Category: General

Julian Assange?

As I said in my post, This is Not about Assange,  some two years ago, I felt very strongly that WikiLeaks was a necessary counterbalance to Governments who wanted to keep their actions out of sight of public scrutiny.

As an Australian, I was appalled that my Government condemned him the minute American politicians said that he should be assassinated.

As an Englishwoman, I have been disgusted how the UK has treated him and have used the ‘Process of Law’ to virtually imprison him for two years and, eventually, to agree to send him to Sweden – from where he would, inevitably,have  been sent to the US.

I repeat: he has broken no laws in Australia, the UK or, even, the USA – since none of his actions occurred in any one of those countries. One may not approve of his actions – and I aware that some here do not – but the Law should be based on ‘Natural Justice’ and not Disapproval.

I am quite sure that Ecuador has its own agenda in granting Assange Political Asylum – but I, for one, am pleased that they have done so.

I’m house/dog sitting for friends from HK.  They are posted here in London but have gone home for their annual leave for a month. The house is in Mortlake, near the Mortlake Brewery, (once Watney’s, now Budweiser,) where my Grandfather worked before the war, commuting daily from Millwall on his twin-pot BSA.

The riverside here is OK, not outstanding, but pleasant for a stroll and walking the dog – at least as far as the Ship inn, a so-so pub but a nice place to sit on a summer Sunday afternoon.

I thought this made an interesting composition…

And I have been adopted as a surrogate Granddad – this is Julian, my friends’ boy.  He is two and a bit, so our vocabularies in Cantonese are about the same 🙂  (Though I can usually mangle my Mandarin to get by in most situations.)

In order to avoid having to rush about without the benefit of a car in Minnesota to make my now empty, in the process of undergoing proper cleaning flat ready for my imminent inhabitation, I arranged with the highly co-operative property management to have most of what I would need shipped to my new address. Everything from a Keurig coffee maker with the special reusable home-brew capsule to a rack for drying clothes was ordered. Then the credit card company struck…

As I’ve had to spend a fair amount of money preparing for my move, and as my credit card has a relatively low limit, I’ve been in the habit of paying for purchases within a few days of making them. Having long thought it good sense it never occurred to me that any sort of problems would arise because of this. Yet problems did arise. My account will now be frozen for the better part of a month. The reason, if it can be considered a reason at all, is that I simply paid too much money. Not only is there a limit of how much I can put on the sodding thing, there is a limit to how much I can pay. As I well exceeded the payment limit, I have a mark of “possible fraud” on my bank record now. While it does not get reported, it does mean that I can’t use the card — even though everyone from the local bank credit card agent to the director of the credit card department at the main bank find the charge absurd to the nth degree, considering my long history of  financial integrity.

Children are tougher than butterflies!

Continue reading “Risk Assessment”

DISCLAIMER.  I shall qualify the following by saying that I have the utmost respect for all the athletes (bar one or two) who get up at OFFS o’clock to put in another interminable stint of training on the track or jumps, in the pool or gym and then set records or personal best times, heights or distances in their events, winning a medal or not.

I have the utmost respect for our Armed Forces who stepped in at short notice to cover the security of athletes and spectators alike. I also have the utmost respect for the 70,000 unpaid volunteers who made the whole thing tick and the seven million spectators who paid good money for tickets to support their teams.

All the above deserved better than be tainted by the Gallery of Shame to come. You all know by now that my fur rests for the most part in ‘standby’ mode on a very short fuse, rising in clumps of hackle when things irritate me until I succumb to yet another full-blown frizzy fur attack. So, in dumbest celebrity TV countdown fashion and with all statutory Mackie-esque warnings about subjectivity, flash photography and the need to wear a hard hat, here are the top 20 things that did it for me.

Continue reading “On the Olympic stramash, apparently”

Having endured the most mind numbing tedium for the last fortnight one felt well overdue for a little entertainment.

The weatherman told of the meteor shower tonight arriving at just after midnight in the NE sky.  This happily represented a deal sight more entertainment that has been available for the said fortnight so I duly sallied forth. There, coming from Orion’s Belt straight towards the Big Dipper were streams of them, every minute or so.  All of a sudden they weren’t heavenly bodies anymore, they were coming over no more than a couple of thousand feet!  Well I suppose they have to land somewhere but appeared a bit close for comfort!

Tomorrow, as it is hot, we will visit the mountain, hopefully we shall miss the end of the whole London olympic thing, I really don’t think I need to witness any more claptrap like the opening ceremony.  Interesting really, however hard humanity tries it really cannot even begin to rival the natural world.  Shooting stars outbid fireworks by a country mile!

Mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue. Voici les résultats du concours de poésie au sujet des jeux Olympiques.

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome. Here is the result of the Pome Competition on the Olympics.

Now that I’ve got OZ’s fur thoroughly frizzed, thanks to all the entrants. Continue reading “Pome Competition Result”