what they say will happen

london 9.31am 9C drizzly tuesday 2018

 

 

 

the predicted weather outcome for the coming week. very unusual to see the uk in solid blue even for a day nevermind for a continuous 2 or 3 days like it looks like here. there seem to be a simultaneous warming of the arctic going on too. a strange anomaly. 

i must remember this is all computer simulation, using data that they have input in and using programmed software that assumes certain things. so it will be interesting to see if this simulation is anything like what will turn out for real. i had a look at the 7day forecast in this website showing the pattern and it shows that during the day , even at the height of the freeze, the day temperatures in the uk did rise above freezing, so it is not solid below- zero temperatures throughout. northern france, germany and the eastern european countries were all below freezing throughout… so they will get the brunt of all this cold weather. i had a look at the forecast for berlin, -3C/-9C for the coming monday 26.2.18. i guess they have cold winters every year, and most probably they dont have these screaming headlines that we have in uk. well we dont have these events that often, the last one was in jan 2013. so i guess u could excuse us for talking excitingly about it. haha. 

just a fried pork chop meal by simon to make you hungry. haha.

where is paradise?

london 1.45pm 18.9C sunny wednesday 2017

5.37pm 17C sunny

i cannot help comparing what a peaceful country the uk is , with no extremes of weather, or any nasties like earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.

what we have is storms, like the one yesterday, or so it seems. i would never have known of it, if i had not read it in the papers this morning. a 85mph storm eileen, the first one of the storms this year that is big enough to have its own name. and it takes september before any one such even appears. i mean what happened in january , february, months that are winter months and presumably associated with storms;?

 to the usa, this storm is a category 1. haha. a small fry when u consider they have just endured two category 5 storms so far. the usa can easily finance and deal with the costs of these storms. so it puzzles me when i see calls to donate to it… what they should be asking for donations is to the poor people caught up in the caribbean islands. and i dont mean the odd billionaires like branson who suffer from it. those ordinary folks in those islands are the real losers in all this. these islands are supposed to be paradise… but i think if u have not realised it by now, you are still very naive… that there is no such place as paradise. there is always a serpent in it. in this case, it is the hurricanes.

all those people who are in the uk, professing to be sick of the uk, and going abroad in search of paradise… little did they know that paradise is the uk, right in front of their noses and they never realise it. it takes being in the middle of a hurricane in their paradise island, to make them realise east west,  home’s best … 

i have just come back from my circuit training with our original trainer. the last 2 wks we have substitute trainers, which are a bit hit or miss, so it is nice to get him back again. he went to oregon for his two weeks holiday… intending to walk the trails, but it was hit by forest fires when he was there. he said he was deciding on florida as another alternate destination… and said it seems he missed the floods but got caught by the fire… haha. 

fresh election on 8june 2017

london 4.55pm 12C sunny. tuesday 2017

my goodness, what a surprise, just after the easter holidays when people have only just got back to work, and then here is this bombshell.

the country is having an early general election to elect the next govt. she is going to overule the fixed term act 2011, normally the next general election would be 5yrs later on Thursday 7 May 2020. this govt was elected in 2015, parliament will have to have a vote of no confidence or a two thirds supermajority of the house of commons to overule that act if she is to have her general election in june 8. there would be hardly any time to campaign on it. i am sure the opposition are all caught on the hop.  i bet they never expected it. is teresa may so confident she can get agreement to hold an election so early? quite a difference in approach from the american system of government when president elections hustings can start months in advance and is prolonged and time consuming. i much prefer the british system of short sharp quick elections. 

i have been rather busy going out. first time i did it, really putting the crutches to work and my right leg too. i managed to get all that i set out to do. so that means for the next 2 days i dont need to go out, and just go out on friday when i have to attend the followup appointment with the fracture clinic in st thomas hospital. the foot is healing well. 

 

this winter has been mild and dry

london 9.47am 7.8C sunny monday 2017

this latest report in the daily mail says this winter has been one of the mildest and driest. i noticed it was mild myself (though i did not notice it was drier than usual. i dont take much notice of the rain as i dont mind the rain and i like it to rain because it lifts the temperature up when it does.)  

and i recall i mentioned it was mild in passing in one of my posts recently. but i had thought it was just london. i am used to london being mild no matter what happens to the rest of the country. but if this report is right, it seems this winter was mild and dry for the rest of the uk as well. this winter is not only mild, but  is unusual for being so dry, as it seems it is more usual for it to be mild and wet. 

so the met office has been wrong (again) when it predicted this winter will be severe. this is the third year in succession that the winters has been mild. the met office should stop predicting long range weather as it is hopeless at it. i thought they said they wont do it anymore, but they recently installed a expensive new computer system, and thought they will chance it again. wrong again. back to the drawing board, fellas.

