Not a Sausage !

Posted on August 4, 2024 by john graham

Over my years of blogging, I have regularly written about things that may reduce your chances of getting dementia. ( You can find earlier posts by clicking on “ dementia” in the TAG CLOUD )

Mostly they require you to give up something you enjoy —- sugary food, meat, wine, beer. But, now the last straw is SAUSAGES.

No less an authority than Harvard University, whose researchers studied 130,000 people over a 45 year period and concluded that sausages weren’t good for you. Apparently they found sausage eaters have a 20% higher chance of getting dementia.

What a miserable piece of research! Especially bad news for Germans.

I am going to forget I ever read about it.

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Smiling Inquiries 🤡

Posted on July 28, 2024 by john graham

The only general conclusions you can draw from all the Public Inquiries I have been blogging about in the last few weeks are that their conclusions don’t conclude very much :-

  • They make recommendations that are rarely followed through.
  • They usually don’t result in action being taken against the perpetrators of injustices.
  • They only succeed in letting politicians and senior management off the hook for any responsibility by delaying action until they have often left post.
  • They certainly provide lawyers with the opportunity to ask endless questions; pick apart every witness statement word by word; dance every word on the head of a pin; Oh! And make loads of money.

So is there a SMILING way of doing inquiries? With rapid outcomes, justice and compensation.

How about making them truly public. Start an open debate on line and in public meetings. Dispense with the lawyers. Have a maximum three month time scale. Write a three page report on the facts, the arguments and the recommendations.

Then have a referendum vote on TV with phone-in votes.

Any court action and compensation to be concluded within three months.

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Endless Inquiry Gravy Train.

Posted on July 24, 2024 by john graham

Following on from my last post, I seem to have found a pot of gold for impoverished lawyers. Remember only a year ago, junior barristers had to go on strike for more pay !

Here’s a list of the most recent Public Inquiries and how much we have so far contributed to the hard up legal profession :-

  • Covid. ————————-? £ goodness knows
  • Post Office. ——————? £ anybody’s guess
  • Infected Blood. ————-£100 million plus
  • Grenfell Tower. ———— £200 million plus
  • Hills borough. ————— a heck of a. Lot.
  • Stafford Hospital
  • Daylon Sturgess
  • Scottish Covid 19
  • Undercover Policing
  • Edinburgh Tram
  • Scottish Child Abuse
  • Brook House
  • Sheku Bayoh
  • Thirlwall
  • Omagh Bombing
  • Afghanistan
  • Scottish Hospitals
  • Muckmore Abbey Hospital
  • Bloody Sunday —————. £191 million

Many of these are long since lost out of the headlines. Some are still ongoing. Their recommendations often fallen by the wayside of a distant past. Perhaps that’s the politicians idea ?

The cost to the taxpayers are quietly forgotten.

THERE ARE PLENTY OF GRUMBLES, BUT NO SMILES IN INQUIRES.

Tagged | 2 Comments

Enquiring About Inquiries.

Posted on July 21, 2024 by john graham

There seem to be a lot of Public Inquiries about these days. They are the “long grass” of politicians promises. A depository of dirty deeds. A graveyard of forgotten responsibility.

All funded by the taxpayers!

Between 1990 and 2017 there were 69 Public Inquiries at a cost of at least £639 million.

The big ones in the news currently are about Covid, infected blood and the post office. Nightly on TV, daily in the newspapers, live-streaming on YouTube and popping up all over social media.

There is a feel good factor about the issues being exposed, but will they make any difference beyond the platitudes of “lessons being learned”?

SOME KEY QUESTIONS:-

  • How much do individual Inquiries cost?
  • How long do they go on for?
  • Do they establish the root cause?
  • Are lessons learnt?
  • Where do no win/ no fee lawyers fit in?
  • Is there a better/quicker way?

I will explore these issues in my next blogs…….

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LLLP Post Election Fun.

Posted on July 14, 2024 by john graham

The Labour Party had a few boring and unrealistic ideas of how to deal with illegal immigration.

The Last Laugh Looney Party had a brilliant one.

Give them all a football trial as soon as they arrive on the south coast beaches ⚽️ . Out of the 70,000 boat people that came this year, there is a fair chance that 5% will be as good as some of the current England team🤡

Any that show promise will then be given a 5 minute substitution at the end of a Manchester City premier league match. That will prove they have played in the Premier League and then they can be immediately sold to a Saudi Arabian side for £50 million. Illegal immigrants who don’t make the grade can go with them as travelling supporters. I am sure they will be most welcome.

5% of 70,000 = 3,500 rising stars who will have all played in a Championship winning side. Transfer fees for the 3,500 x £50,000,000 each is £175,000,000; which is only small change to the oil-rich Saudis.

And the LLLP only keeps a small football agents fee of £17,500,000 🤡

If this works, it is quite probable that many more will follow and Saudi Arabia could become the destination of choice for immigrants🤡

Tagged | 3 Comments

The 2024 General Election result.

Posted on July 10, 2024 by john graham

A resounding victory for the Labour Party? Except for the low turnout. Not exactly a ringing endorsement! A vote against the Conservatives rather than a vote in favour of their vague promises. It looks all too boring.

