Author: trispw

GOODNESS, WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?

FROM FIGHTING IT, TO BEING IT, ALL WITHIN 80 YEARS

Dr Frances Ryan writes:

The Telegraph newsletter today has an online tool to help its readers calculate “how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state” – and the 4 million people too sick or disabled to work. I feel quite sick. They are literally baiting their readers to ask what a burden we are.

It raises the question, just how much of a role does the media play in fuelling disability hate crimes? And what do early eugenic arguments look like?

I can’t help but say that this makes me physically sick. I can’t read the actual article in the Telegraph as I don’t subscribe to it. But, ironically, it will not be the taxes of the owner of the Daily Telegraph that will be used to support disabled people, because he lives in Sark, a self governing channel island connected to Guernsey, but independent from it in most ways, and which levies no personal income tax, no capital gains taxes, no inheritance tax and no VAT.

I wonder what the Scottish branch of the Tories think about their house magazine printing this kind of stuff. Do they agree with it?

If so, who do they think should be next in line to save their tax money?

The over 70s? Gypsy Travellers? Non-whites? Gays?

Of course, the real cost to the exchequer is none of these. It’s not even the royal parasites.

It is… the tax dodgers.

SOPPY SUNDAY

  1. My turn to be on the door today. I did my training with Tris yesterday. (To tell the truth, entre nous, he’s not that good at door keeping. I was teaching him by the end of it.)

2. This is Ern. He lives close to AndiMac and I think he’s teaching Andi how to fish.

3. Munguin reckons this one might be good on the door, so watch out you apes including Tris! You can be replaced.

4. I could do that too… What’s the pay like, and are there good canteen facilities?

5. You won’t catch us doing anything as menial as door keeping.

6. Family photograph.

7. All that’s left to do is set Munguin’s table and organise the entertainment.

8. Some burds are just lazy?

9. Fun with elephants.

10. Well, where are the treats then?

11. Reykjavík.

12. I is one VERY smart mouse, training for a job in the circus seeing as the doorman’s job always seems to be taken when I come by.

13. I would have been at work, but this peoples said that I had to have my breakfast first and he made me late.

14. I’m a Rose Chafer Beetle … and there’s also a fly in the picture. We’re in Bulgaria. Feel free to visit. It’s warm here.

15. And I’m a Cream Spot Tiger Moth, for really obvious reasons. I’m also in Bulgaria but I’m not sharing that flower with that Beetle and his Fly!

16. So, we were on the shore at Auchmithie just a few miles outside Arbroath.

17. Hola. Soy un lagarto cocodrilo mexicano. No hablo ingles. Bonito, ¿no?

18. We wanted something with a balcony.

19. We’re twins.

20. We’re just larking around here waiting for our shift to start.

Thanks to Andi and Kay.

****************

Kay also sent me some photographs of the beach they went to, to scatter John’s ashes.

She writes:

 “It was a beautiful setting. I’m absolutely sure he would approve. Although, as Linda said, he would have complained like hell about the walk from the car park to the beach 😂 there were even some lovely thistles on the path down there, quite fitting really, even if they weren’t Scottish”.  

Here are the photos she sent.

Kay says: ‘”‘This is the rickety wooden walkway that John would have hated. I can hear him now saying “for f#*ks sake, Linda, could you park any further away?”‘

Yep, that sounds like John.

It looks very pretty though. Lovely poppies. and here are some Bulgarian thistles, looking as Scottish as they can manage…

And finally, the Black Sea, where John’s ashes were scattered.

John: We all miss you. Thanks for sharing so much with us and being a part of Munguin’s Republic. Rest in peace.

And a big thank you to Kay for taking these photos and sharing them with us.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

SCOTTISH IMMIGRATION

**********

WELL, ANAS AND MS BAILLIE: WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THIS?

Or are you too scared of Sir Starmer (in the case of Anas) or too right wing (in the case of Baillie, to agree?

**********

NEVER MIND THE TRUTH; THERE ARE MINISTERS’ REPUTATIONS TO THINK OF… AND THERE ARE POST CABINET DIRECTORSHIPS TO CONSIDER

You can, of course, NEVER trust anything Johnson says, but if he is happy for these messages to be handed over, then it looks like maybe he’s decided that the end is nigh for him and maybe he can take Sunak with him. But which other reputations is he hoping to make even blacker than they already are?

Now, I can’t abide Isabel Oakeshott, but in fairness, she makes a good point here.

I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to NOT have submitted both phones.

**********

**********

Thanks to TM for his contribution.

Sailing from Ardrisaig to home for Alan

This is by way of being an experiment.

It’s all but summer and we live in a beautiful country with fantastic scenery and wildlife. We should share it with the Munguinite family.

Alan sent me some pics the other day, and I wondered if we could make this an occasional feature, where people share some of the scenery they saw on a day out or weekend away, just as some already people do for Soppy Sunday.

Of course I know that many of our readers are from other countries: France, Wales, Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Australia, Bulgaria, England, USA, Hungary and Canada amongst others… and photographs (with captions) would be equally interesting from those, and other locations.

