Snow, snow , snow!

For the first time in fifteen years I have had a course cancelled due to weather. It feels really strange. Not least because it's Saturday and I don't quite know what to do with myself as I am habitually working, lecturing, on a Saturday.

So I thought I would blog about the snow.

Snow is something I grew up with. Being born in Yorkshire and living in the hills as so to speak winters were always full of snow. I remember being that cheeky chappy earning 50p a time for digging out cars when I was a mere child, I remember watching drivers with rear wheel drive cars trying to hill climb up what was effectively an ice sheet outside my childhood home and I remember walking miles in the snow to school because in those days we didn't shut schools at the first fall of a flake!

Then as I grew older and was involved in hill walking and mountaineering snow became more testing, more of a challenge. It was fun building igloos to sleep in to see off the worst of the mountain blizzards. I have to say igloos can be quite cosy and homely if you approach them with the right attitude.

Learning to ski in the Jura Mountains of France was fun and I loved the time I would spend in Davos, especially just before Christmas. Watching my children learn to ski in St Sorlin d'Arves was pretty special too. However riding husky sleds in the Arctic certainly tops it all off. If you've never been inside the Arctic circle folks I can highly recommend it as the air is so fresh and for a guy with only 30% lung function I felt I could actually breathe for the first time in a long time up there.

So what about today. Well living now in the South of the UK I find it a real laugh when snow falls. It's like people are living in an alien world. I went out to the supermarket yesterday and it looked like people had been panic buying. It's 10cm not the Day after Tomorrow!

Anyway just be careful out there and remember Have Fun

 

The End of Civilisation

A strong title you may say. Yet isn't that what is happening in Great Britain today. In 2013 the year after our diamond 2012 a new order has dawned. Not one from inspiration though, no one of desperation and desolation.

This so called Government of the Big Society is no more a Government of inspiration than Hitler's was a Government for peace.

In the 1980's I watched the dismantling of the coal industry in the UK that led to millions being unemployed with no real hope of a job. I thought that after that we could not get worse. It was bad enough that communities were split apart needlessly. Now we are seeing far worse, we are seeing a great nation, a great civilisation split apart in a similar fashion.

Both the Tories and the Lib Dems have been so hungry for power in this country that they will do almost anything to prevent a loss of that power. Firstly a move to fixed term Government something that in it's essence goes against the whole life-force of democracy. Secondly an attempt to redraw the political battlegrounds that will ultimately favour this type of Government for years to come. Thirdly a complete reversal on the welfare state that sees hard working people needing help from food-banks whilst at the same time we waste half of our food in the world. Fourthly a complete destruction of the National Health Service and the Royal Navy, the two greatest institutions that Britain has given to the world. And fifthly a return to education of the Victorians where propaganda not learning matters.

For Cameron, Osborne, Duncan-Smith and Gove read Hilter, Goering, Himmler and Goebbels only these have an Oxbridge background and are British so they can't possibly be that bad can they? And Clegg? well he has to be Hess, the great apologist.

This Government lives in a cyber world where all that matters are the pounds in the banks and the shares in the city. We do not create jobs in this country we just service the world with our cybertalk. We don't build things anymore here. We import lots of our food, and we subcontract out to emerging nations like India and old giants like China.

Yes we put on a good party like we did last year, but after every great party comes the greater hangover and  when in the depths of that hangover we allow things to happen without watching.

We no longer live in a civilised country, we live in a third world country. Sure we have all that technology can give us,

           but without food in our bellies and shelter over our heads we are no closer to 
           Maslow's self actualisation than stone age man.

Of Rivals and of Family

Well today is the day of the Liverpool versus Manchester United football match. One of the great sporting rivalries continues and in my family it is no different.

I thought I might pop round son number 1's house as he and his partner are both massive Manchester United   fans. I thought I would take with me for my beautiful baby grand daughter a Liverpool shirt. And I thought I would take also son number 4 (the young one ) with me too. Mainly because he's a massive Chelsea fan. Oh how the psychologist in me loves such days. The wickedness of teasing within the family.

But surely that is how it should be. Families who love each other should be able to do their own thing and at the same time know that the love that binds them will overcome the silly rivalries of sport.

Now I know before you say it that "Football is not a matter of life and death, it's more important than that" but I have to say that you should love the game, the challenge, the sport and the participation. I've read far too much over the years about the hostile nature of opposing fans. I've seen far too much nasty horrible behaviour by so called fans of football who are in reality no more than disorganised thugs. I've seen families who won't talk to each other on the day of the match because they support the opposite view. That is a reality in both Liverpool and Manchester where fans of Liverpool and Everton, and City and United are brothers, sisters, parents and children within the same family. Yet at the end of the day they will still love each other for that is what families do.

So I say to you all who watch the match today whatever red team you support remember that it is a game and in a while there will be a repeat of the game and then another and another. Sometimes you will be up and sometimes you will be down but that is just a reflection on life.

Enjoy the match, enjoy the sport, enjoy the beer at the end of the game but please remember it is just 22 people kicking a little ball around for 90 minutes. When it's all over and you go to sleep tonight it is the people around us that matter the most. The ones we love, even if they are far away.

And love comes in all shades of red, blue, black, white, green, yellow or even orange.