When Savile became Vile

I am a 70’s child and grow up watching Jimmy Savile on the TV. He was a very popular and larger than life character who I saw as a successfully entertainer and charity worker. I respected him for his hard work and support of Stoke Mandeville hospital. Like millions of ours around the country, I was saddened when he passed away last year.


A few weeks ago we started to hear the rumours that he may not have been the man we thought he was. There were stories appearing in the press of the way he had a liking for underage Girls. I was of the opinion that it was probably some glory hunter trying to make some money by spreading unfounded rumours about a widely respected public figure, who could no longer defend himself. That sort of thing really annoys me and I refused to believe that any of these, quite frankly, sick rumours were true.

There was an ITV programme last week that purported to be an investigation into these horrible claims. I had no wish what so ever to watch this piece of alarmist television, as I believed it would be total fabrication. However, Mrs. T-E wanted me to record it and against my better judgement I ended watching it with her.

What I heard horrified and disgusted me. “Surely this can’t be true?” I told myself, but the realisty was that I was beginning to waver. As the week progressed, more people came forward to admit that they’d heard the rumours at the time and done nothing to stop it. It appears that they thought him “Untouchable” and such behaviour was common place at the BBC in the 1970’s.

Currently the Met Police are looking into these allegations, although I doubt there is now anything that can be done to put this right. The damage was been done long ago and Jimmy is no long here to confirm or deny anything. I suppose that if the truth is properly uncovered, his victims will finally have closure and be able to get on with their lives. There may even be others still alive who were guilty in aiding Jimmy in his sick activities and could still be brought to justice.

I would like to think that Jimmy Savile was not in fact a vile and disgusting child abuser, but somehow I fear that he mislead us all for a very long time.

Update:

Since I started writing this article, more victims have come forward and have made complaints to the Police. In the last few days, road signs, memorial plagues and even his grave stone have been removed. There is even rumours that his body may be removed from the cemetery in Scarborough that overlooks the sea.

Jimmy Savile’s memory has probably been soiled beyond repair and I feel extremely saddened that I and millions of others had been taken in by him for so many years. He wasn’t someone who deserved our respect and admiration. I doubt even Jim himself could fix this.


Regards



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Driverless Underground trains ruled out – for now | Railnews

Driverless Underground trains ruled out – for now | Railnews

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Don’t Say the V Word in Front of the Cat!

Last week Bruno (Cat No.3) seemed a little under the weather, but by Sunday he had cheered up a bit. We just put it down to the sudden change in the weather. However, on Sunday evening Mrs. T-E noticed that his left ear seemed to be weeping and by Monday morning his left eye had joined in as well.


After work Monday we took him to the Vets to have him checked over. We had chosen a different vet as our usual one has become increasingly more expensive over the years and friends of ours recommended another local one. We called them and they told us that they have first come, first served sessions every evening between 6 and 7.

When we arrived the waiting room was packed to the rafters. There were 3 cats and 5 dogs in front of us and others kept arriving as we waited. Two of the dogs were fitted with lamp shades, in various states of disrepair and one of the others had a very nasty looking chest wound. In all it was pretty lively in there and Bruno purred the whole time, occasionally pawing Mrs. T-E through the bars of his box as if to gain some attention. Eventually it was Bruno’s turn to be seen and we were beckoned into one of the side rooms.

The Vet poked, prodded and generally examined the poorly lad. The whole time Bruno wriggled and struggled and flatly refused to let the Vet stick her fancy torch thing in his ear. He even had to be weighted in his box, which told us that he was a tiny bit heavier than he should be. She didn’t seem to worry about this as he’s a large cat anyway. Apparently the average weight for a cat is 4kilos and Bruno is 6Kilos, but he’s not fat. Smudge (Cat No.1) only weighs 2.5kilos, which we know is too low, but due to her age (19 years) is not uncommon.

