kind of dystopian future would we have if we did tackle global warming and biodiversity depletion in just such a way anyway. Could we still win a war on climate change and lose a planet and or our own souls too?

I just know and feel that with a god/gods on our side we would be in a much better position to overcome this mess, with a clear and possibly even potentially ordained by the great sprit or god direction to a potential for life and sprit, but without said god or spirit then we are mere children walking towards an unknown and untold future in the dark risking turning or walking in the wrong direction too where there might be no coming back from e.g. extinction and death.

Such a chance to some to have no god or greater spirit is empowering and to others it is a scary thought and place. I do believe in God but I am very much sitting on the fence when it comes to if there is no god or greater spirit whether that would be good or bad for humankind.

The Fire by Rosie Eade

Pleased to meet you

I have been having to look at moderating my online profile at present, removing my work details from Facebook, changing my online profile on LinkedIn and still working out what to have on my blog pages. There are a few things that have come to head.

Firstly due to the work I do on the phones for the public authority I work for, I sometimes speak to unpleasant and aggressive people and I was concerned that I do not exactly want them to know more about me than perhaps I need to say to them and not make it too easy to find out more about me online too.

In the past on my blog I have talked about, my and other peoples mental health, my relationships and the lack of them, my family, my work and my views on political points across the UK and globe as well as Covid, gee Covid remember that little pandemic thing that went on.

I had a run in with someone over the phone recently at work, who was trying to get a rise out of me and make me feel uncomfortable and angry and also implied the use of threats and violence if they ever to meet me in real life.

It was a ridicules situation to be involuntarily drawn into. It just made me think that I really don’t want someone as cruel and unpleasant as that to have any means of working out who I am, who my friends and family are and heaven forbid where I live. Also with work having brought in new guidelines on what I can or cannot discus about my workplace into play, which I am still none the wiser on I also thought it a good idea to again moderate my online content.

It was also a grim and sorry sort of guessing game played across Britain last week: who was the mystery BBC broadcaster who had reportedly paid £35,000 to a young person in exchange for sexual images? By Tuesday the field of suspects had narrowed, as horrified presenters, misidentified in social media posts, attempted to distance themselves. Then on Wednesday 12th July came the announcement from his poor wife that the hidden man at the centre of this tabloid newspaper storm was Huw Edwards, the BBC’s lead news anchor, whose calm and authoritative voice had announced the death of the Queen.

I was out on my birthday night out waiting for my friends to arrive and meet me when people were coming into the pub and talking about Huw Edwards. I quickly looked at my phone and started reading the stories coming in to the World Wide Web. Normally since as long as I can remember when I have told strangers that my name is Huw Edwards, more often than not I would get a positive response and they would reply something along the line of ‘ah as in the news reader’ now due to what he is beign accused of, or what he might have or speculated to have done or because of the fact that he is sitting in a mental health hospital, all that has now changed and potentially forever. I don’t know what people will think of him in future or therefore possibly try and say to me.

Everything about what he has done, what people think he has done and what people think he should do next is all speculation and unsubstantiated, if you are reading this from somewhere else around the world and want to find out more just type in to Google Huw Edwards BBC, though if you want a fair and honest perception of  what is going on do not look up the news on Huw Edwards from a Rupert Murdock owned publication as that mans journalism outputs are poison on a piece of paper and should be called a piece of misinformation rather than a piece of news.

Rag ‘n’ Bone Man – Human

Happy birthday vibes, good times with good people

I swear when it comes to writing my posts of late I mainly want to write about what’s happening in my life or what’s revolving around in my mind and even though there are not a huge amount of readers there is a wide variety of people to consider as an audience. From kind people that regularly read my blog from across the world, to friends across the UK my home city and colleagues in my workplace and not forgetting my mum too.

Well I went out to sing last Thursday night to my local bar and something completely different happened to me that has not happened to me in many years, I almost thought it might not happen again and was not expecting it to happen last Thursday either. But I met a very beautiful woman who I liked and I hope and like to think she liked me too.

I caught a glimpse of her on the side of my eye as she had just walked into the bar and she had then decided to leave because there was no bar person serving. I waved over to her and to the landlord of the pub and said that he could still serve her if she wanted a drink and so that is how we met. It turned out it was her birthday and seeing as how it is my birthday on the 12th of July too I was very happy to wish this beautiful woman a happy birthday and start talking to her.

I then got up and sang at the bar and so did she, with a beautiful voice. I did not want the night to end, even though I was working the next morning I thought I wanted to stay out later and see where the night would take us. So me, a few friends and the wonderful birthday girl went onto a nightclub. It was soon just me and the birthday girl left and we danced and talked and drank until the early hours of the morning when I then walked her to a taxi rank and she got safely home and I got safely back to my place too. Wow what a lovely night.

Again if she gets to read this I do wonder what she will think about me for writing it, she is a friend on Facebook now, so if I were to post this there, I don’t know if she will be pleased or upset to see what I have said. She is a single mum and was firm with me on the night we were out that she did not want to meet up with me to go on a date in the future, again I don’t know why and did not push her on this, but hoped and assumed this was due to her circumstances and not due to anything that I had said or done. I would love to meet her again but that is something I need to try and work out for myself and tell her and perhaps not kind of be writing about on my blog!!!

Stereophonics – Dakota