Toys, Toys, Toys everywhere

I don't think I'm a person to particularly prone to giving in to my childrens demands but, boy, have they amassed a large amount of toys.  These things were favorites for  while but not as long as when I was younger and generally got presents/toys at Christmas time.

I can only guess it is because we have more disposable income than we my parents were younger. It does represent a massive waste of money though over time.  The only thing is the youngest with his mild aspergers is very focused on his toys and still plays with hsi very specific items regularly.  The eldest has moved on to the stage of computer/electronic games.

As it is a bit on the cold side outside it was time for a toy audit.  Partly to clear space and partly to collect all the relevant parts together.   This is now done, apart from putting some of the Lego together.

Now all have have to do is get rid of the filtered out material as not many people are interested in second hand material.

I still think I'm going to hae the Thomas The Tank Engine material around the house for a number of years yet. 

I really should write more.

It seems I'm not that creative.  I intend to write more but never really know what to put down.  I think my personality is probably more of a do-er.

I have been up to quite a lot recently with the formation of a new Focus Team in WELA and getting to know a whole new set of detail about one of Nottingham's wards.  Yesterday, myself and Alisdair with one of our former Councillor's for the area went delivering the latest Focus in the Lenton Abbey area.

It's fair to say that Dave understood where I got my reputation as a speedy deliverer.  He said "I would have kept up with you in my younger years (possibly)."      In the end, myself and Alisdair got most of these two pollling districts down in about 2 1/2 hours.  About half of that was down in snowy conditions.  This meant Wendy took an hour and twenty minutes to get home, by car, from a Nottingham Panthers game at the Arena.

Over the past week I have been creating a blog for the Chair of our local Nottingham Liberal Democrat party.  He has a history of articles to put on to improve his profile and collect his works together.  I have managed to create him a blog on Wordpress, a website system I have never used before.  I am quite pleased with the result.  It should also improve with newer articles.

www.issanghazni.co.uk

The snow was quite a one this Saturday afternoon.  Its taken all the way until February for it to arrive though.  A full 10cm deep on our driveway in one session.  Of course this meant the obligatory trip to Wollaton Park for the sledging down the hill.  From the looks of it almost half of Nottingham descided to travel by car! there also.  The queue outside the gates was lengthy to say the least.  Why these people don't park a bit further away and walk is beyound me.  We, thankfully, live about 1/2 mile away so walking in is not a problem.  It wasn't too cold either as there was no wind.

I'm going to have to think of something more detailled to write at some point.

Fear for Nottingham

After all the work our team has done to get our Councillors relected in the wards they represent has not worked. I'm sure the national situation had most to do with it but I'll let other people argue about that. I am going to go out on a limb and say that it can't be for a particular like for some of the candidates of Nottingham Labour or the Nottingham party itself.

Not all of them. There is one in particular I talked that, I felt, was a reasonable person who was actually there to look after the people she represents, a community activist instead of a partisan politician.

Having spent time with our Councillors well before election time I've have got to say that they are a bunch of people to be proud of. Always trying to work to better the situation for the residents of their wards the best they can. There never seemed to be a conversation in my presence about their own aggrandisement and their first concern was helping.

I have attended several (resident) meetings they have been to, outside the normal freak show that is Full Council, and found that they never politicised a meeting just to make a personal gain. Sound advice and help is what they offered.

I really hope that given the way I have seen Nottingham Labour behave that Nottingham doesn't implode and all the good work that our team doesn't come undone. The arrogance of the current ruling lot thinking they naturally deserve the votes of the people of Nottingham and not actually doing the detailed basic work for constituents to show that people should vote for them on merit makes me cringe.

We shall see what the next 4 years brings.

The Internet and Lost Relatives

I started doing family history research about 15 years ago as when internet research was just blooming. Initially I got all the information together I could about my immediate family and worked backwards from there, as you should.

Of course then Genes Reunited took off and more people became interested with the advent of the Who Do You Think You Are? series. At the time this put me in touch with a few third cousins doing research as well and my tree expanded through collaboration with this people. I am especially grateful to a couple in Derby called the Brown’s who had done a massive amount of research on the Brown family from Ilkeston before internet research made things quicker to reference. I went to visit them and they had all their evidence collected and would gladly share it with me. With a name in my past like Brown I was very grateful.

