The Birthday Pilgrimage to the Rollrights

Visiting the Rollright Stones has been on my to do list for a while, so what better day to do it than on your birthday was my thinking. I was not disappointed.

I first went to the King Stone, the weather worn appearance was beautiful plus it did look like it was sticking its finger upto the world, whilst in the field there were biggest coltsfoot leaves I'd ever seen, they were about 75cm across, if it ever starts to rain in summer they would make an adequate umbrella. 

From there we moved onto the stone circle itself, half of the stones are difficult to see so counting them is difficult, apparently if you count the same number of stones twice you can make a wish, I didn't attempt it but can see how such a belief occurred. I got chatting to a woman who saw me shuffling a set of tarot cards which I had bought with me to charge them up as I lost my favourite deck at Birmingham Pride. The omens of them working were good & I gave her my first reading of them after the confirmation they would work for me & from what she told me I was accurate which is good to know I haven't lost my knack.

It was then onto the Whispering Knights & to my delight I saw 2 bullfinches which were stunning, along with skylarks, meadow pipits & a rather lovely cinnabar moth. I did stop along the way to look at a dog rose too as the rose is my birth flower. The Knights were awesome too with many people leaving offerings of coins on them. Don't expect to get rich gathering them as no one left anything of higher value than two pence.  

It was well worth a visit &would love to go again in the future. I will update this post in the near future with photos & a bit more of the folklore of the place

The economic question of benefits & tax cuts

I'm probably not the most attuned to all the intricate details of economics in this country but I am willing to put my views on this topic into the public forum. I myself receive no benefits but I am a low income earner & less tax on me would mean I would have more disposable income with which I could spend, I would be able to afford to use public transport to go to my main job instead of walking four & a half miles to work on a route that becomes treacherous in bad weather or afford more uniform instead of waiting for it to go into holes before I replace it. I know many people who rely on their benefits to scrape by as single parents, disabled or have difficulties with their skill sets to get jobs. Many who work part time need the tax credits they get so they don't have be on full benefits & not working but can't work full time because of the needs of their children. Their are some people who I now who never be able to work again through disability & it seems to be us who are having to feel the brunt of things, if you are middle class or downwards we are being punished for those in power who frittered away the money in coffers, but rather than the money coming out of their pockets it comes out of ours. The banks were nigh on unregulated & those with the gambling power took great advantage of that, many of them still get their bonuses with their million odd pound a year wages which are now enjoying a tax cut so they can squander even more of their money. The rich are getting richer the poor are getting poorer. There is a theory that would spend more, in uncertain times even the rich will be holding on to their money so it really doesn't work out, plus are the government really expecting that the extra spending the richest 10% would do with a tax cut would out way the money that poorer in the society now can't spend even though their is a far greater percentage of people living below the poverty line of course it won't. Though I don't agree with living of the state all your life without contributing to it, you do need to support those who need a bit of extra help on the lower end of the monetary scale who are working their damned hardest to keep their necks above water. I dare say if this keeps up their will be another peasant's revolt type incident happening only this time it won't be royalty in the line of fire & we do have rights now grrrrr

