just a normal day in london, albeit rather a wet one. hang on that is normal too. haha.

london 7.17pm 9C monday 2016

i am unable to watch tv, the programs live. it says i have a weak or no signal. so i think our  aerial on the roof of the flats have been damaged,  by the storm last night, when it rained really hard for a hour or two, with strong winds.

we can still get the broadband programs on the bbc player, and other channels players. and i can get broadband on my chromebook so my internet access is still available.

added.  i realise i can still watch the live tv programs, on my laptop, because the tv guide allows me to see it live. hmm, it really shows why the license fee is becoming unenforceable, since anyone can now watch tv from their laptops. why bother to pay for a license? hope they will stop that and find another way to finance the bbc. 

so i was able to watch simon reeves travelogue of greece on tv, where he filmed the refugees coming in their boats to a greek island  which is 1 hr from the turkish mainland;  and filmed the conflicts between cultures, and the demonstrations of the young in athens against the older generation establishment who they blame for getting greece into such a bad debt and trouble it is in now. seeing all those trouble and strife, i cannot see anyone wanting to go there for a holiday.

i can understand that report saying most tourists are now going to spain… rather than hotspots like morocco, or egypt or practically every where else, where they can be bombed or shot at by terrorists who are targetting the tourists.

when tourists are not dodging bullets from terrorists, they are dodging  the zika virus in south america. it is really not a nice time to be a tourist… here in london, we are getting rain, it seems a storm is here. storm imogen. all i notice of it is that the rain is heavy but seem to come in bursts of 1-2hours. last night those celebrating chinese new year eve will be very wet. it was a wet night. today it had bursts of rain, so that the covered walkways in victoria are full of people trying to get out of the rain. people just go about doing their business or buy lunch, because that was when i was there. it was the lunch rush hour.

it’s quite a normal day really in london. 

added. 9.2.16 7.19am 7.3C tuesday seems like the rest of the south has got gales and such…

closing borders

london 6.42am 7C sunday 2015 sunrise 6.41am sunset 4.47pm

woke up at 7am the old time, as i slept early and forgot to change the clocks. it is really 6am and still dark. but now it is bright even though sunrise was only 4mins ago, and looks like a sunny day. yesterday it would still be dark at this time. 

this headline made me wonder if that is the solution to the refugee crisis… let all the other Non EU countries lying along the path close their borders. now that serbia is threatening to close its borders, maybe when it does turkey will start to close its borders with syria, and thus close off the land route to europe. you can see if turkey closes its borders with syria, or stop encouraging them, it would stop the refugees from entering europe.  i bet now turkey let them run through their country maybe even facillate it by giving them free travel passes. after all the french are doing it hastening their flight to uk by giving free train passes to refugees.   that will reduce the numbers from syria. i think europe tried to make a deal with turkey by giving them more money to stop the refugees or contain them in turkey, but the turks dont buy that saying we are not a refugee camp. but if serbia closes its border… and it is doing so by building a fence now, and the water crossing to greece from turkey is blocked (a big if, as water crossing is hard to block) that will bottleneck the refugees in turkey.

 the african refugees will continue. but  the world is not so sympathetic to them, compared to syria. and if there is a way to make the northern african countries stop refugees crossing their borders , say if u return the refugees to them, they might start discouraging the refugees from going through their country. that may be the strategy the EU can take, to make the other countries that now hasten the refugees on their way to europe, realise that it is not getting rid of the refugees, and out of sheer own survival will stop any more refugees from using their country as a escape route to europe. 

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

a snapshot of some happenings in the world and london

london

in 1990 i had wondered what people in 2015 would be worrying about. i did not keep a blog in 1990 (because they were not invented yet haha) and here are some of the things that seem to be in the news today.

a novel way for smugglers of illegal immigrants to bypass the controls and just aim a unmanned ship towards italy and rely on the coast guards to steer it away from the rocks. very effective too.

it also shows up how attractive europe is to refugees.

i read somewhere , in a book talking about india and delhi in particular, actually saying its huge population is producing so many people, that there are not enough jobs for them.

in the past it said, europe too had this problem but it was damn lucky to have so many new countries being discovered during the early 20th century;  that could absorb these extra people.

america, australia, canada, africa (to a lesser extent) , these vast empty lands were discovered with very small native populations and ripe for immigrants.

