Tuesday, 4 September 2018
Sunday, 26 August 2018
Saturday, 25 August 2018
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
Monday, 13 August 2018
Monday, 4 June 2018
Andrew O'Hagan: Grenfell Tower. Piss poor journalism.
The publication of this thing does no one any favours except RBKC councilors, Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen in particular and of course O'Hagans bank account.
What is wrong with it:
The timing of this publication, before any inquiry has been concluded and before any results are published demonstrates an arrogance of monumental proportions on the part of O'Hagan.
It is biased conjecture at best.
It fails to acknowledge absolute facts regarding the cladding of the building in favour of defending the councilors who. for whatever reasons, allowed the work to be carried out. The argument that RBKC's use of dangerous cladding was ok because everyone else was doing it is laughable.
It casually lays blame on the Fire Service for the number of deaths. It does not point out that, but for the cladding mistakes, the Fire Service, having put out the fire on the fourth floor would have gone home. Job Done.
O'Hagan is so keen to defend and praise Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen and others that he has completely missed the big story. I would point him in the direction of Companies House records.
I could go on and on but I won't beyond saying that the entire thing is so flawed and biased that it even casts doubt on the facts that it gets right.
It is a monumental piece of 'up my own arse, look how clever I am, journalism' with no concern for truth or justice and a very keen enthusiasm for Town Hall brown nosing.
For the record, I lived in the shadow of Grenfell at the time of the fire. I watched it from the start. I experienced first hand the horrors and I experienced first hand the inadequacy of RBKC in its response.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
Tesco to remove dates from stores.
Tesco is to stop stocking dates in its stores.
A spokesperson said that this would stop uneaten dates being thrown away by consumers.
etc etc etc
The many faces of tax and benefits fraud.
It is easy to assume that benefit fraud is perpetrated by 'pond life and scum'.
This is not the case.
I've spent the past 12 months looking into the abuse of benefits in this area and find that the benefit cheat is more likely to be someone in work, who, rather than being on the breadline feels that they deserve more than they earn and to that end fiddles council tax or single parent childcare benefits.
Benefit frauds and council tax frauds are frequently carried out by individuals who think that they are above suspicion and therefore free from detection. They are 'nice' educated folk whose nasty habits (they hope) will never come to light.
The chances are that someone standing next to you at the school gates, sitting accross the table at a dinner party, living two doors away or up the street is abusing the system. Even that nice police officer next door.
It is easy to do.
Thanks to the internet and Open Source information it is now getting easier to detect.
more later....
This is not the case.
I've spent the past 12 months looking into the abuse of benefits in this area and find that the benefit cheat is more likely to be someone in work, who, rather than being on the breadline feels that they deserve more than they earn and to that end fiddles council tax or single parent childcare benefits.
Benefit frauds and council tax frauds are frequently carried out by individuals who think that they are above suspicion and therefore free from detection. They are 'nice' educated folk whose nasty habits (they hope) will never come to light.
The chances are that someone standing next to you at the school gates, sitting accross the table at a dinner party, living two doors away or up the street is abusing the system. Even that nice police officer next door.
It is easy to do.
Thanks to the internet and Open Source information it is now getting easier to detect.
more later....
Thursday, 17 May 2018
Fleur Dumal, the muse from hell.
Illustration for Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. Odilon Redon 1890.
Jan Nieupjur paid a rare visit yesterday. We sat in the sun, shared a few beers and a few memories but it wasn't long before he turned our thoughts to the muse:
"I've met a new muse ." He informed me.
"Her name is Fleur Dumal, she is the most selfish human being I have ever met; lies constantly, would sell her mother for a glass of wine and is totally untrustworthy... In essence the perfect muse.
She is an artist without a shred of creativity or talent but has a phenomenal delusional self belief in her greatness."
Hmmmm. Sounds familiar
"She wants to write Tristan and to that end could she perhaps pen an occasional post for the blog. Would you indulge her, it might be fun."
I of course, in the interests of equality, agreed and will be posting her occasional thread entitled: 'Life in the pits'.
Should be interesting.
Thursday, 19 April 2018
Sunday, 15 April 2018
Love only bicycle.
It is without doubt the most photographed bicycle in London: parked outside the pink mews house that served as Kiera Knightly's home in 'Love actually' it has featured in thousands of photographs and selfies by tourists from around the planet.
Sent from my iPhone
Thursday, 1 March 2018
Tuesday, 6 February 2018
Fly fishing for hare in Kensington Gardens.
A guest blog by Jan Nieupjur.
Country pursuits are few and far between in London so you can imagine my delight on being invited to an evening's fly fishing in Kensington Gardens by my old pal Buffy.
Imagining trout rising in the Serpentine I packed my rod and favourite flies and headed west to his mews pied a terre in Notting Hill. Buffy answered the door with tears streaming down his cheeks.
"My god Buffy, what on earth is the matter". I exclaimed.
"Just cutting bait, old chap". Was his reply and he went on to explain that far from stalking trout in the Serpentine we would be after the Husk of hares that had colonized Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Apparently Princess Diana had released a breeding pair from Kensington Palace in order to piss off Charles, they were his favourite pets and she felt received more affection than she, shortly after their marriage.
The hares bred like rabbits and today there are more than 2,000 of the critters living in the meadows. Early on the Hares developed nocturnal habits and are rarely seen during daylight hours. An annual cull takes place in February, carried out by the Coldstream Guards armed with high powered air rifles fitted with night sights, as the local communities blithely sleep on unaware of the ongoing carnage nearby.
Buffy has set up the Kensington hare fishing club in order to take advantage of this bounty. fishing is of course banned in the Serpentine but there is no such constraint to fishing in the grass. Twilight was the optimum time for catching the hares which came out to gambol as the park quietened for the night.
