Weather- Wet and Windy

(Wednesday)The blasts of autumn are upon us. I woke in the early hours of the morning and I was almost certain it was raining. I sprung from my bed (I exaggerate somewhat, I know. Poetic licence is what it's called.), drew aside the curtains and, lo, it was raining! At that early hour, around 3.30, there was no chance of taking Alfie for his routine walk around Eaglestone Park. Try as I might, I could not get to sleep, so I decided to go downstairs and switch on the television. I'm not so sure it was such a good idea. Talk of Brexit. At the moment, whenever the television news comes on, I switch over. Politicians bickering is one thing, but within their own parties, what is the sense? It would appear that the Tories lost a vote or something, a lot of MP's lost the Whip because they voted for a piece of legislation which would prevent a No Deal Brexit. The EU must be more flexible, if it ever can be, what's wrong with a bit of common sense and compromise? What's with the so-called 'Backstop,'? Something to do with the Northern Ireland border with the Republic of Ireland (which is in the EU.) So, could someone please explain how it is that a country, such as Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, manages it's borders with those country which surrounds it, which are within the EU? There must be quite a few other countries in a similar situation, I can't name many, but who aren't in the EU, but next to member states. I think this situation regarding the Northern Irish border can be resolved amicably and it's just an excuse to keep us forever shackled to the EU. I don't remember this matter being mentioned during the run-up to the referendum in 2016, so why has it come up more recently?

(Thursday) I have had to ring Ashfield Medical Centre because the diazepam are coming to the end of their course. As I only get ten in a packet, it's a question of having to get another prescription and I was told that I should have a review before I can have more. I rang at 8.10 and was more than surprised that not only were the lines open but that I got through in record time. I had to wait for a doctor to ring back and I have to see Doctor Haye at 10 tomorrow morning.  I am keen to get a skip to use to clear out the small bedroom and other bits and pieces before I can move out of this house. I am somewhat shocked to learn that it will cost at least £160, which will make a huge hole in my bank account and which I can't really afford. So, because of this I thought I'd go to Bleak Hall Motors to get the brakes on the car dealt with. I rang the other morning and was told to just bring it in, but on arrival this morning, they said there were eight other cars being dealt with. I could have waited, but it's booked in for Monday morning at 8.30. From there I drove to the Oaktree Centre because the café is now up and running. I had tea and a really scrummy bacon and sausage sandwich and, speaking to John, who runs the café, mentioned the cost of hiring a skip, and he's offered to help because he has a trailer and will come to help me on the Saturday after Willen Furniture Warehouse come to collect the various items (as mentioned in th last blog post.) So, that is another problem solved.

I started off this blog post by describing the weather as 'the blasts of autumn,' (a good expression, worthy of Shakespeare, I reckon. Thinking about it, I wonder if he had got there before me, but never mind.) But as I sit in the lounge writing this on my MacBook Air, I can see out of the window into the garden (if that space can be termed 'garden.' I think not. Just a fenced-in space with grass in, a ratty, tatty, crumbling shed and several yards of washing line stretched across the grass.) and that the sun is shining and it's really quite warm.

Went to Sainsbury's this afternoon and a large area is closed off for a re-fit. It's the area where the TU clothing is the focus, also, the household items, such as kitchen equipment. It must be difficult for stores to do a re-fit without totally disrupting things, by keeping other areas open to shoppers. All will be revealed in the fullness of time, as they say. I have to say it's somewhat annoying when you go shopping, especially if you go to the same supermarket as I do with Sainsbury's, you get used to the layout, you know exactly where items you regularly shop for are within the store and then suddenly, without any sort of warning, it's all moved around and you can't find what you want. They've done that in the pet food aisle. The cat food is where the dog food used to be. But WHY? I think it's to confuse the shopper, so you have to go and hunt for whatever it was you were looking for. Very annoying.

(Friday) I was more than ever determined not to get out of bed quite so early. There really is no need to be up and about at 6a.m., but it's convincing Alfie of this fact. I took my time, getting dressed, shaved etc etc and sorted some washing and we were out at around 7.a.m. I'm annoyed that the Fitbit has failed. (See next blog post.) so the number of my steps are not measured. Oh well, such is life! Let me finish this off and get it published.

Turn on the television to discover that Robert Mugabe has died, former President and tyrant of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia.) Makes a change from depressing news about Brexit.

