I am now ready now for what the world throws at me, well ready for what works throws at me. All my boxes have been unpacked and the contents put away. It taken me since 06:45 this morning and it now 09:00 so just a little over 2 hours to sort my life out. I can now sit back and watch the rest of the office unpack their boxes and sort their desks out, so it far it not been too bad, I haven’t heard any arguments are any complaints which is quite surprising.

Rabbit

I have been at work now for 15 minutes, The move over the weekend appeared to go ok. Well at least my boxes are at my new desk, its taken me from the time I arrived to now to set up my computer, well not quite, I have to intall new printers, but I'll do that later.

It time time to unload my stuff and set up my desk, I appear to have more storage space than I did upstairs, so that a good, oh well time to get. Will be on again later.

Rabbit

Now that I have my new ‘mobile external hard drive’, or whatever the proper term is. I am able to sort my photos. I have been meaning to do this for weeks, but I am having a quiet day, my daughter is out the weather is not looking too good.

Therefore I’m going to hog the computer all day, and sort my life out, am only coming off to eat.

Oh and maybe a few blogs along the way!

Rabbit

We went out yesterday a spent a little more than we intended too, I needed a new printer to we headed off to PC world. I’d already checked up on what printers to look at, I had two in mind, a Canon and an Epsom.

When we were looking around the Canon was out of stock and the Epsom was only available on the internet (I really should have looked better). Anyway we couldn’t really see one that we liked. Lucky for us Staples the office supply people are right next door. We were planning on going there anyway, because I needed to buy a few items any way.

Well we walked around and discovered that a few of the ‘All in One’ printers, scanners and photocopier were on special deals. We noticed a HP Photosmart for £99.99 reduced from £149.99. Being a Yorkshireman and rather tight with money, (the Scots are generous compared to Yorkshire folk) we decided that it would be ideal. I also bought a mobile external drive 160Gb, the one I use at present is full, paper and some share ink cartridges. So it was successful if want an expensive morning out.

To finish off a good day, we had an excellent Italian meal last night!

It the great annual event on the Thames today, ‘The University Boat Race’. Looking out of my window this early in the morning, it looks like they have picked a nice day for it. Considering the bad weather we have had in the last couple of weeks I bet the organisers are relieved.

They are due to start at 17:15 this evening, is seems quite late to me, I can’t remember them starting that late before. The weather forecast is good, but has said the wind may increase which will make for an interesting race if that’s the case.

We are going out for a meal tonight; hopefully it will be as good as the last one. Well we are going to the same place, for a nice Italian.

Don’t forget to change your clocks tonight; they go forward at 01:00.

Rabbit

I've packed all wordly goods and am ready to move, I managed to fit all my stuff in two small tea crates, ready for the move down stairs to my new desk, all I have left to go is my laptop which I take home with me anyway.

Hopefully when I get to work on Monday morning, my boxes will have been moved downstairs and all I have to do us unpack, I whic all moves were this easy.

I now have nothing to do for the rest of the day, must be time to go home!

Rabbit

My daughters friend is off to Thailand tomorrow for the next few weeks (lucky girl) and she has been struggling for the last few days to get her homework done before she goes, apparently its due in on the first day back to school.

Now my point is this, if a parent was to take their child out of school during term time for a holiday then under the Government policy she may be fined up to £50 a week because her child has been out of school illegally. Therefore in the same principle if the school gives your child home during the holiday then can’t we claim compensation from the school, which are making pupils work during their holiday?

After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Just a thought!

Rabbit

I have been wondering over the last few days, when we bloggers get going we tend to criticise a person or an organisation. Do the people we have a go at, ever read our bloggs, and if they do, do they ever reply to them.

A lot have us tend to have a go, and rightly so at the Government and hell of a lot of us have been critical of the parasite and his crone, the Blair’s. Do these individuals, organisations employ people to search the net and find out about our views on them, if so what do they do about it?

I believe they are so thick skinned that they couldn’t give a damm, after all we are a bunch of nobodies aren’t we. It would be interesting sometimes for them to reply, to see what excuses they can come up with.

Rabbit

Barclays Investment Banking; have paid their CEO Bob Diamond, more than £21m last year. His basic salary was £250, 000, plus he received shares worth £14.4m and a cash bonus of £6.5m. Not a bad job, if you can get it. I am a little unsure about the tax he will pay, I know he would pay tax on his salary and on his cash bonus, but will pay tax on receipt of his shares. He will of course pay tax on any profit he makes on his shares; any tax experts out there throw any light on the subject.

He’s not doing too badly, last year he was paid £22m, Barclays made an overall profit of £7.08bn and it is said that Mr Diamond division contributed about 1/3 of that, hence such a large bonus.

