I've got an idea, Home Secretary: let's give them safe and legal routes.
On second thoughts nah...that's more than your dog-whistled votes are worth!
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
I'm going to identify as an abysmal failure: 😀 after 13 years of it, school children are now learning that it gets them to be Prime Ministers, Chancellors and Education Ministers!
Let "Gongs for all" be our mot juste!
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Tue 9th Jan 2024 14:38
Thanks Wilma-I need to get out more into that cool fresh air.
Comment is about January (blog)
Original item by Wilma Gundy
Trouble is, politicians here are as morally compromised on Russia - Ukraine, as they are with Israel - Gaza.
Comment is about Verbal Activism (blog)
Original item by NICK ARMBRISTER
The advantage of not being the oldest
"If only" - I sometimes think to myself; with that constant feeling of failure- of not having live up to my "responsibilities" of being the eldest.
Comment is about As a Crow Flies (blog)
Original item by New Shoes
Thanks Jon.
Many a truth behind the legends and myths.
Comment is about The Moon (blog)
Original item by Jon63
Hi Uilleam- I feel it to be somewhat a cross between an existential condition and the vagaries of capitalism. R
Comment is about The new un-natural (blog)
Original item by Robert C Gaulke
Because I fear if I remain the way I am
I will be cut by the same blade that gave me life
Wise words.
Comment is about Broken Vase (blog)
Original item by purplemoon
100% with you on this Keith.
100% corrupt system.
Comment is about Donor or Voter (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Thanks all for likes and comments.
Stephen, you're correct to point out that anti-semitic violence is a real and growing problem all over the world.
It's an irony that your point is made by Jews all over the world who are now claiming that the genocide being carried out in the so-called name of their religion is, in fact, making them feel less safe.
Comment is about Anti Semite! Anti Semite! Anti Semite! (blog)
Thanks all for the likes and comments.
Comment is about النكبةAl Nakba: Day 27,375 and Counting…(edited repost) (blog)
Could be, Graham. Or some cock-eyed system of giving points for wins and draws instead of some self-identification.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Thanks for the likes and comments all.
I suspect my attempt at Lancashire dialect has gone awry-I'll write it in err..."the King's" English?
Comment is about Chrismus in t’ Asylum (blog)
Thanks all for likes and comments.
Stephen, does the "perfection" of Mahler's 4th lie in its effect on you, or in the way it's written / constructed?
Carlton, the way some otherwise bonny women disfigure themselves in an attempt to live up to some money-grabbing charlatan's idea of beauty, is horrible to witness.
Comment is about To a Fellow Artist (blog)
Thanks all for the likes and comments.
I feel close to despair when I see and hear of this cruelty which has been condoned and facilitated by powerful people in the UK.
Comment is about W.C.N.S.F. (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) (blog)
A failure of executive decision and oversight under government
watch. I'm reminded how the alarm was sounded and almost
ignored about certain Chinese electronics being utilised in govenment operations. Then there was the distant but still
resonant Thalidomide scandal brought to nightmare notice by the
crusading Sunday Times, as I recall. Ah...how the advocates of
progress per se need to be supervised closely themselves, not
least in a world that involves politics with science...and vice versa.
Comment is about The computer said 'No' (blog)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Thanks for your comments, Graham, two Steves, MC, and Uilleam. And for the Likes, Stephen, Holden, Reggie, K Lynn, Tim, and Jon. Journalism - Computer Weekly, initially - and TV has done a great service in helping to bring this to light. The public is particularly shocked because the Post Office was an institution they thought they could trust. And as for AI, forget Theresa May the Maybot - you can advance a convincing case for Thatcher being the first early AI experiment, until its wiring went awry.
Comment is about The computer said 'No' (blog)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Hang on JC, you don't think the Premier League use Fujitsu to work out the standings do you?
