baldysblog.co.uk

Posts Tagged ‘Personal Journey’

Quite often, some might say all too often, the reader’s responses to articles published in the Media are often far more interesting than the published original and one response because no doubt of my personal experiences, caught my attention concerning “Carers”.

We all know that cuts in Government expenditure are coming and therefore in the run up to the final decisions being made in October, one can expect just about every special interest to be putting forward the case why they should be ‘left alone’. However and as I thought about it, there is rather more to this “Benefits Reform” and in a sense, the basic decision hinges around whether people expect help from the State on the basis of a ‘right’, a contractual basis or, on as ‘needed’ basis.

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For the background, see below and the earlier, “Focusing My Efforts – Before…” but this blog concerns the second part, after my Mother’s death. Similarly it shows my thinking and expectations at that time, both would be subject to considerable change and for that alone to me, worth remembering the ‘difference’.

So, Part Two…

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I started writing this blog in November 2007 but its content tends to be more political than personal so about a year ago, I set up another blog with the intention of that being both more personal and intimate. However, for a whole number of reasons, I was just far too busy to maintain two blogs and since have been even busier in ‘doing up’ the house, I therefore decided to close the second one down.

However, the handful of entries whilst not great prose or great ideas, do cover the period up to my Mother’s death and beyond so, in that sense, are most certainly ‘personal and intimate’. In many respects, whilst people commenting and ‘following’ my blog is not that important to me, every entry in some way, is a snapshot of where I am or was at a given moment in time and relative to some ‘issue’. It is not a conventional Diary but perhaps more of a Journal as in recording a journey so below and in sequence are those entries in two long blogs.

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It was sometime in early March, following my Mother’s death at the end of January, that I embarked on the “Great Redecorating Programme”. How high were my hopes to finish this all in 3 months, no problem ! But alas, the best laid plans of Mice and Men…In truth, there were all kinds of contributory reasons that conspired to cause delays.

Due to the incompetence of a Bank, settling my Mother’s rather simple estate became overly complicated and delayed but also, I rather underestimated the scale of the task I had taken on. I admitted this to a friend of mine the other week and he just laughed, he and his wife had decided that a couple of months back ! However and for all that, looked at another way, my original finish date was end May, the ‘overshoot’ is only about 6 weeks which is not the end of the World.

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Following on from my earlier blog about whether or not Newspapers are dead, some further thoughts as to a way forward. To start with, it must be patently obvious that the existing ‘news/media owners’ have got it totally wrong, they have seen “The Web” as just a change to electronic paper, their business remains the same – WRONG !

The above can hardly be contentious because it is self-evident through their failure to manage a ‘smooth and seamless transition’ that leaves them with a profit and instead, them ‘battling’ to impose a solution on their “Readership” that seeks to extract cash by force rather than persuasion. The purpose of the following is to try and prise apart the key elements to a web experience that is similar though not the same to ‘reading a newspaper’ whilst taking advantage of what the web has to offer.

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Whilst we all know that newspapers have been struggling for quite a time financially as their old business model of getting an income from sales of actual newspapers plus advertising revenue which combined to give them a profitable existence, has now virtually died. There is the current drive under way by Murdoch’s Newspapers to charge for web access but frankly, it is almost bound to fail.

The argument that there is no earthly reason why newspapers should give their content away for free is fair enough, the labourer is worthy of his or her hire but that said, one cannot help but wonder just why and given the financial resources available to companies like News Corporation, they have not yet evolved a new “business model” and my gut feeling is that they simply have failed to grasp the opportunity and have their feet still firmly planted in the past, could there be a better way ?

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I pose the question as in; “Are we now totally incompetent as a Nation ? The reason I raise the question lies in three recent experiences, two to do with Banks and a Motorway Service stop on the M4. Having been “off the scene” for almost 6 years looking after my parents, I wonder if this is the world of commerce that I am returning to ?

It is probably a sign of age but there are some things that really irritate me a lot and cause a disproportionate amount of frustration although, they are slightly different in nature than my main topic.

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The other day, a friend of mine who has a decent desktop PC which I support, told me that he wanted to buy a laptop to add to it and outlined his various ‘needs’ with regard to it. As he was in London, he took a wander down Tottenham Court Road to have a look at what was available.

I had pointed him to look out for Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads, well made and highly functional. A little later he came back and said that what he wanted was something discreet but stylish in looks not some lump of ‘nasty plastic’, he does have a design background but it made me think about the whole concept of ‘beauty’ and question what it is…

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In common with most of the British Press reacting to the Pope visiting the UK in September and in his letter to the British Bishops, expressing his fears over British anti-discrimination laws that have already led to Catholic Adoption Agencies closing down or severing their links with the Catholic Church.

Of course and even in the Independent, the Anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish vote were much in evidence, the Pro-Faggot Lobby was out in force and just for the total intolerance and bigotry, the  Readers comments are worth a browse:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anger-after-pope-slams-unjust-uk-equality-laws-1886589.html

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Early last Saturday morning I called the Ambulance and my Mother was taken into Weston Hospital. It was an “odd call” in the sense that there was not any one specific ailment to point to like say a heart attack. Possibly she had Flu, certainly a leg infection that was very painful plus she has the most awful pressure sore on her bottom. In fact it turned out that she had three separate infections but none responded to treatment.

I visited her and spoke to her on Sunday morning when she was a gibberish truth to tell but as I looked at her lying in her bed, I was taken straight back to a Hospital in Wandsworth in the late 1970′s where her Mother was just prior to her death, exact same look. When I visited again later that afternoon, she was very deeply asleep although she was apparently pretty sparky that evening when my eldest Son, his wife and my Granddaughter visited her.

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