He has his temperature taken (1 degree high) and received injections of anti-biotics and pain relief. The conclusion of the vet was that he had received an infection, possibly from a wound to his ear and was put on a weeks course of Penicillin tablets. See also recommended using cold Tea (no milk or sugar) to clean up his ears and eyes as required. I always knew that Tea could cure anything except drowning.

With Smudge, tablets have always been an issue. Hiding them in food has never fooled her, so we have got very good at holding her upside down and feeding them in manually, which is a 2 person manoeuvre. I didn’t relish the thought of doing this with Bruno, as 3 of us couldn’t hold him still at the Vets. Fortunately he has fallen for the “Small pieces of ham, wrapped around the tablet” trick and he seems to be making a slow recovery. The cold tea for cleaning his ears and eyes also seems to work. Although on the first attempt he had a sneezing fit and continues to wriggle quite a bit.

Currently we are keeping our fingers crossed that he will make a speedy recovery and can return to his favourite hobby of worrying the birds in the garden very soon.


Regards



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A Funny Thing Happened at Football

Last night saw Crawley Town playing Swansea City in the Capital One Cup, which is the new name for what was the Carling Cup. Swansea have recently been promoted to the Premiership, which meant that it was a big game for Crawley. The ground was fairly full with 3500 football fans in attendance, 900 of whom were from Swansea. In all it was a very good turnout for a Tuesday evening, despite the rain. The record at the Broadfield Stadium is about 4500, which was achieved at our recent League 1 game against Portsmouth. Unfortunately we lost that game 0-3 and we had 2 player sent off. Not our finest 90 minutes by a long way.


The game itself was very close, with Crawley giving Swansea a real game. Our performance overall was surprisingly good compared with our recent performances and bearing in mind that Swansea are now a top flight team. The banter between our fans and theirs really made for a great atmosphere and we even managed to get the others in the West Stand singing, which is virtually unheard of. Chants of “Are We In A Library?” from away fans are not uncommon. Ultimately, the visitors beat us by 3 Goals to 2, their 3rd goal coming in the 90th minute, just as the 4th official held up the board to let us know there was 4 minute of injury time to play. Such is life.

At halftime, Chunky, Steve, Ray and a few others always gather around to discuss the first half game play and drink tea, eat biscuits, etc. This time however there was a new face in the group and it was someone I instantly recognised as my Supervisor when I was an Apprentice over 20 years ago. I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, so I didn’t mention it. I later found out from Ray that his name was Brian and they worked together. After the game Ray re-introduced us and when I told him my name he instantly remembered me. It then became clear that I had also worked with one of the other guys in the group. I’ve been chatting with him for the last 3 or so years without realising. It just goes to prove that it’s a small world.


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Woosh goes time

The weather here in England has taken a turn for the worse and not for the first time this year. Last Autumn and Winter saw very little rain fall. The Spring was showing no sign of easing the problem either. Many areas of the country, including my corner of Sussex, had hosepipe bans applied. Water levels in our local resovouir (spell checker can't cope) were significantly lower than they should have been for the time of year.

Then the heavens opened and it seemed to rain endlessly for months. It wasn't until August that the Summer arrived. However, it only really lasted for 3 maybe 4 weeks.

Now September has arrived and the Autumn is back with a vengeance. The temperatures regularly fall below 10c and it won't stop raining. We've had it easy here in the South. Most of Northern England has been washed away. I can't even begin to imagine how it must feel to have your home full of muddy water. My heart goes out to those people affected and I pray it never happens to me.

All we have to look forward to now is the chill of Winter. It seems only yesterday that I felt the joy of seeing the first Daffodil of Spring.

posted from Bloggeroid

Twitter Phishing Scam

Last night I received a text message that appeared to be a direct message from a Twitter user I'd never hesrd of. The message claimed that someone on Twitter was "saying bad things about me" and I should follow the supplied link. I perhaps unwisely, decided to click on the link. It took me a Web page that looked like the Twitter login page, but for some reason the URL looked wrong. I decided to go no further and check my Twitter account via the phones app.

Basically someone was trying to steal my Twitter account. Goodness knows why, it's not like I'm someone of any great importance to the World. Lol.