The cause of Buffy's tears was laid out on the butchers block in his well equipped kitchen.
Preparing bait.
"Horse radish". Buffy exclaimed with relish. Apparently, through much trial and error, this was the best bait for the job. A 'tail' of horse radish was wound into the fly and proved to be irresistible to the animals. Buffy went on to tell me that he had previously used asparagus but found that it often disintegrated on casting. The fibrous horse radish however, grown on his roof, not only had the required stringiness to stay on the hook but also the whiteness of its flesh made it easy for the hares to spot in the gloaming.
After preparing a dozen flies, more lure than a fly to my mind, we filled our hip flasks with cherry brandy and set out.
Kensington gardens at dusk is a magical place, lit by the amber metropolitan glow and swathed in a faint winter mist, silent but for the cough of foxes, grunts of alfresco lovers and the rustle of rough sleepers bedding. we arrived at Buffy's chosen spot, close to the Diana memorial ditch on the southern bank of the serpentine.
"They seem to congregate here, probably where the first pair were released". Said buffy.
I remember, long ago stocking the memorial with a dozen rainbow trout for a spot of sport many years ago after I had been arrested for fishing in the Serpentine. I was arrested for that too.
Illegally fishing the Serpentine.
We set up our rigs and, with some scepticism on my part, cast our lures. to my astonishment and joy the hares rose to our bait as cast after cast we snagged them. Once hooked the animals fought hard, cutting zigzag courses through the meadow, one or two were lost when the line snagged on a tree. I was using a 10lb mono filament line and made a mental note to upgrade to a 20lb braided line next time.
By 10.00 pm we had a decent bag of 17 animals, no specimens but all of a good size, and as the last of the cherry brandy slid down our gullets decided to call it a night.
"Just time to catch the Cow before last orders'. Exclaimed Buffy.
Later, back at Buffy's house we hung the beasts on olive trees for the night ready for butchering the following day. We sat late into the night, celebrating our success with a bottle or two, listening the urban foxes as they congregated beneath the hung hares, salivating frustration.
Hare in an olive tree.
Line caught Kensington hare.
"Je weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt". I muttered in my drunkenness.
Well I Know now!
Country pursuits are few and far between in London so you can imagine my delight on being invited to an evening's fly fishing in Kensington Gardens by my old pal Buffy.
Imagining trout rising in the Serpentine I packed my rod and favourite flies and headed west to his mews pied a terre in Notting Hill. Buffy answered the door with tears streaming down his cheeks.
"My god Buffy, what on earth is the matter". I exclaimed.
"Just cutting bait, old chap". Was his reply and he went on to explain that far from stalking trout in the Serpentine we would be after the Husk of hares that had colonized Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Apparently Princess Diana had released a breeding pair from Kensington Palace in order to piss off Charles, they were his favourite pets and she felt received more affection than she, shortly after their marriage.
The hares bred like rabbits and today there are more than 2,000 of the critters living in the meadows. Early on the Hares developed nocturnal habits and are rarely seen during daylight hours. An annual cull takes place in February, carried out by the Coldstream Guards armed with high powered air rifles fitted with night sights, as the local communities blithely sleep on unaware of the ongoing carnage nearby.
Buffy has set up the Kensington hare fishing club in order to take advantage of this bounty. fishing is of course banned in the Serpentine but there is no such constraint to fishing in the grass. Twilight was the optimum time for catching the hares which came out to gambol as the park quietened for the night.
The cause of Buffy's tears was laid out on the butchers block in his well equipped kitchen.
Preparing bait.
"Horse radish". Buffy exclaimed with relish. Apparently, through much trial and error, this was the best bait for the job. A 'tail' of horse radish was wound into the fly and proved to be irresistible to the animals. Buffy went on to tell me that he had previously used asparagus but found that it often disintegrated on casting. The fibrous horse radish however, grown on his roof, not only had the required stringiness to stay on the hook but also the whiteness of its flesh made it easy for the hares to spot in the gloaming.
After preparing a dozen flies, more lure than a fly to my mind, we filled our hip flasks with cherry brandy and set out.
Kensington gardens at dusk is a magical place, lit by the amber metropolitan glow and swathed in a faint winter mist, silent but for the cough of foxes, grunts of alfresco lovers and the rustle of rough sleepers bedding. we arrived at Buffy's chosen spot, close to the Diana memorial ditch on the southern bank of the serpentine.
"They seem to congregate here, probably where the first pair were released". Said buffy.
I remember, long ago stocking the memorial with a dozen rainbow trout for a spot of sport many years ago after I had been arrested for fishing in the Serpentine. I was arrested for that too.
Illegally fishing the Serpentine.
We set up our rigs and, with some scepticism on my part, cast our lures. to my astonishment and joy the hares rose to our bait as cast after cast we snagged them. Once hooked the animals fought hard, cutting zigzag courses through the meadow, one or two were lost when the line snagged on a tree. I was using a 10lb mono filament line and made a mental note to upgrade to a 20lb braided line next time.
By 10.00 pm we had a decent bag of 17 animals, no specimens but all of a good size, and as the last of the cherry brandy slid down our gullets decided to call it a night.
"Just time to catch the Cow before last orders'. Exclaimed Buffy.
Later, back at Buffy's house we hung the beasts on olive trees for the night ready for butchering the following day. We sat late into the night, celebrating our success with a bottle or two, listening the urban foxes as they congregated beneath the hung hares, salivating frustration.
Hare in an olive tree.
Line caught Kensington hare.
"Je weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt". I muttered in my drunkenness.
Well I Know now!
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