Author: davidjohntooth

I am very grateful to Boris Johnson for showing me a way to have a great Christmas even though there is a pandemic.

So I am going to have a party with two hundred people invited, two father Christmases, and eight dogs. There will be lots of kissing and no social distancing. The tables will be full of food and wine, so much that I may have to re-enforce the table legs.

Then when the police arrive I will just explain to them that this is a business meeting the same type that was held at number ten last year.

At this point, they will just tell me to stay safe and have a happy Christmas.

Politics is a wonderful thing to be involved in because you can never be wrong

Was it only a few days ago that the Prime Minister gave a speech to UK business leaders and mixed up the pages of notes he was reading from.

I remember the classic comedy sketch by Morecambe and Wise in which Eric Morecambe played the piano totally out of tune and when Andre Previn the conductor pointed out that he was playing the wrong notes his response was to say ‘I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.

If only Boris had said ‘I’m reading all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.’ he would have saved the day but not everyone is a genius, Morecambe and Wise were.

To understand this post you may have to watch the original sketch on youtube

Become an MP with a basic salary of nearly £82.000 plus expenses, then even though it’s against the rules Lobby for firms that you work for.

And even when you resign Borris may make you a Lord; a gateway to making even more money.

But most of the shambles that developed was the inept decision by some members of the conservative party to change the law to keep Owen Paterson in his position. It’s like coming last in a marathon then the organizers deciding that last is the new first because they like you.

I am however sorry that OwenPatersons wife committed suicide, Money can do many things but it can’t guaranty happiness.

I guess we may have to wait another few days before the next dire incident.

I always wonder if any of the children that I played with when I was young ever think of me and this may be because I am what most people would class as being old ( eighty next year ) and of course they would be theoretically correct.

When I was young I thought you got old when you look back more than you looked forward and stopped listening to the latest music.

Help

I was about nine when I met Christine Robinson and she was a few months older but while I was scruffy and immature she was classy and mature. Not the normal grounds for a friendship but the one thing in my favour was that she lived in the house next door. I remember she was about my height and build with two brown plats that reached past her shoulders. I realize now that she was very pretty but I never did then; it was never about what she looked like but the things we did together.

Twice a year the travelers arrived with their round-topped brightly coloured caravans pulled by shire horses, they would stop for a few days in the spinny by Bar Beacon and the caravans would form an oval shape reminiscent of the formation the American cowboys did to prevent attacks from the Indians.

The middle area was where they did the cooking at least the women did, the men would sit on the ground and drink homemade beer and elderberry wine, as soon as we heard of their arrival the two of us would spend as much time as we could in their camp oblivious to the dangers.

One warm summer night at dusk one of the men aged about thirty asked Christine to go inside his caravan with him, he was very drunk and held her hand as they walked towards it.

One of the very old women stood up and shouted at him in a foreign language he shout angrily back at her but let go of Christine’s hand. We walked back down the lane together but never talked about what nearly happened because we didn’t understand it.

Later that year we moved to a different part of the City and I never saw her again but I always wonder what she did with her life more importantly I hope she was happy.

Would I like to see her again, I’m not sure because age has no respect for how we looked yesterday and neither does our memory.

I wish I could remember the colour of her eyes, how she smiled, and how she sounded when she talked, but I can’t, and sometimes perhaps the fact that events happen and are retained somewhere else has to suffice, perhaps cloud storage systems were thought about long before we existed.

Simple things that may save the world but wont get a prize

We are all aware that planting tree’s helps to reduce carbon monoxide levels what if every single person on the planet planted a tree, or even an acorn which costs less but takes a little longer to grow. (the acorn is an example but use what is available where you live) And make every country have its own rain forest.

Yes I realize that if you live where this is impracticable then this wont be possible, but for most it will be.

Your house needs more room to park an extra car so you slab the total area; the drains cant cope. Dig deeper and place chippings underneath but allow gaps so excess water drains into them.

