Lazy Sunday

27 November 2011

For one reason or another Jan had I have a busy week with a number of very early mornings (fur us at least), and one night of disturbed sleep due to Kile's mum needing our help after a disastrous operation in hospital the other day.  I shall be encouraging her seek legal advice of the cause of it.  As a teenager she had braces fitted to her teeth but the dentist made a right cock up of it and she has had to have eight teeth removed - hence the need to for her operation.  To my mind she ought to be compensated for it!

On another day I had to get up to make an appointment with a doctor because of what looked like an infection; it was and now I'm on antibiotics for 7 days ... as it if I'm not enough pills!  To make an appointment for that day we are requested to phone the practice at 8am - which means getting up a little earlier than that.  It was 3 minutes past 8 when I fist phoned - it was engaged ... and so it went on until 8.25 when I finally got the phone ringing on the other end.  Another 10 minute wait to get through to make the appointment.  Think about folks ... it's called a GP practice - and by heck they need it!  But perhaps after so many years they actually stopped practicing and id the job for real.  Maybe then the NHS would work properly!  Anyway, we are having a lazy day today because of it all. 

So what's new in the world today then?  Nothing really.  Let's face it, we still have a Tory led government so why is everyone surprised that inflation is going up, unemployment is going, youth unemployment is going up even faster.  We have soup kitchens and food handouts.  It's all typical of the Tory ideology of "if you can't afford it, you can't have it!"  Which is fine when we talk of widescreen TV's and the latest iPhone or must have gadget.  But basics like food and water and electricity are not just that, basics, not luxuries!

The chances are that some of you will already know how I feel about the Tory's, but I have to be honest and say that some of this 'need' may actually be down to some of the so-called 'needy'.  Jan and I live on disability benefits and it certainly doesn't allow us to live in luxury.  Yet we both have cars; we both have new laptops and DSLR cameras and lenses; we have a full freezer of food from which we always eat well - a nice chunk of rump steak for today for example; my fruit bowel is always full; we spoil Kile rotten every time we have him for the weekend.  So what is different with us compared with some of the 'needy'?  

I was sat in Whetherspoons the other day.  Always on the lookout for anew story ideas I keep my eyes and ears open to what is going around.  At a table not  from me sat three people, all with full pints of what looked like lager.  As I sat with my orange and lemonade I watched one of the three get up and get three more pints - at £2+ each.  Then he sat and rolled himself a ciggie.  One of the others asked, "I thought you were going to give that up?"  The smoker replied, "Why?  It's the bit of pleasure I have in my life," and off he went for his smoke.

How sad!  If smoking is his only pleasure in his life.  But hang on, he'd just bought another pint - doesn't he enjoy that too?  My orange and lemonade is not me trying to be virtuous.  I love real ale.  Somewhere in all my stories a real ale lover gets in there.  But I know full well that I want to lose any weight at all, and I do, then I have to leave the booze alone!  As for smoking, I've never smoked in life.  But here's thing ... because I don't smoke I have extra cash to spend on laptops and cameras and more importantly, to fill the freezer.  And because I have stopped drinking I have the cash to buy a photo-mag every week and subscribe to a birding mag as well as two writing mags.

Food is a basic right not a luxury to be tagged on at the end if it can be afforded!  There is no way in 21st Century Britain that people should be dependent on food handouts and soup kitchens.  People should not have to make a choice of sitting in the cold or having a meal.  Luxuries are just that, luxuries, paid for with cash left over when the bills are paid, the freezer full, the kids dressed and well and fed!