Well today I am feeling very virtuous.
I had a problem with my laptop, at least after dropping it, I had a problem.
A cracked screen.
Expensive to repair I thought, so I watched a video on you tube and it appeared to be an easy job and so to ebay I turned and like the Aladdin's Lamp it is, I rubbed it a few times and lo and behold a new screen came through the post.
And today I fitted it.
Like the marvellous comment in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about a Japanese folding bicycle. installing a new screen on a lap top requires great peace of mind and so I waited for the Zen moment to arrive and it arrived today so out with the screw driver, out with the old screen and in with the new.
Now I am wondering like the famous children's TV knitting wife of Noah whether there might be a you tube video for changing the Government?
You can't just buy one on ebay. Neither can you knit one. So I guess we will just have to wait for the election.
2015 can't come soon enough for me.
Underlying my general dissatisfaction with the con-dems is the fact that they make me feel ashamed. I find myself wanting to go up to complete strangers in the street and apologise for the government.
Of course once that is said there follows quite logically the inevitable consequence that some people apparently agree with all of what is being said and done and this expresses itself in the actions of people who are emboldened by the implicit support for their prejudices.
There is in my view a direct line of cause and effect which runs from the newspaper photograph of the Chancellor sitting in his car in a disabled bay eating his burger and the abuse of disabled parking spaces in town centres and outside supermarkets by people who appear as they walk away from their cars to be perfectly able bodied.
As the political rhetoric feeds into the public discourse attitudes harden, people are less generous, less kind to each other, less prepared to be tolerant, less neighbourly.
But the other reason why I cannot wait for 2015 to cast my vote is the rhetoric of blaming the last Labour Government for just about everything.
I came down to my newspaper the other morning to read that, on a recent visit to the Somerset Levels, the Prime Minister had suggested that the responsibility for the flooding should be laid at the door of the last government who had, it seemed, not dredged enough.
As with a previous conservative PM we are always being offered simple statements of the blindingly obviously wrong when faced with complex issues.
There are factors at work here from treeless uplands to canalised rivers (caused by dredging?) to swapping grass crops for Maize crops to rising sea levels all of which point to the historically complex roots of what is happening and which suggest that these extreme weather conditions are arising as a result of changes to atmosphere such as global warming rather than a left wing conspiracy.
I wonder whether the next time Mr Cameron is asked a challenging question on American TV, remember Magna Carta? such as who was responsible for the Norman Invasion? his response will be to blame the Labour Government for reducing the defence budget in 1066.
Well I don't blame Labour for my lap top failure, or global warming, (although the decline of Manchester United under a new manager might have contributed) but I have to admit that fixing it myself, whilst brilliant, hasn't helped the economy because it means that I haven't popped out to PC World or the co-op on line store to buy a new one, so the imbalance of payments when it is announced might be down to me or could I blame labour too?
I had a problem with my laptop, at least after dropping it, I had a problem.
A cracked screen.
Expensive to repair I thought, so I watched a video on you tube and it appeared to be an easy job and so to ebay I turned and like the Aladdin's Lamp it is, I rubbed it a few times and lo and behold a new screen came through the post.
And today I fitted it.
Like the marvellous comment in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about a Japanese folding bicycle. installing a new screen on a lap top requires great peace of mind and so I waited for the Zen moment to arrive and it arrived today so out with the screw driver, out with the old screen and in with the new.
Now I am wondering like the famous children's TV knitting wife of Noah whether there might be a you tube video for changing the Government?
You can't just buy one on ebay. Neither can you knit one. So I guess we will just have to wait for the election.
2015 can't come soon enough for me.
Underlying my general dissatisfaction with the con-dems is the fact that they make me feel ashamed. I find myself wanting to go up to complete strangers in the street and apologise for the government.
Of course once that is said there follows quite logically the inevitable consequence that some people apparently agree with all of what is being said and done and this expresses itself in the actions of people who are emboldened by the implicit support for their prejudices.
There is in my view a direct line of cause and effect which runs from the newspaper photograph of the Chancellor sitting in his car in a disabled bay eating his burger and the abuse of disabled parking spaces in town centres and outside supermarkets by people who appear as they walk away from their cars to be perfectly able bodied.
As the political rhetoric feeds into the public discourse attitudes harden, people are less generous, less kind to each other, less prepared to be tolerant, less neighbourly.
But the other reason why I cannot wait for 2015 to cast my vote is the rhetoric of blaming the last Labour Government for just about everything.
I came down to my newspaper the other morning to read that, on a recent visit to the Somerset Levels, the Prime Minister had suggested that the responsibility for the flooding should be laid at the door of the last government who had, it seemed, not dredged enough.
As with a previous conservative PM we are always being offered simple statements of the blindingly obviously wrong when faced with complex issues.
There are factors at work here from treeless uplands to canalised rivers (caused by dredging?) to swapping grass crops for Maize crops to rising sea levels all of which point to the historically complex roots of what is happening and which suggest that these extreme weather conditions are arising as a result of changes to atmosphere such as global warming rather than a left wing conspiracy.
I wonder whether the next time Mr Cameron is asked a challenging question on American TV, remember Magna Carta? such as who was responsible for the Norman Invasion? his response will be to blame the Labour Government for reducing the defence budget in 1066.
Well I don't blame Labour for my lap top failure, or global warming, (although the decline of Manchester United under a new manager might have contributed) but I have to admit that fixing it myself, whilst brilliant, hasn't helped the economy because it means that I haven't popped out to PC World or the co-op on line store to buy a new one, so the imbalance of payments when it is announced might be down to me or could I blame labour too?
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