The Olympics so far

With the opening ceremony not embarrassing us, well mostly, the chronological order of history was out a fair bit & a random volunteer leading out India, what can we say? Well good things & bad, as of time of writing this Team GB have not got a gold medal (though hopefully this is about to change, but not holding my breath). One amazing thing is that every team this year has a female competitor, it has surprised me that it took this long but hey, there is also women's boxing for the first time too, so yay for women's rights. The amount of openly LGBT competitors is down though, so not quite so good, but that is probably more to do with the qualifying times/scores of the individuals & the ability for some of the athletes to be out. We're doing OK as a nation on medals but not fantastically. But as an event for Great Britain well it doesn't seem to be working out too well financially. the British tourists are staying away from Olympic areas as they are expecting the traffic to be a nightmare & most hotels have put up their rates 10 fold so putting them out of price reach for somebody wanting to take in a show in London for the weekend or go to the beach at Weymouth. Stratford-upon-Avon however has had a boost to there economy because people want to see Shakespeare's stomping ground. A fair few of the sponsors of the Olympics had been tax dodging until protesters tightened their grip on them & looking at the Olympic sponsors, why don't we go all out in unhealthiness & have KV the official pork scratchings of the Olympics & Mr Kipling & Ginsters can have a go too. Then there is the empty seats, although they do seem to be seeing to that already. Will the Olympics boost our economy the answer seems to be no at the moment, with the irony that now London's attractions are so quiet now that it would be the perfect time to visit them. So far though I have been enjoying them, predominantly because I have been selective what I have been watching. But what happened to the quintessentially British sports of tossing the caber, gig racing, cheese rolling, pub skittles & street football? We were even good at tug-o-war back in the earlier days when it was an Olympic sport, why did we not see those we could have stood a chance of getting a gold in those, OK with the exception of gig racing & tug-o-war they are not international but we could have seen something interesting. Anyway off to check the medals board.

Natwest fiasco

I was stuck in this, for four days I did not have proper access to my account, but hats off to the people at the front facing level, it was frustrating to have to wait half an hour to get my money to pay my dues. I'm just glad I got off lightly, did not get blacklisted, have a house deal collapse or have to spend a short stretch in prison for none payment of fines like some people did. It does make you wonder though why a company so big wouldn't have made sure that they had the software/hardware to deal with such a situation if it arose, although in the short term it may seem a bit pricey but the damage that they are now going to have to put right are is going to cost more & the customers that they have lost & are losing because of it is going to cost them way more. Companies should not cut corners or eventually they will fall on their asses,. Local councils working on the highways agency is another case in point of this as they are using cheaper materials to resurface our roads with & we are now in the midst of having millions of potholes in the road & are having to resurface the roads every couple of years which they didn't have to do before. Its just with  Natwest with the recent scandals you would have thought they would have learnt their lesson from complacency, but it appears not & they feel that they are immune as they already one thing go wrong so nothing else could possibly go wrong. It is the wrong attitude to take & you are only doing yourselves more harm, sort it out & plan for if the worst should happen & hopefully in these uncertain economic times you won't go under.

Would the world be a better place without money?

With the world seeming to be going belly up financially at the moment it almost makes me feel that it would be better if we didn't have money & people just did skill & product exchange, no corrupt bankers screwing people over, no wars over financial gain & no imploding on a vast scale that could leave us all doomed. It could be argued that society would not have advanced so much without out it, but have we advanced? We have nice things yes, society has expanded, we trade further afield & therefore communicate further afield, We experience different cultures more as we travel, though as to whether we treat them as positive or negative comes down to the individual. We still need law enforcement though, to keep people from doing wrong, we still get sick, we are living longer but half the time we are sticking our older generations into retirement homes to let someone else take care of them & shipping our children off to child minders or nurseries from an ever younger age so we are longer bonding with the older or younger generations like we used to, just so we can earn more money. I suppose it all comes down to status, people think that money is the key to that, are they wrong? Should money equal power? Are we failing our poor just so we can lord over them with our money, shouldn't we be helping all of society? Would having no such thing as money sort out these problems? Money is just a man made construct, if we reset the worlds finances as zero in all countries or cancelled all debt would the world end up in a better place because of it? Would making one pound equal to one euro, one dollar, one yen etc make the world a fairer place to live in, with people earning from their commodities but not then going from country to country for a better deal as their money is worth or in a different country? It is hard to tell but soon the world's economies could implode with the euro destabilising even further with the possibility that Greece may have to pull out & that Spain & Italy could also need bailing out, it could then be that Germany, the richest country in Europe could see it finances going down the toilet which could see the economic world come crashing down as Europe is one of the major powers in the economic market. I'm hoping things will turn out well in the end but until things either settle or go horribly wrong we will not know how best to tackle whatever financial situation is on a personal level. Hopefully if we keep paying our taxes that the government will try to see the country right (though not holding my breath)