Stop, Look and listen

Distant bells that sing a background sonnet
To the green and pleasant land that stretches out before
The birdsong cuts its way across the shimmering fields
As cattle stand and stare their tails swishing to the beat

The sun sits in the bluest sky no feathered clouds to fear
It's warming blanket smothers every nook and cranny
Only shadows spoil her fun and leave a refuge from her charms
The hot and bothered flee to seek that shaded corner

The gentlest breeze carries heaven's very scent and teases senses
It's warmth and richness lifting up the soul with every breath
Insects sing and dance as if this day will never end
Their gentle background humming belies their manic stance

How sad it is such fayre is offered yet we choose to ignore
For further on beyond the fields that surely hold life's key
A constant stream of metal flows along the blackest stream
Like angry ants they file on through not looking left nor right

To them this show of earth's own soul is of no consequence
Their goal a lonely path that promises rewards of gold and silver
Single minded, ignorant and blinkered to real wealth,
From such shadows I appeared, I ran away and now I am richer than ever.
 
  

Ludlow Hospital Shambles..NHS Waste...Time for Change

Interesting times here in the UK as the Health service finances come under scrutiny once more with billions found wasted on a computer programme that is not even workable. I hope the instigators of this disaster are sent to The Tower as a century or two ago this would have been the case, but oh no we allow such stupidity these days. It is however all the more galling if you are a South Shropshire resident or more pointedly a Ludlow resident as the £127 million pound community hospital proposed and approved over a period of many years now seems to be sitting with it's head in the Health budget cuts noose.
Quite how so-called "experts" can justify wasting billions on one hand and then deny an already hard done by County of much needed services is quite honestly a travesty of the highest proportion. Our very fine MP Philip Dunne has said that there will be some "hard hitting questions" if this hospital is scuppered due to a 1.2 million a year deficit in its running costs, I would suggest that the people in charge ought to join our so called NHS computer experts in The Tower. Society seems to allow for such people to make such blunders and walk away as if it is "just one of those things" I often think back to Lord Archer being jailed for a few years for lying in court, it affected a newspaper and a few egos, yet he received a stiff sentence for his crime, so why should some civil servant who has miscalculated to the tune of billions to this country walk free from such a mess that clearly could cost someone their life?
Perhaps if we started locking some of these fools up for a minimum stretch of ten years they might think twice before launching into another hair-brained scheme that has no hope of working, I for one think they are a disgrace to this Country and should be kicked out of their jobs without further delay at the very least, if you were a tax payer and you owed one thousand pounds you have to pay it and rightly so if its due, but in turn that taxpayer should demand that his hard earned tax contribution isn't handed to Biffo The Bear and spent like water on some hair brained ill conceived pie-eyed illogical computer program that was never required in the first place, those billions would have built many hospitals countrywide and indeed some of that money would would have safe guarded the Ludlow Hospital Ad Infinitum. I hope those idiots who spearheaded this stupidity losing all this money at the same time don't sleep too comfortably in their beds, I am sure their grandparents would have been very proud of them...

The Sunday Roast.

I would imagine the President of the United States is not sleeping quite so well in his bed as he used to. Pushing ahead the vote to bomb Syria while his own country suffers from the affects of the world recession and parts of the USA are also still in various types of disarray from hurricanes and tornado's is a mighty big decision, in fact if I was from New Orleans I would be pretty miffed that several million pounds worth of missiles will be heading for foreign lands while the tin shack you live in drips water and is frighteningly cold and insecure. But aren't all leaders guilty of foreign intervention when in reality their own house needs to be put in order? I am not making light of the atrocities being carried out in Syria, but my guess is without the intervention from so called "allies" the Syrian uprising would have been quashed years ago and chemical weapons would never have been deployed, so in a way we are all responsible for the cruel deaths we see on the TV screens before us.
Dictators as history has all too frequently shown us have a self belief that will lead eventually to thousands and thousands dying simply because they think they are invincible, but I think seeing so much bloodshed is making the world very tired of the West removing a dictator only to have the country split into a million pieces afterwards with all the many factions vying for power. If we leave Syria to its own affairs and stop arming the rebels Assad will take control again and the world will have an uneasy peace. This is not what people want but history shows us we cannot and should not intervene as the outcome is all too common, we get dragged into a conflict that has no end. It should be with a very heavy heart and much consultation that Obama reaches for that red button, if not for the people of Syria then for the people in his own back yard who are suffering from a horrendous lack of financial aid, after all charity begins at home does it not?

The real feel of Autumn is upon us and to be fair we have had a great summer by our standards, in fact a week of sunshine would constitute a summer theses days never mind a whole month! So now we think of heating bills electricity bills becoming larger and larger as we slip towards Christmas time and of course all the energy companies will HAVE to put their prices up as they are starving and destitute. I think its long past time that the UK government took back the powers of these parasitic service companies and brought the bills more into line with other European companies, who actually own the UK supply of energy due to our own mismanagement and apathy, I mean why would a French electricity company risk losing customers at home with higher bills when it can hit the pockets of UK residents instead?  It was mooted this week that the government is looking at buying back the energy supply contracts and running them as a National company, now that would be an election winner if ever I saw one.

