https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/25/socialism-rich-oil-gas-capitalism?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Firefox

Karina-Jones was due her post-op check-up this afternoon at the Vets.  Perhaps prematurely I was congratulating myself on getting her easily into her jazzy ‘travel’ zip-up carrier.  There it was now, safe on rear seat of the car – the occasional mews of sadness & mild complaint emitting.

Three hundred meters down the road I fancy I can hear a zip being slowly, experimentally pulled, and sure enough – a few seconds later, she appears in the rear-view mirror.  Grinning.

OK – “Be calm” I tell myself “Just drive slowly, and if there’s any sign of her getting toward the front, then pull over and pop her back into the box” – Easy.

At the first set of lights I swivel round and gaze rearward – nothing.  No cat.  She’s obviously climbed over into the hatch area.  This is good news.

We (as I presume it’s still ‘we’) get to the vets.  I need to tell you here that parking at this Vets is very close to a main road.
If I just open the rear-hatch now, a jumpy cat would be about one tiny metre away from a very busy road.  So I gingerly open one of the rear doors, kneel on the rear seat, close the door behind me and try to see Karina.

Nothing.  That’s weird.

Now OK, there’s a lot of stuff in the back – not yet cleared out from a summer’s boating, beaching and god knows what I imagined we’d be doing all Summer from the amount of equipment I carry.  There is however, no matter how many items I carefully move and peer under – decidedly no cat.

“Ok” I think “I’m at the wrong angle” – I get out of the back, carefully close the door, and walk around to the rear hatch and open it about 3 centimetres, kneel down and check no animal is squatting there – pre-pounce to freedom.

Nothing.

Open door wider, scrabble about under items of summer, behind screen-wash top-ups, behind stack-and-store boxes full of emergency tools never ever needed.

Nothing.  “My god I’ve lost her!”  Against all logic – I’m feverishly trying to think if there’s a way out from the back of the car – maybe underneath?
Just like checking the same place a million times when you’ve lost something you KNOW you’ve checked this place but you can’t help yourself.

OK, there’s nothing for it.  I lock the car doors and walk into the vet’s reception.

“HI!  Steve Evans, and Karina – except I haven’t got Karina.”  The young girl gives me an old-fashioned look.  I try and explain, I fail, and we re-schedule the appointment.

Back outside I’m in one of those ‘I can’t believe this’ moods.  What a waste of time and effort – I’m never gonna use that stupid travel cat jobby-thingy again.  I lean against the front wing of the car and stare at nothing.

A movement attracts my attention.  There’s Karina, paws up against the rear window – she’s staring at me in a way that seems to ask “what shall we do together now Papa?” 

I open the door, pick her up, pop her effortlessly into the carrier, zip it up (noticing en-route the Velcro zipper lock I’d completely failed to see the first time).

Now at this point it is maybe three minutes after I’d last been into reception, so I whiz back in – cat in bag, so pleased to have retrieved the situation.

A different girl is sat behind the desk, and she’s on the phone to someone who seems to prefer every phrase to be peppered with “you know” and “to be fair” before the conversation can progress.

Fifteen hours later she puts the phone down.  I explain that I am no longer sans-cat.  She peers at her computer monitor.

She presses a few keyboard keys, and looks up to gaze around reception for a few hours.

Apparently the ‘phone call was someone diving-in to take-up the cancelled appointment.

“Ah well thanks anyway.”   Karina-Jones and I drive home.

Great to see some good football.  Like millions of us, I never watch it unless it’s the World Cup.  This “it’s coming home” is a bit of puzzler though isn’t it?

I mean, to start with – it’s obviously not ; not once our guys start to play some heavyweight talent, and (b) if it were coming home, then it would be going to Uruguay.
(The first World cup was the 1930 FIFA World Cup  – held in Uruguay in July 1930).

Still, let’s not mince potatoes shall we?

Anyway – I went onto wikipoobia to do a bit of in-depth analysis, sorry, meaningless crap-chat – and discovered the terribly useful snippet below . . . .

Resigned?  What?  You, you mean like, resigning from Europe?

