No Blogging for a few days....

This week I am mostly..... fishing,

in West Wales

Just guessing.

Figures from the National Guesswork Authority show that the rate of inflation is 1.9%

I just don't believe it; I know that I am unlucky in life.... to the extent that if I joined a marching band I would be given the grand piano... but I cannot believe that everything that I need and buy from the list of goods and services in the CPI list are the only things that have gone up in price and that everything I choose not to buy has gone down in price.

I do not understand economics.

If I go fishing and park in a seaside car park ; I find the price has increased by at least 10% and in some cases 33% ( actually more as the hours you have to pay full rate have been extended ). Fuel for my car has gone up, when the dollar is strong fuel prices rise as 'oil is priced in dollars' when you can get pockets full of dollars for a pound I would expect the price of petrol to come down; it does not. Prices for fishing bait, fresh and frozen, have risen.
Takeaway food, especially fish and chips is now far more expensive than last year. All of this , especially when you chuck in the above inflation rises in council tax etc, makes the rate of 1.9% looks deeply suspicious.

Food price inflation is about to take off. The fucking EU and supermarket buyers have stuffed and bludgeoned the English dairy farmer over the years and now there is a huge shortage of English produced milk. Talking to someone involved in the food industry I hear that butter prices have gone sky high. We used to get butter from NZ but they, after being shit upon by our politicians, have found other markets in Oz, China and India. The UK wholesale price of butter has risen from about £1800/ton to £3400/ton and is going on to £3800/ton for September deliveries....... yet supermarkets are still selling the stuff for 53p per 500g or about £1000/ton.... as I said, I don't understand economics !
I hear that supplies of butter are coming in from Iceland, no that's not a typo for Ireland where they are known for dairy farming, I mean bloody Iceland .... for fuck's sake!
(The average Icelandic farm is small, with 18 milk cows )
Milk auction prices are double what they were last year, milk powder price has doubled, cheese up 60-70% and grain perhaps up 30%... and rising.
Vegetable oil and grain prices will rise further as more jump onto the bio-fuel bandwagon.

Any bets on Goblin King Brown dashing for an election in October before the prices work through and the shit hits the fan with the economy ?

Police again.

Following on from my last post, we have the news that we will have to rely on the services of children because of recruiting decisions made by some twat of a policeman.

"they demonstrated the skills that we need,"

So we are to have "police substitutes" who are aware of health and safety issues, gender equality, racial issues and can chat for hours with the passing knife carrying pick-pocketting transgendered illegal immigrant without infringing his ( or her or its) human rights. I suppose if you are going to have policemen who can't go out on a lifeboat without a note from their Mum you may as well have children if they are cheaper.
What a fucking farce.... how many weeks will it be until one of these children is shot or knifed when 'interacting' with the youths they are said to understand ?

Bring back the types of cops we used to have, big hard fuckers ..... and let them use the methods that used to work.

Police, what a bunch of fairies !

Those of you who read John Gilmour's excellent Lifeboat Blog will have read about our valiant police 'force'.

"we were going to go to attend a domestic situation which had occurred on a boat nearby. Reports were confused but seemed to involve a father and daughter, some violence, a lot of tears, calls to the police and a suspected heart attack. Not your usual lifeboat stuff. So just as we were ready to launch the police called to ask if we could wait to take them with us as they wanted to attend and also had a defibrillator. So we waited. And waited. And then a bit more waiting. So imagine our shocked amazement when they then arrived (having increased our response time by about 250% when there was a suspected heart attack)and told us that they couldn't come because they hadn't done a sea survival course! "

What a bunch of fucking big girl's blouses..... can't go to sea because they haven't had the right training for fuck's sake they were going to sea in a fucking great lifeboat, surrounded by trained lifesavers.
Police, paid to face danger can't go out in a life boat... the unpaid volunteer lifeboat crew can ! ....fuck me what a farce.
There have been other cases recently like a chap bleeding to death while the police wait around, police not attending a shooting for ages for Health and safety reasons..... policemen used to be men, and they worked for a force, now it seems they are a bunch of limp wristed do-gooders more concerned with their own safety than that of others.

Fantasy meets real life.

Those of you that keep up with events in Mutley's life in Bridport, Devon ( yes, Devon, not Dorset like the real Bridport), will know that he has a new job with the Bridport Beetroot Corporation. I was intrigued to find mention, in a local free magazine, of a competing beetroot product company in Devon.... is Devon a hotbed of unnatural practices with beetroot ?.
I am intrigued also by the thought that people might be driven by hunger, or the mind-numbing pursuit of novelty, to consort with the notion of eating fried beetroot chips.... whether fried in a hand or in a pan. The website of the company firmly seated on the bandwagon of trendy comestibles is rather jolly; do leave a comment here if you have tried this product and let me know if their work with LEAF has been worthwhile in 'raising awareness of its aims'.
I am informed that " we are very proud to be the only LEAF Marque Accredited chip maker in the UK" said Jonty.........
Allowing for the fact that anyone calling himself Jonty is likely to be a bit of a knobhead I do hope that he has other achievements in his life to be proud of, as a fall back, on his CV.

On the theme of fantasy, I came across the fantastical construction pictured below on the beach at Swanage at the weekend when I went there in the evening to fish. A fun afternoon's work abandoned to the incoming tide. The discovery of this cheered me no end; somewhere there is a lucky child with a whimsical and creative parent or a lucky parent with a child of great talent; quite brilliant and a welcome antidote to the cares of the real world.


The engineer in me wanted to dissect one of the trees to determine how it was made, the artist and child in me left it for others to enjoy and the tide to reclaim.

Foot & Mouth Again.

An outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in Surrey, that's about all that dairy farmers need !
Screwed by the supermarkets, going out of business, herds built up over generations destroyed..... and a milk shortage that will get worse. Butter is already in very short supply ( wrong type of grass, huge cutbacks in dairy farming ) and with flooding affecting farm outputs there are going to be some big rises in food prices..... get the freezer stocked up.

No doubt our friends in europe will rally round to help as they usually do........

Our borders are as porous to illegal importations of meat as they are to illegal importation of people so I for one am not a bit surprised that once again the disease will ravage the countryside.