Great Day Out, But………………….

Yesterday we had a rather nice day out at the West Midlands Safari Park and the Severn Valley Railway. The safari park was great as we got there early to avoid the crowds. You can really get close to the animals, including lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes. We even had a horned cow put it's head through the window to say hello!
 
After the safari park we went to the railway. We only went to Bewdley, but it was a nice trip. It was interesting to see that the safari park was packed when we went past on the train! We were hauled by the 8F and the Stanier Mogul. All in all a jolly day, and we completely missed getting drowned in the showers 😉
 
Trouble is that yesterday's Bank Holiday, was traditionally Newcastle's carnival day. However, the political geniuses who ran our Borough Council cancelled it as they said it cost too much. This is after they spent nearly £1000 last year on Posh 'n' Becks impersonators! 
It was replaced by a Jazz and Blues festival. OK, not too bad, but all the gigs were in local pubs and not in town or at the Brampton. They still had charity stalls in town, but forgot to tell most of the charities that they could still have a stall. Well done local politicians! 

Knives & Planes

Why have there been so many stabbings recently? I think there have been three school kids and a chap on a train at Oxenhome stabbed in the last couple of weeks. I suppose a lot of it is down to gang culture and that these fools think they need to carry knives as they are 'hard', 'kewl' or need them as they need 'protection' or that they need 'respect'. Well none of that is true, especially the respect bit. These fools think that carrying a knife or being hard makes them deserve respect from others. WRONG!!! Being a person who does work for the community without banging on about it, being a great leader or being a great engineer or scientist, as examples, are people who deserve respect, not some jumped up little thugs. Trouble is, they are far too stupid to realise this!
 
As I was in the garden this afternoon, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight came overhead. The Hurricane, Lancaster and Spitfire made an enormous sound as they flew quite low overhead. I can't imaging what a squadron of fighters or a bomber formation would have looked and sounded like. Quite impressive and scary really. It's good to see them still flying as my Grandpa (Ken Wood) worked on Hurricanes and Lancasters during the War (he was a mechanic). The chap who designed the Spitfire , Reginald Mitchell, was also born round here!

Charity & Footballers

I'm very proud of my Mum as she managed to raise over £1000 for the Children's Society yesterday by holding a coffee day. She's spent ages organising it, my Dad too for that matter!

Now compare this with the footballer who signed for Chelsea yesterday. It was reported in the news that he is to be paid £135000 a week! That's over £7 million a year for kicking a football around. Now no matter how skilled at football he may (and I guess he must be), he is not worth THAT much. His wages for just over an hour would cover the amount that my Mum, a retired person, took weeks to raise. I must admit, I'd quite happily accept 1% of his salary ;-).

Perhaps these overpaid, vacant footballers should look to someone like David Gilmour, the Pink Floyd guitarist, who having decided to sell his house in London, gave all the proceeds (approx £4 million) to a housing charity as he said he didn't need the money!

Ignorant, lazy people.

Why are people so lazy and ignorant? I've just walked to the shops and there are people who have parked their cars all over the pavement. I'm getting fed up people thinking they have the 'right' to park where they want and sod everyone else.

If someone with a child in a buggy or someone in a wheelchair wanted to get past these f***wits, they couldn't, except by going on the road.  More accidents waiting to happen.

Driving

I'm getting fed up about the appalling standard of driving on our roads these days. I took my test in 1988 and again 3 years ago so I could drive the School's minibus. I passed both times first time! So I can say that my driving is at least reasonable.

In the tests there was some mention about speed limits, red lights, double yellow lines and the like. Thing is that it seems that most people choose to ignore such inconveniences. I've been overtaken on urban roads when travelling at 30 mph – the legal speed limit. You can see that these prats are annoyed to be kept to the speed limit.

Recently a local man was killed on his motorbike while he was trying to escape a policeman. Now, any loss of life in such circumstances is tragic, but he was trying to escape as he had no tax on his motorbike. If I remember correctly, he was a banned driver and had no insurance. But, and this is a big but, he was still prepared to ride his bike on the roads. This chap's family were blaming the police. He was prepared to break the law and endanger other people's lives, but it's the police's fault.

All this comes down to the idea the we live in a free country and that people can do what what they want. This is an excuse for basically being selfish. The idea is that 'I can do what I want' and sod everyone else and sod the consequences. It seems that no-one is bothered about anyone else now, just as long as they can do what they want and get their own way. What happened to social responsibility?

Sunday Opening

Oh dear, according to my newspaper today, the government is bowing to pressure from the major retailers and is going to extend Sunday opening hours and let them open on Easter Sunday.

WHY???????
Is that extra day's opening going to make a huge difference to their profits? Is the fact that they can open for a few extra hours on a Sunday going to make that much difference? As it is now, most major shops are only closed on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday (although some are still closed on Boxing Day, but that's a diminishing trend).
Banks are now starting to open on Bank Hoilidays (the point of a bank holiday is that the banks are closed!) and HSBC in their wisdom decided to open their Telford branch on Easter Sunday. Give me strength. These companies say that they are bowing to customer demand and aiming to improve customer service. Cobblers! All they want, as usual, is to make more money. Once one company, for example, opens on Easter Sunday, the rest feel they have to follow suite as they can't 'miss out'. Trouble is, there is only a finite amount of money available. The other problem is that the more the shops open, the less time the staff get off. Whilst all the sad people are clamouring to go shopping on Boxing Day, most of the shop workers have managed to have a whole day off for Christmas. On the other hand the sad consumers with no lives who must shop till they drop, have got one to two weeks off work.
Get lives people!

How long will it be before the shops open on Christmas Day? I remember a few years ago when I worked at Asda Stafford, it was Christmas Eve and a woman came in at 17.45 when the store was closing at 18.00. She had a real go at one of the customer service managers, saying that she had just finished work and she had come in to do her Christmas shopping, there was no fresh food available and the store was closing in 15 minutes. She thought it was disgaceful. The customer service manager politley pointed out to her that she was still at work and she did her shopping some days ago. At the school where I work now, the term dates came out one day a couple of years ago. The Autumn Term finished quite late, a few days before Christmas, and some of the staff were whinging about how terrible it was that they only got a few days off before Christmas. I had to walk out of the room because I would have said something rude, as two years before I'd finished for my Christmas holidays at 18.00 on Christmas Eve and had a whole two days off!!

These people don't know how lucky they are (I must point out that I don't get full school holidays!). Just proves how selfish and stupid people are! So no to extra opening hours on Sundays and no to opening on Easter Sundays. Big companies, don't be so greedy and the general public, don't be so selfish and get lives!

p.s. Happy Easter!

Honours

With all this talk in the press about cash for honours, it really annoys me that people can think that by giving oodles of money, directly or indirectly, to a political party, that they can get an honour. What, other than being rich, have they done to deserve it?

My Dad was awarded an MBE for services to the railway industry and for all of the work that he has done in the community. That’s over 25 years at work and a lot more than that for his church and Scout Group. We as a family were really proud when it was awarded to him. But to gain a higher award for giving some money, I don’t think so. When you’ve worked for 25 years for the benefit of your local community, and not blown your own trumpet, then you can be considered!