i really enjoy the winters here in london. and i do hope we get more mild winters so that it becomes the norm. but of course, i expect nature will bring in one severe winter , we are due for one.

who knows we might have a ferociously cold spring this year. snow in devon, anyone? it seems to me we are overdue for that one too.

we witter on about the weather here in uk, its a national pastime; and talking as if it is life and death if the winter is severe but really it seldom goes below -5C anyway… when u consider places like edmonton with -20C normally in their winter, you have to laugh at us really.

but it is a harmless pastime and is fun to do, so lets continue to do it. a good excuse to post lots of pictures of flowers in the sun.

the sun has moved round so that it shines into my flat now. so i have been getting lots of sunshine streaming  into the flat. 

indefinite leave to remain

entrlondon 4.51pm

when i read this woman, who is singaporean being deported from uk because she had let her permanent residence lapse, i was surprised because i thought i read some time ago that she got a reprieve.

but it seems not.

she got ‘indefinite leave to enter’ (the official words stamped on your passport that says u got permanent residence in uk) when she first married her husband in 1990, but  she went back to singapore for more than 2yrs to look after her dying parents, and so lost it. that was a mistake, she should have come back before the two years, just to re establish another 2yrs just to keep that permanent residence alive. but i guess in those days u dont really think of it. i have a feeling she was absent from the uk for a long time. 

what is interesting is that she was given a ‘indefinite leave to enter’ in 2008. which suggests that she came back to uk that year. and what is strange is that it needs to be renewed. so it might be she again left the uk to live in singapore and overstayed the 2yrs.  i dont recall that a ‘indefinite leave to enter’ needs to be renewed…so that seems to me the only reason why it has to be so.  if that is the case, then she must have tried their patience, leaving the country twice for more than 2yrs after being given permanent residence twice.

if away from the UK for more than 2 years you may still qualify to return to live in the UK under your previous conditions if, for example, you have strong family ties in the UK or have lived here most of your life. However, as this would be a matter for the Immigration authorities, you would be required to address any further queries to them.

and now there is a new rule for spouses of british citizens, the husband (usually it is the husband, though i suppose it applies to the wife too if she is the british citizen) must earn more than £18,600 a year. this was recently upheld by the judges. the husband unfortunately has recently undergone heart surgery, and so out of work and so do not fulfil that requirement. 

what is interesting is that the ruling went all the way to the european court and the euro judges upheld the british court judgement. when those same judges overturned british judgement and ruled that european criminals cannot be deported after their sentence  because it breached their human rights to be with their local families… and then they agree with the british judgement in this case of having to earn that kind of money before their spouse can stay… it is quite laughable really. i can see it is something that the british have to do, to prevent a huge influx of wives coming in from europe, and their kids too… but i must say their agreeing with the british judges really surprised me. usually they could not care less about british judgements and rule against . but i think after our vote for brexit they must have thought we better be more resilient and allow them some autonomy. haha. or they might be thinking it might open the floodgates in germany and france too, if they overrule it. 

nowadays things have changed a lot, it is a long way from the old rules, where just being married to a british citizen is enough to allow u right to live in this country. but too many people have abused it and so they changed the rules. and now she is caught in it. 

 

UK votes to leave the EU

london 6.59am sunny 14.4C friday 2016

what a surprise i have when i just woke and got online to see this headline in the news.  i am elated of course, especially when i was expecting to lose, and preparing to live with it.

i m glad the british have the fighting spirit still and willing to take hold of their own fate in their own hands rather than let other unelected people dictate to them.

and so yet again the polls have been proved wrong. i now know why. it is because those who vote leave kept quiet. i did, and i bet a lot of people also felt the same. we just vote and it would appear a lot of others felt the same and want to leave.

london clearly voted to remain… again not surprising because london has benefitted enormously from it. all that cheap labour from very skilled europeans come to london to work. we see that in all those restaurants opening, and coffee shops etc proliferating all over the city. but the rest of england gets the big migrant problems of overcrowded services, schools, nhs, etc. and none of the benefits.

   sunderland with its 77% leave vote (its now amended , the final tally is 61% to 38% the majority was about 22%.)was the first indication that things might not be all that it seems. and looking at the map of england it is a sea of blue for leave, even wales, surprisingly, as most of us thought they will vote remain.

it is truly a historic moment. independance day all right.

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 i am glad the bookies will lose money. they were predicting a remain win. i hope all those who betted for a remain win lose money. this link in the guardian allows me to find out how my area (westminster) voted. 

More people in Westminster voted to remain a member of the EU – a 37.93% majority.

68.97% for remain 53,928

31.03% for leave 24,268

A total of 78,196 people voted, representing 64.88% of the 120,524 electorate.