 america was the jewel in the crown its huge empty continent that was desperate to have new immigrants.

but now in this year 2015, there are no places that are not full of its own people so where are these economic (maybe both economic and asylum refugees) going to go?

well here in 2015, they come to europe.

added. 4.12.15. the socalled arab spring has been a disaster in my opinion, it spawned so much unrest and regime changes in northern africa and the middle east and destroyed their economy that it drove lots of people away to seek new life in europe. 

in future we will have to colonise the moon to absorb all the extra people that the world will generate. but for now, europe has the jobs. esp uk. so they all come. i am talking of people in northern africa and the countries bordering the lands south of the mediterranean obviously, as america gets refugees from mexico and cuba. 

we got a very infectious disease called ebola to worry about. though the worry is more health workers going there to do their charitable good deed and then coming back infected to potentially infect us all. so far we have the 2nd case of infected health worker, but from what i read she is getting worse instead of better.

each time there is a case like this , the country panics and shit bricks. i wonder when the country will finally recognise that it is not good to have these people go there for a few months, and then come back potentially carrying the disease. sooner or later, one of them will infect people here and then all hell will break lose. there is really no way of screening them all. may have to quarantine all of them like new york does it.  but it will be costly. i have been in central london, near soho and am surprised at the huge numbers of buildings being pulled down. whole blocks gaping empty. one whole side of leicester square with just the facade and empty blanks where their windows would be. and another block razed to the ground with a big hole inside it. its amazing that london is having this big wholesale destruction of its existing buildings when u consider its whole reputation has been built on its old history and ancient architecture… it started in the city of london, and still do, but that seem to have crept to the west-end too. there is a big chunk taken out in regent st too. 

bus fares has gone up 5p from £1.45 to £1.50 with the limit set at the same, £4.40 a day. so just taking 3 buses will kick u over the limit, and subsequent trips by bus will be free. i dont have to pay of course which makes me very happy.haha. lots of other things happening but it is impossible to give them all. not to mention if i anything grabs my attention it is small things like lidl offering 1.5kg oranges for 74p. haha. i bought two packs.(8 oranges in each pack) it is nice to have oranges in winter. they are from spain hope the local spanish people are not deprived of their oranges to serve us in london. haha. not that i care, ho ho.

refugees

london

its a pleasant life i lead. this morning i went to the library to read the saturday papers. there dont seem to be so many eastern europeans in the library this morning. i wonder what happened to them. do you think they are all on holiday back to poland? or is the govt’s efforts to get them to go back bearing fruit. haha. they hang around here because they can charge their mobiles/smartphones. nowadays even the poorest beggar has a smartphone. its no wonder so many want to smuggle themselves into uk.

there is an article in today’s paper … the uk to continue to pay benefits to czecks and slovaks  who argues that those  citizens have paid their national insurance and so are entitled to benefits even though they are in a different country.

if the uk is forced to pay out, it would mean the uk govt will have to bring in laws to change that and it will affect the brits living in uk. what it might mean is more of the locals here who are british born and bred will find more restrictions placed on how and when they can receive benefits. the poor here will be the ones who will bear the brunt of these eastern europeans coming here for the govt will realise that the conditions for benefits are too lenient. and they will tighten the conditions to get them, and ordinary british poor people will be the ones affected as they will find it harder and harder to get or maintain those benefits. well, blame those immigrants. or rather reform of the benefits system is long overdue and this immigrant influx taking advantage of it merely highlights its excesses and form a catalyst to have it changed. 

As you can see, i am going to argue that it is high time the lenient way the benefits system is implemented is curtailed.

it is the same arguement that will be applied to the illegal entry of people, nevermind the poles who are at least legitimate and legal to come in. because so many are trying to get into the uk in the mistaken belief (or maybe not so mistaken after all,it seems) that the benefits system is so good here, the govt will have to enact rules to curtail who can receive them and put a limit to the amount and the time they can get them.

of course the alternate way is to leave the EU.

this problem of countries trying to curb economic migrants from their shores is endemic all over the world.

look at australia’s solution. haha. they bung the boat people in nauru… and then they sign an agreement for cambodia to take them by paying the cambodians.

i dont really have an answer to this as i can sympathise with the refugees who want to find a better life. the trouble is if they leave their country, their country will sink even further down into anarchy and strong man rule. at the same time i am understanding of host countries who do not want welcome these economic refugees.