I am a big fan of Boris Johnson, he has done much for London and the Olympics was a shining star that will never fade in the hearts of the British people, just how much Boris had to do with it remains to be seen but his conduct during and after the games was excellent. Unusually for Boris I totally disagreed with his proposal this month to penalise trucks in Central London that do not carry a cyclist aware set of equipment while in the City. This is plainly another absurd cost and yet more overheads for an industry that has been hard hit by the recession and in my humble experience of some thirty years driving trucks/buses/cars etc is that our good friend the cyclist is getting a little too much of the cream while disobeying nearly every law in the road traffic act. Admittedly they are very vulnerable and very small compared to trucks but a truck driver cant put his feet on the ground and move his truck two feet from the road in a heartbeat.
 Make no mistake if a truck is in London it's there to work, they pay for the roads the cyclist enjoys and that's how it should be as they do the most damage, but there has to be an element of awareness and self preservation on the behalf of the cyclist, all too often we see them without lights, pedalling on pavements or in a stupid road position that the poor truck driver has to make 44 tonnes compensate for.  I am a keen cyclist, I go up into woods and forests and enjoy it immensely, I am lucky i live in the country.
 I would suggest to Boris that rather than burden the poor haulage industry with yet more legislation to deliver in the capitol that he puts the money into more cycle lanes, or even a training module where a cyclist actually gets to sit in a 44 tonne truck and see the problems they and their two wheeled self powered obstacle in the road actually cause for even the most experienced of heavy haulage driver. When all is said and done, without the services of these huge lorries and the guys that drive and run them we would have no fuel in our tanks or food on our tables and even more ironically the bike shop would have no bikes, so as my Grandad used to say, "Don't flog the willing horse" Boris.

Now on Kindle, hope you enjoy.

Nice to see the first responses are favourable to my poetry book now out on Kindle  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DRJ3OIQ  many thanks to those who have purchased the book and even more so to those that have given it such excellent reviews. My first novel "A False Twilight" is also now out and getting good first reviews, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00E1RHJFM  if you havent done so already please download for the bargain price of 0.99c and enjoy.

The Sunday Roast. Real Life.

Blaming governments for all our ills is pretty much the standard these days. We moan when they make decisions and we bemoan their lack of decision making.
There is no one single fix available for the huge range of things that any government may encounter yet we turn to them like a frightened congregation turns to it's God in times of trouble. This symptomatic rush to expect a magic wand from our leaders is indeed true folly, yet we still look up to them to provide the answers and when they get caught out spying on us or make decisions we don't accept it soon becomes apparent that our God may just be someone else's Satan, indeed it's a thankless task. The answer is simple, many years ago governments ran departments and national companies yet were seldom seen or heard of, but now they are in the news every minute of the day. Governments have become too involved in our day to day lives because we have cried to them so often about how terrible things are, as a result we have now "over-sensitized" our leaders allowing them to believe we actually want their intervention in everyday life, it has become in affect a "Nannie state" the answer is in our own hands, we need to start taking a little more responsibility for our own actions and hence expect less from government, in return we may gain more freedom, nice thought anyway.

The first of the month arrives and with it the ordeal of getting the kids back to school, new uniforms are all pressed and washed and the worry of new classes and new school's enters the heads of parents and children alike. It's a bitter sweet time as many of us parents will be seeing  our kids go to new schools and face new adventures, the worry never leaves you as a parent but it can be equally stressful on your off spring, something we well remember despite our own advancing years !



I guess we all have times when life is tough, but what happens when those tough times build up over a long period?. You never know just how you will react to such things until they are upon you, of late I guess I have had more than my fair share, life has thrown all its dirty washing at just one man it seems and I happen to be the only one stood up. I watch the atrocities in Syria and around the world and my sanity tells me that there are so many more people worse off, I guess it's like your Grandmothers voice from your childhood, trying in some vain way to bring reason where very little exists. I would be lying if i said I was happy at this precise moment, in fact I don't think I have personally ever felt so low, it's a difficult thing to live with and its at times like these where you need a sense of humour, a very good one, but even that has deserted me. Being a poet and a writer only compounds such issues of feeling so down as so much of a burden is carried with that thought train that rattles continuously through my head like the six a.m express, it never stops.
There is little I can do to stop any of the torment at the moment other than the obvious route out, its a well worn path by much more distinguished folk than I, so I guess for once at least I would be in good company, but I have always lived with the thought that there may be light at the end of the tunnel, though at the moment that theory is being severely tested as the future strays from dark room to darker room. I guess if you have never been in this position these will seem strange words, but to me they knit together like that scarf your favourite auntie used to knit and there lies my biggest worry. Either way I guess my thoughts and deeds will have little or indeed no impact on the world we live in, much like my life up to now, after all "There is always someone worse off" didn't Gran used to say?.