The Benefit of Work?

To be honest, I am sick to the back teeth of hearing Cameron bleating on about the Benefit Cap and how it is that people on benefit are earning more than people in work and I am more infuriated that people believe his rhetoric. With this article, I aim to shed some light on to the subject.

The official line is, the average household earnings are around £35,000 per year before tax, which equates to approx £26,000 after deductions. This is true.

However, what this does not tell you is that same family will still receive Child Benefit AND Child Tax Credit (CTC), plus any Disability Living Allowance (DLA) entitlement, industrial injuries and a slew of other benefits available in varying circumstances.

Also, to earn a pre tax wage of £35k, you need to be earning approximately 3 times the national minimum wage of £6.08 an hour! Or put another way, a shop assistant in Asda will have to work for 3 years to earn what a teacher gets in one! However, the teacher will be able to buy a house and the Asda worker won't.

The quality of life however, need not be as far apart as one may think. The table below shows the varying wages of four identical families in different circumstances, along with benefit entitlement, and yes, Tax Credit ARE state benefits, like it or not. (Apologies for the formatting, I couldn't find a way to make an Excel speadsheet convert well to a jpg)

	The Work Benefit Analysis
		Family 1		Family 2		Family 3		Family 4
	Gross Earnings	35,000.00		£12,014.00		£5,058.56		£5,509.40
	Less Tax and NI	8,712.00		£1,477.00		£0.00		£0.00
	Net Earnings	26,288.00		£10,537.00		£5,058.56		£5,509.40
	Child Benefit	3,164.00		£3,164.00		£3,164.00		£3,164.00
	Child Tax Credit	3,289.00		£10,735.00		£10,735.40		£10,735.40
	Working Tax Credit	0.00		£2,364.48		£6,502.08		£0.00
	Housing Benefit	0.00		£7,800.00		£7,800.00		£7,800.00
	DLA	0.00		£0.00		£2,672.80		£0.00
	Total Net Income	32,741.00		£34,600.48		£35,932.84		£27,208.80
	All families based on 4 children and 2 adults, renting a 4 bed house at £150/week
	Family 1 is earning the average wage of £35,000 before tax
	Family 2 earning National Minimum Wage of £6.08 / hour, 38 hours a week
	Family 3 with 1 disabled adult working 16 hours a week @ NMW
	Family 4 - Not working and on JSA
	Housing Benefit assumes entitlement to 4 bed rate based on figures from benefit calcualtor at http://derby.gov.uk/apps/benefitscalculator/
	Tax Credit and Child Benefit figures based on the benefit calculator at http://www.familynest.co.uk/Tools/Tax-credits-benefits-calculator/
	JSA rates found at http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_200090.html
	DLA rates found at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/disabledpeople/financialsupport/dg_10011925
	DLA rate here assumes 1 adult with High Rate Mobility Componant Only, families with disabled children or adults with care needs get more
	Income Tax and NI payable worked out here http://www.incometaxcalculator.org.uk/index.php

What Does This Table Tell Us?

Family 1 have the best paid job overall but pay the highest tax and get the least Tax Credits and no help with their rent.

Family 2 work an unskilled job on minimum wage but work the same number of hours as family 1. NMW is so pitiful that they could not afford to live if it wasn't for the boost from Tax Credits AND Housing Benefit. However, this then means the overall income of family 2 is higher IF they have 4 children, the less children they have, the further behind family 1 they fall.

Family 3 has the main earner with a disability which entitles them to work just 16 hours a week to get Working Tax Credit and the rate of WTC is much higher. Coupled with the DLA, this brings the overall income of this family above both of the first two.

Family 4 has 2 unemployed adults so all of their income comes from State sources.

Remember the Cap?

Based on this outline, both family 3 and 4 have TOTAL benefit payments of over £26,000 and would therefore be hit by the new proposals.

The family with a disability would stand to lose £6,000, more than wiping out their entire disability support and child benefit! Family 4 would lose nearly £100 month. This makes the people who are already the most vulnerable, even more so!