The more unreal things that have happened are as follows;

I have met my wife’s 7^th cousin several times at work and they live not a mile away from me. Our common ancestor being from about 300 years earlier.

Myself and my father-in-law met up one New Years Eve with his 3^rd cousin who came all the way from New Zealand researching his family.

I have been in contact with my wife’s 10^th cousin whose connected relation was from about 1650.

I moved on from Genes Reunited as I started to get weary of their website and some of the people using it and started using Ancestry.co.uk instead. I put my research out there to find living people who might be connected to our family and in an exchange of information I was after getting so images out of them of their ancestors to add to my collection. Names, dates and occupation of ancestors are great but nothing can beat a picture of someone’s face which you can insert in your tree and their image won’t be forgotten.

Doing all these things have been fun but not my greatest thrill.

The best time I have had is quite recently. My father-in-law lost touch with the two sisters of his dad as they moved away from Nottingham and over time contact faded. I found this happens when the parents pass away and direct common link is there no more.

Well, finding living people can be sometimes difficult but after a bit of persistence I managed to find father-in-law’s cousins from Hull to find one had moved back to Nottingham and worked in a shop that my wife goes in all the time. The two sisters from this family hadn’t seen each other for a while either so I arranged a family get together back in Hull so we could all meet up and all say hello again.

My father-in-law’s other aunt (Annie) was a little more difficult as they had moved to Australia in the 1950’s, had stayed in touch with Annie’s mother but this contact reduced when her mother died. I think there was something more about this but not quite sure. Anyway, their names were Atkinson so finding the family was going to be impossible.

Janet was a daughter of Annie and in the earlier 1970’s decided that Australia wasn’t for her so did some travelling around Europe and then stayed with my parents-in-law in Nottingham for a while before moving on to Canada. Well, after 40 years Janet decided to do some family history research as well and because I’d put my information on Ancestry she emailed me to ask a question not realising that she was so closely related to us.

It’s brought back a lot of memories for Janet and she also gave me the information that Annie at the grand old age of 97 is still alive and, although bedridden, has all her facilities. She also remembers my wife, although the last time she saw her was at 2 years old so she has changed somewhat since then.

Although sometimes computers can be a pain and a thing someone of Janet’s age can be reluctant to learn from scratch recently like she has I am so glad she did.

Quiet as a Church Mouse - Speaking in Public

Having been to our local Lib Dem AGM mini-conference today I was asked to give a little report about the recent Autumn Conference with a couple other of my fellow Nottingham Lib Demmers.

A few years ago I was at a induction session for Junior Doctors with a few Consultants present. I used to get extremely nervous talking to a group of people until one particular session when someone spoke before me who came across very poorly because of her extreme nervousness. I felt sorry for her as when not in these inductions she didn't come across this way. Having heard this though I was grateful that suddenly after thinking to myself "I'm not like that am I when I talk?" my "bad" nerves about speaking in front of these people disappeared.

I couldn't beleive it and I've not felt that nervous since.

My BIG problem is that I have been told repeatedly that I talk very quietly.

I think this stems from the fact that my eye sight is poor so, as they say, my hearing has compensated and my hearing is very acute. This makes my speech sound very loud to me but to everyone else barely audible.

Fortunately today I think people heard me as they at least laughed in the right places but I do have a tendancy to slip back to my normal volume after trying to talk louder at the beginning.

Is the solution to stick some earplugs? :-)

Do I then come across as loud and obnoxious?

I may try it one time in front of people I know.

Nottingham City Recycling

I bike to work every morning. Always the same way so I can usually get to work without thinking too much about the bike ride itself.

Unfortunately sometimes this leaves me time to look around at the surroundings. This morning in our area it was household general waste collection (green bin). There are four of us in our house and I'm amazed how heavy the bin is but at least the lid is always closed.

On the way to work this morning I noticed a bin overflowing with a lid almost vertical but what really gets my goat is the fact that one of the bags on top was full of drinks cans. Really annoying. As much as this City doesn't get right there are large parts that do have access to the brown/grey household collection recycling bin. What else was in the bin that could have been recycled?

