Do you strive to be “green”, recycle, try to do your bit to save the planet? Do you think our governments are doing enough? Is big business really invested in being environmentally responsible or are they just playing lip service to appear that way? Is what we are all doing, enough?

We have recently seen protesters blocking roads and motorways in order to highlight the problem with insulation in homes. We may not agree with their methods but we might support their message. I think there are more important issues to be highlighted but that is not to dismiss their point. Would you protest in support of green issues? Perhaps you think they don’t t really affect you. Perhaps you are not aware of the effect our planet is suffering? There are still many who deny climate change or environmental problems? 

Yesterday the conservative majority voted against an amendment to stop water companies dumping raw sewage in our rivers and the sea! What does that say to you about a government that promises so much and then does that?

The problems of our world can only be solved by all of us, we cannot rely on others doing it for us. Sometimes it seems that problems are so huge, they can’t be solved and that is true for some of them but if we give up they never will be!

Human progress has always been fraught with contradictions and mistakes but we have always moved forward and we need to keep trying to make things better, it isn’t easy but then nothing worth doing ever is!

Stay well 

I know longer know what to say! I am exhausted with the whole thing. Get fucking vaccinated you ignorant fools. I am sorry but I can no longer play devils advocate and stand by while the infection rate remains horrific and deaths continue at an alarming rate. Where is the irrefutable proof of the harm this vaccine does. Millions throughout the world have had it and where is the evidence of the health problems it has caused? If it was so dangerous do you not think the news would be brimming over with the consequences? Or is this yet another crackpot conspiracy that it this news is being withheld?

I have enough of pussy footing around the subject, get the jab and make sure your children have it unless there incontrovertible evidence that it would harm you get the vaccination! You have no longer any excuse and if you won’t have it then keep yourself isolated and out of everyone’s way! 

Stay well

I am an artist. Those of you who have read my blog will know that from time to time I post some of my art. I have no training and certainly can’t draw a or paint with any realism. I am obsessed with shapes and in particular triangles. Sitting drawing is a pleasant way to spend time. I listen to music and get lost in the design. Those who have seen my work seem to like it, like me, it is unique. There are drawings I produce which I am not so keen on but others really like them, which proves that art is in the eye of the beholder. 

I doodle really just glorified doodling! What is art? Art I suppose, is whatever we say it is? I think we all know great art when we see it, the big artists, Van Gogh, Turner, Da Vinci, Caravaggio etc, we collectively recognise that these are painters of great works of art. Did they know they were great painters, they certainly had recognition in their lifetimes? 

A few years ago we went to the National Portrait Gallery. I watch Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky Arts and was fascinated how each contestant produced their work within 4 hours. Overall, while there were some fantastic paintings, I was disappointed. There was little of a contemporary portrait and I found a lot of the painting rather dull! 

So, art is what you like but even if it is not your thing it is still art!

Stay well

 I have spoken to several parents who are reluctant to have there children vaccinated and other whose child has decided for themselves not to have it. Yesterday our infection rate accounted for 20% of the worlds cases! We have 2000 deaths per million, China for example has 5! I am sure there are some discrepancies in all figures and statistics but ours remain way too high. Having done some research the consensus of medical opinion is that the infection rate is highest in the young. Britain has fallen out of the top ten of countries providing the vaccination and we seem to be much slower providing the booster than the initial doses? Yet this seems to be news, that is never on the front page or hardly written about. The rules have been relaxed and guess what the infection rate remains high! The vaccinated are less likely to end up in hospital or die but that has not stopped them doing so. I have said many times I am all for freedom of choice but if me or mine catch Covid because of the reluctance of others, then that is just plain irresponsible. There are still many adults who have not been vaccinated. If you had a disease and went to the doctor or hospital and they said take this medicine, it will help you recover, you would not hesitate for a moment. You would not stop and read conspiracy theories or look up all the possible but minimal side effects before taking it? What happened to the mantra, prevention is better than cure? Are we now more interested in our freedom than our protection? Very soon you’ll have far fewer freedoms than ever before based on what our government has done, is doing and proposing, do you want to be too ill or lost a loved one just because your to stubborn or ignorant to protect both yourself and others. Frankly I am fed up with those who continue to endanger both themselves and me! We can’t beat this virus but we can sure do something to protect ourselves. 

Get you and yours vaccinated and stop all this nonsense!

