Taexalia
wild.life
Riot Responses
I apologise in advance if this turns into a mish-mash of ideas and a ramble. I'm trying to tease the Who I Am Response out of the knotted tangle of Emotional Reactions of what I have seen over the past few days. I reject the idea that the riots that have dominated several English cities are simply a product of poverty, or race. I see people from all walks of life indulging in this behaviour - men and women, boys and girls of many ethnic backgrounds. They are not dressed in rags, they are in ... read more
How To Create Change…
When I skimmed my RSS reader this morning, my eye was caught buy a post entitled How To Create Change: Don't Help People. I opened the post and, before I started reading, I made a few wee assumptions... I was going to read a timely reminder about saying No to time predators I was going to read something wholly inspiring and uplifting I was going to nod my head and agree with everything I read Although the timely reminder didn't materialise in the post itself, I was prompted to ... read more
Morning Sunshine
I confess I am tired of the snow.
It's hard walking a hound in a world where the motion of cars is The Most Important Thing. This translates to a street where the pavements have been used as a dumping place for snow. We have to walk on the road. Is it on the road, or in the road? Either/Or.
People are digging out their cars and throwing snow onto the pavement, ... read more
Mary Bale ~ How To Be A Victim
I don't think I need to host a video of the animal cruelty story of the week ~ Mary Bale the RBS employee who was caught on CCTV dumping a cat in a wheelie bin. Her actions resulted in the cat, Lola, being trapped for nearly 16 hours before her owners discovered the cat terrified in her own mess. Britain, the most CCTV-ed nation in the world, soon gave birth to a new internet sensation that wasn't quite as heart-warming as the Susan Boyle lovefest. Before she knew it, Mary Bale was a YouTube ... read more
Charity Pollution and Littering
Last week my personal equilibrium was assaulted by an idiot from Scottish Hydro. This was later followed up by a pointless email from their customer service department who suggested I go and buy a sticker and decorate my door with it and their sales reps *may* adhere to the reques but, since the sticker is not legally binding, then again they may not. This week my personal space, and indeed my personal equilibrium, has been assaulted by a charity no less. Plastic bags are banned from ... read more
Power Struggle
This is my doorstep. It is the entrance to my home. I do not think I am particularly unusual in wanting my home to be a private, peaceful place where I can relax and shut out the rest of the world. I have fought very hard for those things over the last few years, having been subjected to untenable noise by ignorant people who think that they have the right to ruin my life, and my sleep, with their appalling behaviour. Now that I ... read more
Dangerous Owners Act
The media, the Police and quite a lot of other people are in a frenzy trying to discern the breed of dog which killed four year old Paul Massey. They've got it all wrong. The problem is not the genetic build of the dog, the problem is the behaviour of the people who owned the dog. The question is not whether the dog falls under an ineffective piece of legislation, the question is whether the owners should have owned any dog (or animal) at all. The stupidity of the act may be ... read more
How Our Fife Council Tax Is Spent
I stopped blogging again. It's like a yo-yo on this domain - get some peace, get some confidence, get some momentum and then BAM off it goes again. Silence except for the Tweets. I'll tell you what the BAM is - it's bams. Bams as in people. Let's just say that during the last couple of years this blog has attracted a few bottom-feeder readers. Instead of looking at it as a compliment, a mark of an interesting blog I seem to react by going silent. The latest bottom feeder is going to get a ... read more
CWU Striking To Prevent Royal Mail Modernisation…
CWU members voted to destroy small businesses and disrupt mail during the busiest time of the year by going on strike. I haven't seen a coherent explanation of exactly what they are striking about, and I strongly suspect some of them are still bearing a grudge about the expectation that they work a full shift for a full shift wage. The only reason I see coming up again and again is resistence to the planned modernisation of the ... read more
But I *am* Living In The Moment – It is the moment that is the problem
"Did you ever think, when you held or looked at a beautiful pearl, that its origin was irritation? An oyster, in response to the irritating presence of sand within its shell, creates a thing of beauty." ~ Thomas F Crum I thought I had found the pearl birthed from the last piece of grit but it seems that I have just floated on the ebb to a different shore and inherited a new piece of grit. A second strike of lightning. I want to know what the thing of beauty is that this piece of grit ... read more
Snake(s) In The Grass
Oh how things change. For years I have travelled to America visiting many interesting places, spending my tourist pounds and being curiously welcomed by strangers asking if I know any Ferguson's in Falkirk as that is where their great grandfather's second cousin twice removed came from. The only thing I've ever done in Falkirk is visit the Falkirk Wheel. My closest link to a Ferguson is the tractor my Granda drove around Belt Croft. My knowledge of ... read morePotential
I was reading this article about the potential increase in costs, or perhaps the potential failure, of the Edinburgh Trams Project and I was struck by a few of the details... Now before I go on I need to state that I am often accused of nit-picking. I am often accused of nit-picking as if it is a negative thing. The thing about nit-picking is that if you don't pick nits you will end up with a very uncomfortable head. Or to put it another way: "If you think that something small cannot ... read more
Why I Am Participating in Earth Hour
http://www.earthhour.org/home/
Or perhaps NOT Why I Am Participating in Earth Hour...
The suggestion is really simple. I mean it is so simple that I cannot believe that people are having a problem. I mean what is so hard to understand about this:
At 8:30pm local time on Saturday 28th March switch your lights off for one ... read more