Cans are perfectly acceptable in the recycle bin and you don't have to take it anywhere other than the street on collection day.

It does tend to make me seeth that this facility is there freely provided by the City Council and a few people have the arrogance not to do just the smallest little bit.

I hoping that the binmen report it to their supervisors so that these people receive the correct education material to help them mend there ways.

Hopefully printed on recycled paper. :-)

Delivering Liberal Democrat Focus Leaflets

I thought today I'd make a start on my batch of Focus leaflets with a spare couple of hours.

Oh my word it was cold. The car temparature monitor said 0 degrees. Mmm chilly.

The batch I did was part of the Sherwood Rise area of Nottingham which I've not really been to in detail before. Having travelled around a few new areas I have noticed how fantastic and interesting some of the old houses in Nottingham are. And how big some of them are when they were probably in there original format of only one house instead of flats.

It would be nice to have seen some of these areas in their original spendour but unfortunately time takes its toll and some of these properties must require significant cash to maintain.


There were even more substantial properties on another cul de sac that don't appear on Google street view which could look wonderful again but needed significant investment to bring them back to their former glory.

Hopefully I'll carry on seeing these marvels around a few of the other areas I'm due to travel.

Christmas Lunch with Work.

Today we went to Zizzi's on King Street in Nottingham at 12 midday. Possible an unusual time for a Christmas Dinner but definitely worth thinking about.

The menu on offer was the restaurant's usual menu instead of, what I feel, is the standard conveyor belt Xmas dinner that places seem to offer. I haven't found one of these in previous years to my satisfaction. A little bit rushed and generally sub-standard considering the cost.

The meal was very nice without a hint of the rush to get you out for the next sitting I think you would probably find at an evening shindig.

I hoping that next year we may consider this time again.

Bit of community work.

I noticed that the bushes from the local school were getting out of hand at a certain section and growing to block the pavement. So I grabbed how of my mum's clippers, pulled her garden waste recycling bin and got to work. Fifteen minutes later the bin was full, the path was clear and I was chuffed.

Having been told by the Head Teacher how much this sort of work costs them to have done it does give me a little bit of self satisfaction to know that I have saved her this amount of money to be spent of something a little more worthwhile.

Goose Fair 2009

Me and the children had annual trip to Goose Fair yesterday. We managed to park about 1/2 mile away which is always a good thing as the area does tend to get snarled up with traffic.

A pleasant walk there and a good walk around with the boys going on a couple of rides later. The dark arrived about an hour after arrival. This is the best time to see Goose Fair lights in all their glory and the masses of people out enjoying themselves.

Arnold Carnival

Off to Arnold Carnival today. From last years review it looks like an extremely popular event. I think I'm going to have to park a bit away and walk in from the looks of it but considering i walk down the longest cul-de-sac in Europe (about 1/2 mile) yesterday delivering leaftlets both sides I think we can cope with it.

Looking forward to the caribean carnival this year but am disappointed with myself that I went and missed the asian Mela in Nottingham City Centre. Oh well may be next year. These are wonderful, colourful and vibrant events that celebrate the uniqueness of these cultures but I can't think of any event that celebrates british culture in large event form and what would be at that event. Have we got such a boring culture and a willingness to just blend in and not drawing to much attention to ourselves like the person who can't dance at a party or are we too afraid that an event like this could slightly cross the line and be misread as overly nationalist.

I'm sure there must be still some forms of britshness that could be put in to a carnival of some sort.

The Meadows, Nottingham

On Thursday as part of the Election Campaign I assisted in delivering leaftlets around the Meadows area of Nottingham.

I have never particularly spent a significant amount of the around the estate itself it was a nice day and a lovely walk. The one thing I can say is that you tend to only hear negative stories about the area but on my walk that the people I passed where polite and curteous and generally had a "good day" or "hello" for you. This applied to people of all ages and all creeds. They were a credit to the area.

I must say that the community garden near one of the schools looked fantastic as well.

Although I was a little lost around the inner streets of the estate. I look forward to a repeat walk around at some point in the future.

Big Spring Clean - Robert Shaw School

As part of Nottinghams Big Spring Clean as few of the Residents Association, Year 4 pupils and a couple of others are getting together tomorrow to give the school a bit of a spruce.

