A Death Wish

All these ignorant souls who maintain that the Covid-19 does not effect them is a nightmare of delusionary proportions. I have seen people who don’t wear masks, bumping in to me at supermarkets etc etc .There was one member of the Kidwelly Co-op staff who spoke the truth (BBC News) – they are all tossers (my words you understand, the learned BBC wouldn’t broadcast this!) and the lady was quite right too! So good on her!

They are signing the death warrant of the whole nation!!!! They are fools that would make Shakespeare blink again!

Bloody conspiracy theorists!!!

Where do all these nonsensical conspiracy ‘theorists’ come from??? They are all bloody nuts! Message to you all, bugger social media and bugger all these sites that peddle ridiculous notes on Trump and Covid-19. We ought to bring back Bedlam for you all!

Trump? What are Americans going to do?

He is a despicable example of humanity going awry. The storming of Capitol Hill? He should just wear a uniform of histories most evil dictators. He is a sham, an egotistical maniac and should be placed in a field of nothingness.

University students!

Students are suffering ‘mental health’ problems? Well, they need a red hot poker shoved up their arses to make them see sense. Jesus Christ, what next!!!!

Left or Right? – it doesn’t seem to make any difference! – SWEP

Well, how about being the Prime Minister? Criticism from every quarter. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t seem to matter who is in, Left or Right, it is just a matter of keeping people safe, from the Virus that is. The young are being hit now as well. This is the biggest threat we have faced since the First World War, the Spanish flu etc. I wouldn’t want the job it, that is for certain. Keir Stammer is doing his best (at the same time he has said ‘Goodbye’ to the Left of Left in the Labour Party) at least people are listening to him now. The hell of making the Virus v Economics is a battle that I wouldn’t want to partake in. That is democracy for you. Come to think of it, China seems to have got the better of the Virus, but then it is an authoritarian state, so who wants that!

Never mind, your very own Ruck, is on form. Some say I’m ‘outspoken’, I say I just speak the truth. At the end of the day, it’s for you the readers to decide.

So, what else has been happening?

I must say, whilst wandering around the Swansea streets the other day (I only ‘wander’ when I am with the missus, I refuse to go into shops with her, and all you men out there will know why), a great and joyous splash of colour shouted at me front the frontages of every shop. All shut up, at the moment anyway!

What is going on here I thought, as my eyes tried to take in all the blues, greens and yellows? The Council doing something to re-vitalise the town and give it some fighting spirit at long last. Good on them but and here is the thing, what is going to happen to the town post the Virus.

Seriously, all Swansea needs to do, is cast off the tatty clothes of the past (come to that, so does Wales generally), railway stations and Churchill and start looking to the future. A bit more of Swanseaite humour, determination and private investment and the town will be on its way.

So let’s all stop, whingeing, whining and moaning. We all must gird the loins instead and put Swansea back on the map! It can be done, the people have the courage, so let’s just get on with it.

Damn, politics does get the better of me sometimes, God forbid!

PS I have got to mention this though, have you heard the recording of a conversation between Trump and a Georgia election official? It should go on a revitalised Monty Python sketch!!! The man is crazy and embarrassing for the whole American nation.

Devolved responsibility? -SWEP

Well, there you have it! It is more Welsh language for the English medium schools. Welsh will no longer be considered a second language (what in the blue blazes is it, it is the first language of Wales now?) in English medium schools, with a greater opportunity to use the Welsh language. The Principality is going barmy, the Welsh ‘Government’ (they’re interpretation!), is imposing new restrictions on schools – well, if I had young children, I would be off out of Wales for good.

It is all in the course of ‘independence’ no doubt, what crazy brain thought this one up, the mind boggles doesn’t it?

So, our Welsh administration in its profound wisdom, is choosing to stay with the ‘module’ based GCSE’s (that is when they are not cancelling exams due the Covid-19), albeit that the rest of the country is going for a more rigorous and challenging exam-based system (long overdue in my view).

I despair.

Education in Wales is now to be used as a political Action Man for those who seek a nationalist Welsh Nirvana, or indeed a Welsh War of the Roses with those English ‘robber barons’ rampaging along the Marches.

To hell with our young. To hell with the future.

The Welsh administration, in an exercise of supreme stupidity, short-sighted and stunted intellectual ineptness, has now chosen to ignore the fact, that Wales is bottom of European league tables for literacy, is not far short of the same in Higher Education International league tables, is rapidly falling behind England and Scotland in all league tales, English University numbers of Welsh students are increasing, while Welsh students are substantially decreasing at Welsh Universities, the list goes on and on.

