Monday 1st March 2010

Walk and Ride

It is the 1st March, not quite the official start of spring, but the weather is looking better, a clear blue sky, and bright sunshine.

Once the chore of doing some food shopping is out of the way, it is about 11:00am and I suggest we get ourselves out and enjoy the day.

Kathleen has made tentative soundings about joining in with the "Boys' Walks" on Wednesdays. I have tried gently to point out to her, that although I am absolutely sure she can stand the pace, she may have to make other adjustments (ie perhaps she will not be in charge). This is relevant later, bear with me.

So it is decided that today we will doing a walk which makes use of our "free" metro pass (before the expected government spending cuts take them away). The plan is to take the Metro to South Hylton, from where we will walk home via Cox Green. I have not actually done this before, so I am not sure how far it is, but I manage to sound convincing enough that no questions are asked at this stage.

Lunch is packed into the backpack, and off we go to catch the Metro at Brockley Whins.

As we travel towards South Hylton, the problems start.

First complaint I have a few spots of mud on the backpack, from a previous outing. I point out, Lesson 1, if she is to join in with the "Boys' Walk", she has to learn to put up with a bit of mud without complaining.

Second, she starts asking probing questions about how far the walk is to be, and suggesting ways of shortening it. Lesson two (for the "Boys' Walk"). You do not question the route. If the walk leader (ie the person with the book or map), suggests a "short cut" which it turns out is longer than the original route, you do not complain. It so happens I have neglected to bring the map, but I know (roughly) where we are going, so (metaphorically) I am in charge.

We arrive at South Hylton and leave the Metro, walking down the hill towards the River Wear and the Golden Lion pub, then west along the south bank of the River, under the A19 road bridge. You have to admit it looks very pretty, and it is a beautiful day.

Now the questions start about how far it is to Cox Green (and the only bridge we can use to cross the River). "Just around the next bend" I answer. I do not actually know it at this point, but it is just under four miles away. Most of the track is fine for walking on, not too muddy despite the recent snow, ice and rain we have had. But we do come to a particularly soggy bit just before Cox Green Golf Course. We have to climb on the fence and walk along the fence planks to avoid walking in six inches of squelchy mud.

Not a word of complaint, full marks.

We happen upon a seat by the track, and stop to eat our lunch. "where are the napkins?" asks Kathleen as I unpack the food and flask from the backpack. Napkins!, Napkins!, this is training for the "boys' walk" I tell her, the boys don't take napkins with them!

Two (or maybe three) bends in the River later, and you will observe, still no sign of Cox Green village, or a bridge. My morale boosting comments of "it's not far now", "almost there", "we should be there soon" etc, are not well recieved.

Eventually the Bridge at Cox Green comes into sight.

Harmony returns.

We cross the bridge, and turn east along the North bank of the river, following a well marked cycle track / pathway, through woods, past a Northumbria Water Office building, and then past the Wildfowl Centre. Continuing along the signposted cycle track / pathway, to Low Barmston, then over a bridge which takes us over the A1231 Washington Highway, past the Nissan Training Centre, along Cherry Blossom Way, to emerge on the road past the main Nissan Factory. This is retracing part of the "Walk to Durham" route, you may recognise. Cross over the A19 at the Nissan flyover and then follow the track alongside the A19, to the Mill Garage BMW dealer, and home.

On checking the map, we have walked ten miles.
Not a word of dissent (well almost not a word), 8 / 10 I think.

Democracy in Action

Just noticed this in our local authority website:

Labour candidate Ken Stephenson has been elected to represent the Primrose ward on South Tyneside Council.

The ward's 6,307 electors went to the polls today (Thursday 25th February) in a by-election following the sudden death of Labour Councillor Barrie Scorer in December.

The results are as follows:

Ken Stephenson (Labour) 854

Pete Hodgkinson (British National Party) 566
Aaron Luke (Independent) 213
David Alan Rice (Independent) 174
Anthony James Lanaghan (Conservative) 124

Susan Heather Troupe (Liberal Democrat) 100

The turnout for this election was 32.25% and Labour win with a 288 majority.

Nice to see "democracy" in action, the "winner" is elected with only 13.5% of the people elegible to vote actually voting for him. Worryingly the BNP are a close second.

