My childhood

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930’s, 40's, 50's, and 60’s

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made with some asbestos...
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Curry House. Even though all the shops closed at 5.00 pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with 4 friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old/empty drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, milk from the cow, and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because.......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we had forgotten the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Play stations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY no video/dvd films, or colour TV, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms . . .
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside to find Them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time.

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10^th  birthdays.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door, rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT!

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating!

We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.

Our parents would tell us to ask a Stranger to help us cross the road.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla' and Kanye

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL

Threats if we don't stay in the EU

A few days old but doesn't seem to have been mentioned by the "impartial" BBC.

Britain will be treated like a 'deserter' by the EU if it votes to leave, the president of the European Commission has said.Jean-Claude Juncker warned that Germany, France and other states would not 'bend over backwards' to help if the UK abandoned the union.It is the latest bloodcurdling threat about the consequences of cutting ties with Brussels.The French finance minister previously sparked fury by insisting the UK would be 'killed' by its former partners in negotiations over a post-Brexit trade deal.

I for one do not want to be threatened by an unelected president of the EU.

Not that it matters to me. I'm voting leave anyway.

The NHS needs to change.

In the last month or so I've become convinced that the NHS should be privatised.

Now I've nothing against the front line staff as I think they do a superb job. When I was hospitalised last month I found the nursing care was second to none.

The point I'd like to make is it is the other services that destroy it's effectiveness.

Until I could be discharged I had to await medication to be delivered to the ward from the pharmacy. I was told this would be ready by 10 O'clock. In the end I ended up storming out of the ward in my pyjamas and slippers followed by my daughter at 3PM. Arriving at the pharmacy I'm told that I can't have the medication as it has to be delivered to the ward. The air turned blue at that moment. Sanity eventually prevailed and I left the hospital and shuffled to my daughter's car.

And I thought that was a one off in mismanagement in the NHS. Oh no.

last week my ageing mother in law whose 94 (Bless her) suffered multiple falls in her warden assisted flat, and was eventually admitted to hospital for tests to find out why.

Getting her out of the hospital was a nightmare. The hospital rang yesterday and stated that she would be delivered home by 10 O'clock today. Right.

The ambulance arrived at her flat at 6.30 pm!

Mrs FE has been at the flat waiting since 9.30am. She is not pleased.

And the wheelchair/commode that we had to receive at her flat the night before she was discharged so that she could spend a penny at night time. The sodding thing is so big she'll trip over it and fall as she tries to exit the bedroom in the morning. (Incidentally, the loo is only about 10 paces across the hall way.)

How could a private company exist with that level of efficiency?

A very good read about why we should leave the EU

The EU referendum campaign is presenting us two competing choices. On the one hand a vision of Britain as part of a steadily-integrating EU (at whatever speed) or a vision of Britain completely outside it.For the Remain side, we are required to anticipate what may happen over the next generation which, if the last 40 years are anything to go by, will mean a gradual growth of EU power into more and more areas of competence - the ratchet towards “a country called Europe”.The vision of Britain outside generally uses a number of arguments employed over a long period: of the need to regain our sovereignty and become a self-governing democracy again; to have the flexibility to deregulate; to spend the UK’s EU contributions on something better inside the UK; to drive forward better trade deals with countries beyond the EU; and to constrain immigration.However let’s take this from a different angle and set out a third vision - a Leave proposition that rejects some of the arguments outlined above. In short, a liberal case for Leave.

The rest is at the Adam Smith Institute. The article spells out the very good reasons why leaving the EU is in the UK's best interest. 

My own thoughts about the EU are that we have lost so much of our power of self determination since we had the referendum in 1975. Most of us at the time were coerced into thinking that we were just ratifying the common market agreement. We were so wrong. I actually feel ashamed that we have allowed our country's right of self determination to be stealthily taken away from us.

My biggest worry now is that the younger generation accept the current status quo and think that rule by Brussels is the only way to go. What they are never told is that our own elected government has little or no power to prevent nearly seventy percent of laws devised by the european  commission be forced upon us. Our parliament is effectively powerless. (In fact I'm not sure why it exists).

The UK was in the past the powerhouse of innovation and daring in the world. Oh how we have fallen. We could be Great again. The younger generation could make it so. Have they the courage that our ancestors had, or will they just allow their great country to just become a minor state in a federal europe?

It's your choice kids.

Prime Minister Cameron warns of Great Flood after Brexit

Having spoken to the Almighty, David Cameron announces: Following Brexit, there would not be enough wood to recreate Noah's Ark. Due to Calais migrants jumping into the sea, water levels would rise by 10 metres. Kent would disappear. 25 million would drown if Britain votes to leave the EU

Read the full article HERE.

And other project fear stories of disaster.

Just a thought.

Before we joined the EU we used to address letters home with the last line being "GB" for Great Britain.

Since being in the EU this has changed to "UK" for United Kingdom.

Why did we start being ashamed of being GREAT?

That poll on Brexit.

Last Sunday I posted a poll "Is David Cameron a shining light in the darkness of the referendum?".

The results are below.

Now I expected option 2 would get the most votes and it got me thinking. How accurate are the mainstream polls this time around? After all they got it wildly wrong at the general election.

At the moment the mainstream polls are predicting a win for remain and the bookies have shortened their odds to suit.

Yet if you look at online polls they seem in the main to indicate leave is ahead by a margin. I think their are a lot of people who are not letting on that they are going to vote leave.

Who really rules us?

Paxo reckons we should tell the EU to get "stuffed".

He discusses all sides and explains how the various parts of the EU works.

Yes it's 58 minutes long but quite thought provoking.

Grandad. Religion versus the puritans

Grandad discusses the rise of the new puritans.

For a start, both Puritanism and Religion have the concept of eternal life in common.  While Religion applies this to spiritual eternity, the Puritans seem to believe in physical eternity.  Religion promises that if we obey the tenets of the belief that we will live forever in Heaven, while the Puritans tell us constantly that by not obeying their tenets, we will die physically, often with painful and debilitating consequences which presumably is their concept of Hell.

A good read and is found HERE.

Leave?