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.

Random Meeting in a Cemetery

On a unplanned trip recently to take pictures of headstones recently for my family tree research I came across a lady looking at headstones across the cemetery also. At one point I was taking a picture and the lady came near me. The person with her commented on one of the headstones "he could be one of your relations". I happen to hear and said "if he is one of yours I know he is one of mine". After a bit of a conversation and a little bit of information from her a lot of what she said was familiar.

I returned home to find that we did have a connection way back in 1740. People always say it's a small world. How true that is as this situation of meeting a person at random related to our family from so long ago has now happened to me twice.

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.

LITTER LITTER EVERYWHERE

I had a walk today to sort some things out around my old estate and couldn't believe the proliferation of litter. It amazes me that people live around this. Is it now always someone else's responsibility to pick it up? Should we just whinge about the litter louts that blight our country?

These small pieces of filth in a relatively small amount of numbers can instantly reduce the quality of an area. Do your country, your estate, the environment a favour and either don't drop it in the first place or be a good person and pick some up an throw it in the nearest bin.

I did my bit today (again). One whole carrier bag of cans and plastic bottles straight in the recycling bin at home, ready to be used again in a more useful way instead of sitting there awaiting the other person who responsibility it is to pick it up.

I'll keep on doing my bit. If everyone did there very little bit what a better and cleaner place we would be.

Rant over.