Election Posters

January 2nd 2010

The war of words heats up as the leaders of the main parties try to drag our attention away from enjoying ourselves to convincing us we should vote for them in the comming General Election. "Call me Dave" even reminds us there at most 154 days to go, in much the same way that retailers remind us how many more shopping days there are to Christmas.

Cameron tells us he wants to "devolve" more power to local authorities. Hmm.. geat idea, just hope he is going to give them a good kicking first and get them on track doing what they are supposed to be doing, instead of filling their diversity quotas and paying themselves generous salaries and inflation proof pensions.

Given that local elections have even lower turn outs than general elections, less than 40% is typical, so if we assume that the winning councillors get 90% of the vote, we have people who are elected with only 36% of the population voting for them, and we feel entitled to criticise other countries systems of government (eg Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan)... interesting

Newspapers are in decline we are told, perhaps our local paper will act bravely, and run a series of articles investigating Local Councillors expenses and Council waste, I suspect it would make interesting reading.

New stealth taxes are announced as:

"Motorists in England and Wales fined for minor offences face having to pay bigger penalties under a government scheme to compensate victims of crime. Since 2007, a £15 surcharge has been added to the fines of all people convicted of a crime, to raise money for support services for crime victims. Now ministers want to extend the scheme to on-the-spot fines and fixed penalty notices for a range of offences. They say the offences that could be targeted are not victimless crimes"

so presumably the "victims" of people overstaying their time in a "pay and display" car park are those of us who cannot find a parking space, does that mean we will get compensation?

Don't rush out and spend it!, you just know it is going to be spent on another army of public sector employees to "administer" the system and boost Gordon's turkey army of capitive voters.

And finally a bit of light relief, check these two out for a laugh:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbt3RchDyg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gjxrq89VJE&feature=related

Friday 20th November 2009

This morning we must attend Kathleen's hospital appointment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. We have to be there for 09:20, and being aware of the traffic we leave in plenty of time. Big mistake, there is no traffic. Not sure why, is everyone using the metro (given the 25% increase in the cost of petrol), or have they all been made redundant?

Net result is we arrive at 09:00. First you have to report to a reception desk, where your paper file is located and despatched via their high speed delivery system (ie an elderly lady who hand delivers the file to the clinic). I thought the NHS had recently spent several millions (or was it billions) on a "state of the art" computer system, clearly they have not heard of the paperless office and electronic transfer.

We arrive at the clinic to find about six people already waiting. By 09:20, no one has been called. It has got conversational, and we find that three people have 09:00 appointments, and three have 09:20 appointments. New people arrive as we sit there, soon there are no seats for the arriving patients. Shortly after 09:20, the first of the 09:00 appointments is called, so we start the day 20 minutes behind. Anyone there in America reading this, just note you do not want a system like this!.

Eventually Kathleen is seen and we get out at about 10:00, not too bad I suppose, at least it allowed them to charge us for an hours parking.

The good news is that they do not appear to have found anything dire wrong, but as always they do of course find something. They now say she has evidence of osteoporosis in her spine, so she must attend another appointment with a different specialist. She is not happy about this, since it probably means even more tablets, and she hates taking tablets.

After lunch I go cycling with the cycling group. Despite the dreadful weather they have been suffering in Cumbria, the afternoon here is dry and sunny and we have a very pleasant 2.5 hour ride taking in Beacon Lough and the East Gateshead Cycleway. Mark says we did approximately 15 miles, it almost all seems to have been up hill!

After my return from the cycling I decide to set up the new Digital TV Recorder I recently bought, thus bringing us more technologically upto date and making our Tape VCR redundant. It turns out to be very simple, and within half an hour (most of which was spent in waiting for it to tune itself into the available channels), we are pausing live TV, rewinding live TV, and recording whole series at least as well as the average ten year old.

The UK news today is dominated by the flooding in Cumbria, and the tragic death of a policeman when a road bridge collapsed under the weight of flood water. Plus the trend to being governed by unelected representative continues with the appointment of one of our unelected members of the House of Lords as EU Foreign Secretary. Perhaps when we have finished training the Afghan Army, they will come to Europe and restore democracy here?