Not being the proud owner of a washing machine I have to do my smalls by hand in the sink and take my sheets, towels, shirts and certain other things to the local launderette for a service wash (cut rate for Old Age pensioners on Mondays!).

Living alone I just couldn’t justify the cost of buying a machine because they all seem to be ‘family size’ jobs, a slight case of overkill in my case. I did once find a small one on the internet designed for batchelors and people on their own but the price was about half as much again as a family size one. I suppose that manufacturing costs would be higher because not many were made. It was out of my price range anyway.

But I digress. This week I packed my grubby washing into a bin bag and took it to the Launderette. I collected it later in the day and it was all nicely folded and packed neatly into my bin bag.

When started to unpack it I noticed that it hadn’t been dried as well as it usually was. In fact it was still quite damp. Never mind, I thought, I can put it over the clothes horse to dry.

Then I noticed that the towels and sheets were still grubby (and damp). When I examined my shirts I saw that the inside of the collars and the cuffs were still dirty. I thought “I’m not having this, especially as the price had gone up in line with the VAT increase!”

I took one of the towels and a shirt straight back to the launderette and confronted the girl who served me and told her I was very unhappy with the service. Her reply was, “The manager has told us that due to the increase in the water rates, the electic bill and the high cost of the washing powders we have to reduce the washing and drying time in order to make it cost effective”.

Cost effective my arse! They also put the pensioners rate up to £11 from last week when it was £8 per load. I know the VAT went up to 20%, but these charges are just way over the top.

I think in future I will join my neighbours and go with them to their free “launderette”!

I was going to write an article about the apathy of the British people today, but on reflection I just couldn’t be bothered.

J’allais écrire un article sur l’apathie du peuple britannique aujourd’hui, mais à la réflexion je ne pouvais pas être dérangé.

First let us establish what a ‘hustings’ is. A husting (called a ‘stump’ in the United States) refers to a physical platform from which the candidates present their views to the public before a parliamentary or other election.

Nowadays a husting, although not recognised in law, is the democratic right of all the legal candidates to face the public to explain the policies and intentions of their respective parties.

The BNP, as much as any other political party in the UK, has the right to make its voice heard, to be given a fair hearing, and to present its views to the people on an equal footing with any other party. That is democracy.

It does not matter if people agree or disagree with those views, democracy is not about a government or legal apparatus deciding which views are allowed to be heard, it is about the people being allowed to make up their own minds.

I am not condoning all what the BNP stand for, but as Voltaire said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I disapprove of other political parties as well, but what happened to the BNP candidate yesterday shows that this country is on the downward slippery slope to a dictatorship.

Once the state begins to subvert the democratic process by barring views that do not fit in with their agenda, it ceases to be a democracy, it becomes an authoritarian democracy, a state where the people are free to decide from among only those opinions which the state apparatus considers acceptable. Today is a sad day for Britain, this is not the state or political system that our forefathers fought for and died for, this is everything that they fought against, this is totalitarianism in all but name.

Make no mistake about it, the moment that the state begins to use such apparatus to interfere with the electoral process then it ceases to be a democracy. Whether you love or loathe the BNP, state attempts to disbar them from the democratic process represent a direct attack on the freedoms of every person in this country, and the death knell for democracy in Britain.

Watch the following video to the end before the state have it removed, and think that this incident has now sent a precedence, and in the future the big parties will be turning their attention to all the other small parties who are a thorn in their side and ousting them from the hustings.

We, the British people, have had our democratic system, which was once the envy of the world, subverted and betrayed. It is no more, the BNP are but the first victims of this new political totalitarianism, our country is being led down a dangerous road that ends in a nightmare for all of us.

This post is not about the stupid, mindnumbingly boring reality show on TV, but about the more serious matter of the ever growing number of CCTV cameras sprouting up everywhere in the public domain.

I always holiday in France where the food, climate and quality of life is so much better than England. The towns, villages and the countryside so much safer; so there is very little need for cameras on every street corner, but as soon as I drive off the ferry at Dover I am immediately struck by the number of CCTV cameras monitoring my every move until I drive out of the docks onto the main road, and even then there are cameras along the route. If I stop at a pub on my way home I am being watched on cctv. Practically every pub now have cameras in all the rooms watching what and how much you drink. OK, so they say they are for security and to watch for any anti-social behaviour, but what if the landlord sees on the monitor that you drank three pints of beer, and then phones the bobbies and tells them that you have just driven off the carpark?

Yet while CCTV cameras proliferate, now numbering 4.4m in the UK – that’s more than there are Welsh people – latest figures back show what everyone has long suspected – that the bloody things don’t actually stop crime!

Driving through our little town of Earl Shilton, from when you enter to when you leave you are never out of sight of a police camera. On every road into the town there are cameras that read your registration number and instantaneously check with the DVLA computers that your car is taxed, insured, your MOT certificate is up-to-date and that you are wearing your seatbelt (cameras using using high image lenses)!

There are cameras in Wood Street Park monitoring the childrens play area to watch out for child-molesters and paedophiles, of which the authorities seem to think that Earl Shilton is infested with. Fair enough, I suppose that is one place where cameras make sense.

One place where they don’t work is the Wood Street Carpark where a car was vandalised recently, and despite the fact that there are two cameras the vandals they were not seen. Since my post about that incident another car has been vandalised, but to date I don’t know if there were any arrests made.

Nearly all the local shops, Post Office and Supermarket are bristling with cameras. I never feel lonely when shopping in the town, knowing that numerous nameless people are looking out for me.

