Out and About on St Andrew's Day

Yes it's another wet day and now the wind is rising as yet another high tide threatens flooding as shower after shower sweeps across the landscape!

What do you do on a day like this where dark mornings discourage rising early and short days demand an earlier than usual return home before darkness falls?
We like to get out. And we do. Lunch in Rhu followed by a trip to Lomond Shores and Antartex offered opportunities for a lunch out and a purchase or two. Dougal had a wee walk, although he would have liked more, and then we all headed back to base to catch up with reactions to yesterday's gloomy forecast from politicians, and the effects of strikes by public sector workers.

Striking is not something I'm too happy about, but on this occasion as pensions for public sector workers, of whom I was one, are being devalued and inaccessible to too many until they reach their very late sixties, I applaud the strikers. How else can they raise their objections to what is yet another erosion of their standard of living? The squeeze is on and as it has done through the ages, found its most significant hold on the poorer people in our society. In the chancellor's statement, we heard plenty about the pain that we would all face over not only this year, but for for most of the decade to come. It is outrageous that those who caused this situation by their blatant misuse of power walk away with bonuses and golden handshakes. Banks propped up by public finances still operate their strategies of 'keeping their investors happy' and 'not lending while interest rates are too low to offer suitable returns'. They have not had their pensions ravaged, nor seen their incomes shrink to insignificance against soaring increases in living costs. Nor have they been reprimanded in any shape or form for the way they risked and lost so much on behalf of so many.

But then what can we expect from a tory government of millionaires and their liberal associates who have become their clones? The economy is in a mess, and those who made the mess have walked away and left others to clean it up. The class system in Britain is not consigned to history. It is with us today as we head backwards into a supposedly new millennium. The rich are getting richer. Too many of our young people have no employment and too many of our old people are struggling to survive with a meagre pension. The people in between now see no light at the end of an increasingly long work tunnel. Bleak....gloomy......dark......relentless.....
Charles Dickens springs to mind, and all that was bad about Victorian times. It may well be that these times will be with us again.

On a brighter note....Dougal looks forward to his tea!!