The Unite Union have said that Barclay’s staff would be astonished by the size of his payment and added that “The millions of pounds awarded to directors was only possible because of the hard work put in by staff”

I was watching with interest a report last on the local London news, the article was set in Convent Garden related to buskers who operate in the area. The Landlords want a reduction in street performers in that area. The spokeswoman for the Landlords was saying that they want a reduction of 30% in performances. However, s as representative from the performers was saying that they actually want a reduction of 50%, but will eventually try and drive them out of Convent Garden altogether.

Needless to say the performers are not very happy, saying that not only will it affect their livelihood but it will also reduce the number of tourists who visit the area. I have to agree with them and with Lesley Garrett who is also in favour of keeping the same level of performances. I used to work in an office a stone throw from Convent Garden and I used to go to Convent Garden during my lunch hour just to watch the performers. On the whole they were very good and I sent many a happy hour listening to singers and musicians.

Rabbit

Terminal 5 is still having ‘Teething Problems’. A few months ago on the London news there was a report on T5 on how it would cope with the baggage, they had thousands of bags and people to test out all the systems, which according to the report worked perfectly and would be a great asset when the terminal opened.

Well now it’s now open and what do we see, total chaos, apparently I in 5 flights will be cancelled today, so much for our efficiency!

Rabbit

Terminal 5 and BAA is already losing bags, the flight this morning took to off Paris without any baggage on board, and passengers have to wait up to two hours to retrieve their baggage when arriving. BAA senior management have but it down to teething problems. Considering they have had 5 months of testing I don’t think it can be put down to teething problems. It just the same incompetence that’s always been there.

BAA motto ‘Why change a habit of a life time, we have built our reputation on losing your bags’

The girls in the office are in panic mode at the moment and running around like headless chickens. We are currently in the process of moving offices, from the third floor down to the first floor. The move will be finalised this weekend and to achieve this we are to pack all our worldly goods in crates kindly provided by the company. These will be moved to our new desk over the weekend.

Now I don’t have a lot to pack away and it will only take me about 10 -15 minutes to pack away my stuff. We have to be ready to move by the close of play tomorrow. The girls, bless their cotton socks keep coming across to ask us when we are going to pack, they obviously don’t realise that we are engineers and the only ones who do any work, while the admin staff gossip about Eastenders and Coronation Street while polishing their nails.

If we pack all our computers and paperwork today we won’t be able to do any work into Monday morning, we are planning to start packing at 13:00 tomorrow we should be finished by 13:15.

Rabbit

T5 has finally opened to the public, the first flight left for Paris at 06:37 this morning, while the first arrival was a BA flight from Hong Kong.

The anti-airport expansion group have planned a ‘Flash Mob’ protest at 11:00 this morning. The organisers are expecting 500 to turn up to carry out a protest against BAA plans for a third runway and 6th terminal.

I have decided that recycling can be dangerous to your health. No really it can be and I am living proof. Last night having arrived home late, it was too late to cook a proper meal so I decided to have a bowl of soup. The can, was the type with a ring pull, I opened the can cooked the soup and had a nice bowl of Scots broth soup.

Now comes the dangerous bit, when I had finished I washed the bowl and pan and started to wash the empty can ready for the recycling sack, this is when I cut my finger, blood was very where, I had cut my finger across the joint of my ring finger on my right hand.

The cut about an inch long was bleeding quite badly, I did contemplate on going to casualty as it didn’t appear to be stopping, but I thought its only a little cut I don’t want to sit in casualty for about fours only for them to put a plaster on it and send me home.

So using my first aid training I put some gauze and tape on it and went to bed. This morning I changed the dressing and when I bent my finger it started to bleed again but only a little.

See recycling can be dangerous I could have bled to death……….lol.

Now please answer the following two questions.

1 Should I go to casualty, I think it may need a stitch, but because it’s across the joint I doubt that they would be able to do it?

2. Can I sue Heinz?

Rabbit

Teachers have voted to oppose the MOD from recruiting in schools. The MoD has said that while it does visit schools to raise awareness of the Armed Forces it does not actively recruit in schools. After reading the report on the BBC website, I feel somewhat angry at some of the comments reported to have been made by a number of teachers.

One in particular, a Mr Paul McGarr from East London, has virtually accused our serving soldiers of murder and torture, while carrying out imperialist occupation of foreign countries. While I was and still am against the wars both in Iraq and Afghanistan, I find his remarks both offensive and sickening; it reminds me of the 60’s when teachers practiced socialist and communist ideology brainwashing our children with their outdated ideas. Some similarity can also be drawn to the end of the Vietnam War when American forces returned home to hostility, hatred and ridicule. It appears that Mr McGarr has something against our Armed Forces I wonder if his hatred also date backs to members of the Armed Forces who took part in the first and second world wars. Mr McGarr should support our troops more. He however did make one valid point in his statement, he did indicate that our troops are poorly equipped and some come home both mentally and physically injured and the help they receive is less than adequate.

