Time to spare

As I have a bit of downtime, though I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write, that's been the start of a few epics (in my opinion only) so opening the window usually starts me off regardless. One idea I did just get from reading some other blogs is politics/news. The bottom line is I stopped giving a damn some years ago, completed when I was reading a paper at my grandparents and thought this sums up all the crap stories we get in one page, wars, crashes, weather disasters, political arguments etc. It then transpired the paper was about 30 years old (grandparents do that sort of thing, I find) which showed me it's basically all the same crap going round in a cycle, and the only news I mind about is that related to London and local petrol prices. Selfish? I don't think so, just realistic. It's not that I don't care about people- quite the opposite, but by hearing about things that we'd never know or care about unless someone who should have better things to do travelled half way round the world, got on a satellite phone and blethered about internal politics, scams, murders and other disasters we can do little about does not improve my quality of life, or yours either if you think about it.

Unfortunately the brainwashing obsession with world events as if they matter is a ruse to divert your attention from local matters, rather than provide a service. The more you can worry about Iraq and that fucking tsunami the less you'll realise that people are having to pay more of their income on fuel, transport and accomodation than at any time in history. Pardon my French, but disasters have been occurring on a similar scale in far-off places since the beginning of time/the media, and just because some Brits copped it in the tsunami we suddenly have to go all charitable. No-one shed a tear for Sudan or Rwanda despite the deaths there all being deliberate and preventable. Our minds are being manipulated by selective reporting to only focus on the issues they want us to, normally those where we can do little to change and make good TV, including long drawn-out discussions on newsnight. Now if you think about what actually affects you, then the Daily Mail is possibly one place that actually bothers to address many of those concerns and gets accused of being fascist as a result.

Meanwhile, the issues which every Brit is subject to every day include: Longer queues and waits for every public service mainly due to overpopulation from immigration. Filthy hospitals which are infecting people at random with far worse plagues than in medieaval times, as now we have antibiotics, but like the dark ages they still have no effect on the current germs. Fuel which costs approximately 5 times as much as many western and poor countries alike. The most expensive transport and hotel rooms in the world, as well as the highest house prices. Apparently Hampstead Garden Suburb, where I lived for 28 years, has now overtaken Hong Kong and Manhattan and I'm not the least bit surprised.
London alone has been converted to a typical third-world capital in the short time Ken Livingstone has had his dirty hands on it. The roads are now clogged due to bus lanes being taken out of already narrow roads, humps on many routes including A roads, plans to extend the congestion charge from Central London west, and increase it from £5 to possibly £15 after saying there was no reason to increase it in the next 10 years. The bus lanes and parking restrictions are currently being reviewed to go all-night instead of stopping around 7 pm. The North Circular Road which crosses North London is 6 lanes until you reach half-way along, when there's a 2 mile stretch of 2 lanes. That's because after the houses had been purchased to widen it before he came into power were never demolished, so he had a reason to block the widening scheme and has now been forced (don't ask me how) to accept a partial widening but probably not where the houses are. In fact the only thing he did I approved of was to plan to build some sci-fi type skyscrapers near me opposite Brent Cross, which were stopped by the other Stalinist (if the left can exaggerate, then I will) John Prescott, also single handedly responsible for the possible demise of my local football club, Barnet, by stopping every plan they had to move to an approved stadium from their sub-standard one.

Basically, if the media proper focuses on the crap that seems to take much of the public interest (as reflected in blogs, forums and radio phone-ins) the Daily Mail and people like me are the only way to push the local stories that we really need to worry about. Granted there's sod all we can do about it besides complain, and hope if enough people complain we may get a repeat of the fuel protests and others that did change government policy on fuel tax albeit marginally. The French create merry hell whenever the government make a silly law until it's changed, it shows democracy can work, but only if we show them who's the boss and they are working for us, not vice versa. Finally, I'm not a tory, the last time I was was a protest vote to dump Labour in 1979 from what I remember. At the moment I think UKIP, having just released their complete list of policies besides withdrawal from the EU reflects my views the best, but my politics are personal single-issue stuff, and I don't align myself with the views of any party, though I am a member of one as I believe they are the most harmless of the lot should they ever get in (Lib-Dems), rather than squeezing my own opinions to fit in with all of theirs. Just to say if people want a bit of a glance behind the scenes, I'd recommend reading David Icke, as though it's peppered with way-out stuff, the technical stuff at least demonstrates pretty clearly how the media make us believe what they want us to think what's important- until we are made to realise it isn't.