Thursday 31 March 2011

Hue & cry

On the one hand: london shooting leaves girl, 5, and man in critical condition, 117 killings took place 2009-2010; whilst on the other: 5,000 londoners die of pollution a year.

Which figures are you more frightened and scared of?

Friday 25 March 2011

Heaven nirvana sto'vo'ko forefend

Just for a moment, consider.

Why would any being (who wasn’t narcissistically looking at themselves through their nether regions or a complete control freak) who created trillions of fast moving objects, start smiting the inhabitants of one trillionth of a trillion or some other small number on a spinning ball of mud in a backwater of a galaxy which will soon (in universal time) smash into another galaxy of similar size, which will reset those galaxies biological clocks to zero unless any sentient and intelligent inhabitants pop out and off sometime before that all takes place, be concerned whether those inhabitants pay him/her/it any obsequious homage whatsoever, or even be bothered if they knew he/she/it existed?

I can create a black hole, but you aren’t paying me a tenth of your earnings - so you’ll burn in everlasting fire, and so on.  Sounds like something a financier would dream up…

Perhaps the creator so many religionists' believe in started life as a banker!

Tuesday 22 March 2011

4 something lighter

Every now and then something pops along, crossing my scrubbed vision and warped but strangely playful mind.

Not a regular listener of nine inch nails, nor 50 cent; but this particular mashup combo had me tapping the slightly less jaundiced leg in a semblance of time for quite a couple of days, before the novelty disappeared into a puff of diesel fumes.

Saturday 19 March 2011

TfL and the pyres of fire

I tried not posting, but just couldn’t help myself.


First off, thoughts to all of those caught under the triple hit in Japan.  I seriously doubt many other country’s citizens would have behaved so, civilised, when faced with such calamities.

Second, getting ready to eat my hat, as those wringing nations might actually do something before the last squeaking cry of freedom is extinguished in libya.  Just leaves china, saudi arabia, zimbabwe, ivory coast, north korea, or just any country where peoples have demonstrated the exact same cry as those in libya, but whom are without any strategic value whatsoever, and the international community simply defends them  because it’s the right thing to do…

Oh yes, back to tfl.

I have arrived at the sunny conclusion that tfl cares not one jot, not a single dried fig, for the residents haplessly caught in the vicinity of imposed bus stands (and not, in case some people get confused, bus stops) otherwise residents would not be up in arms over those drivers who intransigently continue to sit idling at the stand with their vehicles engines ticking over, and belching bilious clouds of pollution in all directions -as though fossil fuels would last until the end of time!

As my attempts at burning bridges, and detonating the struts and supports has been 98% successful, I spend some of that newly released time looking up stuff from all over the globe trying to see a whole.  In this case, I have taken to looking at air quality measurement snapshots every couple of hours for the area south of the river, with findings pointing to the fact that when the wind direction’s from the n, nne, or nnw, the measurement at the station is higher when compared to its nearest neighbouring stations (actually to most of them), whilst the air in the 0-50m zone smells as though you’ve attached a hose to the exhaust of your car, and left the engine on with the window half open.  Sadly our windows are closed; but with hundreds of bus terminations at the stand and most with their their engines left running for up to 20 minutes, we’re forced to breathe in more toxic vapour than a smoker on  40+ cigarettes a day.

Don’t forget, it was only 4,300 people who died in london last year from air pollution, yet look at the fuss government makes about potential terrorists under the bed when their own actions kill far more of their own citizens!  So who’s going to mind if a few more pesky troublesomes are added to the pyre; obviously, so far, no-one.  Although i’d imagine if 4,300 young londoners were shooting and stabbing each other in a frenzy of blood letting, the papers would be wetting themselves in a virtuous circle of vexatious apoplexy, and a national emergency called.

Court action would appear to be the only option, as polite diplomacy’s turned out to be a dead-duck.  Everyone (in authority) tells us it shouldn’t be happening, the drivers know it shouldn’t be happening -when they know they’re been monitored they practically glide into the stand, switch off their engines the minute their vehicle comes to a stop, and glide out of the stand when it’s time to start their route.  Once monitoring has ceased engines are again at full throttle (amazing how word gets around); but the report back to hq says how wonderfully quiet everything is.

If tfl were a neighbour they’d be done for poisoning with careless intent and the proud owner of an arm-full of tattooed asbos’ they’d no doubt be proudly showing off at every opportunity.

So tfl’s new motto?  We would care, if we could give a…

Monday 14 March 2011

Queen bee

A bee, which at this time of year and by its size alone makes it a queen bee, flew from behind the radiator before being liberated into the poisonous air of lambeth.

I was happily minding my own business, alternating between the disasters in sendai, the murder fields of ivory coast and the blood-letting in libya (watch the soon to be hand-wringing of pious nations) after mg gains full-control, and listening to the low level of corporate convictions when it comes to manslaughter, when what sounded like a small helicopter taking off filled the room. 

Indeed it was.  A queen bee had popped from god knows where, as all the holes (bar any behind the radiator) have over the past few years been studiously filled, and i seriously doubt it had silently crawled in through the open window in the bathroom at the back of the property to launch itself from the floor,once it had reached the front room!

Initial thoughts of squashing it quickly fled, as despite my apparent general loathing of humanity (which really isn’t the case), I do like and enjoy nature as long as it isn’t crawling all over me or trying to consume me; so i quickly thought about retrieving a glass bottle before it disappeared from sight somewhere, when it buzzed up a storm zooming up the net, eventually becoming trapped between it and the window until I opened the window allowing its flight to freedom - once it traversed one of the most polluted roads in london.

Ah yes proof…

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