If you think it’s a good idea, let Munguin know.

In the meantime, enjoy Alan’s day away…

Getting ready to leave Ardrisaig, with a tum full of breakfast from the Rumblin Tum cafe just behind the camera.

Early start, first lock past the top of canal. 4 miles to go down to Crinan Basin and sea level.

 Nearly there, and breakfast.

Passed Muck and passing Eigg on the outside, west side. Magnetic anomalies pick up, as did the wind. Nice.

Small pod (7) of common dolphins gave company for a few miles. Then felt 6kts was too slow, so zoomed off somewhere more exciting.

Through the gap and into Canna for the night, a short night, this is 5am.

Quietly stowing lines and leaving Canna. Not too far to home and breakfast.

Grateful thanks to Alan who took and sent the pictures and wrote the captions.

**********

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Goodness me… the BBC has inadvertently said something nice about Scotland

Seriously though, would you drink that?

Does King Mrs Parker Bowles have to drink that?

What is it doing for the tourist trade?

Straighten up and fly right, Thérèse, old thing.

**********

PLEASE , M’LORD, MAY WE USE THE BATHROOM

Firstly, why do we have to have England’s approval to have a recycling scheme?

And, wasn’t it the Tory branch office in Edinburgh that wanted glass included?

Also, why did the English government agree that the Welsh could include glass but we couldn’t?

Do they not like us? Something we said?

Additionally, why did the Nob in waiting, Union JackBoots, tell the Press before he told the Scottish Government? Surely Humza shouldn’t have had to learn Eye Bags Man’s decisions from the 10 o’clock news?

Do Aristos in waiting not have any manners?

Mon dieu, les français savaient ce qu’il fallait faire de l’aristocratie.

Talking about Jack’s impending blood transfusion and elevation to aristocrat, it’s said that there is a possibility that the Johnson honours list may not go ahead, given the latest allegations of his duplicity.

Imagine how poor Mad Nad must feel after all that creeping…

Language warning

**********

OOOPS

I suspect that 30p got the job as deputy chair of the Tory Party because the likes of Rich Sunak, totally removed from everyday reality by immense wealth, imagine he fits with the working class northerner in a way that the posh people from the south could never do. (I’m not sure that the PM was correct in this.)

I expect it helped that he was ridiculously right wing, wanted to force unemployed people to pick crops from dawn till dusk, while living in tents, to make up for the lack of foreign workers (who used to come here and take all our jobs until they didn’t), because…well let’s face it, what European would want to come to Britbin now?

But the trouble with that is he lacks the subtilty to keep the worst of his fascist English nationalism to himself. We know that’s how many Tories think of us in the Celtic fringe (and Lee, mate, they probably also think it about Northerners and the working classes… and that would include you) but the more savvy of his colleagues know when to shut up.

He’d be best to go back to keeping a 24 x 7 watch on the local McDonalds for a family that has used a food bank, popping in for a burger … or ratting on his PA’s personal affairs.

***********

THAT WAS REMARKABLY HONEST, YOUR SIRNESS!

Probably not the message that a lot of the voters you are trying to win back from the SNP want to hear. If ever there was a time, in Scotland, to distance yourself from Tories, this is probably it. But hey…

**********

POURQUOI? JE VOUS ENTENDS DEMANDER

C’EST SIMPLE, TRIS. C’EST PARCE QUE LA FRANCE EST UNE DÉMOCRATIE

***********

SOPPY SUNDAY

Time to get up for the early shift, you say, Tris?

2. Nothing like a spot of sunbathing on a nice ice sunbed.

3. Union Canal may have an unfortunate name, but it’s very pretty.

4. Where’s this?

5. Some might like to sunbathe on a bed of ice… I prefer gravel.

6. Baby Hummingbird with a BIG dinner.

7. Any more fares please?

8. Pygmy Possum.

9. I’ll share with you…

10. Get the harmonies right, backing singers!

11. I’m a snow leopard but…where’s the snow?

12. Fairy Bridge, Glen Creran.

13. Otter be a law against that level of cute.

14. Egypt.

15. Or we could make cider?

16. Luncheon is served.

17. I think I must be destined for great things. I’ve just been born and already I’m on Soppy Sunday.

18. Karbala, Iraq.

19. I’m just getting my picture taken on a day at the beach, and a peoples gets in the way and photobombs me. She obviously hasn’t seen my horns. (Fionnaphort, Isle of Mull.)

20. That’s it. Work’s over for today … and me and this people are are off to play.

With thanks to Dave and AndiMac.

Bonus Pics

I just saw this on Facebook … lovely looking trees… with a beautiful dedication, in French.

Les arbres sont des poèmes que la Terre écrit au ciel. Trees are poems that the Earth writes to Heaven.

**********

Brave tree that lost its head but keeps on growing and looking beautiful by the road to Glen Clova.

**********

Where Munguin takes his preprandial cocktails of an evening.

**********

BlueJay.