Friday 17 June 2016

Jo Cox

On a very personal note, I remember as if it was yesterday the moment I had to tell my 8 year old son his mother had died.  Brendan Cox has to do that for his and Jo Cox's three and five year old children.  I can imagine the pain he and the children will go through, made infinitely worse by the terrible circumstances.

Tuesday 14 June 2016

The world is flat

I am convinced we've finally reached a tipping point and the world has at every level gone totally, absolutely and completely barking mad. 

Trump for President?  Really? Really, really??? I cannot believe that he has got this far...how could any intelligent, thinking person vote for him with his ignorant, bigoted views.  Ah yes, he's a populist and we know where that gets us.

Brexit?  Really?  Really, really??? In an interconnected world it is crass stupidity that we will be out there on our own.  We won't.  We will be having to make hundreds of new agreements with other trading blocks from a position of weakness.  The EU has been massively good for the UK and for every individual citizen here but the asses who are running the Remain campaign have stuck rigidly to their scare tactics, which no one likes.  Do we want to be governed by the Little Britain mentality politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage, or monsters like Gove and Duncan-Smith?  It's a nightmare, and we will all suffer badly if we leap.  I'm posting on Facebook every day a benefit of being in the EU in the hope it might make a little difference

Orlando? Really? Really, really??? A terrible, terrible avoidable tragedy, and we've all be shocked by the reports of people texting, sending photos and videos to their loved ones just before they die.  What is it with America that mass killings are acceptable?

I spent the last week, or four days of them, cycling from London to Amsterdam.  Roughly 370 miles with eighty other people of various ages, size, fitness and ability.  Unusually, I quickly made friends and spent the time with three others, two of whom are from Brighton.  We all helped each other enormously to cover the miles....you might think that cycling on the flat through Belgium and the Netherlands would be easier than the hills and valleys of England and France, but it's not so.  The benefit of a hill is that at the top you can coast down, whereas the flat requires constant effort and in the Netherlands where the roads can be very straight for a long time it can be quite disheartening!  We got a little wet, but mostly burnt in the sun and had a great time as we passed through Dover, Calais, Dunkirk, Brugges, Breda, before reaching our destination.  I added a little extra to the journey by doing the bit from Tower  Bridge to Crystal Palace as I just wanted to go from central London...and as a reward they opened the bridge for me (nothing to do with the boat going through underneath!).

Hardly a picture taken by me, but I've gathered some: