"Do Diddely Di Dum, Do Diddely Di Dum Day"

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I am more than willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder,

united with our Irish brothers, sisters and cousins.

BUT instead of helping the Irish people,

which is the right thing to do,

we are bailing out her politicians

from the consequences of their euro folly.

"We do not want to have to bail out the Irish economy."

I will drink to that.

This calls for a little Irish music, I tink.

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I tink we should help the Irish people direct.

So, if there are any Irish Grannies out there,

that fancy a wee holiday in the Thames Valley,

just drop Uncle Bernard a line.

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"Little Old Ladies"

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I have quite a number of old songs about..

"Little Old Ladies",

but not 'sight nor sound' of old gentlemen

of any dimensions!

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I guess it's because you ladies (the stronger sex?)

outlive us men (the weaker sex?) by many years.

So how many of us are going to freeze to death this winter?

From the news....

BRITISH OLD AGED PENSIONER Weekly Pension Allowance £100.

Spouse (wife) Allowance £52.

Additional weekly hardship allowance - NIL...

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS / REFUGEES LIVING IN BRITAIN

Weekly Pension Allowance £250. Spouse Allowance £225.

Additional Hardship Allowance £100?

"I hope you have read the foregoing and that you will forward it to all your contacts so that we can lobby for a decent old aged pension. After all, the average pensioner has paid taxes and contributed to the growth of this country for the last 40 to 60 years. Sad isn't it?

According to information given out by our parliament we are "broke" and can't help our own Senior citizens, Troops or Homeless. In the last month we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , Turkey , Greece , Pakistan .

Our pensioners are living on a 'fixed income' and the vast majority receive no extra aid or get any breaks while our Government and religious organizations pour hundreds of millions of pounds and tons of food to foreign countries ."

I find it strange that there is so much cross-party support for increasing overseas aid. Apparently we are committed because we promised to spend 0.7% of GDP in line with the Millennium Goals we signed up to.

So, our government keeps promises made to foreigners but rats on its own people. Amazing!

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Last week the BBC actually mentioned the fact that India receives hundreds of millions in British handouts whilst still have the luxury of engaging in its own space programme.

Over the years the Indians are probably £billions better off and thousands of our pensioners will have frozen to death because they can't afford to keep warm in winter.

It wouldn't surprise me if a few in government and at the BBC might be not be too unhappy with this result.

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And lastly, have you noticed how Boy George

has lowered the Winter Fuel allowance to pensioners by £50?

(£250 to £200)

Is there anyone in the country

who has experienced a drop in their bills for gas and electric?

No. Thought not!

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If we must comply.

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“Business chiefs have issued advice to companies and public bodies on how to escape heavy penalties for failing to display european union flags after British organisations were fined an astonishing £150 million for not giving the eu enough publicity.

Companies receiving European grants MUST display its logo on their buildings, posters and websites.”

So there!

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OK?

Since 1973 Britain has NEVER received a single penny of eu money. As a NET contributor, any grant, is some of our OWN money being given back to us with 'strings attached'.

And if we don't ‘toe the line’, it gets snatched back.

Its not enough to be slaves,

but we must also show that we love our generous overlords.

So......

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When did we agree to this slavery?

Isn't it time we left?

Just tell them to 'push' off!

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Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

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"At least he's pleased at the outcome - for the time-being."

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Labour pledges to :-

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Well, Gordon Broon, the Prime Monster, has just told an open court that we shouldn't expect him to be telling the truth with his promises, and that no manifesto pledge can be considered to be binding in anyway.

In the court case brought against him, by a UKIP member, for breach of contract over a referendum on the EU Constitution, Brown's personal barrister just told the court that :-

"Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation".

Sorry folks, the future looks grim!

Perhaps we should vote for someone else?

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"I Wanted to go to Birmingham" . . . . .Really?

.

"Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do?"

"I wanted to go to Birmingham........in 75minutes!"

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Today's headlines in our local papers tell a sad tale.

"The owners of 440 homes face having their properties demolished to make way for the first stage of a 250mph rail line from London to Birmingham”

The proposed line after leaving London will slice through our beloved Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty.

All of those places that I have been posting about recently are likely to be affected.

Amersham, Great Missenden and Wendover.

Already, as you would expect, the people of these villages are forming protest groups, and rightly so. But what we have here is a proposal, a blueprint and is not being supported by the Conservatives.

A change of government could see a change of plan.

What I am unable to understand is WHY there is a need for a third line to Birmingham? It is certainly not one of our most attractive cities.

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Old Amersham High Street.

We already have a rail service running quietly up through Amersham to Aylesbury.

We already have the Chiltern Line serving Beaconsfield, Wycombe and Princes Risborough. Both can take you on to Birmingham gently and peacefully.

Why this obsession with speed?

Who would benefit from arriving in New Street ten or twenty minutes earlier than at the present?

A few wealthy business travellers, that’s who.

Everything seems to be wrong with this proposal.

Spending £30 billion on another railway line linking cities which are already well linked by road and rail, merely to reduce the time spent in the train for a small minority, is truly stupidity and extravagance on a monumental scale.

We are told it may provide up to 10,000 jobs (for Labour voters), but I believe it to be an utterly pointless waste of effort, a waste of resources and will bring about the destruction of a huge swathe of our already diminishing countryside.

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A back lane in Princes Risborough.

Theresa Villiers, the Tory shadow secretary of state for transport, poured scorn on the plans. She said,

“We have made a clear pledge to the travelling public that we see no point in building a line which only the rich can afford to use. No equivalent promise has been made by Labour.”

“The next Conservative government will begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, with construction to begin in 2015.”

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Peace in Little Missenden.

So friends, a change of government will only bring a change of route and will still upset thousands of people, gobble up millions of square yards of our countryside just so the wealthy can save minutes off their journey to one of the most unattractive cities in Britain.

“Fast trains are like fast food: the wrong diet for healthy growth”

Small Morsels

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Well, as Foody was interested in the packets in my weekly shop, I shall reveal all.

Not all the shopping, mind you, just the foodie bits.

I don't eat crisps and nibbles and things.....well, I mean I do but I don't make a habit of buying them. However, I am having little visitors on Saturday, and in order to keep up their strength after all the organ cranking I though I had better make a start at getting in a few things that little stomachs require. I need to go out again on Friday.

Yes, great uncle B is having a visit from some of his great nephews and nieces as happened here last year.

I have no idea what these are like.

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I expect Foody will put me right?

Now on a totally different subject........being a pensioner, about this time of the year I am thrilled to get an increase in my state pension.

This year I was informed that I would get a weekly increase of £2.40.

I was asked not to spend it all at once!

This is about £10 per month.

In the same post I had a letter from Thames Water putting up my Direct Debit by £5 per month.

That is just one bill.....and half of it has gone.

They must be living on another planet.

And then, out of sheer generosity, (which does not include me by the way) they invite those over 80 to apply for an extra morsel.

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Note....you MAY be entitled to an extra 25 pence!

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England and Englishness.

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Jan asked….Fri Feb 5

“By the way, could someone from across the ocean tell me when I'm supposed to use these terms? Great Britain, England, British, English. In my mind Great Britain is everything on your island and England excludes Scotland and maybe other areas? Mostly I just avoid the terms, though, because I'm not sure how to use them properly.”

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Britain comprises Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Great Britain comprises England, Scotland and Wales.

Britain’s full title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

(Although the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not part of the United Kingdom of GB &NI, they have a special relationship with it.)

In 1973 Britain joined the European Union.

The EU then went on to carve Britain up into Regions. There was Scotland and Wales for a starter, but the remainder (England) was too large a region so it was carved up into smaller regions, for example we have a South West Regional Development Agency.

England is no longer on their map.

It was Jack Straw who is on record as saying “The English are not worth saving as a race”.

The English were slightly miffed to put it mildly.

Thus there is now a marked rise in the number people who, without a second thought, would once have called themselves British, but now refer to themselves as English.

I for one!

Over the last ten years or so, amongst commentators, academics and the media, deconstructing 'Englishness' became the order of the day, in a way which would not be tolerated by the Scots, say, or the Welsh, who have instead been encouraged at every turn to re-affirm their sense of identity.

This negative onslaught is the background to the new-found celebration of England.

The new celebration of England and Englishness will be more visible from now on simply because, in the minds of millions of us, it needs to be.

I am firstly English and secondly British.

I am not a European.

Europe is part of a Tectonic plate, it is a Continent not a Country, it is an insult to all Nations with a language, a history, a culture, and an identity.

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Foody, April last year left me this interesting comment.

“Many foreigners think that England is the whole of Britain and they think Scotland and Wales are parts of England. They usually assume you're English if you say "British". Imagine how irritating that might get. Even people on the telly and radio talk of England when they mean Britain and vice versa. You notice these things if you start to look out for them. When people on the media don't appear to know basic facts and geography it's a bit bad. I suppose the more the smaller nations hear these things the more annoying it gets so the more they have feel the need to assert themselves over the years.

It kind of gets me when I hear people talk of 'British law'. There is no such thing. Even the BBC do this. There's the law of England and Wales and there's Scots law. They talk of 'UK law' too and again there's no such thing but it has come to be used to refer to the laws of the UK as opposed to those that Brussels imposes on the UK."

Old Scrooge.

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I was just beginning to enjoy the run up to Christmas and now that Parliament has folded up I was not expecting to get wound up and angry for several weeks but…

This in the Sunday papers made my blood boil, even though it is -4'C outside!

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Village hall dances and other charity events face a new £20 million tax after Scrooge Mandyson scrapped an opt-out which allowed voluntary organisations to play recorded music.

Community groups said last night they would be forced to abandon hundreds of services for the elderly and children because of the new rules.

Abolition of the so-called PPL exemption will affect charity discos, tea dances, youth clubs, salsa groups, sports clubs, coffee mornings and even charity shops which have a radio in their staff room.

In its own impact assessment the Government admits that it will cost voluntary groups £20 million a year and will be "highly detrimental". Some organisations will "cease playing music" because they cannot afford a license, and it will hit a quarter of a million organisations - 140,000 charities, 6,750 charity shops, 66,440 sports clubs, 4,000 community buildings, 5,000 rural halls and 45,000 religious buildings.

The shadow minister for charities, said: "This is another Liebour assault on the fabric of British community life. Having shut down post offices and local pubs, Liebour's Whitehall bureaucrats now have village halls, scout huts and churches in their sights.

Fancy raising this during the run up to Christmas! I understand there is a campaign being set up to oppose it as it is nothing short of a heartless tax on Christmas discos and dances in community buildings across the country.

The cash, I gather, is handed to organisations which pass on royalty payments to musicians and songwriters who you can bet your bottom dollar are not ‘short of a few bob’.

Outrageous!

At least they haven’t gone for us ’live performers’…….yet.

After all that, it's hard to get back into a good mood....still let's have a go.

Sign seen in a Mothercare shop….

“You should have danced all night.”

And....

There was once an old person of Tring

Who, whenever they asked him to sing,

Replied "Isn't it odd?

I can never tell `God

Save the Weasel' from `Pop Goes the King'."

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However....I still LOVE sprouts.

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Today is the 1st of December, perhaps we should call it

"Loss of Independence Day"?

This morning the eu will at last have the supreme government it has wanted for so long – unelected, unaccountable and, as even its own polls show, less popular with those it rules over than ever before. But what do the politicians care? They have the power, and we now have a government we can never dismiss.

The eu is a corrupt dictatorship wearing the clothes of a democracy.

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Just five of the many things we lost at midnight.

1. Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum. Latin for "you may hold the body subject to examination". This undeniable right protects one from the state.

2. Courts de jure. Latin for "courts by jury". We have some 70 courts in our land geared for jury trials. Today your right to be judged by a jury of your peers evaporates completely.

3. Innocent until proven guilty. This morning we start playing a whole new game whereby you, the accused, are guilty until you can prove your innocence.

4. Loss of sovereignty. Under the eu our sovereignty is dead and buried. No more English, no more Scots, no more Irish, no more Welsh. We are all european now.

5. Democracy. From the Greek demokratia-power to the people. This morning we give away this unique method of rule for an oligarchy. Mandarins in Europe are not elected. They are selected.

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However....I still LOVE sprouts.

I got that stick, by the way, in Sainsburys for only a pound!

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“A bad day for British democracy”.

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As Czech President Vaclav Klaus finally agreed to sign off on the Lisbon Treaty,

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was

“A bad day for British democracy”.

Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP and leading Euro-sceptic said the signing was a step towards a European super-state. Saying

“The boot continues to stamp on the human face.”

The UKIP Leader Nigel Farage added:

"Today marks the day in which people will have to start asking themselves what it is they want for the future of their country."

"Do they want a land that is second in the affections of its rulers? A land whose laws are made by those who neither live here nor care about our citizens? A land who is governed by those who, be they ever so decent, have no sympathy for our ways, our traditions, our quirks, our foibles."

"Or do they wish to live in a land of which they can be proud of? One that is a friend to those who wish to be its friends but is prepared to stand up for what it believes is right."

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I find it hard, very very hard, though every means I try;

My living to get and keep out of debt,

But I can't and I don't know why.

I bought a Butcher's shop last year,

A grand one in High Street;

Oh! dear, oh! dear, it turned out queer,

Up went the price of meat!

Up went the price of meat,

Up went the price of meat.

There's heaps of troubles on this young man's mind.

They raised the price of meat!

And that was written in 1882.

And what has this little song got to do with the lisbon treaty?

Britain's farmers are going to be forced to tag individual sheep by means of electronic implant - a very expensive procedure compulsorily pushed on an industry that is already on its knees

Why? Because......

The introduction of electronic identification is an eu obligation, which must be implemented

Lord Tunnicliffe, the Minister supporting the regulation, stated

"I accept that this regulation is probably, on balance, not a good idea. It will create more costs than benefits in most of the industry.... "

"My Lords, it is absolutely clear, I am afraid, that the industry and the individuals in the industry will pay."

The damage done to the UK sheep flock will express itself in further reductions to the national flock, more farmers giving up and even fewer livestock visible in our countryside.

This is a classic example of the worst excesses of eurobureaucracy. It is entirely unnecessary, it is positively harmful and when questioned the answer from the proponents is :-

"That's the way it shall be, because the EU says so, so there."

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Now expect more and more and more.

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Rocking Horse S**t hits the Fan!

I am writing this on the day the Irish people go to the polls to decide whether we are to be freed from the iron grip of the eu or have our lives made ever worse by more and more stupid directives.

This is the latest to ‘wind me up’ to an anti eu frenzy!

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Britains’ tradition of rocking horse manufacture could be crippled by new eu safety regulations. According to the new standards, “activity toys” cannot have a height from saddle to floor of more than TWO feet! (or in their bloody directive - 60cm).

The British manufacturers say that, that effectively rules out all but the smallest rocking horses and could not only ruin a £35 million per year cottage industry but also deprive future generations of children of a magnificent traditional toy.

There is something very special about the traditional rocking horse. It occupies pride of place among playthings, to those who have parents who can afford to buy one.

Not only is it solid and dependable, but in many cases is a work of art that is likely to become a family heirloom.

The first toy horses appeared in the 15th century. These were the hobby horses, and in their simplest form might be no more than a stick with a carved head added.

By the late 17th century fully carved horses had begun to appear. These horses comprised a basic wooden structure covered in a thin layer of plaster called gesso.

This is the same as I used on my carvings on the organ front.

The most popular paint finish over this gesso, was a dappled grey, although for the most expensive horses, real animal skins were used.

The horse’s features were usually painted on, perhaps with the addition of glass eyes. The manes and tail were often real horse hair, and the saddles and bridles leather.

Today there are numerous different models from which to choose, but the basic Victorian design has remained largely unchanged.

Traditionally, rocking horse bodies were made of yellow pine, but this wood is now expensive and hard to obtain so woods such as Douglas Fir or Malayan jetlung are used.

Some horses are composed of as many as 16 different pieces of wood. Each horse generally takes between 60 and 80 hours to complete.

Antique rocking horses are now collectors‘ items and are fetching very high prices at auction.

However, if the eu have their wicked way there will be no chance of traditional rocking horses becoming the prized antiques of the next century.

One way round this would be to not to sell them as “activity toys” but label them as “for decorative use only” and then let the children ride them with the horses backsides facing brussels!

A Cat's Whisker

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"Never mind 'Global warming', where's that pesky Blackbird?"

I received the following from my friend in Australia.

Read the following analogy and you will realize the insignificance of carbon dioxide as a weather controller.

Here's a practical way to understand Australia’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

If we knew the amount of carbon dioxide that GB human activity puts into the atmosphere we could swap it for the Australian figure of 0.18mm. It can't be very different?

Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a walk along it.

The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.

The next 210 metres are Oxygen.

That's 980 metres of the 1 kilometre….. 20 metres to go.

The next 10 metres are water vapour…. 10 metres left.

9 metres are argon. …. Just 1 more metre.

A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.

The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre - that's carbon dioxide.

A bit over one foot.

97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.

Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left.

Just over a centimetre …. about half an inch.

That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.

And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in 0.18 of a millimetre.

Less than the thickness of a hair.

Out of a kilometre!

As a hair is to a kilometre - so is Australia's contribution to what Mr. Rudd calls Carbon Pollution.

Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway Bridge, ready to be opened by Mr. Rudd. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean.

Except that if Mr. Rudd says "We have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted -there's a human hair on the roadway,."....we'd laugh ourselves silly.

There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It's hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.

Those Pesky Mini-Banjos

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The other week, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were accompanied by hundreds of audience members at the Albert Hall.

"The tally was rising even as people took their seats. One minute the rumour was that there were 500 ukuleles secreted about the audience of the Albert Hall."

" The next it was 800. By 10pm kick-off, It was being told that some 2,000 of the pesky mini-banjos were about to be unleashed on Beethoven’s Ode to Joy."

Poor old Beethoven.

But there is an amusing side to this....."Ode to Joy" is used by the dreaded eu as it's anthem.

Perhaps this was a way of blowing a "raspberry" at Brussels?

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Stand up for England

Yesterday I was browsing through the BBC iPlayer and I noticed they had program categories for ‘Northern Ireland’, Scotland and Wales.

As “Chad” would have said “Wot no England?”

No, the BBC do not recognise England as a country.

So today is my “Stand up for England” day.

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Old England ain’t a country what’s ruled by Gestapos,

By blokes dressed up in uniforms and goodness only knows.

You sees a copper now an’ then but if you ain’t on the twist,

They treats you matey an’ polite, there ain’t no mailed fist;

An’ I want to keep it just like that!

Yes, I want to keep it just like that!

This England’s full of freedom for blokes like me an’ you,

Make no mistake we treasure it an’ are fighting for it too.

I don’t allow nobody for to dictate fings to me,

Excepting p’raps the missus…still that’s ‘ow it ort to be;

An’ I mean to keep it just like that!

Yes, I mean to keep it just like that!

When the Queen signed the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, this country adopted the EU Regionalisation Plan. This abolished England's 48 counties and replaced them with 9 European regions, each with its own Regional Capital, who reports directly to Brussels, not to Westminster.

This effectively obliterates the country of England.

For example the County of Cornwall is replaced by the South West Region, which stretches from Lands End and includes Gloucestershire and Wiltshire; its regional capital is Exeter

After the EU abolishes our 48 counties your address will change from 4 High St, Taunton, Somerset, Great Britain, to 4 High St, Taunton, Area K, European Union.

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Save our Counties.

The English summer has changed.

The cylinder lawnmower has disappeared.

The tartan picnic rug has been waterproofed

with sticky-back plastic and yet one

20th century item has remained constant,

…..the Panama hat.

This stylish headgear is more than a smart accessory,

It identifies an Englishman,

It is a statement of patriotic standing.

It is an old friend reborn with the arrival of the high sun,

It is the raffish stamp of the civilised Englishman.

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My “stamp of a civilised Englishman”.

"Wot, no cylinder lawnmowers?

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Cylinder lawnmowers are still alive and well in Filey, Yorkshire and that's because Stan Hardwick has 365 different mowers to try out.

The retired greenkeeper is fascinated by the machines and owns every type imaginable. Some date back to the mid-19th century.

With the grudging consent of his wife Margaret, 68, Mr Hardwick keeps his favourite examples in the conservatory and the front room for visitors to admire. The rest are stored in a huge two-storey shed at the bottom of the back garden.

Mr Hardwick, 69, who has been dubbed the Lawn Ranger, said: 'Some of my mates think I'm mad, but pals I know from greenkeeping are quite interested.

And, if you've got a few minutes, here's a new song that's just popped up on YouTube.

There.......I feel better now!

Musings on Money

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Todays sheet music is dated 1922.

So in 87 years nothing much has changed!

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Deb (Harmony Club) said she was feeling 'tired, and gave me the idea here, but I expect it was 'sleepy tired' rather than this.......

"Some get tired of drinking and of eating,

Sweethearts sometimes they get tired of meeting,

Some get so tired of work, night and day,

People even get so weary, too tired to play,

Some get tired of asking someone for a kiss,

Nobody yet got tired of asking this."

Chorus......"I want some Money....etc"

And on the subject of money, I am alarmed that Government departments are spending time and money on preparing to scrap the pound.

Whitehall departments are spending time and taxpayers’ money updating their plans for the switch and each one has a named minister in charge of the process!

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said:

“It now appears that Broon and Mandelsnake have a secret Whitehall agenda to exploit their appalling mismanagement of the public finances and use it as an excuse to join the euro”.

“Time and resources are now being spent on preparing to issue council tax bills and TV licences in the new currency“.

Do they know something we don’t?

You bet your bottom ‘Pound Sterling’ they do.

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Now why have I shown you a couple of quid? ....

Well, if you look closely you will notice that the cross on the Queen's Crown has been removed!

What's all this about then?

Has someone been 'offended'?

This next "non-PC" song dates back to 1902.

The decades of prim Victorian rule and the seemingly never-ending war (sounds familiar) in South Africa made the British public yearn for 'something different'.

Every verse builds into the lyrics, an air of expectancy for the 'good times' that were to come...."Father's going to change his socks and Auntie have a bath" and the sentiments echoed by the chorus clearly predict the splendour of the Edwardian era that was just around the corner.

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Summer Hols

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Politicians have just "broken up" for the longest recess ever.

With all that lovely tax payers money they prepare to start a bumper 82-day summer holiday.

I wonder where they are planning to go?

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Here perhaps?

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Or how about 82 weeks in......

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But no......with all that lovely money of ours.....

Swimming pigs have been photographed taking a dip in the tropical waters of the Bahamas.

They are such a familiar sight at the spot that locals have named the area "Pig Beach."

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It's a stay-at-home holiday for me, I'm afraid......I'm skint !

Last summer I went to Devon for a holiday.

The landlady said to me

“We charge £20 a night, bed and breakfast…..or £12 a night if you make your own bed.”

“Oh, alright” I said,

“I’ll make the bed.”

She gave me some wood, a saw, and a hammer and nails!

Pick-your-Own rubbish !

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I don't like to have too many moans......but this sort of thing really does make me cross.

What sort of society are we all going to end up living in?