So what’s next ????? We need to add some Last Laugh Looney Spice 🤡

  • Instead of votes for 16 year olds; try votes for 12 year olds 🤡

Solve the wait for GP appointments with 10,000 Google doctors. Fully trained in a nanosecond and able to dispense a pill for all ills. Just like now 🤡

  • Eliminate NHS waiting lists overnight by sending all ill people on a free holiday abroad, then if they need emergency treatment they can get it wherever they are. Then come back cured 🤡
  • Ask all politicians to drink water directly from our rivers. That should solve the pollution problem pretty quickly 🤡
  • Coco says give everyone a dog so they get more exercise 🏃🏽‍♂️ and speak to all the people they meet.

There will be more fun ideas to spice up the years to come !

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New Defence Strategy

Posted on July 7, 2024 by john graham

On July 2nd front page headlines in the Daily Mail proclaimed

“Britain’s forces not ready for ‘ conflict of any scale’”

It is a great way of telling your enemies that now is a good time to invade.

It was the conclusion of a report by a defence expert, Rod Johnson ( not Boris). Supported apparently by leading defence figures, including a lord, a colonel and a General. All in a team within the Ministry of Defence. You can’t make it up !

To make it more convincing, the best thing to do now, would be to take them out and put them in front of a fireing squad for leaking state secrets. Or at least strip them of their rank and deploy them on the front line, when Putin’s invading forces come over the hill.

Unless of course it is fake news 🤡 with just a bunch of civil servants clumsily trying to get more money for the armed forces.

HOLD YOU FIRE ! OOPS 🤡

This secret MOD team could of course have been very cleaver. Perhaps they were learning from WW2 when Churchill dropped a dead body in the sea off Portugal with a briefcase full of plans for Britain to invade Sicily, to deceive Hitler about the Normandy landings.

So now Putin has to double think there may have been other miss-information campaigns. Perhaps our new aircraft carriers really do have planes after all. Maybe our nuclear submarines can fire Trident missiles without them falling into the sea. Who knows if the SAS hasn’t secretly been recruiting thousands of illegal immigrants, who have been practicing small boat invasions across the Channel in plain sight?

Perhaps the Lords, Generals, Colonels and people called Johnson really are very cleaver after all?

🤡AND ALL FOR LESS THAN 2.5% of GDP 🤡

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My 77 Garden Age & Buttercups !

Posted on July 3, 2024 by john graham

This is my last post before the Election.

A buttercups selection.

The next one will be a reflection 🌼🌼🌼on the result.

Buttercups are the most deceptive of weeds.

They entice you with promises of yellow flowers.

But they spread their tentacles over all around them.

Politicians are like buttercups.

Their promises are full of flowers.

But their deeds are full of weeds.

This pesky post even got into my blog

And got posted a month ahead.

Politicians are unruly like them.

They get out of control.

So the remedy for buttercups is

DIG THEM UP AT THE ROOTS.

Start again with 🌹🌸🌼🪻🪷🌻🌺🌷

🌺🪷💐🌻🌼🌸🌷🌸🌹🌼🌸🪻🪷🌺

Now you have to figure out

Which politicians are buttercups

And which are flowers ?

In my Garden Age

I still dig up weeds

and cultivate FLOWERS.

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My 77 Garden Age & the NHS

Posted on June 30, 2024 by john graham

This is probably the biggest challenge of all in the electorates mind. And it is only going to get worse as the population ages. So what can we learn from my garden?

Well the NHS is choaked with weeds, all claiming their little bit of space in the garden. Bureaucratic weeds handed down by a micro-managing central government—- these need to be pulled out straight away. Then we can dispense with an army of administrators, who don’t grow any flowers in the NHS garden.

Most of the NHS staff need to be gardeners helping patients to grow back to health. It is what they do best —- creating 🌻🌹🌼🌸🌺🪷

Cottage hospitals should have cottage gardens, where patients can recuperate. Hospital wards should be full of flowers, not banned by infection control police.

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My 77 Garden Age & Crime.

Posted on June 26, 2024 by john graham

Weeds are the criminals in my garden. They appear where they are not wanted and take up space that could be used for flowers. They also divert my time and effort into pulling them up.

How does that relate to crime in our society ? Well, there is too much of it and it’s growing. We need more flowers, but the ground is not fertile and just encourages more weeds. Our justice system is not fit for purpose , nor delivered in a timely way.

Prisons are full and fail to prevent reoffending. Around 25% reoffend, which costs an estimated £18 billion a year. That doesn’t include the ones who don’t get caught!

The answer is not to build more prisons; nor to effectively decriminalise shoplifting; drug-taking; burglary and car theft; nor to shorten sentences; nor to release criminals early. It is to find new ways of helping prisoners back into society with the skill and outlook to lead an honest life.

Easy to say / difficult to do !

Gardening can be hard work and take time and patience. But it is also rewarding 🤡. So let’s get our prisoners outside digging up weeds; growing flowers and planting fruit and vegetables🪴🪴🪴And trees —- lots of trees. 🌳🌳🌲🌳🌲🌲

Later they can move onto housebuilding. More homes for everyone, including them, when they are released. We will build a new skilled workforce of gardeners and construction workers.

As I write this, it all sounds too utopian and unrealistic. But it doesn’t have to be a soft option. Initially the gardening will be done in the prison grounds. Outside prison grounds, high risk prisoners will be fitted with a ball and chain. Later this can be changed to a tracker, but abscond and you will be back in the ball and chain.

After a year of gardening and construction work, prisoners can opt to switch to other work or full time education. All designed to give them a better opportunity when they complete their sentence. They will also be given a release bounty, equivalent to the minimum wage for the period of their incarceration. 50% of the bounty must be used to compensate any victims of their crime.

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