GRASP 3 — Regulations.

Posted on December 28, 2025 by john graham

We are increasingly bogged down with rules and regulations these days. Lawyers and accountants love them. Civil servants spend all their time dreaming them up.

Elf & SAFTY is the excuse for not doing lots of things. Uman Rights is another catch-all for many more infringements. Tax regulations tops them all, with thousands of pages of rules and the threat of prison if you don’t comply.

What if we cut through all this red tape and freed ourselves from all the rules and regulations for a while. Just to see what it’s like. Maybe we could try it for a year.

I don’t mean a lawless society, we could make “COMMON SENSE “ the new order of the day.

The police have already done this to some extent, by not bothering to catch shoplifters and just giving crime numbers to people who have been burgled. That has enabled them to concentrate on more serious crimes, like ‘hate speech’.

SO ! A year without rules could be rather like the Wild West, but preferably without the shooting and lynching. People would need to respect each other’s freedoms and behave kindly towards each other.

Needless to say, there would be a small minority who would take advantage of this situation, but they would get their comeuppance at the end of the year. They could become the bin collectors of the years to come 🤡

Posted in SMILES | 2 Comments

GRASP 2 — Rubbish

Posted on December 24, 2025 by john graham

Rubbish disposal these days has been turned into a complex sorting and sifting operation. Gone are the bin men who came once a week and hoisted your bins contents onto the back of a bin lorry — no questions asked. Now it’s a sort-it-yourself into multiple bins, collected on different weeks — and woe betide you if you get it wrong!

Rubbish has been a frequent feature of my blog and it pops up more and more in the national news with bin collection strikes and flytipping ever more commonplace.

(Click on “rubbish“ in the Tag Cloud to my other posts on this subject)

It’s a symbol of our increasing wastefulness as a society and our lack of regard for our environment.

SO IS THERE A BETTER WAY ?

Conveyer belts up the central reservations of the M1, M5 and M6 could be used to carry all our waste up to a remote glen in Scotland. The glen could be gradually filled in to eventually make a great ski slope to rival Switzerland. That would be great for tourism. The methane produced by the decaying rubbish could be harnessed to power all the new hotels that would be needed.

Who could possibly disagree with that?

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 1 Comment

GRASP 1 — Climate Change.

Posted on December 21, 2025 by john graham

Who knows weather climate change is real or not ? President Tramp doesn’t seem to think so. Neither do the Chinese. Both are polluting as fast as they can using all the fossil fuels they can muster.

Meanwhile our Government are headlong in pursuit of Nett Zero, whatever that is, thanks to Edless Elasticband our Climate Minister. Windmills abound, coal left underground, and oil and gas not found. Even so our little contribution to reducing carbon emissions accounts for a very small percentage of the world’s energy.

So all we can do is to set a good example and here it is :-

The Onesie.

Turn off all your central heating, we didn’t have it in the olden days, and kit out the nation with nice and warm Onesie’s.

An inexpensive solution to global warming. If the globe is warming that is.

That can be Britains major contribution to fend off global warming. If it catches on, Edless Elasticband could bounce back as a saviour of the world.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 1 Comment

GRASP

Posted on December 17, 2025 by john graham

GREAT RADICAL ALTERNATIVE SPECIAL PROJECTS.

That’s what we need to solve our many problems and stop us from descending into the black hole created by our politicians.

There are some ideas already promoted in my earlier blogs, but they are obviously not radical enough, because nobody has taken them up.

The Last Laugh Looney Party will hold a one day long Public Enquiry, with absolutely no lawyers, and brain storm some ideas.

We will think about CLUTTER ….. and RUBBISH …… and CLIMATE CHANGE …… and REGULATIONS ….. and PILLS ….. and TECHNOLOGY ….. and WELFARE BENEFITS …. and POLITICIANS …………. and NETTLES.

Because you are always supposed to GRASP the nettle🤡

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

Forgotten Dementia 2

Posted on December 14, 2025 by john graham

This is a follow on from my last blog and in many ways a summation of all my previous posts on the subject.

You can read them all by clicking on “dementia” in the Topics List.

Let’s start with some updated facts … there were estimated to be 850,000 people with dementia in the UK in 2010 when I started my blog. Now that figure has risen to almost 1,000,000. By 2040 that could rise to over 1,300,00, if no cure is found.

We spend ten times more on cancer research than we do on dementia. The focus of most charitable expenditure on dementia is on supporting sufferers and carers. Research seems mainly aimed at early diagnosis in spite of the fact that there is little treatment available on the NHS.

There are over 13,000 beds blocked in NHS hospitals by patients who are fit to be discharged, many of them elderly with no place to go. This is estimated to cost £2 billion a year.

If we used this money to move dementia patients into specialist residential homes in the community, or supported them living in their own homes, it could be a win/ win situation.

There is no point in staying in a hospital bed for “for free”, if there is no further treatment they can give you. The catch is that social care is not free so people don’t want to move.

The other unspoken barrier with residential care is that it has a bad reputation, sometimes justified by low and unqualified staffing levels. One third of social care providers are rated ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by the Care Quality Commission.