Thankfully it looks as though the weather is going to be nice for us. Hopefully we'll all get the place spic and span.

Finally a break in the rain.

At least one of these Bank Holiday days has turned out to be relatively rain free day, although everything is still damp so no playground for the children unfortunately.

The wife is trying to get profile done for her yearly assessment so a little peace time is required. A little walk was in order to burn off the whole Easter egg that the children have just ate. A whole egg in one go, how they were not ill I'll never know. Glad to see Nestle have removed the plastic packing and replaced with cardboard and reduced the size of the box. I had read this was a plan of theirs. Good on them.

There was a bit of land near a subway that seemed to be a litter trap so a couple of black bags later the years of litter have been significantly reduced as well as a whole carrier bag of can recycling which went in the appropriate bin.

A couple a miles later back to home a few calories burnt off and a bit less muck on the street.

Ikea Nottingham on a Saturday Afternoon

We need some of Ikea's storage units for the "Toys R Us" volume of toys that the children have. Ikea have a couple of good storage ideas and since I have removed the old useless fitted wardrobes from their bedroom we now have the space.

The suggestion was put, "Why don't you go this afternoon?"

I thought about this and decided that the volume of traffic on a Saturday afternoon is comparable to the entire D-Day landing force.

I decided to put it off to a late evening one day in the week.

Nottingham Industrial Museum

Being a reasonably damp day we decided to take a little walk to Wollaton Hall Natural History Museum and the attached Nottingham Industrial Museum. Both of these excellent facilities are thankfully inside are free to everyone as the Nottingham Industrial Museum always has been. It has been compiled, repaired and maintained by volunteers all these years.

Nottingham City Council has given these people money to maintain this facility to his point. Now because of a shortfall in the council budget of £20 million pounds they plan on removing this funding. A paltry £44,000 in the grand scheme of things.

Isn't it strange that they can find the unreal amount of money for the Nottingham Contempary Art Gallery from a VAT refund, what a lucky refund that was to get them out of a pickle.

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Petition-save-Nottingham-s-heritage/article-756538-detail/article.html

As someone in a letter of response to the article about says, there are plenty of art gallerys in available in Nottingham already but there is only one Industrial Museum and these machines are not something you can switch off and then in 2 years time just switch back off again.

The article from this Evening Post above also quotes Councillor David Trimble regarding the gallery, "It is this sort of thing that put Newcastle/Gateshead on the map". Do we have a case of City envy Mr Trimble. There is also the fact the just a gallery doesn't make a city Mr Trimble.

OH by the way, Newcastle Council is a Liberal Democrat run council, take some tips Mr Trimble and your LABOUR colleagues. I know one thing, I'm envious of the Newcastle citizenry for this fact.

Thanks for choosing an easy, non-fashionable target Labour Councillors.

About time for a change.

Recently, although I am quite comfortable in my life and have actually quite prospered even in this downturn, I have become despondent with the inadequate way we are being governed and the complete disregard for the common person with which this government acts.

From the actions that took us in to the Iraq war after such a significant protest against this course to the complete mismanagement of our economy based on the premise we have got some money lets spend it (during the boom times) instead of what was being preached to us about saving and our own financial responsibility. Normally I wouldn't be against an ID card scheme, one did exist just after World War II for several years, but it is the insidious amount of data they wish to hold about you that fills me with fear and sickness. If this government were to have their way my and my children's DNA profiles as well as all manner of biometric data would be collected with as little thought as someone collect coupons from a supermarket. They can not be trusted to hold this data secure. This is my mind just classifies everyone from BIRTH as a future criminal to be monitored, catalogued, suppressed and feared. How long before we cross further over the line and criminalise more aspects of our lives. It all seems to be creeping in the back door through these times with civil liberties being eroded in the times of so called emergencies but these liberties never being returned once the emergency is over.

We are constantly informed of the threat of terrorism which I am sure our secret services are doing a enormous job to keep us safe. I remember the IRA attacks on the British mainland happening on a regular basis but no DNA database, biometric ID card or such like that would have been available at the time being proposed. A database of every law-abiding individual is not needed. Use the money being wasted on other resources for the correct people to be investigated, infiltrated and imprisoned when they wish us serious harm.