The other 2 families lose nothing and I'm not saying they should. However, as Child Benefit is universal it should not be counted in the cap. If you can get it no matter what you're income, it is only fair to exclude it from any benefit cap. This would make family 4 safe, they wouldn't have to move home or make a choice between eating or paying the gas bill.

Family 3 however, would still be stuffed! Remember, despite having a disability, they are still trying to work and raise 4 kids. These are the families the government should be encouraging and really do need the support. DLA is also a universal benefit, you get it as a pauper or a millionaire. It is essential for most disabled people's mobility and / or care needs.

What is the point of have benefit supporting disability if you just take that off Housing Benefit or some other essential form of support? With both CB and DLA protected, family 3 would also be safe.


What about Housing Benefit?

This is spoken of like it's some kind of luxury the sponging benefit scroungers are living the high life on, yet it avoids the truth. It get paid to people who can afford to own multiple houses, landlords!

Tenants do not get to have the money, it pays to have a roof over their head, but they do not see the cash! What would you propose we do? Kick all Housing Benefit claimants on the street?

Remember, a good proportion of HB claims are for people who ARE trying to work but get paid crap wages, or who have been made redundant or are either too disabled, sick or old to work! One of these situation could very easily befall you one day soon and you will be asking for support too.


The Abusers?

In every system, in every walk of life, you get those who want to take advantage of the generosity of others. There is no way to stop this and we need to accept that. We can threaten, punish, humiliate, beat and imprison these people but it will NOT stop if from happening. It will only serve to make it harder for these people to rejoin the workforce.

Yes, we do need to work together to minimise exploitation and encourage people to want to take part in society again. We need to rebuild communities and help people to help themselves. We need to re-empower people and give them a voice.


Conclusion

We are told the maximum possible savings from a benefit cap are £300m. That is less money than Vodafone has avoided in tax last year. It is a mere 20% of the money failed banks received to continue to pay their bosses £900k bonus packages. It way less than has been spent on unused aircraft carriers. Yet this one measure is going to affect hundred of thousands of children and vulnerable people.

Exclude DLA and Child Benefit from the equation and things balance out a bit, but it is rents that are most people's biggest outgoing and the one thing you can't cut back on. There isn't any surplus social housing for people to fall back on and private rents are increasing with demand.

A one-size-fits-all cap can not possibly work all over the country taking in to account the huge variations in housing prices and the cost of living. We need to accept the fact people in different parts of the country need different amounts to live on and we need to stop judging others for what they're getting, for one day it could you your turn!

What's more, if a family can get more on benefit than they can in work, it doesn't mean the benefit should be cut, it means the wages need increasing!

Musings from the Car Wash

Well, I see it's been over a year since I posted anything on this blog, partly through denial of enforced changes in plan and not having the enthusiasm / motivation to commit to words the many thoughts passing through my head.

Anyway, amongst other things today, I spent an hour at the Hand Car Wash (HCW) where I was getting my LPV (Large Passenger Vehicle) some TLC. This in itself was not without irony, having not long before, purchased a whole load of new car cleaning stuff from Asda, returning home and looking at the task in hand and thinking "OMG, NFW (No fucking way)".

So, the first point to make about the HCW, it's a place where people go who CBA go to give their own car some TLC.

I should point out, my LPV is really used as a family car. My own six kids, their friends, my friends and the fact the having a large vehicle quite obviously means you will be more than happy to take all your friends shite to the tip, randomly collect half a kitchen from Ikea and will more than happily accommodate other people's "essential" camping gear they can't fit in to their Smart Car! Yes, they were sensible enough to think ahead, the smart car is perfect for 1.5 adults and a 1 man pop-up tent but their kids have to travel with me, along with all the extra crap.