However an investment in improved residential care and home care would be cheaper than the NHS. It would also create space in hospitals to eliminate corridor care and reduce waiting lists.

So if it that obvious, why not do it ?

The cost of social care would have to be paid for by the individual but it could be paid for by putting a charge on peoples property. In theory Local Authorities can already do this but it would be a big drag on their cash flow, so it seldom happens I suspect.

It could be facilitated by being underwritten by Central Government in the same way student loans are covered.

It would take a bold political leader to step up and suggest this and talk honestly to older people about the reality of our aging population.

It’s probably a pipe dream and means most politicians and some older people prefer assisted dieing as a final solution.

Posted in Dementia, N.H.S. | 1 Comment

Forgotten Dementia.

Posted on December 10, 2025 by john graham

My very first blog was about dementia. Over fifteen years ago. Since then I have regularly returned to the subject. Little has changed in all those years in terms of understanding and treatment of this debilitating condition.

You can read all my earlier posts by clicking on “dementia” in the Topics List.

“Lest we forget” was the title of my first post. But sadly it seems we have forgotten or at least shovelled the issue under the carpet. In 2010 there was estimated to be 850,000 people in the UK suffering from dementia, although that was only a best guess, as there was no clear diagnostic test available at the time. For most people there still isn’t today.

Equally there were few effective treatments back then. There are some drugs now than can help with the early stages of the disease, but no sign of a long term cure is even on the horizon. So forgetting is still the only option for the majority of people.

Which brings me to this weeks Daily Mail. Front page headline…..

“Public no longer trust NHS over dementia care”

It’s the start of a campaign by the Mail and the Alzheimer’s Society. probably to no more avail than all the previous attempts to improve dementia care. Nor can it be a surprise to any one.

Our politicians have prevaricated over this issue forever. Tony Blair’s government commissioned the Dilnot Report and then in spite of some good ideas, kicked it into the long grass. Cameron was full of promises but no action. May came up with an idea, which was quickly branded a ‘death tax’, so it too was dropped. Boris resolved to ‘solve social care’, but never even got started.

So we could blame all the politicians but, the reality is that the electorate won’t vote for a solution that costs them more money. Any solution will cost £billions. Much more than the Alzheimer’s Society can collect.

So is there an answer and how do we get to it?

My next blog will try to offer a voteable solution.

Posted in Dementia, GRUMBLESMILES TRUST | 1 Comment

No News is News.

Posted on December 7, 2025 by john graham

The 24 hour news channels mean that most of the time the news is not news. It’s just the regurgitated news from the last news bulletin, which was probably only an hour ago. The newspapers will have the same news in the following days edition.

Social media will have the same news, usually with a twist. Sometimes a distortion which changes the meaning altogether. A step beyond that is a conspiracy theory, which leaves you not knowing what to believe.

Maybe if we shut everything down for a month, then at least there would be some new news in a months time 😊

Unless of course it was a Public Inquiry, in which case it could take up to twenty years for the news to come out. Even then it probably would tell us anything we didn’t know already.

1 Comment

Binology.

Posted on December 3, 2025 by john graham

What to do with your rubbish is not a simple question these days. The days of one bin collected every week are long over.

We now all have lots of different coloured bins which are collected on different weeks. If they are collected at all that is !

But it doesn’t end there. You have to know what you can put in which bin. Wo betide you if you don’t.

There are pages of advice on your District Council website. So you have no excuse for getting it wrong.

Basically you need a degree in binology to be a good citizen.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

Budget Final Whistle.

Posted on November 30, 2025 by john graham

The frenzied speculation about Rachael Rivet’s budget has at long last ended. The worst of the rumours proved to be rumours. Rebelling Labour MP’s didn’t need to rebel.

The financial markets were happy that the “black hole” had been filled in. If there ever was a “black hole” in the first place.

The “working people” must continue to work to pay for all the “ non working people”.

Rach and Sirkeyer can tour the country and bask in the glory of it alll, as if nothing happened. They have still got their jobs.

FOR NOW.

Meanwhile:- Ukraine is still fighting off the Russians; Gaza has been almost forgotten by the media; the climate change summit was a load of hot air; Trump is headline chasing as hard as always.

THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER.

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Cox’s Orange Pipin.

Posted on November 26, 2025 by john graham

There is a natural alternative to the dramatic growth in the use of pills💊 It could save the NHS a fortune and there are lots growing in my back garden.

The old saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.

These days it can be very difficult to see a doctor, if you can get through on the phone the appointments are often all fully booked. If you go to hospital the Junior Doctors are picketing at the front gates.

So my apple tree could be a solution to all ills. I think I am going to sell shares in it around the village. Then if that takes off, I could even float it on the stock market. Steve Jobs did that with another Apple and he did quite well🤡

Doctors can strike all they like: the NHS 💊 bill will drop a lot; sell any shares you have in Big Pharma.

With luck I have found in my garden …..

THE MAGIC MONEY TREE 🤡

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