council savings in a recession (double dip)

here at brighton & hove, actually we want to give you a few tips to help save your community and vegetarians and those with a wooden leg (ok, heather?).

money must be saved to keep life moving forward and this means all working together in the face of council tax rises as their services further deteriorate in the face of climate change and running a farmer's market and living on a caravan site.

for sausages: let the pork do the talking.

use an indoor barbie should it be a bit shaky outside. open a window. use the nearest old person for kindling and a decent confit which can be used at a later date. should you be lucky enough to startle and strangle a passing sooty there am de gravy!

other cuts include sirloin and porterhouse as well as bin collection. the latter is a particularly good chance for getting hold of the gravy or haggis (lot of scoots lezzies lorna doone here on the auld king cole).

do not drive over pot holes. as far as possible, grow your own.

if you have a neighbour with a garden wait until they go orfft on a long weekend you have recommended (eg. north uist), requisition and plant leeks and pipers. they will think that their tulips are doing well for the next couple of months. then recommend south uist for your harvest.

for your energy needs invest in a generator and a bicycle. find a couple of over-weight illegal polish immigrants and tell them to lose weight at the minimum wage.

more tips later.

paedophile popes & catholics - goodbye

fab mein pope. an apopeolgy from the paedophilic church over priest child abuse for decades.

don't bother with your uk "tour" in september. you're most unwelcome.

this is just the start of a number of warnings and attacks.

wilkommen to the official site

 World Athletic's Championships 2009

Berlin

15th-23rd August

"ich bin ein Berliner," someone once said. wise words, mate. we all love the odd doughnut.

for nine glorious days this august the cream of  elite ayrian (and black) athletes will celebrate and triumph in the revamped 1936 olympic stadium pushing themselves to the limits of perfection realising dreams ("i have a dream," somebody else once said. more wise words, mate) of the 1930s. 

recession to dive into depression

not being much of a blogger but someone who corresponds, writes (attaches) by e-mail, fountain pen & paper and even skype (skippy, tch! tch! tch!), i had a look at this site today. one blog regaled against the council's claim for a 6% pay rise (they didn't get it) whilst one written 5th november 2007 (apt day for the first half of the content) predicts the economic mess the world is presently going through.
if it was an eton mess then daddy would bail me out.

gold hit $1033oz 21st march 2008 before retreating to $681oz late last year but is now powering above the $1000oz level once more and, i bet, there will be continued buying beyond there (silver is already up 25% this year at $14.60oz - a much better bet to hit last year's highs of c.$22oz) and should take the market to it's inflation-adjusted all-time high of $2220oz in 1981.

this is a serious & sustained flight to quality (eg. gold & treasuries) as global stock & property markets slide to 42% of july's 2008 highs. however, i don't think this will just be a rule-of-thumb 50% retracement but further and deeper. it's called a depression that will last for a couple of years (for those of you who didn't realise you were in a recession from spring last year.

like global warming, it's both man-made as well as cyclical.

i watched (yet another) unsurpassable attenborough wildlife documentary focussing on salmon returning to spawn at their home grounds in alaska and canada the other evening. as they fought their way upstream there was a line of grizzly bears waiting at a waterfall ridge, open mouthed, claws lashing out for the silver, pink and gold that flew towards them.
the majority got through; bears never get hungry, they go without food for 4 months a year, but they still shit in the woods.

but the salmon will be back to get through them again in another four years when gold will still be continuing it's longest bull run for 60 years.

council striking for pay

as corrupt as inept as inefficient. from brighton & hove council all the way up the current (short-lived) government of gormless gordon brown (the chancellor of the exchequer who sold half of britain's gold reserves - against advice from everyone in the markets - at the bottom of the market, $250 troy ounce; we're now closing back in on $1000 oz). just one of many examples without mentioning the billion pound-plus private pensions screw up. no wonder phoney tony and the daughter of housing benefit fraudster tony booth got out before the back office fuck ups hit the fan.

but it all begins or ends at the grass roots. the local councils.

council tax has doubled in ten years. services and efficiency have halved. bureacratic shite rules with the minions run by corrupt and incapable managers and officials who when challenged publically seem to either take early retirement or disappear up their own nether worlds.

and these people, many poorly paid, still have the cheek to ask for a 6% pay rise.

they are not skilled or trained, like nurses, doctors, firemen or policemen. none of them would get a job in the City as a clerk or a "runner" of old - 'chase me, chase me' (a huge number of poofs are employed there).