8.02am final tally country wide the result …51.9% leave, 48.1% remain

added. 25.6.16 the sharp up and down of the stock market was quite a frightener, but i think we are getting to know its tricks… it always do that because the lot of them are money chancers, able to see a chance to make money on the backs of gullible fools. they first sell, then when a lot of others panic and sell too and the market drops, they then calculate how much it will drop and then buy. so dont let what the stock market does affect you.

the right decision was made, we have to get out of this EU, it is now going for tighter union, which the uk just will not fit into.

in time, people will realise that the EU is making itself into a closed shop. not by saying so, but by indirect ways, their myriad regulations and red tape will take care of that. it will make it difficult to trade with if u are outside it. if it makes it difficult for the uk to do business with it now that we are out… we will know its true intentions. 

i hope it wont succeed, that is why i hope it will break up, because if it does succeed it will cause global trade to polarise into them and the rest of the world. with the uk out, the incentives to join might be lessened. with 27countries in its pocket now, it is a powerful group.

the refugees are both a source of manpower for it as well as a potential terrorist source. mixed blessings there. if they can control its influx it will help, hence their giving away refugee passports. that is a very recent development. the passports will digitally identity each refugee, but it will also allow him to move about europe. at the moment there is no way of identifying a refugee, they could just disappear into the system…(it is a typical solution that can only be  cooked up by bureaucrats.)

but i think the refugee problem will be the one that breaks them up.

right now, everyone is criticising cameron for allowing such a referendum. history i think will make us grateful to him for giving us, the people, the chance to choose. that choice have been lacking in all the doings with the EU.

as usual of course all this is just one person’s opinion, ie mine. so dont get too het up if u dont agree with it. haha.

added. 26.6.16 quite a good account of why uk voted for brexit.

In the end, the lesson of the referendum was a simple one: more Britons felt they were losing from EU membership than winning. It was a message that politicians and business leaders based in London — the only region of England which had a majority for Remain — totally failed to spot.

it seems to be forgotten that switzerland withdrew its application to join the EU a week before the referendum vote. those canny switz must know something … 

added. 26.6.16 interesting that the german , spanish and french stock exchange lost a lot more than the english stock market which recovered very quickly. i think this is the moment when the uk is like that boy who shouted, ‘but the emperor has no clothes’, of the EU. 

added. 7am 27.6.16 16.4C cloudy monday . another article which asks why uk left. and may pinpoint the single most important reason… people dont like the sudden huge influx of migrants , and it applies to usa too… and may bring in trump as president. it is uncontrolled immigration i think that worries people. because it brings in sudden huge increase in a community which can overwhelm public services.

added. 27.6.16 this article about italy’s banking system points out another weakness in the EU. their rules have put a strait jacket on their banks . the euro is really weaker than it appears and it might be the world will come to realise it, when italy’s banking system collapses, then u can bet the euro will fall like a stone. 

Italy’s banks are the Achilles Heel of the eurozone financial system. Non-performing loans have ratcheted up to 18pc of total balance sheets as a result the country’s slide into depression after the Lehman crisis.

The new bail-in reform this year has brought matters to a head, catching EU authorities off guard. It was intended to protect taxpayers by ensuring that creditors suffer major losses first if a bank gets into trouble, but was badly designed and has led to a flight from bank shares. The Bank of Italy has called for a complete overhaul of the bail-in rules.

It is now almost impossible for Italian banks to raise capital. They are caught in a pincer as the ECB simultaneously demands compliance with tougher capital adequacy buffers, in some case demanding fresh infusions of capital three or four times.  Mr Codogno said the ECB is unwittingly destabilizing the banks in an overzealous attempt to make Europe’s banks safer.

added. the british banks bore the brunt of the losses of their share prices. why is that u might ask, if our banks are well capitalised… it seems they act as middle men for the rest of the world to access the european market… passporting it is called. and not being in the single market will jeopardise it… as this article explains. but european banks will also lose… so the chance of  all banks being given access to each others market is high. it seems to me that britain has acted as a conduit for the rest of the world to access the EU market. without britain, the rest of the world will have to go through the expensive time consuming way of opening up trade links with EU . it might make the EU loosen its language and regulation barriers to allow them to bypass the UK …logically that is the best way EU can take advantage of the situation… but  they are such sticklers for regulations and rules they wont do it, even though they will benefit. after all, as a result of uk leaving the EU,  there is even a call to remove english as an official language  in all interactions with the EU.

but u can see why the EU wants to bring everyone into the euro and join up all the banks in the EU countries and centralise the whole thing. that way they can lock the uk financial institutions out of the EU and keep all business in house. 

katie hopkins response , i agree with her on this

london 9.45pm wednesday 2016

After the Dutch floods of 1953 which killed 2,551 people, the country stood up and declared never again.

Never Again.