Private snoopers are being paid to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras from home via the Internet. Their job is to try to spot criminal behaviour on live feeds from cameras in stores and streets. If, for example, they see a shoplifter they send a text message warning the owner of the firm. It reminds me a bit of Nazi germany when the youngsters in the Hitler Youth movement were encouraged to report any anti-Nazi behaviour by their parents, friends and neighbours.

Finally: (and you couldn’t make this up!) Cameras are being turned on the people paid to watch CCTV streams, to note which bits of surveillance footage they didn’t see. The system developed in Turkey uses webcams to track a person’s eye movements and can then produce an edited reel of footage that they didn’t see at the end of their shift.

Although being born an Englishman automatically qualifies one as an honorary meteorologist – we tend as a nation to greet our friends, neighbours and indeed, complete strangers, with our opinions of the current weather situation – no modern English weather-man has summed up the British climate in a single sentence better than the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, who in AD94 wrote:

“The sky is overcast with continual rain and cloud, but the cold is not severe”.
-Cornelius Tacitus, Agricola, 12.3.

Nothing changes does it? Well, obviously since Tacitus wrote that it’s got fu. . . bloody colder!

Julius Cæsar described Britannia (Britain) as “the Empires arsehole” in his journals. (Because it was a terrible place or just full of shit?) Being posted to Hadrians Wall in Roman times was like being posted to the Russian Front in the German Army during the last war!

This morning I woke up bright and early. The sunlight was streaming through the window, the birds were all of a twitter and I felt really great and nicely relaxed. Not even the usual hangover!

However, that was soon to change. I clicked onto “Yahoo” to read my emails and the news and there, in large letters on the right of the screen, “YOU COULD DIE TO-DAY. Could your family meet the bills, etc.” You’ve probably seen the adverts. The insurance companies are getting desperate for customers in this time of ‘austerity’ (big depression!) and the ‘credit crunch’ (BIG depression!).

“Ah well”, I thought, “Thanks for making my day Mr Yahoo, aka Aviva Ins. Co.”. Feeling slightly off colour now I munched away at my toast and Marmite, then I heard the postman dropping to-days allocation of junk mail into my postbox.

Now, I don’t know who is putting it about that I am an incredibly old git who needs all sorts of very expensive aids like stair-lifts, walk-in baths, walking sticks, mobility scooters, recliners and the like, but just lately the junk mail has turned from ‘Start a new career’ courses, work from home, gymnasium leaflets, meet the lady of your dreams, holidays in exotic places, to the oldie type junkmail that now chokes the postbox. If I find out who it is I shall hit them with my zimmer frame!

This morning was no exception. I received a catalogue for medical aids with such things as leak-proof incontinent underpants and other things that a sex pervert would appreciate more than me! I had a free trial copy of “The Oldie” magazine that “one of your friends has recommended for you”. Huh! Some friend!

You know you are getting old when you look in the Gents Outfitters and think “Hmm, that’s a nice cardigan. . .”

Now I’m depressed. I’m going out to throw myself in front of a passing blonde.

Following a conversation in the local about the standard of education now, a businessman friend told me that because there will be a lot of school-leavers at the end of this academic year, who will in all probability finish up in the dole queue, he decided to set on two to train in his IT business.

This is because one of his staff is due to retire at the end of the year. He said that if he could find two youngsters who were interested in IT it would give them time to at least gain some knowledge of what’s involved from the person retiring soon.

He placed an advert in the local paper and insisted that applicants should apply in writing in the first instance, and to included a résumé of their knowledge of the subject and what, if any, training they had in school.

To his amazement he received nearly 200 applications, of which he had to throw out almost half of them for various reasons. 83 were obviously done on word processor like “Word” although he had stated “in writing” in the advert. The reason he wanted the applications in writing is because there is no spellchecker in a pen and you can basically judge a person by the handwriting and layout of the letter. Others were thrown out because the handwriting was virtually unreadable and untidily laid out.

Another type of applicant he rejected was the kind of youngster who saw themselves as trendy and streetwise, and used “modern English” to impress which fell flat with my friend. You know the type, they use 4 instead of “for”, 2 instead of “to” or “too” and write the personal “I” as “i”. The latest idea now is to put the period “.” at the beginning of the following sentence i.e., “The cat sat on the mat .the dog barked madly ,and the cat ran away”, if you see wot i mean, innit?

Rejecting all the above type of letters eliminated having to interview a lot of people who were obviously unsuitable.

He was left with 48 applications that were worth at least a first interview. Most of those turned up scruffily dressed, or reeking of fag smoke, or both, and had no idea how to handle themselves during an interview.

In the end he finished up with two girls who dressed nice, spoke “proper English like wot i do” and seemed very keen on the work involved. He told me he is looking forward to setting them on soon.

Today, 9:05am. Phone rings.

Me: “Hello?”
Man with Oxford accent: “Oh, could I possibly speak to Mr Smith please?”
Me: “Speaking”.
Man with Oxford accent: “Did you know there is a possibility that you could die today?”
[click]

Shit! That’s all I need. Some advertising technique that is; put the fear of God into them first and while they are in a state of shock sell them massive amounts of life insurance! Brilliant!

I presume it was some insurance company. Well, I hope it was, but it could have been one of my creditors who is just about to sent the big boys round with the baseball bats to persuade me to cough up.

Well Stanley, “That’s another fine day cocked up before it’s even started”. Already this week I have heard that a favourite blogger of mine, “Mutley the Dogs Day Out” has died, and yesterday I had the sad news that an old Army pal has gone off with the Grim Reaper. (I hope there are plenty of good pubs in Heaven).

Suddenly I don’t feel well, I think I’ll go back to bed. . . .