Well, the latest from the "elf 'n safety" plonkers is stating that..." pick-your-own fruit farms could be hiding a host of hazards within their hedgerows."

Mr Boddington, the farm owner said:

"To us it’s a pick-your-own farm but to the insurers and the health and safety people it’s a strawberry factory."

‘The insurers want us to cotton wool the place by adding walkways and bridges, and making restricted zones with cordons.

‘They even wanted us to put handrails in. It is a sad day when a pick-your- own farm is closing because of heath and safety fears."

It appears this all started about a year ago, when an elderly lady filed a claim against the farm’s insurers over a fall that left her in hospital.

Mr Boddington, went on to say: "With that claim, our insurance premium more than doubled. It was already in the thousands of pounds and that was far too much."

"‘A guy from the insurance company came out and assessed the whole site and said we needed tape or a barrier around any hazard such as a hole in the path or field."

A statement on the farm’s website read: "It is with much sadness that we have had to make the decision not to open to the public."

"Firstly, we have been advised that we would need to implement radical refurbishment of the fields to make them safe for you, and the cost of this would be more than any turnover we generate."

"Added to this the cost of insuring you all just in case you injure yourselves while here has also rocketed to more than the turnover."

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People are so stupid, so lacking in responsibility for their own actions. By suing people left, right and centre, they are hemming themselves in more and more until it will no longer be possible to do anything but stay in bed all day.

"Elf 'n safety" is a repressive regime that stifles the population and its freedoms, while serving to propagate the "it's someone Else's fault" mentality.

I blame the eu, because they are the ones who put this law in place, and where most other eu countries don't bother applying it, the idiots here, follow it to the letter without deviating from the script, and forgoing common sense.

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Sunday Rant

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“Why do people think their 'supremacy' gives them the right of life and death over other creatures?”

A good question Foody.

Do you know, I've been lying awake at night thinking "God, please give us a Tory government so that they can urgently give people the right to chase animals around for a laugh before ripping them limb from limb, just for a jolly good bit of fun".

Well, my prayers have been heard!

How can a party who in certain other fields argue so strongly for the right to life, put as their priority the right to murder other creatures "for fun".

Would that be because human life is far more important than any other form of life?

In which case, anyone mind if I come and chase their cat or dog around for a bit with a baying pack of hounds before having ripped to shreds?

"Animals don't have feelings".

Step on a dog's foot and watch it yelp out in pain.

"Its a tradition".

Oh, that’s ok then, the rights or wrongs of something are irrelevant if its a tradition.

How bloody stupid.

12 years in the wilderness, worst recession since the 30s, unemployment rising, businesses going under, for which our policy is "wait and see", but......

....... one thing we can promise we can do is make murdering foxes for fun legal again.

Is this their priority?

I really despair of this opposition party at times.

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"One Man's Meat is another Man's Poison"

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A barmy new EU rule says, that owners of horses and ponies, must sign a pledge not to eat their pets — or face up to two years in jail.

The Horse Identification Regulations, to come into force next month, are partly aimed at stopping harmful vets’ drugs entering humans’ diets.

British owners will be ‘saddled’ with the legislation even though it is aimed mainly at continentals who happily munch through two million of the creatures every year.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said:

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall when the Queen and Princess Anne are asked to sign a form saying they’re not going to eat their horses“.

All British horses will be treated as though they are headed for the dinner plate unless the owner declares otherwise.

Furious stable owner Kate Gillanders, of Kinross, Perthshire, said yesterday: “The thought of them being eaten is utterly repulsive. Brussels is poking its nose in where it should not be.”

Albert Busker said "This sort of thing gets me angry and all wound up"

“We don’t see our horses as cattle. “The EU knows nothing about me and cares even less."

I wonder how long it will be before they extend this to include other pets like dogs?

And what about all those people who keep snails?......or frogs?

Lets finish with a smile.

A blogging ‘petite’ young lass

Had a truly magnificent ass;

Not rounded and pink,

As some of you think !!!

It was grey…had long ears…and ate grass.

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