Dear all,
Well it’s 2013. The year kicked off with a cracking gig at the Lamb and Flag in Little Haywood which I enjoyed very much indeed. Thanks to all those who attended and made it so. A quiet January is followed by a mental few months so not too much to tell you about just this second but lots to come shortly! I have had my jabs for India which was fairly unpleasant and made my arms feel rather dead and weird but that is perfectly normal I believe…presently in Bromley visiting my beloved whilst trying to organise my life.
I feel rather worn out from listening to the many fiery views on the welfare issues. The sheer botchery in certain quarters is mind boggling principally the ludicrous decision to base the threshold for child benefit on what a single earner might be earning rather than the household income. In other words one bread winner might be over the threshold in one house and that house would not get child benefit whereas a house with two earners whose combined total easily eclipses the threshold may still. Bizarre in the extreme, but what can one expect? However, I do feel a sense of realism is required in regard to pensioners. The universal benefits for pensioners is, in my opinion, rather silly. There are a lot of pensioners who need heating money, bus passes etc and that is absolutely fine but I’m afraid there are also an awful lot of pensioners who do not. There are pensioners with a lot of money already who really don’t need those handouts and means testing to me seems profoundly obvious. However, given pensioners account for a rather large percentage of voters these days the change seems unlikely….
Anyway, I have a bit of coldy fluey horrible nonsense right now and I do not like it. I have discovered also that first defence is just about the most pointless substance known to man. Have you come across it? Allegedly, you spray this stuff up your nose as soon as you feel the remotest symptom of a cold and you don’t develop a full cold. However, the reality is that this stuff which costs between £7 and £8 is actually about as useful as an itchy veruca. It did not help one iota and I did precisely what it said on the label. This is not the first time I have found it utterly useless but it is the last time I shall use it. I shall stick with good old lemsip which of course does nothing at all other than steam out vast amounts of snot for about fifteen seconds making you feel a little clearer before returning to feeling lousy but at least I know that’s all it does. It does not pretend to be anything else!