It brings me to the point of this rant, thoughts or feelings whatever it is to say that we need a change in our lives and my conversion half way through my life (hopefully less) to take a deeper interest in the main parties in our politic system and my position of blissful and comfortableness in my old position of doing the same old thing.

I now believe that our 2 parties that are at the head of the game just take it in turns making an absolute mess of country after a certain period in office without the will to change anything that might overly offend their paymasters for fear of reducing their own personal income. They are bought parties doing what they think is best and listening to no one else because we do not matter.

I took an online test recently that asked a series of questions and was surprised to find that i was definitely holding out the wrong political position. This took me to look more in-depth at the Liberal Democrat party, what the stand for and what changes the could make.

We have had Liberal Democrat councillors in my ward for a number of years and have always been impressed by their attentiveness to local issues that actually matter to people but when it came to a General Election I am guilty, like maybe a lot of people, of being steered to vote for the usual gruesome twosome.

We have the vote to change that, use it and DON'T listen to the nay-sayers that "oh, the Liberal Democrats will never get enough votes."

We need to vote for a party that is instilled with the values of Freedom, Fairness and Trust to change our lives for the better.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/policies

Delicious Proof

On Friday I had the unfortunate gift of having the abominable "Loose Women" on the communal television screen at work. These Macbeth-styled witches were giving their unwanted opinions and brewing up uninformed words on the nature of politeness in Britain and the supposed North/South divide that seems to exist in politeness and open friendliness to strangers.

A conservation started in our communal area regarding the attributes of Nottingham in this respect which started off quite positively but the area was frequented by a work (i was going to say colleague but that would denote some form of positive association so I'll say "a person I work near") who has such a negative orientation on life that this conversation degenerated in to her usual sardonic comments about everything about the place she hates.

Boy did she generalise and club everyone in the city in to the same basket. For some reason she mentioned she has fallen down a lot in the past in the city (God only knows why, if he exists) and no one has ever come to her aid. Vehemently denying that this makes everyone rude and unhelpful and pointing out that someone of her age would be perfectly capable of extracting themselves from the floor. My response was that I was positive if a child or a pensioner had fallen over (obviously a child with no one to be seen in attendance) that the good people of Nottingham would come to their aid.

To my utter satisfaction we were in the City Centre this Sunday morning and an incident occurred in the corner of my eye. I turned to see a lady had slipped to the floor (uninjured, thankfully) and no fewer that 4 people at her attendance. Thank you to the good Nottingham people for proving me right.

Litter picking spring clean

I had some time spare again as I have the week off so after the disaster of going to get some new tyres to find our mechanic had our locking nut in his worshop(a quick run around to fetch it) I thought I would do a bit more voluntary community work on our estate.

I don't know whether it was because of the bad weather and the authorities hadn't had chance to go around cleaning properly but boy was there a lot of litter around.
Yes, it is a bug bear of mine and I don't like it but I'm sure I have a few people for company, at least I know of Bill Bryson anyway.

Three bin bags later and a lovely walk on a lovely sunny day the place looks alot cleaner.

I didn't get some funny looks though. It seems that this activity seems out of the ordinary for a normal person and I did get looks that people thought I was a weirdo. I dressed what I thought was relatively smartly for the process I was undertaking. Maybe the looks I was getting was of shock that some people still do care about where they live.

I will probably never know unless I ask them. I may do that next time.

Oh, it only took about an hour today, just think if everyone did their 2 minutes what a lovely clean country we would live in.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/4957531/Call-to-revive-Saturday-litter-pick-to-save-trashed-Britain.html

Volunteer Work

I decided last week as the relevant powers probably had more pressing maters on their hands that I would do a bit of clearance work on some of the garages on our estate where parts had become a little over grown. This was a couple of hours good hard manual labour which can be a little hard going sometime for an office bloke like me but continue I did.

I was quite proud of the outcome given the limited resources at my disposal. I was a little perturbed as I was doing the work several people passed and whilst not doing the work for any credit about 3 of them comment on whether I was getting paid for doing it. No I wasn't but doing it for the general good. Is it too hard to believe nowadays that some on might do something like this and not look at you in shock and winder if you have lost your faculties.