NOVEMBER 2002
I see that environmental transport campaigners have gone to the High Court because they argue that speed cameras are too visible. The Slower Speed Initiative group say painting the cameras bright yellow just makes motorists slow down. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought that was the whole point.
"There are dark powers at work in this country about which we have no
knowledge"
The Queen according to Paul Burrell.
Right on, Lillibeth. Right on.
On the other hand there are dark powers in this country that are definately not working, the Council of the East Riding of Yorkshire being one of them. Some of you might remember the Swinemoor Youth Project where we are trying to build soccer and handball pitches for the local kids. We have managed to get the money together, and were supposed to start construction in July, but found that the Council had been sitting on the planning application. After a lot of pressure we finally got the Council Legal Department to issue the legally required notices in the press in late August except they got it completely wrong. We screamed about it, and they promised to sort it out. Three weeks later they issued the same notice without any correction. Then the chap who was supposed to have a report ready for the Executive Council meeting in early October didn't manage it, but promised us to it would go in on the late October meeting. It didn't. He guaranteed it would be ready for the meeting on 12th November, but we have just learnt that this meeting has been cancelled by the Executive.. It will now be presented on the 29th November meeting, but we have been told that they are worried that it will attract young people to the area. Well, that's exactly why we're doing it, isn't it? Likely starting date is now 6th January providing the Legal Department gets it right. As of now they still haven't managed to do so.
Bronwen is still having problems with her breathing, though Marcus is working on her. He lobs her off in a tree every morning and collects her in the evening in the hope that she will gradually start to exercise herself and build up her lungs again. She seems to be getting somewhat better, but I'm afraid we are in for a long haul.
In the meantime, though, I have great fun flying Arthur. He caught a rabbit the other day, but the ground is so waterlogged that we suspect he actually drowned it rather than killing it with his feet. He struck the rabbit sitting on the ground , and the water splashed more than 6 feet upwards. Otherwise I have been flying him in the dark a couple of times; pretty scary. Either you don't see him at all until he slams into your fist, or you see him coming silouetted against the moon like something out of an old Hammer vampire movie.
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred pounds and a substantial tax cut save you thirty pence?
Kiyoko isn't speaking to me at the moment. It's been raining and raining; no fun to train outside, so I have been doing my swordcuts in the library. Unfortunately I slightly misjudged the length of the sword and hit the ceiling lamp. After combing glass out of my hair and stemming the bleeding of my feet after stepping on glass slivers, I tried to vaccum up the mess and somehow knackered the Hoover.
To top it all Moggy, the Heimbu cat, has suddenly decided that he needs to mark out his territory inside as well as outside.. When we got up this morning the whole house was stinking of cat pee. So the pair of us has been more or less banished to the stable, joining Arthur who was kicked out last year for shitting on the carpet.
More fun and games from the Council. A woman down the road found that the dustmen had left a bin-liner full of trash outside her house. She called the Council to complain, and was told that some-one would be sent around to collect it. Of course no-one came, but a few days later she got a letter from the Council advicing her that they would prosecute her for leaving trash in front of her house outside normal collecting days, and that she was looking at £10,000 in fines and/or up to 6 months in prison. The poor woman got pretty hysterical about it, but got her solicitor to sort out the situation. She have just received a second letter from our wonderful presumed servants. Surely a humble letter of apology, you say? Far from it. She was told that they would let her off this time due to the extra-ordinary sircumstances, but that she could not expect lenience if it ever happened again.
I had somewhat of a shock this morning. My bank manager doesn't know the difference between an asset and a liability. I've had a bit of cash-flow problems the last few months and needed to up my overdraft limit, which he was happy enough to do, stating that as I was pretty asset-rich, the bank had no problem with my request. This rather suprised me as I was not aware of having any assets (at least not that he was supposed to know about). It turned out that he meant our house. Now, in my opinion an asset is something that makes money for you, a liability is something that costs you money. If I rented it out, yes, I could turn it into an asset, but as of now, as it costs me a fair amount of money in Council tax, utility bills and upkeep it is really a liability. Anyway, all this started me thinking, and talking to a lot of people I found out that hardly any-one seems to understand the difference. Hmm.
The firefighters are out on strike, and the Dear Leader has just been on the telly saying that no-one in this day and age can expect the country to be able to afford more than a 4 per cent rise. No-one but the politicians, that is. They voted themselves a 40 per cent rise a few months ago.
Things are looking up for Bronwen. We finally couldn't bear seeing her so miserable and took her to the vet for an X-ray. As suspected it took an enormous amount of anestethics to put her under, but she was finally knocked out. Her lungs were clear, but there was fungus growth in her trachea, so antibiotics were prescribed. After that we almost lost her as she didn't come out of the anestethics for several hours. When she finally came around the first thing she did was to foot Markus with one claw going straight through his middle finger.
Markus took Bronwen hunting yesterday, and it seems she is almost getting back to her normal grumpy self. She made a long stoop at a rabbit, missed, and was so pissed off that she went straight back to Markus and footed him in the hand again. True happiness.
There was a short pause in the rain today, so I took Arthur out for a quick fly-around. No sooner had a let him go and the rain came back with a vengence. We managed to find shelter under a bridge and were soon joined by two ducks. It sure says something about the weather we're having.