Every country should learn to recycle everything that is made instead of buying new items. Do you really need a new shirt when you have twenty hanging up in the wardrobe and how many pairs of shoes can one person wear at one time.

I can remember a time when every person in the back-to -backs where I was born fitted soles and heels to shoes and boots and continued using them until they fell apart.

Socks were darned with whatever wool was available.

Nobody had a car the young boys run every where and the older people walked. They got their shopping from the local shop and walked there and back. Walk more drive less.

No I don’t advocate moving back to those times but you can see where I am going with this.

And as a sure way to cut energy emission in every country in the world they could implement a cunning policy the UK government has brought into fruition. Cut the wages of the poorest people so that in winter they cant afford to have any heating on. Its called eat or heat, so if starvation doesn’t kill you the cold will.

So gas prices in the UK are increasing at an alarming rate and many people are blaming Brexit as the reason and yes it is part of the reason but not the main one.

Like many countries around the world we have never had any forward planning but only knee jerk reaction and this steep rise in the demand for gas is because over the last few years we have never stored it in any sort of quantity or spent enough money on alternatives.

But we don’t really need it do we because within ten years all the gas boilers will be obsolete replaced by hi-tech heat pumps that produce electric from the ground. Of course they cost four times as much as traditional gas boilers and cost more to run, still if you live in a big house in a gated complex this isn’t a problem, and if you live in a house in Balsall Heath and live day to day theirs always charities to give you a couple of loaves and a hot water bottle.

Sorry for once again being cynical it must be my age.

The speech that Mr Johnson gave today at the Tory conference sounded impressive. The UK would be no longer have less well off people in different parts of the country it would all be leveled up. The poor would become the middle class, the middle class would become the wealthy, and the wealthy would become super rich.

Education would be dramatically improved for younger people and wages would rise in all sectors. Wow that sounds impressive.

After listening to speeches from many different leaders and from many different parties I am sorry to say I am quite cynical about what is really going to happen.

But I am not a politician so will give you an honest mathematical forecast.

Add up all these promises and you arrive at a simple word which is Inflation.

In life you don’t get something for nothing.

God has taken another two of of the great sixties musical legends Don Everly of the Everly Brothers and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones.

As you pass through life a piece of music become a date stamp that you can look back on and remember what you were doing the first time you heard it.

So hear I go.

When I was sixteen and attending Erdington College, Birmingham one day a week occasionally in the dinner hour I would go to a small caff on the high street with another boy and hurriedly eat a plate of egg and chips.

They had the first juke box that I had ever seen and the one dinnertime someone played Bird Dog one of the brothers early hits, and I thought Wow.

The only time I saw them life was in the UK and it has always brought back mixed emotions because the following morning my Mom died.

How I wish I had spent that night with her and not attending their concert.

I saw the Stones when they were still teens and so was I; but how mesmerizing they were with that blues style of riffs. And Charlie Watts was part of that distinctive sound that pulsed through the building and the audience.

Bet God Has to take a lot of paracetamol; its his own fault he should have left Charlie down here a bit longer.

China is starting a program which teaches children from the age of six to think in terms of a becoming part of a communist regime and reducing there ability to have independent thought. But there are many governments that move peoples ideas in the direction they think would help them achieve long term goals.

A long time ago Germany and Japan had ideologies which used the same principles and look where that took them.

But not that long ago the UK dominated certain parts of the world so my philosophy is ‘he who is without sin throw the first stone’ actually I think someone did on the Monty Python show.

When my mother was in her late seventies she once told me that she never looked in the mirror anymore because she didn’t like what she saw. I must be quite progressive because I stopped looking into a mirror well before I reached my mothers age.

A piece of advice from an older person ‘dying is bad for your health,’ so do your best to avoid it.

If God could build the earth in seven days how come he made such a bad job in designing humans.

No wonder I am nearly an atheist, the part of me that strays towards believing is the same part of me that took out insurance policies; just in case.