Monday 31 August 2015

Social housing problems



31 August

What a miserable day it is out there today, and yet again it’s a Bank Holiday. As it is I have a blazing headache anyway, so it’s a good job we hadn’t got any plans for today apart from a nice quiet day at home reading and watching telly. For the last week we have been enjoying Big Blue Live on the BEEB. We love wildlife shows anyway but that one was really special. Well worth viewing on catch-up if you missed it.

I’ve mentioned the writer Ed James before but this morning he’s announced that his 7th novel in the Scott Cullen series. I shall be looking forward to getting my hands on it on me Kindle later this evening. He’s a good writer folks and the Scott Cullen books are excellent. Of course he’s in Edinburgh, just like Rebus but even though the genre is the same the writing is entirely different and there’s no cross over in storylines.

The roughest estate here in Dorktown is called Camphill. It was built originally to house miners living in this area. Then the council built a load more houses too. Over the years it was the estate where all the problem tenants were housed, and then they wondered why there were so many problems in the area. Over the last few years there’s been a regeneration of the estate with many house being demolished and flats and so on built to replace them.

A large number of these new properties are for sale, not for rent, which means that the stock of council houses have been reduced even further, but what happened to all the tenants that were moved out to make for the new builds? Well, the only thing I can think of was that they were moved into other estates, several of which have a bad reps anyway. So there I was looking at Facebook this morning and I found that one of the remaining council houses in Camphill was totally gutted by fire early this morning.

That means that there will be two more houses less again; one for the family who lived in the burned house, and two, the burned house which will need a lot of work doing on it to bring it back to use. That means that every one on the waiting list drops down two more places. I say waiting list because that is just what it is, a list of people waiting to be housed by the council/housing association.

They of course it’s not a waiting list because now everyone gets the same chance to bid on a property and win it. I can see their point but this bidding system isn’t quite so simple. There has to be a way of determining who gets offered the house first. Like us in this place, we were top of the list for this one and one in Bed’th but others we were as low as 6th or 7th. It all depends on the applicant’s circumstances and the type of property available.

On telly there have been stories of people waiting years and years for a place; so when I bid on six places on the Thursday before a Bank Holiday, I was really surprised to get a phone call on the Tuesday offering me a choice of two places. I viewed this one on the Thursday and signed for it the same day. Of course I’m not complaining about it. We both know we were very lucky to bid on the right places at the right time. They were my first bids too.

Today’s photo is from last weeks trip out … 

One of a number of white flowers about the place.

Today’s funny …

Two elderly ladies had been friends since their 30s. Now in their 80s, they still got together a couple of times a week to play cards. One day they were playing gin rummy and one of them said, "You know, we’ve been friends for many years and, please don't get mad, but for the life of me, I can't remember your name. Please tell me what it is."
Her friend glared at her. She continued to glare and stare at her for at least three minutes. Finally, she said, "How soon do you need to know?"

Sunday 30 August 2015

Name calling and violence threatened



29 August

Deary-deary me, the locals in Ipswich are up in arms and threatening violence upon my person. And why? Well, one of my nephews has named his daughter Destiny. She’s a pretty little girl but don’t like the name they chose for her. It seems that a lot of people are naming kids with similar names these days, look at Beckham kids for example. At least Destiny has been born into a stable relationship, for which I am pleased about.

Why don’t I like Destiny? Two reasons, 1, it’s the sort of name that Africans name their kids; 2, I can see Destiny getting a pretty hard time later in life because of it. Actually, it’s not really a matter of disliking it as such, more a case of thinking that it’s inappropriate for a white English girl in my opinion. Still, the deed is done and the girl will grow up and live with it. I just hope I am wrong and that no-one tells her of all this fuss and bother. I fear she will have enough to deal with anyway without knowing that someone has caused so much hatred to poured out over her name.

Our flat is feeling empty again. Kile is on his way home and this place is quiet again. Jan has taken him to church and then he will be taken to home from there. At least I can get some writing done now, or I hope so anyway. As I’ve said before I really do need peace and quiet to get any real writing done. Earlier this week I had an idea that I shall try out later this week. Basically, it’s got through with one of our folding tables and sit on the end of the bad to write. Why I hadn’t thought of this before I don’t know, but there you have it.