Mr McGarr if you read this Blog then take heed of the poem below.

The Soldier

It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier not the poet who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier not the objector who has given us freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier not the lawyer who has given us the right to fair trial.

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves the flag, whose coffin is draped with the flag, who gives freedom to the protestor who burns the flag.

This is a soldier, lest we forget

Father Dennis Edward O’Brien USMC

Visitors to the London Eye yesterday were stranded when one of the tyres that support the pods and help it run suffered a puncture. Management decided that the only option was to shut the eye down and repair the tyre. It took an hour to undertake repairs meanwhile passengers were ordered to open the safety pack located in each pod for blankets and water.

Once repaired the eye was restarted and passengers were offered a hot drink and a full refund.

Judges are being criticised by Merseyside Chief Constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe for being too lenient when sentencing criminals involved in gun crime. At present if you are caught carrying a gun it carries a mandatory five year sentence. He said that some judges in line with Government policy are using mitigating factors when sentencing criminals convicted of carrying firearms.

If this is the case then it is not really a mandatory sentence, if you carry a gun and you get caught they can be no mitigating factors, you should get a minimum five years. The Chief Constable is asking fire a change in the law, he wants to see a minimum of a 10 year sentence for anyone who dischargers a firearm.

The shadow home secretary said Labour has passed tougher laws but fails to enforce them he went on to say “As well as failing to enforce the law, our porous borders allow weapons to simply flow into the country while the government's failure to combat the scourge of drugs also fuels so much violent crime."

This is not just a Labour problem, this started many years ago when the Conservatives were in power, and no Government has dealt with the problem adequately. If we jail more criminals then we get people stating that the prisons are full and we shouldn’t jail as many. It seems what ever is done, it is ridiculed by the opposition, perhaps we should change our approach on crime, a joint venture by all the parties to formulate a policy into law and order and whatever they come up with it should be strictly enforced with no interference from Europe or organisations such as Amnesty International, these are criminals and as such should have no rights!

The day has started a little better than yesterday, although we have had a hard frost. I may have a walk down the sea front later.

We have more bikers today, so I may get a few pictures for my collection. Apart from that I will be relaxing once again in front of the TV, it been a good break in that sense, I feel totally relaxed and ready for work again tomorrow. Actually I done a lot of reading, which I enjoy and it totally relaxes me.

Am looking out of the my living room window, and can see an artic blizzard, well maybe not quite that bad, but it snowing and we have a reasonably strong wind. I have just fed the cats and let them out; I don’t think they will be out for very long, even though they have fur coats, they like the warm sofa too much. I think, the only saving grace is that it’s not really settling. I can remember last Easter it was hot and sunny and this is the coldest Easter since 1964.

Every Easter in Southend on Sea, we have a motor bike event, thousands of bikers set off from a Café on the North Circular and head down here collecting money for charity. Once here we have the usual events, Easter egg hunt, and things like that. I don’t think many will attend if the weather stays like this.

I don’t think I will be going very far today, I settle down on the sofa with the cats and watch a DVD, I don’t think there is anything decent on TV. Talking about TV yesterday afternoon while channel hopping I happened to notice that the ‘Grinch’ with Jim Carrey was showing, isn’t this a Christmas programme, whatever were the schedulers thinking of.

I have always wanted to a TV scheduler, we wouldn’t have any soaps, Eastenders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street and the rest all would go. To be replaced by more comedy and nature programs, even watching the test card would be better than watching the trash they call soap operas. Still it keeps the narrow minded simpletons with no imaginations happy, most think that it real life.

Rabbit

Well after a reasonably good day yesterday the bad weather has finally arrived, although it's not snowing yet, we have heavy rain and cold wind. Am praying to a non existing god that it will improve, or if it does snow I hope we have a significant fall so I can get out with my camera, a lot a snow can make for great pictures!

Doesn't seem a lot in the news today, but then again I have just glanced at the headlines I haven't really gone into great depth at the moment, time for later.

Must go, we are off out to vist my mother in law and father in law, on the orders of Caz my stepdaugther, she wears the trousers in this house ....lol. I think she wants to out early and get back in time for the final of the world figure skating. I don't know why she has suddenly become interested in that but she seems to know who all the best ones are.

After watching the depressing weather forecast last night, we decided to postpone our weekend plans. It forecast a cold day with strong winds from the artic along with snow. What do I see when looking out of window at the moment? Blue sky and sunshine, it might be cold though, I haven’t been out yet?

