Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Quite likely that it would have been overrun, yes - as for the other countries, who knows? One thing I do know is that we've not gotten any closer to ending the war, all we've done is fuelled it. Isn't it amazing that we have had all the calls (and protests) for ceasefire in Gaza, yet in Ukraine... nothing.

Speaking of Stalin, I think we've got problems of that ilk much closer to home.

 

But they don't have the money to keep our pensioners warm...

 

The only black hole involved is the one in Reeve's backside.

 

I don't think Putin himself knows what his end plan is. It's just a constant power trip for some 'leaders' of countries. The populace just wants to live and trade.

 

I certainly agree with that, as do all State occasions and similar ceremonies. How far the benefits of that reach outside of London is another matter although the tourists that come to the country for them do travel fairly widely around the country.

More controversially is the cost of policing the Ride London bike race and the disruption and cost of it as a large part of it is not even in London but mainly through Essex, who host it. They close roads for up to eight hours with no real regard for people living in the area or wanting to get to or through the area. It has about 25,000 people entering it and has been going for about ten years. They have cancelled it for 2025. They say it is in order to reorganise it and design a new concept. I wonder whether it is because of the thousands of complaints made about it.

 

Enjoy it - we had Ride London cut right through our patch and out into Surrey for years. Road closures then were nearer 18 hours than 8, and were a nightmare for us to co-ordinate around.

 

Apart from the disruption locally I understand that quite a lot of people missed their flights from Stansted as people from out of the area didn't know about the closures.

If I had wanted to go to our county town that is only 15 miles away I would have had to take a detour that added 28 miles to the journey.

 

At it's height, we were having to send buses round the M25 as it was the only way to get them across the 'field of play' for our routes that operated on the other side. The strategy I used was to get the vehicles round the M25 as early as possible (they aren't exactly fast, so being on the M25 is not a fabulous idea) and then pay for railway tickets as well as running cars, vans and minibuses around the M25 to get the drivers to and from during the course of the day - bringing them all home at night was much easier as the roads were open by then.

There were some places in Surrey where folks were basically prisoners in their own homes for a day as they literally couldn't leave their driveways - so if a relative took ill and you had to travel to the other end of the country to be with them... tough.

 

Now this is very interesting - there is a petition on the parliament website, started yesterday, on the basis that Labour lied to get into power (and continue to do so!) which is currently garnering signatures at rate of roughly 2000 per minute and is over 620k signatures already - not even been open for 24hrs.

Petition: Call a General Election