Standing there looking at 9 seats layered with crisp, biscuit and bread crumbs, ground together over a year, mixed with sand, soil and shit, the odd regurgitated carrot from the travel sick kid who always sits at the one place they can't get out of before projectile vomiting last night's Quorn korma all over the child in front and the floor, recently tidied but still with a healthy quota of used food wrappers, shoes, coats, numerous odd socks, Lego pieces and a plethora of random paraphernalia. It wasn't a hard choice to make and the deserved and VGC (Very Good Clean).

However, the HCW isn't just good for those of us who CBA to give a VGC to their VDV (Very Dirty Vehicle), oh no. It's so much more. Let me explain.

In front of the queue was a 2 year old white Audi, driven by an ageing Asian man (AAA man). Apparently he ordered a full valet and would wait while it was done. From looking at the couple and the car, I would postulate that this is probably their weekly drive out, probably via the Mosque and M & S. If my car had looked like their BEFORE it had been cleaned, I would have said it was spotless. AAA man repeatedly inspected the work by running his finger along a just-polished piece of glass and inspecting it for signs of dust.

Of course, this left a grease trail on the glass and the diligent valet man dutifully dabbed his chamois to remove it. This process was repeated on several occasions, who knows how long, my attention had shifted.

In front of me the line moved forward slowly. The car in front was not a VDV either, it was a NCV (Nearly Clean Vehicle), with lowered suspension, over-sized alloys and a fat-ass exhaust.

However, my excitement at inching forward was all too much. A young chap came up and I tentatively asked how much it would cost for a wash and vacuum. I had to say, I was a little scared at this point. He eyed the VDV / LPV up, thinking "shit guys, this one actually does need cleaning" and muttered £15. Fortunately, my fake, stick-on tinted windows, with little holes picked in them by children, prevented visual contact with the interior. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was waaay worth it!

I was thrilled to be beaconed forward by another of the crew. By this time there were 4 other VSV's (Very shiny vehicles) in varying stages of post-wash buffing and hoovering, another couple NCV's pulled up behind me.

I sat in the warmth as the team surrounded my VDV and began spraying, wiping, cleaning and waxing. The comfort I gained from knowing my VDV would soon be a VSV was immense and it wasn't going to take me three hours graft and the onset of hypothermia to complete. The winds were blowing the water from my car on to the others behind. I wondered if this was by design, to make the job a little quicker and to recycle the water or just to ensure the car behind really did need a wash by the time their turn came.

However, the true amusement didn't begin until after I parked up in the dry cleaning area and got out. I had left my phone at home so couldn't send pointless texts, browse facebook or check my emails or ebays for the 14th time that hour! Whatever would I do? I paced hurriedly over to the kettle then away again, unsure if I could use it. I repeated this little dance three times, trying to decide what to do before plonking myself on a sofa that was so soft it almost swallowed me whole. My legs firmly back on the ground, I peered around hoping no-one else saw me. They didn't, I think.

Opposite was sat a late 20s chap, clean shaven, well-pressed, buried in his iPhone rip-off phone, pretending to do important stuff. He had an almost new GiT (this is what I'm sure the makers meant to write instead of GTi, were it not for the dyslexic signwriter). You know GiT's when you see them, although you usually hear them first. The GiT is the one who drives right up your arse in town, with the stereo, sub, amp 1 trillion watt mega blaster turned on full, shaking your bones to Dr Dre and waiting for that moment you leave more than 18 inches in front of you so he can roar past. The only difference between a GiT driver and a seventeen year old, is the age of the car. GiT drivers probably still don't have kids, they have have learnt what make a good ride.

The next car after me was driven by an almost middle-aged, bald and quite well-spread fellow. The car was a Mondeo Ghia, lowered suspension, 18" alloys, sports skirts, NOS and something else from Fast and Furious I can't remember. I figured by the time you get to this age ( my age incidentally) you're too large to fit in to a GiT car like a Golf, so you have to move up a notch. I also decided that he probably doesn't get that much good sex, didn't have kids and wasn't married, using my Sherlock-esque powers of deduction. This man cam and sat next to my on MY sofa. Shit, did this mean I had to talk or could I just do what we Brits do so well and just pretend he wasn't there. I opted for the latter, fearing the inevitable discussion about horsepower and penis size would otherwise ensue. I decided this car was an FFV (Fat and Forties Vehicle), driven by someone who still has that 17 year old zest for powerful cars but was way too much spare time and cash.