And what is our OK Corral Welsh ‘Government’ doing? Lumping on more of the same. It is plain unbelievable!

They are cheating Welsh children on a grand scale, they are promoting failure and, mediocrity and neutralizing ambition.

An education is the most wonderful gift any parent can ever give to their child. The Welsh administration is now seeking to award Welsh students a second-class qualification, in a first- class graduate world – like the Welsh Baccalaureate for example, not recognised by most Universities.

It is condemning our students to a qualification that will be treated by the rest of the world, with sniggers of superior delight and a ‘No Hope’ label at interview time.

Our young deserve better than this, the Welsh liberal educationalists and know-all politicos are not the future (and just look what they’ve done for it, so far?) our young are, and what is happening here is nothing less than the commission of a slippery, confidence trick upon those who wish to excel, those who wish to succeed and those who just plain want to get on.

NB There was a time when the Welsh Joint Education Committee was the toughest and most highly respected examining board in the land. Look at it now.

Welsh nationalists, God forbid!!! – SWEP

Devolution has done nothing but help to raise the nationalist flag and create chaos throughout Wales. It’s over 20 years now, since the Welsh Assembly has strutted its stuff, and what do we have to show for it? A tin-pot ‘Assembly’ of no hopers. A ‘government’ (that is what it calls itself now) ruling three million citizens out of a population of sixty-five million. It is mind boggling and a waste of space.

A debt-ridden Health Service that would make a Provi debt collector turn tail, an economy on the brink of melt down and not to mention the Covid-19 debacle, and so dependent on the tax-payer that even AM’s are giving up their haute cuisine lunches in Cardiff Bay, and buying burgers from McDonald’s instead (as if, but you get my point), and last but not least an education system that is having trouble competing with the Czech Republic – and the Czechs really are skint! The Welsh publishing industry? Is a subsided excuse for literary genius. The tax-payer is paying for non-sensical manuscripts!

To cap it all, there are some Welsh Local Authorities who are now insisting that job candidate’s speak and be able to write ‘High’ Welsh at interviews – not only this, we also have the recent incident of a school pupil being refused the use of a lavatory because she refrained, when asking, to use the Welsh language!

In any modern and civilised democracy, everyone has an inalienable human right to speak whatever language they like and quite right too, but is it a good idea to start insisting that people speak Welsh? Surely, the way forward is persuasion and consensus, not the whip of the Statue Book or the coercive will of a minority agenda?

I must argue, that such a condition of Welsh employment will merely put off talent coming to Wales to work, the last thing we need – Covid-19 notwithstanding, you can bet the Welsh administration will be asking for money on this economic disaster. Devolution?

It is recognised that Wales is already suffering from a brain drain (note, that all these Welsh celebrities are always ‘returning’ for a quick TV programme, but they don’t hang about do they?), a chronic lack of  private-sector investment and competitiveness and a generation of school leavers who only want to work in the public sector.

Love the Welsh language, speak and sing it at will but please, let’s not allow Wales and its future to be further disadvantaged by unrealistic Welsh language policies that in the long run, serve only to divide, separate and cause resentment. And a million Welsh speakers by 2050? Someone is having a laugh at this outrageous tip of hyperbole!

The Welsh language has come a long way since 1997, and those who have fought and struggled for its survival and preservation are to be congratulated and admired. But the nation is in crisis, and surely now must be a time for common sense and pragmatism.

For all Welsh people, be they Welsh speakers or not.

Devolution? Let’s get out of it and be ruled by a true UK Government.

Donald Trump – SWEP

Trump has finally been trumped – do excuse my card play here! Joe Biden has done it and we will be free of all the lies, political meanderings and testaments to how great Trump is. It means a good rest for all the journalists who follow Trump and his entourage. It remains a mystery to me why seventy odd million Americans voted for Donald, on this he will still be a gargantuan beholder of Republican values. Well, this a moot point. The Republican party must see a way to reposition itself, make itself more valuable to the people otherwise it is finished. With Trump leading the way, my statement is as true as a gnat flying in a pile of horse manure.

Can you imagine if he tried it on in this country? He wouldn’t get off the hustings. Five bankruptcies, a misogynist, a racist and anything else you care to throw at him, apart from the fact that he is all about Trump, full stop. The American voters mean nothing to him or his ego. Why can’t they see this??? Social media has a lot to do with it – I don’t do any of it. Twitter and Facebook can go to hell in a handcart as far as I am concerned.