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/why-are-covid-cases-so-high-when-vaccination-is-widespread.html

Stay well

 I’ve just read a very long article in the New Yorker about McCartney and the Beatles ahead of the release of Peter Jackson’s trawl through all the footage from the Let it Be sessions. I am sure I have mentioned before, that I am a huge Beatles fan. Nothing strange about that I am juts one of many millions who grew up with their music. The first single I bought with my pocket money was She Loves you (I still have it). They were a large part of the soundtrack to my teenage years in the sixties. I can remember waiting for their latest single to be released and the anticipation as you wondered what they would do next? I was on holiday with a youth club in 1967, in Devon, when Sgt Peppers came out, I rushed to the local town to see if I could find it and managed to buy a copy. My next search was for a record player to listen to it on. It was an old machine and I was reluctant to play my brand new LP with its old stylist but my excitement to hear it overcame that and with a couple of like minded friends, we listened in awe to one of the greatest albums of all time. I vividly remember buying Hey Jude in Kingsbury North London and taking it out of the brown paper bag as much pleased with myself because I was accompanied by Jill and Mary, identical twins, who every lad in the school fancied, proper mods with their Mary Quant hair and black eyeliner! 

I remain a fan of both their collective and individual work, though I confess I have not kept up with much of the later stuff from McCartney or Starr. In some ways I feel sorry for McCartney who has to be the voice of the the past but at the same time he irritates me with his humble I am just an ordinary man act. I cannot be to harsh, the rarified atmosphere in which he is held is something none of us could possibly understand and there is no doubt he is very talented. My favourite post Beatles album is All Things Must Pass from George Harrison his outpouring of songs that he never got on Beatles albums, it is a true masterpiece! 

Music is a huge part of my life (not alone in that) Without it I would be bereft. I have to say most of the music I have heard from todays charts seems to be so angst ridden that I often say it is “music to cut your throat to” it is awfully depressing and there is far to much vocal “gymnastics” Still i am old and i know much was said as pop and rock music developed in the sixties by the older generation. It is the a natural progression. Who would have thought back then that so many of these great rock stars would still be around and still playing, certainly not many of themselves!

Stay well

Oh dear, good news is in short supply and has been for a while. Do you feel bruised by the constant stream of disaster and brutality? Has the last few years been a tsunami of hurt and betrayal? Do you keep wondering when it will end and you can breath again knowing the world has actually calmed down? There will always be tragedy, wars, disasters and all the other horrors that humans seem either to bring upon themselves or nature does in order to wipe us out! In recent years it feels like it has been non stop and just when you think you can mentally relax something else hits the headlines! It seems natural to me to engage with the world and care and yet I have a sneaky envy for those who don’t! Try as I might, I cannot switch off my outrage and disgust at the events that unfold. You can understand why people love pictures and videos of cats, dogs and other creatures doing silly things, its a relief from all the other crap they see! It is not all doom and gloom, there is always good and happy stuff going on but it sure does not feel like it a lot of the time!

If anyone doubts Climate Change then they are fools, plain and simple. you do not need to be a scientist, environmentalist or metrologist to see the changes to our planet, it is blindingly obvious! Those who deny it or question its validity have either an a profit making agenda or are just idiots. Governments talk and talk but seem to make little progress? The rate that we are ruining Earth is so far ahead of the rate in which we are trying to save it that I wonder if we can ever catch up? The young must despair at the state we have left their home in?

So there you are, cheery Sunday, have a good day.

Stay well

It is very sad that a sitting MP (or anyone else) has been murdered and sympathy and outrage are the correct reactions but his death pales in comparison with the continuing death toll from Covid. We seem to have become immune to the the still very high infection rate and the deaths. Ours is still the highest in Europe? We had this wonderful rollout of the vaccine, the government were praised for one of the rare things that it got right. Why are we not raging in outrage over this toll of human life? You think the pandemic is receding, think again? We are not back to “normal”, yet seeing people out and about you would think we are? I understand we want to put this tragic time behind us, move on, have our freedom back but let me tell you the figures do not reflect our complacency. This virus is still as dangerous as ever and now we have the flu season coming, with strains that we have been isolated from. The NHS is still under enormous strain, as it was anyway even before the pandemic. This virus can still get you, the vaccine is some protection but do not think for a minute that we are safe, because the evidence shows we are not and wont be for a long time! 

Stay well