Blinking Brexit

You just can't get away from it. Britain leaving the EU. Or Brexit for short. I hate the term. I actually voted to 'Remain,' but I can't think why. I spent ages on deciding the pros and cons of voting to either Remain or Leave, but I can honestly say that, if we were to have another referendum, I think I'd vote leave. I just hate all the unnecessary bureaucracy created by a virtually faceless load of pen-pushers in Strasberg or wherever the organisation is based. Did we really know what we were voting for during that referendum in 2016? I doubt it very much. The politicians didn't know how difficult it was going to be to disassociate ourselves from this 'thing.'

We should never have had this crazy referendum in the first place. It was only because of the rise of UKIP, the party who wanted us to leave the E.U. that David Cameron ran scared and had the thing in the first place. Surely, being a member of something, such as a club or trade union, you don't always agree with everything the organisation you're a member of does. But you have the power to influence things, as Britain did as an E.U. member. You can work to change it, for good or bad. Just leaving because you don't like it isn't really the answer. The joke is, that now UKIP has virtually disappeared from the political scene. 

I really object to having laws and regulations foisted on us by an unelected body such as the EU parliament and those laws being above our parliament. We've currently got to give our consent if we want to have emails sent under something called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as from 25th May 2018. I'm getting endless emails to make sure I tick the relevant box to make sure companies which I've already signed up to, have my permission to continue to email me. It doesn't make sense when I've already made it clear I've given my sense when I signed up to these emails however long ago it was. Just another layer of bureaucracy. But what really gets me is that I bet this doesn't stop all the junk mail I get or the endless telephone calls trying to get me to claim PPI (which I've never had.) Even though I've signed up to the preference service which is supposed to prevent these calls, so I bet this new EU regulation will have about as much clout as a chocolate hammer.

So, we have to go through all this rigmarole about a Hard and a Soft Brexit (whatever they mean. Can someone explain, please? I'm totally confused.) It has never ever been explained to me how the E.U. works or what we got from being members. Where does the money we pay in go? What do we get? Do we get Nectar points?

I can see why people voted to leave. The British are a proud nation. We fought two World Wars. We got through The Blitz, Dunkirk and countless battles. We're an island. We like to make our own rules and regulations. We don't like being dominated by faceless bureaucrats.

Do we really, honestly spend £350 million a day on funding this organisation? Or was it weeks? I don't know, but the leave campaign had it emblazoned on the side of their bus, and it was going to fund the N.H.S. Was this just a reason to get people to vote leave? I think it was a week. Surely it was a week. I can't believe we'd pay that much a day. But Boris Johnson said it was an 'underestimate.'

Politicians on both sides of the referendum argument, remain and leave, made absolutely no attempt to explain what the E.U. was about. I can see that, when it was originally set up back in the 1950's, as the Common Market, and when it was just 6 nations, it was an attempt to get countries to cooperate and hopefully prevent another war in Europe. Cooperation being the operative word here. We had joined under the Harold Wilson government in the 1970s and then, for some strange reason we had a referendum, in 1975 I think it was, to ask 'The People' if they wanted us to be members. A rather back-to-front idea, putting the cart before the horse, to have a vote AFTER we joined. But the E.U., as it's now called, isn't the same organisation it was at that time. We now have a single currency, The Euro (which Britain didn't sign up to) and far more regulations and laws.

Why is there such a problem with refugees and immigrants in this country? We've always had immigrants and been tolerant of refugees. Just look at our history, going back centuries. We've welcomed people from different ethnic groups, such as the Huguenots  who fled persecution and then set up the silk weaving industry in London. The idea of having 'open borders,' meaning you can cross into the other E.U. countries without having to bother with endless paperwork, passports, making trading easier because you all have the same structures for such things as health and safety or weights and measures and even (heaven forbid) currency makes a lot of sense. If we could all agree on how to deal with refugees, then that problem might have been resolved, and not put pressure on one or two nations within the E.U. (ie: France and Britain, with all the problems caused by refugees at the Channel ports between France and Britain.) then the E.U. might have been a worthwhile organisation to be a member of. But it seems the different countries with the E.U. can't even agree on that. A shame. It would really make being a member worthwhile.

Why on earth, when they were setting up the 2016 EU Referendum, didn't they set a target, a sort of percentage of one way or other, to remain or leave, of, say 10% or even 20%, to which would be agreed as the winning amount of votes and then decide whether Britain remained or left the E.U. As it trend out, the result was 51.89% to leave and 48.11% to remain, a really tiny percentage to leave. Hardly enough to decide to leave. Surely it should have been a higher percentage to leave. A crazy mistake on the part of our politicians who put the country through this incredibly messy situation as regards the negotiations to extricate ourselves from the E.U. Then you learn that there were25,359 blank or invalid votes. What were those people who wasted their votes thinking? Just wasted. Either way, if they had used their votes sensibly then the results might have been completely different.