This option allowed me to continue my observations. Next up was a Very Clean Vehicle that didn't need washing, it was also an SUV (stuck up vehicle). The SUV, which annoyingly I couldn't identify my make and model within 15 seconds, or indeed at all (infuriatingly), for those that don't know, is like a family car that's overdone the body building meds. The Stuck Up Vehicle sits just that little bit higher than all the pleb cars on the road, the bodywork is that bit more overstated, giving the driver that feeling of supremacy on the road. These are usually driven by people in the late 40s or early 50s with a good deal of money behind them, often couple of kids or so. These would easily accommodate a couple of larger than average people and their over-indulged children and the manicured poodle in a personally crafted poodle pouch.

However, the Stuck Up Vehicle was to be outdone, overshadowed and left feeling more than a little inadequate by the following ACV (Almost Clean Vehicle). Yes, here was the STV 4x4. The Stuck-Up Twats Vehicle was a Range Rover, clearly never driven on a country lane let alone a field or somewhere with actual dirt. 4.5 litres of disgustingly wasteful engine fronted by gregarious and illegal bullbars with enough inner space and outer ruggedness to house Jeremy Clarkson's ego at a squeeze. Almost new STVs are owned by those who really do think they are God's gift yet would have a coronary at the thought of breaking a finger nail or getting a spot of mud on the wheel. The ST's that drive the V's know that you can't damage their car but if they so much as touch your car, it's a write-off and drive accordingly.

Oh and by the way, Mondeo Man did start a conversation that confirmed by suspicions about horsepower and penis size, he had a lot of horsepower....

... which concluded my trip to the HCW. My LPV was now a VCV. I can see my reflection in the dashboard, I do actually have carpet on the floor and the windows do actually work now. I truly believed I had faulty glass before. My lovely VCV won't remain so for long I'm sure, but I remain happy that although I can't do 0-60 in 1.1 seconds or drive at 270 mph (Mondeo Man can allegedly), my horsepower is small and.... (hmmm I won't go there).

It's New Year again

Well new year has come round again, another year has flown by and my god, what a year it's been! I find it impossible these days to predict or attempt to plan where we'll be this time next year. In the last 12 months we have lived in 4 houses, in 2 countries and had 1 baby, been in court several times and been involved in various other domestic battles.

I wonder exactly how kharma plays it's cards sometimes. I think I am a decent person and deserve to be treated as such, yet it seems no matter how hard you work on being nice to people, being friendly, non-judgemental, open-minded and the rest of it, some people are all too ready to stab you in the back as soon as something happens that they don't like.

Some friends, who have been so for a number of years, took it upon themselves to slag me off for moving abroad, not just to me but to others behind my back, thinking or hoping I wouldn't find out about it. When I walk back in to that life, they don't know where to look, yet don't acknowledge they have done anything hurtful, or even worse, pretend they haven't said or done anything. In a weeks' time, all the home ed activities begin, I wonder what will become of those friendships.

When our backs were really up against the wall and marksmen taking aim, where were these so-called friends? The same can also be said for some elements of family, pretending to be nice, supportive and friendly, until the crunch comes, at which point all they can do is either criticise, judge and condemn or blatently come out with name calling and abuse when things don't go the way they want.

One thing is for sure, in 2011 I won't be putting up with two-faced people. Either you're there for us when it matters, either in reality or virtually, you tell us directly what your opinions are, IF those opinions are in some way helpful, otherwise you support what choices we make, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. I am always open to meaningful dialogue, resolution to problems/disagreements etc, but I won't put up with people who say one thing and do another, make out they're being friendly but then say stuff behind my back, that's most unsupportive, both to me and my family. Do this and you can expect excommunication. I am not wasting my valuable energy on people who don't deserve it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't pretend to be perfect, or try to be so. I make mistakes, sometimes big ones, I put my foot in it or say the wrong thing from time to time. Who among you has not? I hold my hands up to that. Life is nothing if you don't at least try though. I will tell you things as they are and expect you to do the same and to me, not to some other person who may pass on parts of the message. If you can't handle certain truths, that's your issue not mine.