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Quite right, Stephen. If all it needed was a vigorous assertion that black was white despite the evidence then The Mighty Spurs are the best team in the Premier League and have been Champions every year since its formation.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Tue 9th Jan 2024 06:01
Yes my dog pulls a lot and all. J
Comment is about Send More Tomorrow Now (blog)
Original item by Robert C Gaulke
I think I might self-identify as a Post Office Executive, John. You know, bonuses and gongs however many mistakes you might make. Nice while it lasts, anyway......
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
For Jane, it can be observed that her "Prints" had arrived. 😉
Comment is about As their relationship developed,Jim and Jane make a snap decision to marry (blog)
Original item by hugh
Aha...my favourite "ism" in this life: optimism.
Comment is about Send More Tomorrow Now (blog)
Original item by Robert C Gaulke
I'm tempted to observe that common sense has gone to cock
due to the strident idiocy of a selection of confused c...s! (you can insert "clots" if possessing a delicate disposition.)
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
A knock
a letter
gently drops
your name
you open
it reads
each poem
I read
love felt
every word
you write.❤
Comment is about Brimming with hope (blog)
Original item by Sunshine
Isabella
has a new you
lighting up inside her
glowing brighter by the Moonlight
a pure heart for 2024.❤
Comment is about 2024 - "Year of love and light" (blog)
Original item by Sunshine
I do like the idea of trying to sex brass objects, Uilleam. Perhaps the trick is asking them which they feel like.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
It is the year 2524: a team of French and German anthropologists are on a “dig” in former Preston, in search of traces of that English tribe, the Lancastrians, once renowned for their superior intellects, and posession of a once prized commodity: “common sense” which they traded with Yorkshire folk who were known as "Tykes".
Alongside human remains, are uncovered two objects called “keys”, one originating in France and one in Germany: both objects are later determined by metalurgists to be made of something called “brass”, hence the large amounts of nearby “muck”.
DNA tests are also made; the results of which confirm the human remains to be those of one young male and of one female; but the anthropologists are unable to confirm the sex of the brass objects.
They call in a team of linguists who explain to the astonished team, that in German grammar, a boy is "Ein Junge" and that a girl is "Ein Mädchen"; that in French grammar, a key is "une clé", and in German it is "Ein Schlüssel".
Ee bah gum, who'd a thowt it!😕
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
I've always thought the barber's was a dangerous place to exchange political views. Stick to football. That can be dangerous enough, the day after Chelsea have beaten Newcastle on pens in the League Cup. I agreed that the Blues were lucky, and still had both ears at the end of it.
Comment is about Verbal Activism (blog)
Original item by NICK ARMBRISTER
Surprisingly he was called Alan. We should remember his name. There is not much else left of him. I wrote one called “Alan on the Morrow” about him some little while ago.
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
Perhaps not quite as stereotypical as you might think Steve. I am prepared to come halfway on this. For instance, if a man or woman wants to think of themselves as a woman or a man despite their birth sex and simply because they feel like one, that’s fine by me. They have every right to do so.
Just as I have every right to say it’s all a loada blocks.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Well, you fit the stereotype I guess, John.
The medical practitioner, observing the child's cock staring them in the face, determines their sex, as you say, but their gender, the expected norms of behaviour based upon the cock staring their doctor in the face, or otherwise, is assigned by society, as I suspect you know.
Hilarious that your woke apologist self-identifies with a pseudonym.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
A statistic becomes a person and a life. Well done, John, an important poem which should shame many people who only see numbers and problems.
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
Thanks for your thoughts, Tim. A remarkable piece, New Shoes. It deserves posting on the blog as a stand-alone piece. Incidentally, Mick once offered me the job as his lead guitarist but I told him to stick with Keith. “The lad will get better”, I told him.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Thank you, Greg. This massive corporate miscarriage of justice makes me more angry every time I read (or last week watched the ITV drama) about it.
Your poem highlights how the Post Office saw these 'little people' as a nuisance to be bullied and humiliated.
One thing- after outsourcing the IT system to Fujitsu and the responsibility for losses to the postmasters, what do these Post Offoce executives actually do? (Apart from getting awards and bonuses).