And since that day a nation which lies mostly below sea level has never been allowed to flood again, thanks to this real determination to find solutions to the problem.

It strikes me, instead of normalising terror, instead of accepting that an attack on the UK is inevitable, and instead of the Belgian president announcing ‘What we knew would happen has happened’, we need leaders who when they stand up and say ‘Never again’ actually mean it and come up with solutions.

Instead of increasing police presence to reassure us, we need action on the root causes.

Typically, the only man talking tough after yesterday’s attacks was Donald Trump – who ‘mainstream’ politicians abhor and ignore.

We need to stop allowing jihadis to return to Europe, prevent extremist imams accessing young minds and spreading their religious brand of hate, and stop communities colonising parts of Europe where former generations of immigrants used to integrate.

i read this just now in the dailymail online and find i agree with her. she is pointing out something new in the direction that europe is going… like it is normal now to expect a new mass killing by isis. the authorities seem to have lost all control of the situation, and admit they cannot stop the terrorist attacks because they cannot stop them moving freely in and out of europe.

 but we in uk, should not admit defeat like that… we can control our borders and can keep them out, and those that are allready in , we can find. and we can make sure it is not easy to buy guns or bomb making stuff here.

it surely is not just due to luck that uk have no such incident since that fateful day when bombs went off in london. in fact our reaction to it was so different to europe, which shut everything down. it just make matters worst… and make more people really afraid… europe should take a leaf out of how the uk handled that … it seems to me they have much to learn from the uk. europe should swallow its pride and come cap in hand to uk and ask for help.

i think uk had so much more experience to cope with these terrorist attacks, after all, the IRA bombings of mainland uk makes these events not such a special ones… we have experiences to deal with them. that may explain why london very quickly recovered and life went on as usual. it surely helped that we are an island and can control who we let in.

europe lost that advantage long ago, and that is its weakest factor in this new dynamics. and their security is divided between a lot of different authorities , there is no overall force, to co ordinate intelligence.

katie is right, that we should un couple ourselves from europe. and for the first and most probably the only time, we have a chance to have a vote on it. come 23rd june. events in europe with this bombing, have really convinced me we should leave.

i think that vote will be a fateful one that will determine what our future will be. i sincerely hope we vote to leave. 

added i think the citizens of europe can have a strong case that their govts and the EU governing body have failed in their duty to protect their citizens. something that is first priority in any govt… the EU have failed in that most important regard… and i think do not deserve to continue. i think it may lead to the dissolution of the EU as such.  people and the member govts may well come to the conclusion that if the EU as a whole cannot guarantee their safety what is the point of them? i fear it is too late for them, they have lost a lot and will lose more , not only their freedom, but their culture and way of life too. and this loss is not only due to the huge influx of migrants, but the slow attrition and homogenising effect of all those EU regulations making all the countries seem more and more to be like each other.

for me, each country in europe have lost their distinctive different identities that was so attractive about europe in the past. 

smart meters

london 10.31am 9.4C sunny tuesday 2016

its a waste of money and time to install these in all households. and someone, writing in the Times today, is finally warning the govt of it. it asks the govt to reconsider before it is implemented later this year. the trouble is we all , energy users will be forced to pay for it, via a supplement on our bills. wish they will ask us if we want it or not, instead of forcing it on us. it costs about £200 to install in each household. i hope those who use more will pay more. 

ah well, this country thinks it is so rich it can just impose costs on everyone, and get away with it. and in many cases it can. 

 

 

 

the weather in october

london 6.51pm rosy clouds from the sun rising. monday 2015 10.8C

i found this page in the guardian giving a summary of the weather in october. there are links to the other months too. i try to remember what i experienced of the weather during those months, and try to relate it to what i read about that month in the guardian summary; but cant say i can. everything is a blur and merged altogether. haha. was it very wet in august in london this year? hmm. does it matter? haha. i enjoy the weather any old how anyway.

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[but i guess it is a human kind of curiosity to collate and to make a pattern of the findings. and to say oh, braemer was warmest and coldest in sept and oct. ya, that is a funny place , it happened around the end of sept and beginning of oct. that period must feel weird for the folks who live there… daytime so hot, and night plunging to minus temperature. it was both the warmest and the coldest place in the uk on the same day almost. haha. for someone who likes moderation in all things, it is a irritating place to live in. haha. (just joking… just; though it is bordering on ‘I mean it’ about it).

british coins today

london 6.32pm 19.4C clear saturday 2015

i have lived here in london and used the coins everyday but never realise they spell out the shield when laid out in the way shown in this post by ya ma donkey. it is interesting.

though all that made me take a look at the coins i got  and found two £1 coins with different backs designs. both showing bridges. and they dont have any latin words on the rims. i hope they are real, ie not counterfeit coins.

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