Yesterday I bought a Guardian newspaper, so far I’m not impressed, although there are few sections left to go through yet. It puzzles me as to how folks can read so many supplements there are in our weekend papers, I certainly can’t read them all in one day. As it is I already ditch the sports, gardening, money and property sections anyway. Having said all that, if the Telegraph moved to the easier to handle tabloid size, I would go for that one every day anyway.

August Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow, so what shall be do I wonder. Looking at the weather I can’t see us going anywhere simply because it’s not much fun out in the rain and using our scooters. We have DVDs to watch, a lot of recorded shows to watch and again, it’s a chance to get some writing done too. Jan will no doubt be engrossed in sorting out her growing bonsai collection. And I shall be trying to get my stuff on to Ebay, if it lets me this time! Ebay seems to change every time I go on it, bloody thing!

For today at least I have a lot of photos to edit, but before I started this I edit this one … 


Kile on the rock climbing thingy on Friday.

Today’s funny …

Three elderly sisters, ages 92, 94 and 96, shared a house together. One evening, the 96 year old sister went upstairs to take a bath. As she put her foot into the tub, she paused. Then she yelled down to the other two sisters and asked, "Was I getting in the tub or out?"
"You dern fool," said the 94 year old. "I'll come up and see." When she got half way up the stairs she paused. "Was I going up the stairs or down?"
The 92 year old sister was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea and thought, "I hope I never get that forgetful, knock on wood." She shook her head and called out, "I'll be up to help you both as soon as I see who's at the door."

Saturday 29 August 2015

A good day out yesterday.



28 August

Yesterday we had a run out to West Midlands Safari Park and we had a really good day, all three of us. I came back with 190+ photos, Kile 245 but I don’t know how many Jan got. When we got home Jan uploaded Kile’s lot onto her computer and showed me some of his shots, and he really is brilliant at it. He’s using my old Sony Alpha 350, a good camera anyway, and has learned to use it and the Tamron 18-270 lens he has on it.

But it’s not just the kit; he has a good photo-eye. By that I mean he looks and sees photos that Jan and me miss, even with all our experience. His shot of the flamingo head perfectly reflected in the lake at Burton a couple of months, … shows exactly what I mean. Yesterday he did the same again with at least two shots Jan showed me as they went through them together. One was small plains antelope head down feeding, the other was a yellow ball shaped flower. Both were perfectly framed and focused, and we missed both of them. But remember, he’s only 11 years old.

We were all tired by the time we got back here but we were all ready for a decent hot drink. After we left home we didn’t have another hat drink until we got home. There’s plenty of food and drink outlets at the Park but they are expensive and not very good, actually we were not impressed with the little we had over there. They don’t have Coke-cola, only Pepsi and we’re not fussed on that one, and what we had lived down to how we feel about Pepsi, over sweet, tasteless and flat. But what really bugged me was that they don’t service any ice for cold their drinks. What tea/coffee we saw was in card cups, not our idea of fun.

The drive through part was really good now that the free ranging monkeys have gone. The animal security was excellently controlled by use of traffic lights and rolling gates at the carnivore enclosures. The vegibores was fine as well apart from us arriving and starting our tour close to the hottest part of the day and most of them were lying down in shady areas. As we headed round it became obvious to me that I needed to pee, but we are not allowed to get out of the car. The result is that we had cut it short so I could go pee and that caused us to miss around the last 30-40 minutes of the tour.

Perhaps next time we will do the amusement park bit first and do the drive through later in the afternoon, there seemed to be a lot less cars about in that area when we got back to our car. And yes, we will go back seeing as we got a ticket for free admission for our car only and the three of us. Mind you, we will make sure we have enough drinks with us next time.

Right then, photo time … 

Kile’s flamingo shot, and I make no apologies for posting it again.

Today’s funny then … Could be a problem; our internet seems to be down and I now need to try to get it going … Ha-ha, its working …

My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.  Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.