America has gone racing down my estimation of a country that was once a vivid picture of democratic nicety. Now it faces an uphill struggle to get back to this feeling that all people in the world have. Joe Biden is the man to do it, but it will be hard earned and messy. Trump won’t do this, and to cap it all he isn’t even being transitional to Biden, in a polite and gentlemanly way. Court hearings on the election is just about as crazy as it gets, he has no evidence of ballot tinkering and even if he did, it will make no difference to the end result.

Joe Biden is the Present-elect and that’s it. So go and find a new life Donald and do us all a favour. Bidens choice of a Vice-President is a wonderful example of his centrist values. A woman of African-Asian ethnicity will forward the scope of a feminine cause, and good for her! We need more of this. A vaccination on Covid-19 is in the offing and what can I say, it is good news. This is a virus that needs immediate representation in America and beyond, the world that is.

Congratulations to Joe Biden and his Vice-President Kamala Harris! A light is shining down from what can only be described as an abysmal mess of the past four years.

Medical Profession – SWEP

Doctors,

Now, I do not know about you, but most times when I visit the doc’s, it’s for something silly like a cholesterol test or a prostate check-up – of the blood variety! My point is, that I always walk in with a light step, and a self-satisfied grin on my chops.

Not so, when I walk out!

Just sitting in a GP’s waiting room, is enough to make you feel terminal. Every killer disease under the sun is shouting at you from the walls, you start believing you’re an alcoholic, even though you only drank one bottle of whisky the day before, as for the fags, well don’t even go there – GP’s have an ‘Electric Chair Room’ out the back, aversion therapy it’s called! -and to cap it all, there’s even some stuff telling you, you’re about to be a basket case!

As if all this isn’t enough, you look around the room, and what do you see? A load of people who look as if they have just been given three months to live – Covid notwithstanding!! Sour faces, not a smile in sight, and the only words being spoken are about Jack’s bad back or Aunty Flo’s bunions. I mean, and there’s me only going in for a check-up!

Well, you get my point, GP’s surgeries are not the healthiest of places to visit, because if you go in feeling just dandy, you sure as hell do not out feeling the same way! And another thing, while I am at it. These days, as we all know, we are always being told how to live healthily – one of the more palatable diktats of the nanny state, Guardian readers would have you believe. Mind you, believe a Guardian reader and you really have lost the plot, rush back into the doc’s surgery for a quick reality test, is my advice.

The ‘oldies’ ie anyone above thirty-five these days, are going to cause a huge amount of grief for the young ‘uns coming up behind us; no money to pay for us etc etc. So, the question must be asked: Why is the Government, so hell bent on keeping us all alive until we reach a hundred?!

Eat, drink, and smoke your way to an early grave I say, and do our young ‘uns a favour! Just on a more serious note, I know we have a vaccine for Covid-19 coming on-line shortly, but just do not give up on the safety measures that are in place at the moment. Do remember that if you ignore the social distancing, wearing a mask etc you might die. It will take months for a vaccine to have any effect. Oh before I go, on our Donald Trump’s escapade, let’s face it, you would expect a child of seven to behave in a more mature way, but this is America for you!

Females?

You know, I reckon there are plenty of women out there who could be first class operatives in the murky world of national security, particularly when it comes to interrogation. Take my missus for example. Every time I go out to meet a friend, of the masculine variety God forbid! upon my return, it is: ‘How is he? How is his wife? How are the children? Did they enjoy their holidays? Etc etc Now, sorry to disappoint girls (actually, I’m not) but men’s’ brains just don’t operate along the same lines as women’s. If I started asking a pal all these questions, he’d think I’d lost the plot once and for all. The missus even asks me what I had to eat, what the grub was like and so on. What do I say? ‘Fine. Everybody’s fine’ and then proceed to disappear into my study knowing full well that she is going to seethe with irritation at my total lack of detailed response. Good, isn’t it? You see, we men do have something up of our sleeves after all, when it comes to balancing the scales of female dominion over all things. And do you think the missus is going to let me get away with this? Not likely. Women always have to have the last word, in fact they’ll fight to the death in order to make sure they do. An hour or so later, in she comes full of steam and fury: ‘You’re so rude, do you know that?! I was only being polite!’ The thing is, when men are on their own being polite isn’t an option. It’s usually all about foul mouthed exchanges of insult and how great it is to be away from the diktats of female tyranny! That is men for you.

And another thing, while I am at it. Have you ever done the shopping (I am addressing men here)? You can guarantee when you come back overloaded with shopping bags etc there will be something wrong with the items you have painstakingly gone through the food shelves for   – something like ten things. The coleslaw is not the right one, the skin on the tomatoes is too tough etc etc.

Well, I have already said men can’t get it right, but if this example of female dictatorial nonsense doesn’t apply then I give up!