I will continue not to make judgement on people unless of course they cause hurt or upset to my family. I will continue accepting people for who they are, but that doesn't mean I want them all in my life, and I will endeavour to practise more forgiveness, remembering that we are all inter-connected spiritual beings.

I wish you all peace and inner resolution to your conflicts. Happy new year!

Love and light

Organising my thoughts

Time is a strange thing, for as long as I can remember, it has been in short supply, never enough to do all the things that need doing or that I want to do. There was always home ed, running around after one child or another, lots of people coming and going, holidays, trips out, houses to renovate, projects ongoing, gardening, cleaning etc. Notice how cleaning is at the end of the list though!

Now, we're hundreds of miles away from all our friends, from my other children, from all MY responsibilities, commitments and indulgances. The kids are in school, the other kids are too far away to pick up (but that's a whole other story), everything is different and remote. There is, in fact, too much time to fill, which then gives my mind a chance to kick in!

Thinking, thinking, thinking. One thought after another, round and round and round! Everything you can imagine from Atlantis to 2012, the Comprehensive Spending Review to reforming the political system, from application, submission, registration to global health and education agendas. So it goes on. I welcome the opportunity to expand my knowledge, walking further down the path of spiritual enlightenment and somehow to try and piece these ramblings together. The overarching sense that everything and everyone is connected, that somehow, to collate all this information into a central place for dissemination to others.

I have to say, having my first four followers in quite exciting! I actually have people who may be mildly interested in what I have to say. The term followers in mildly reminiscant of Jesus and the disciples, indeed I have been informed of my resemblance to Jesus by more than one person. Now my fellow Bloggers, follow me and be delivered right in to the path of temptation, profanity and insanity, for I'll deliver you nowhere you don't choose to be.

Good God, look at that, the power is going to my head already. Bloody hell, I used my father's name in vein, Jesus wept, I did it again and again!

Now the issue of religion has well and truly been dealt with, we'll cover politics, drug use, educational abuse, health and more, but not now. I need a coffee to take away the giddiness of having followers! See you soon.

Thinking freely

For me, having my own thoughts is an absolute essential. Yes, I am interested in what others have to say, in their feelings, personal viewpoints, etc and I respect their right to think/feel/believe whatever they want. So why is it then, that (some) people shout me down, call me names, insult me or dismiss what I am saying as lunacy or heresy?

I'm fascinated by how people come to holding certain viewpoints. I love to question them on those views and try to ascertain whether or not they are well-informed, researched personal views, arrived at through thought, reasoning and deliberation or whether they are recycled views, regurgitated from the Daily Mail, BBC News, The Sun, trashy magazines, etc. Make no mistake, these so-called news productions have just one purpose, to "programme" the way you think.

The term TV "programme" is not accidental. You are being programmed by the media, to behave, feel and respond in a way that's socially acceptable. What do I mean by that? In a way that makes you submissive to the powers that be, you become unable to think for yourself, easy to control through fear and no more than a zombie, acting out your daily life in blind subserviance. This process starts the day we're born.

First, as a new human being on the planet, you are free, no ties, no restrictions and limitless possibilities. You have to be brought under the jurisdiction of the country you're born in, made a "subject" of National Law, and henceforth have your sovereignty and freedom as a human being removed. You are made in to a "person" when you're registered and given a certificate of birth, or to give it the legal definition a "natural person". From this point on, you are a legal entity, capable of taking legal action and having it taken against you.

