Phone hacking

Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the past month or so, you'll have heard about the demise of the News of the World newspaper. Basically Rupert Murdoch quite happily sacked 200 or so staff to save one top executive Rebecka "the slapper" Brookes... she got the title "the slapper" from the publication Private Eye when she was accused of kicking seven bells out of her then husband TV hard man Ross Kemp...

You can imagine that she is a very driven person, competitive, cut throat and results driven... she could of course be the complete opposite of that...but that would be stretching the imagination a little far.

Once the rats had jumped the ship regarding the advertising it became an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction and damage limitation by News international... 

But I think the rot goes much deeper than this and isn't necessarily contained to one media organisation.... How many times have you read "from a trusted source" in news articles? There is currently lots of smoke but I think the fire is under the peat bog and it's raging away.... I think there are a lot of editors out there currently sweating... We've only really seen the tip of the iceberg at the moment and this kind of thing has been going on for years like a bad attack of dry rot, all of it fed by higher circulation and money changing hands.

I've never been a reader of the tabloids I find them very low brow and sensationalist journalism (I use the word loosely...tittle tattle is probably more accurate), but it seems a vast majority of the population do like that kind of thing, and where there is demand, there is supply.

Anyway enough of the serious stuff I'm sure the ones who are supposedly in charge of this country will thrash out a deal with News International and it will be buried for an unspecified sum of money or a suitable donation.... or will last long enough until something juicier comes along... 

Meanwhile in the real world our soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan for an unspecified reason and will continue to do so, fighting a completely unjust war with very little sign of an endgame. 

Anyway... We're off on our jollys soon, we are camping up in North Wales for a week then shooting off to Scotland for a bit (not camping I might add)... hopefully the weather will hold for the week, but even so I'm reliably informed that not only does the Llyn Peninsula have outstanding views but it also has a glut of pubs, of which I intend to visit some of the better ones... Chris my mate has promised to visit considering its just down the road from where he lives... but his reliability has proven somewhat dodgy in the past... so I won't be holding my breath or getting a pint in unless he actually turns up... I'm also hoping to do a bit of fishing up there... which reminds me I must check if they have a decent bait shop up there 

Anyway we are all ok both teenagers working decent hours down in Pendine and actually getting some money in their pockets.... Freya is the missing link in the Dinosaur fossil record in that she is living proof that the Stropasaurus evolved into a human female... although she does make us laugh with her constant singing and ridiculous statements like "nooooo you're Princess Kracka Lacken"

the only other bit of hilarity is Fomo boy's voice is on the verge of breaking, and his ridiculous warbling will only get worse as he gets older.... he doesn't really notice it but we do ...his voice box hasn't quite decided where it's going yet, but I'm sure it will pretty soon.... He's off to Andrea's Mum & Dad on Friday, So we'll probably notice his warbling more once we meet up with him and Hugo (Andrea's nephew) when we pick them up for  carry on camping.......

When will we learn ?

The only worrying thing is that we will leave two teenagers with free reign over the house for ten days.. but they will be under pain of death (and quite possibly eviction) if anything gets trashed....

We shall see

Gotham City

The bats are back !! well one bat or it could be two, they have decided that the gap between where our wood burner goes through the ceiling and into the roof space is an ideal place to launch themselves from come twilight....The only problem is that they launch themselves inside our house. I think it's a pipestrelle but I could be wrong it seems bigger than the ones we had in our previous house. Either way both Andrea and Lauren were hiding under a Charlie and Lola blanket like a pair of quivering girls... eventually I trapped it in the hallway and opened the front door and out it flew....alas later on it came back and had another fly past before I went to bed, I've named it Douglas after Douglas Bader the battle of Britain spitfire pilot. We've also found a baby bat in one of our bathrooms.... so it looks like they are breeding up there..... 

Xbox Boy is in Zante in Greece for a weeks holiday with his friends which he can barely afford, but that's up to him, He does start another job once he comes back in Pendine, it's only seasonal but it's a better job than he had...

Lauren is working in the same place and she works hard.... I think it might be a bit of a shock for Stewart... but there you go time will tell. Stewarts work history thus far has been far from glowing.....Although Lauren got a dose of reality the other evening when she asked Andrea for bus fare to get to work a few days AFTER she had been paid... erm no... 

FOMO boy had a nice birthday, he asked for money for his birthday and he put it towards something called an E-Pad, which is basically a HUGE android phone or a wannabe iPad... but without the phone bit... He broke the charger within a day.... I don't think it's going to survive very long if I'm honest, either the screen will get cracked or it will befall some other terminal damage, just like his DSi. call me cynical....

On the subject of technology as I predicted several months ago Lauren's brand new 12MP camera is on the verge of death, it's very obviously been dropped (probably more than once) and has an intermittent lens error... I see little point in buying Lauren any type of technology because she simply doesn't value it or look after it....In fact her answer to being questioned about it's lack of working properly was "Well you should have got insurance with it" "Erm no.... You should have bloody well looked after it, insurance is for genuine accidents not stupidity" This Christmas I think it will just be cash....In fact I will insist upon it.. at least that way I won't get predictably upset when it gets trashed, which of course it won't because it's cash.

Andrea is still running, she was out last night on a club run and she's out again tonight in Lampeter on another run, she enjoys it and it keeps her fit and trim so who am I to complain ?

We are planning on going camping in North Wales in July, so hopefully the weather will hold... but knowing our luck it will tip down, because thus far this summer is turning out to be much like the summers we've had recently....par for the course it seems.

The only news that has made me chuckle recently was the prediction that our Sun is going into an unpredicted solar minimum when it should be entering it's solar maximum now, and this minimum is along the same lines of the little ice age of the middle ages when the river Thames froze over predictably every year and they held winter festivals on the frozen river.... That has to hack off the Anthropogenic Global Warming zealots, because it cancels out the predicted rise in temperature because of CO2, and the ONLY way to counter the impending freeze (if it happens) is to pump out more CO2 to warm the Earth up.... You've got to laugh, they haven't got a clue and if anything it shows how little they know about climate... I also had to laugh at the IPCC when they stated that renewables would provide most of our energy by 2050, a paper written by a guy in the IPCC who is Greenpeace, but worse than that they let him review his own paper... and NOW governments are using this data as fact.... erm no epic fail

So true......