Just watch out for this and other similar scams. They are very common and often very plausible. NEVER give out your bank details or PIN numbers in response to emails or phone callers who are supposedly from your bank. If in doubt call them back using a phone number from your card or bank statement, not a number you received by email or phone call. Always be suspicious

http://blog.twitter.com/2009/01/gone-phishing.html?m=1

Regards
Chris

posted from Bloggeroid

The Effects of Commuting

As a daily commuter, I have been a  approached by someone who has done some research into the mental and health effects of commuting to/from work. As you may have guessed, these effects are not positive ones. I therefore went off to check it out.


It was quite long and quite interesting, but sadly it's largely based on American figures and commuting by car, which of course I do not do. The art work is well thought through, clear, colourful and kept me amused for quite some time. Over all I think it's a very good and informative effort.


Here is the original graphic, which I have provided here with the authors permission.

Created by: College At Home



The link above will take you to the authors website. If you find it interesting and wish to extol its virtues, I'm sure they would love to hear from you.

Regards



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Joined Up Thinking....NOT!

The "Westminster Muppet Show" have surpassed themselves this week by causing the public to panic buy fuel. The media keep bombarding us with imagines of massive ques at petrol station up and down county.

Do the Government live in the same reality as the rest of us? Somehow I very much doubt it. They should have called for calm as there is not treat of fuel tanker drivers going on strike in the foreseeable future. Instead they advised people to keep their tanks full and even suggested that hoarding fuel at home is a good idea! The result has been wide spread panic which in it self will cause fuel shortages. Worse still a woman in York has managed to blow herself up trying to pour petrol from one container to another in her kitchen while cooking on a gas stove. She received 40% burns and has been admitted to a specialist burns unit, while her family home lays in charred ruins.

The only possible reason I can think of for the Governments ridiculous behaviour is to raise even more revenue from the much punished British car owners. Apparently the public purse has benefited from an extra £32m in fuel duty over the last 48 hours, due to all the extra fuel sold at the pumps.

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Come Play With Me

I have for a number of years been the proud owner of an XBox 360 and I often play on-line games via the XBox Live! service. Regularly I am sent emails informing me of new game releases and on the bottom of the latest one I noticed that they've attached an imagine of my Avatar.

It is actually quite a good likeness of me.

If any of you fancy a game of Gears of War (1,2 or 3) one evening, please look me up. My user name is "TRANCE-ELBOW".

See you soon 8-)



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Have Kindle, Will Read

This last Christmas my Wife and I bought each other eBook readers. We went for the new Kindle 4, which has no keyboard or touch screen. Although very basic, it is excellent value for money at only £89, it works very well and I am very impressed with the whole ebook reading experience. The screen is quite simple, but very clear in good light and unlike most tablets, is easy to read in bright sunlight.

I wasn't sure what I should read first and was disappointed to find out that not all of Robert Rankin's books are available for Kindle. I am reading his books in order of publication dates so as not be out of sequence, but so far I am about 10 years behind. This means that the next two books in the series have yet to be Kindled. In the hope that this situation is resolved soon. I decided to try Terry Pratchett's Disc World Series, which is about 40 books long and all of them available in Kindle format. The first is "The Colour of Magic". It's ok, but I'm having trouble getting into it and I can't really explain why. As a consequence I have read two other books since buying that one, both of which I have since finished without completing "The Colour of Magic". These books are,

• PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE: The Hilarious and Shocking Inside Story of British Policing - By Inspector Gadget

Inspector Gadget is the synonym of a serving Police Inspector in the British Police force. This book was written on the back of his quite famous Blog  , where he expresses his displeasure and exposes the lunatic why our Police Force is now run in the 21st century. A great read, but quite worrying at times. Read it, you WILL be shocked!

•    Stealth - By Gail Briggs

Stealth is Gail's first book and I was quite surprised just how good it is. I enjoyed the whole thing from cover to cover. If you like Fantasy/Supernatural stories, then Stealth is for you. I myself can't wait for her second book.


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