Programming starts immediately. If your parents are religious, you may be ordaned in to the house of their particular god, and the conditioning of religion begins, be good and you'll be fine, be naughty and the devil with have off with you. ie do as you are told by us, society, god, etc, become the perfect slave, do not hold free thoughts, free will or freedom or else your all-loving god will no longer love you and send you to a very nasty place.

Then, if your parents are being the good, obediant slaves they were trained to be, you'll be taken down the clinic for the first round of vaccines. You are taken in to the house of the medical gods and baptised there too. Your parents will of course believe that they are doing the best they can for you. They will be naively believing their programming: diseases kill, vaccines protect, if you love your child get it vaccinated or it might die! If they pause for thought at that moment, they'll be reminded of their civic duty to "protect" others, after all you don't want to be responsible for someone else dying, do you? If your difficult and obstinate parents don't submit then, they'll be accused of neglect, irresponsibilty and social disregard. Once they leave the clinic and begin passing through towns, villages and cities across the land, they will be putting others at risk.

According to the logic of the great medical establishment, if you do NOT inject your child with their elixir of health, your pure child will be putting the ones that have been "protected" at risk. How, I hear you ask? How is it possible that an unvaccinated child may pose a danger to a vaccinated one? But of course, your un"protected" child may continue to harbour diseases that jabs have allegedly been eradicated. If they have been wiped out, why do we need injecting to protect us? Of course, they haven't been wiped out now, just brought under control. This means that these big, bad diseases are just lying dormant, waiting to come and get your child, without warning. Your child deserves to be "protected", it has the right!

Of course, no mention is made of the fact that so-called immunisations contain a pletora of toxic ingrediants, many of which have no safe level of human consumption. No mention is made that vaccines may permantently and irrevocably alter the structure of human DNA, damaging the gene pool and leading to further genetic mutations in future generations. There's also no word about the link between vaccines and and Autistic Spectrum Disorders which now affect as many as 1:66 children in the UK. There's also the link to decreased fertility, cancers, brain tumours, cot death and a whole host of other disasterous consequences to medical intoxication.

As a baby, you'll be lucky if you avoid the shots, not many people have parents who are even bothered to research it, let alone be bold enough to stand against the establishment. If you do get the shots and are lucky enough not to acquire one or more of the afforementioned potential consequences, you'll be given the chance again and again before you reach five!

Your parents will now be watched and monitored more than the acquiescant masses as they made a choice! They will be reminded to conform on a regular basis. Failure to conform puts a black mark on your record. If they made other free choices, like being vegetarian or vegan, like following a non-authorised religion, like breast-feeding you for longer than the authoritarians say they should, like not returning to work when you're a few weeks old, or heaven forbid, not having a job at all, or living in a council house, or not being able to read well or articulate themselves, etc, etc, they will be watched, ridiculed, hassled and coerced into conformity.

If the authorities haven't managed to steal you away from you birth parents by now, they'll recommend you for a place with the educational gods at daycare, Surestart or some other government-sponsored programme of family division. The more you are away from your parents, who by the way, should not be trusted with your well-being at any point, the less your parents can pass their heresy on to you. That's right, your parents are not free thinkers, they are heretics. maybe suffering from ODD, Obsessive Defiance Disorder. Once you're away from your parents, they are allowed to return to their slave trade job at Tesco or in the City. You will have no-one that actually cares about you, looking after you every day, trying to ensure you are programmed to think like everyone else. You'll be free to do as you are told, dress like everyone else and suppress any individualistic tendancies you may have. If your thoughts are not in line with what's required, they are not valid! This will be repeated for sixteen years or more, by which time you'll either think and do as required by the State or derided as a lunatic, smoking funny fags.

Alternatively, your parents may think for themselves and allow you the freedom to grow in to a unique individual, in an educational setting that allows your creativity and individuality to flourish, takes care of your emotional and spiritual needs as well as the academic ones. But, do NOT expect support from the State, you'll be an outcast now and new laws will need to be drafted to control and monitor you, you have now become a threat!