50% of them are surplus to requirements and should be fired. the other 50% should be reinterviewed by professionals in the private sector, sacked or paid a wage that warrants their capabilities.

no wonder the polish are going home to a properly run society or a properly run run police state like france.

these people are having the cheek to expect council taxes to be raised to pay for their wage claims....

i pay the police, the fire brigade but not the hopeless council.

fuck and sack these ignoramuses. whilst they're lying in bed on a wednesday morning waiting for staff training to finish.

love and death in the british isles

long time since i've been on.

one of my two labs, the ten year old golden, has just died in my girlfriends arms after forfeiting a third cancer operation. there was a night of banshee-howling pain so the right thing was done.

it's cold, windy and empty for end-june in brighton.

coming back into the flat there's a fucking great hole of silence. no thumping of a wagging tail on the floor-boards. oscar, the black lab, keeps looking for the late widdle jack and is confused. they were together eight and a half years.

a scenario:
wakes at 5.30am and listens to the financial news on the world service. has a slash. girlfriend's up at 6am and takes the dog out before going for a swim at the gym. doze and listen to the news on radio 4 for a couple of hours. basically negating the guardian which has turned up in the meantime; except for the obituaries and crossword.
she leaves at 8.30am and the pc goes on with a second cup of lemon tea with honey. even tough i've listened to the shipping forecast i still gaze out at the eastern, southern and western horizons to check on the day's weather. in my dressing gown.
the first thing i'll check on the pc (e-mails & skype aside) is spot gold, oil, currencies and overnight asian markets. i don't know why but it's habit having been involved for over twenty years.

then i'll have a look at some porn and maybe wank, or maybe not.

there will probably have been a phone call with an automated message from a creditor by then. i, however, do not accept unacknowledged phone calls - unless i'm pissed, when they're told to jog on.

probably 9.30am by now so we switch from radio 4 to ken bruce on radio 2 (after that bore wogan has left his seat).

any business calls necessary are made over the next couple of hours - except during pop meister (sacred) at 10.30am.

either bath or shower and get dressed, write notes down for an unwritten song or book and look out of the bedroom/office window to see if the medusa (bar) is open. should there be a glass of red left from the night before, i'll quaff that as it's rude not to.

11.30am/12 noon it's down to the bar for a couple of pints with the guardian crossword and politely ignoring people you certainly wouldn't ask back for dinner.

maybe a game of backgammon over lunch with the odd mad friend, or not. the cricket could be on long wave, anyway.

if there has been backgammon, that means a few bottles of red and that means bed around 4.30pm for a quick siesta.

back up an hour later and clear the place and start doing the washing-up before the maid gets home to walk the (sole) dog at 6pm.

cook a mea. watch rubbish or sport on tv and slink back into bed with papers or a book.

it's a hard life. oh, then you worry about how to pay the rent and bills all night over the pack of cigarettes and bottle of merlot.

cancer in society, cancer in my labrador

the clocks went back last week so, in de mean time, here am de news...

if you're not already aware the uk and the states are in the middle of what is about to become a little more than a downturn but a meltdown leading to recession over the next 2-3 years.

inflation (gold 28-year highs in $ terms, crude at all-time highs in any terms and bonds going through the roof), property markets taking banks and markets down with them.

however, volatility (ie. what goes up must come down & vice-versa) only temporarily fills a class gap. more people from different backgrounds meet in the dole office. and the latest leave first.

still finding a way to have that necessary and smirking sunday lunch with friends who were more prudent or have clung on, who had parents to bail them out because they had priorities and friends and family. once back on their feet - chou, baby.

even in the 1980s the family gathered around a table of a sunday for news, assists, laughs and groans was the expected norm. every class, every background.

we even had friends from nassau and princeton who came to blackheath every two or three months for these gatherings. plenty of food either side of the roast my father carved whilst i showered after sunday morning football. washed down with bon viveur.

but we met. we spoke to eachother. there were manners. nobody (in general) got shit-faced. there was respect for the elders. most family and friends are now dead.

but since the wealth divide increased from those days, so has that of parenthood, that of inherent respect and, especially, that of education.

bollocks to maggie's privatisations, encouragement of home ownership, to phoney tony and gormless ("how to sell half the country's gold reserves at the bottom of the market") gordon.

the family has disappeared and the place of expectancy and self-respect is a fast-spreading pandemic in this country which makes one despair.

in january our 8 year old golden lab, widdle jack, had a tumour (malign) the size of a rugby ball removed. he didn't moan or wail (much). we were warned that it would come back one day and, as it was of a particularly nasty kind, with a vengeance.

in the middle of october i tried to convince myself (and my girlfriend - he's a mummy's boy) that the enlarged lump on his side was just further healing of scar tissue.

last monday he had a secong and much more severe operation. for the following few days (back to the vet for morphine injections per day) his whelping and howling was so heart-wrenching (he,s a rescue dog) that i wondered if we'd done the right thing.

by friday evening, with the help of some hashish and milky way (which stars did he see?), he had calmed down and exhausted, we all went to bed.

around 2am we're awoken by drunken shouting, bottle breaking in the street outside our third floor sea-front flat in brighton.

i talk to the owner of a bar and night club the next evening after we've quietened down the dog. that night it's until 5am sunday morning.

they will lose their licence - and i did ask nicely. at that time....