Re:  Driving in the UK, congestion

Once a gorgeous part of Bournemouth – with houses sporting entrances like this (Private Hotels, mostly).

Seems this one now much better employed as a service cupboard?

Moving on . . . . .  (a little further up Sea Road, Bournemouth)

Jason Streatham lives here – lovely shiney black machine there eh?  Well suited to get you from one Country to another.

Jason’s gonna have to be careful though . . . . (car window glass – Argyll Road)

. . . . but if he keeps his Kitchen door open, maybe?  (Argyll Road)

The only thing I cannot understand about all this is – why the surprise?

Why is this considered “news”?

We’ve had months and months of pathetic “bulldog” style posturing by the UK, followed inevitably by climb-down after climb-down. In all cases UK Politics has got in the way of any real thought. Or anything the people of this country might use.

It was always going to be a disaster, and one day those folks who voted us out of Europe might see what they’ve done, and/or recognise the rubbish that was spun to them.

I was sat on a bench just now, and a bus cruised past with the American Express advert across it – exclaiming about rewards.
Now I know you know this, but these rewards, they’re not are they?  You buy stuff, there’s profit involved – and some of that goes to the a C/Card company who charge you interest, and then they give you a tiny bit back, from the amount they’ve already just been paid – by the same people who you just bought the stuff off of.

Sort of mind games for idiots, to be honest. I wonder how many branding professionals could be told to fuck off if we just didn’t bother? If the circle of crap was broken, lost most of it’s spokes and the value was the price paid, full stop.

Reward. There’s a word. Reward, there it is again – the same one. Twisted into a meaning that’s meaningless. It’s the same with Loyalty cards. You get points, be it for stamps on your card in a coffee shop, or automatically for going back to the same supermarket, or visiting one of the outlets whose cartel involve themselves in the same branding program.

And here’s the odd bit – this is about Loyalty – get the poor sods into the frame of mind where they’ve built-up some perceived value (points), and now daren’t sway away too far because (ha! like saving?) they can add to and increase their future reward. They’re trapped.

Never mind if said supermarket charges 30% more than the German one down the road, never mind if the £75 you’ve saved-up in your points by Christmas could’ve been £275 LESS spent in the year running-up, if the supermarket hadn’t been involved in these shenanigans and all their attendant costs.

But it’s worse isn’t it – now they are tracking where you spend and WHAT YOU BUY, enormous chunks of your data roll around the planet – by god, if we used half this amount of ingenuity and focus on some real-world problems it would help n’cest pas?

Yet for the bigger stuff, the telecoms, the utilities, the insurance, the bankers – loyalty is precisely not going to get you any rewards is it? Deals go to new customers, advertising is pitched at new customers – we want your money, for this deal only.

One commentator even put it this way – They’re either a creepy way to monitor and exploit your habits or a desperate gambit by weak retailers to distract you from their own shortcomings. Most companies use loyalty programs as a crutch when they’re out of ideas, and, therefore, these schemes are ultimately bad for customers as well. If a cashier tries to shove a loyalty card into your hand, it’s a good indicator that you should be taking your business elsewhere.

I sort knew instinctively – all those (30-odd) years ago, that this was a distraction, somehow I wouldn’t be seeing what I needed to see and feel if I allowed myself to indulge in this crap – it never, never really pays.

Here’s a bit of news for you . . . .

This was the BBC front page for their news offering this morning, to be fair (god! I hate that expression) you could pick any channel, any website, any newspaper and you’d get worse, or better – it really doesn’t matter.

That’s the point – IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER, it’s all non-news, and a really large proportion of it is crap, utter crap.

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So on this very same day – another little set of facts caught my eye.

The map above is today’s predicted temperatures – and it mirrors, largely, the UK temperature situation this past month, and a trend that is becoming alarmingly real.

In truth, if you’re as old as me – you’ll know that it was UTTERLY UNHEARD OF FOR SCOTTISH TEMPERATURES TO BE HIGHER THAN THOSE AT LOWER LATITUDES.
And yet there it is, for the umpteenth time this month, plain fact.

FACT – you notice?  Fact, not crap.

There’s your real news right there.