Comment is about The computer said 'No' (blog)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Thank you, Carlton, for your fascinating comments based on your own experience of war situations, and to Tim and RG for their views on this. I am pleased to contribute to the provocation of thought and in this poem a lot of details are left deliberately vague.
The main point is that wars claim the lives of many brave, dedicated people, while others, due to accidents of birth, connections or simple good luck, come out with their status enhanced.
War is fundamentally bad and unfair, not to say evil.
And thanks to Stephen A, Nigel, Holden, Steve, K Lynn, Manish, Jon and Nila for liking.
Comment is about Big Break (blog)
Original item by Stephen Gospage
That's an excellent poem and an important thing to say. Thank you.
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
Thanks Greg. I suspect that the "someone, somewhere" who knows the truth are a serious of government ministers for whom senior figures at the Post Office were more important to protect than the "little people".
Comment is about The computer said 'No' (blog)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Funny thing, though I feel the same way as most of you on this post, I had a dream the other night that I felt brought myself some clarity on the issue.
Mick Jagger was watching a comedy performance on geriatric stage performers needing to piss several times while performing, some pissing into the back of their guitars while playing. After the skit, Jagger got up on stage and talked about what inequality really meant and without the gender identity push into all our consciousness that we could never allow free expression of all individuals. It was felt as a push what maybe free will should really look like, not just what we have come to know as "normal" in the world we were born into.
The dream then faded into a television screen and on it showed the time 1:15pm and a voice announced that this was the time every day that the people of the world should be still and reflect on all the injustice that surrounds us. And by doing this, we will bring change.
A lot of this falls in line with the Hopi prophecy.
Thanks for listening peeps! And I would like to thank Mick Jagger for being a good sport!
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Mon 8th Jan 2024 06:10
Thank you all for the likes!
Comment is about I miss you (blog)
Original item by pallavitryingthings
John your poem is elegantly written with the dark ink of tragedy.
A lost and tormented soul provided with dignity of respectful words to be remembered.
Nicely done. Tim
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
I pray that my acceptance as a member of the human race and the veracity of my existence is never reliant on a pronoun.
I wonder what the AIs of the future will identify themselves as.
Hopefully they will see the redundancy in our obsession with labels.
Thanks John.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Sun 7th Jan 2024 23:34
Thank you so much, Stephen, for your very kind comment! 😊
Comment is about Warblings... (blog)
Original item by Holden Moncrieff
My main regret is that there wasn’t this choice of boy/girl/them friend when I was younger, Ghost. Twice the fun!
And thanks for the Like, Holden.
Comment is about SELF-IDENTIFICATION (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
John,
This poem probes deep into our humanity. The illustration at the top of the page, if I recall rightly, is that of a little boy whose family attempted to leave Syria for Greece but did not make it. Your poem encapsulates so many aspects of our humanity all embodied in a body on the beach, life's journey ,its difficulties and ambitions all brought to nought. A poem drenched in melancholy but one which reminds us of what is taking place everyday as people seek a better life and love on another shore.
Thank you for this,
Keith
Comment is about BODY ON A BEACH (blog)
Original item by John E Marks
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh
Tue 9th Jan 2024 15:35
Around 2013/14, when he was speaking of an NHS IT project involving the same firm, a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee said that the culture of secrecy (NB. secrecy) surrounding IT projects, was one of the main reasons why they kept going so badly and expensively wrong.
He said that it was obvious to experts (experts whose advice this government have told us they don’t need) that the NHS IT programme, launched by Blair's government, would be a "train wreck".
He said contracts lacked clarity, were signed "in an enormous hurry" and contained confidentiality clauses preventing contractors from speaking to the press.
Lives lost, livings lost, reputations of individuals and of families lost.
As I’ve said elsewhere today: 100% corrupt system; nothing will change under the current or incoming shower!
Comment is about The computer said 'No' (blog)
Original item by Greg Freeman