If they gave a weather forecast of hot and sunny for the Sahara Desert it would rain and if they gave one of snow and very cold for the South Pole it would probably be hot and sunny. Can’t these people ever get it right?

We should have carried on and gone out, it turned that snow did fall we could have turned round and come home. Oh I long for the days when I lived in Cyprus, the beach every day, hot and sunny god it was heaven.

Rabbit

Well it seems he has got away with it. Who you may say, MP Derek Conway, will not be investigated by the police because they is a lack of systems in place to account for MP’s expenses. He paid his son £40,000 to research for him, and they were no proof that he actually did any work.

In the aftermath of this publicity, he was ordered to pay back £13, 000, suspended from the commons and also lost the whip. Considering he paid his son £40k of our money he has made a tidy profit of £27,000, for defrauding us the tax paying public.

He has stated that he will stand down at the next election that is not soon enough he should resign now.

It just goes to prove that MP’s are a law unto themselves. There must be some way the police can investigate and prosecute this thief, or have they been told not to investigate by the powers that be. Protecting they own!

Rabbit

Am very pleased with my results yesterday, the only things that they brought up, was my anti-oxidants levels were low, and therefore should eat my fruit and vegetables. I love apples and bananas and eat loads of them but apparently there don't contain high level of anti-oxidants. Only bright coloured ones contain high levels. Am overweight and I don't drink enough water.

But my liver, kidneys, heart and prostrate are all fine. The check took about 2 hours but as well worth it. Am grateful to my company, who paid for it. The company I work gives all its employees the opportunity when they reach 50 to have this check done for free, then every two years after that.

Am showered, shaved and dressed, have taken my samples.....yuk and once again am ready for my trip into London. I am attending a Nuffield hospital close to St Barts for my health check. Just a few hours in town then hpme again for Easter on the other hand I might do a little shopping.

Am not taking my camera, the weather forecast is for heavy rain and its going to be cold. I hope the waether improves we had plans for this weekend, 4 days of taking pictures, that looks in doubt now. But if it snows like forecast than I might even get some better shots, one never knows.

Have just returned from my day out in London, the meeting went very well and we just about covered all that we needed. I have to the same tomorrow, but it not a meeting I will be attending but a health check.

I am sure the doctor will not be very complimentary, words like diet and exercise will no doubt cross his lips. But am I worried, damm right I am……lol (not really)

I see the papers have gone to town on Heather Mills today, I am sure she will headlining for a while, still it will keep the reporters happy and it will sell. I have no sympathy for her she has brought it on herself.

Just a quick blog this morning, am on my to London for a meeting. So i won't be able to get online much today. The meeting is expected to last about 3 hours so I doubt that by the time I have finished I will have to get to the office.

Tomorrow I have a health check, again in central London, and I definatley not planning on going back to the office tommorw. So it appears that I won't be in the office until after Easter.....yippee.

Hope you all have a good day.

Rabbit

The judge in the divorce case has now given his ruling. Despite Ms Mills attempt to prevent disclosure on the grounds that it would endanger her daughter, Mr Justice Bennett revealed the ruling and told her could not appeal against it publication.

The judge described Ms Mills as having a strong willed and determined personality with a kind disposition and devoted to her charities.

Sir Paul’s evidence was balanced, consistent, accurate and honest. He expressed himself moderately although at times with justifiable irritation.

The judge indicated that he gave Ms Mills every allowance but much of her evidence both written and oral was not just inconsistent but inaccurate and les than candid. He added that overall she was a less than impressive witness.

So there we have it, we can understand now why she did not want the judgement published. It wasn’t to protect her daughter. It because the world will officially know the truth, she is a liar and a schemer, and of course £24.3m better off.

The conservative party as once again called for an investigation into the Iraq war. I can’t understand what this will achieve, apart from wasting millions of pounds of tax payers money that is.

Everyone knows that the war was illegal. Blair lied to the public and to Westminster that is without doubt. The report on weapons of mass destruction was ‘Sexed Up’ and there has been a report over the intelligence failings and a report into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly.

We do need to know what went wrong after the war, but does this need a full blown public enquiry, I doubt it.

What we do need however, is for the people who are responsible for getting us involved in the illegal war to be brought to account, Blair, Brown and other members of the cabinet at the time should be charged with mass murder!

Once again Mohamed Fayed is making a mockery of our legal system, in the first instance he insisted that the inquest into the deaths of Princess Dianna and Dodi Al Fayed be held in front of jury, which is not the usual case.

His lawyers are now going to the high court in bid to overturn a decision not to call Prince Philip to give evidence at the inquest. He his still trying the blame the Prince for the death of his son and Princess Dianna, it about time he was stopped, he his not British so lets deport him, confiscate his assets to pay for this inquest and send him back to Egypt!

Rabbit