You are a threat to the status quo. Your brain and body haven't been intoxicated with pharmaceutical drugs and educational conformity. You are less likely to acquiesce to their requests and more likely to upset the apple cart. You are less likely to believe the news, accept the social programming or do as you are told.

However, the authorities remain unabashed by this. They have a whole arsenal of fear-inducing tactics to reign you back in. Super-bugs every few years that require new vaccines, new drugs for headaches, new foods which alter moods, fluoridation of the water supply to dumb you down, global warming to tax yoiu more, and the biggy for the 21st century, TERRORISM!

Yes, you need to be afraid of terrorists! You don't know who they are, where they are or what they can do, but you do need to be afraid of them! People from the Muslim world, all are suspected terrorists, people from Africa, you gotta watch them you know, the Russians, Chinese, Irish, Brazilians, Jews - in fact anyone who isn't white or Christian. Oh no, wait now we have the threat of home grown terrorism too, so your neighbours, friends, teachers, absolutely anyone could be a terrorist. If you buy a dodgey DVD or a spliff or cheap tobacco, you too are supporting terrorism! Yes, your money WILL go to train taliban soldiers of you buy that DVD.

However, don't worry too much, we (the State) will come to your rescue. We will introduce new laws to protect you, don't worry about a few civil liberties here and there, about the right to trial by jury or the right to peaceful protest or the right of assembly, or using your camera in a public place or free speech. So long as you're safe from terrorists, it's worth it!

But wait, the Sheeple are no longer believing all our stories of terrorism, no longer scared enough, they even have the audacity to suggest we caused atrocities like 9/11, 7/7, Princess Diana, global economic collapse. Firstly, the news stories will keep reminding those maverick people just how dangerous the world is, just how much they need our protection and how problematic those immigrants are! Then we'll give them more reality TV, more computer games, more mind-numbing chemicals in their diet, water supply, food and drugs. They can have more social networking, they can express their views freely everywhere and we can see what they are saying.

Now all the people are voicing their opinions online and uniting in unexpected ways, they're uncovering and sharing things online that we'd rather they didn't... hmmm... what now? Oh I know - CYBER-TERRORISTS are going to bring the country to it knees, tell the people again and again how many times we've been attacked, they can't prove it after all, it's virtual, it's the perfect rouse. Then we can bring in new laws to "protect" them and protect the country. I, for one, say BULL SHIT! Cyber freedoms are as important as physical ones, if not more so.

Keep your mind open and you will see.

Welcome to The View From My W1nd0w

You're probably thinking "why has window got numbers in it?" and why give the blog such a name? Well, first things first, I have had a continuous dialogue playing itself out in my head, an ongoing conversation about everything conceivable, sometimes my inner dialogue making me laugh out loud (should that be "LOL" on here?) and other times making me question my own sanity by the obscurity and utter bizarreness of the musings. The obvious thing to do is externalise these random cogitations and show the whole world how utterly barking I am, and why not, I mean, if there was any doubting my lack of conformity to conventional ways of being and any question as to whether the men in white coats should be summoned, the answer is here! Send them round now! Spare yourselves from any more!


Oh the numbers thing... just a way of getting the title I wanted. And the name? Well this was by pure chance. I wanted to take some shots of the view from the balcony, over the mountains and fjord. I fired off one single picture and was presented with the dreaded "memory card full" error, implying my delightful teenage, female David Bailey impersonator, had surupticiously acquired my camera and captured hundreds of images on total bollox! Dozens of her sister pulling impossible, contortionist faces or ones of dutch sheep or German trees, capturing the essence of the journey to Norway!

Faced with the dilemma now of being arsed to empty the card and continuing the shoot or abandoning the idea for the day, I opted for the latter. No great surprise to many of you no doubt! However, this triggered off an idea. What if I was to take just one picture every day from the same viewpoint and see what changes occur? This then led to an escalation of the idea, the view from my window can be literal and metaphorical, ie I can use this as a forum to extol the wonders of my personal viewpoints and inflict them on others.

If I were you, I'd run now and never come back!