Please don't privatise our Postal Service

People that live (as we do here) a very long way from civilisation - will gradually be neglected if the UK Postal service is privatised. 

On the whole I back capitalism. Governments are not good at running things and a spot of competition is very healthy. But - get real -  there is no way that a private company is going to run a loss making service. 

Delivering mail to distant parts is not profitable just as providing television, mobile phone and internet coverage and transport are not profitable. For instance - we can’t get ordinary telly here - there is no reception at all. 

There are some things Government must run because otherwise some people will lose out big time. Government needs to protect them.

Apart from the above - another obvious thing is the NHS. It could be possible for private enterprise to take over. They would do very well with all the profitable glamorous stuff -but would ignore the non-profitable such as mental health. The results would be too terrible to contemplate. 

In country areas (such as this) the postman is a very important person. As well as mail, he delivers prescriptions to the housebound, as well as occasionally keeping a wee unofficial eye on the infirm and the elderly living alone.

Three years ago we were on holiday in a small town in Southern Italy called Giurdignano (population 1,911). Their postal service had been privatised. The result - no deliveries to their town, no post office in their town. They were all forced to drive to the nearest big centre to collect mail and deliver mail. 

This will happen here - be warned

The Muslim marriage market place

We have an old and dear friend - a non assertive English gentleman. Many years ago he married a British born Muslim girl whose parents came from Pakistan. They have sons and one daughter, all brought up as Muslims in the UK. His wife is the dominant one in their marriage.

Talking to him is fascinating as it enables me to see what life is like for them - for a Muslim family in the UK.
In particular, what it is like for a young Muslim girl, educated to professional level, and looking for a husband. The story of what has happened to this lassie is quite awful. She is effectively in a market place- the marriage market place for Muslims - where as her father says  - she should have done well because she was on the path to earning a six figure salary. But one disaster has followed another.

In one - the very "suitable " man introduced by a friend turned out to be a con man and trying to marry two women at the same time, whilst relieving each family of large amounts of money. Another was a very "suitable " man - introduced by a relative who turned out to be a controlling abuser.

Each time there was a Muslim engagement/ marriage - which is not valid in British law. The man can annul this by simply saying out-loud that he is doing so. The woman cannot do this and is therefore trapped. She has to apply to a special Muslim Court (all men) to get her freedom. These courts are biased against women. They ask insulting questions about her inability to keep her husband happy and delay for months and years, preventing the woman from getting on with her life.

In some European countries it is against the law for a Muslim engagement/marriage to take place without the country's own legal form of marriage registration happening at the same time. This goes some way to protecting women and should be introduced here in the UK as soon as possible.

But where in this is LOVE. The young woman wants to please her parents who she loves and she wants to keep faith with her religion. She is presented with possible suitors and hopes that she fancies one of them enough to agree to marriage. Our friend would certainly never have made his daughter marry against her will

But - I couldn't believe the way our friend talked about his daughter - as if she were a commodity.
It has been a long time since those in the UK  viewed their daughters that way.
He and his wife have spent large amounts of money and effort getting their children "on" in the world. But - hearing him talk - it is clear that they view this as an investment. They expect to be looked after by their children in their old age in return.
Again it has been a long time since parents in the UK expected anything back from their children.

It is very easy to say that we should ban Muslim engagement/marriage to protect women but we would be horrified if we lived in a Muslim country which demanded that Christian marriage be banned.

It is quite fascinating to look at different cultures - and this is really all to do with culture and nothing to do with religion.

You don't know what you've got till its gone

They've paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Wonderful Joni Mitchell got it so right in her song.

I have just read an article in my paper by the journalist  Melanie Reid. She broke her neck in a riding accident in 2010 and is now tetraplegic.
Amazingly she has written  an article almost every week since she recovered consciousness - charting her experience.  Such a brave and wonderful woman, I have untold admiration for her.

In this week's article she mentions something about wanting to shout at those of us  with working bodies. She wants to tell us  - to use them - because we can - and because she can't-
- you don't know what you've got till its gone.

We take our bodies so much for granted. We moan about silly things like spots and cellulite and being too thin or too fat  - but we should be rejoicing every day that our bodies work.

I once broke my little toe. It was painful and I was quite amazed at how much it restricted movement and what I could do. I was just about to go on holiday and needed hands and feet fully functional to negotiate trains and boats and planes etc. It was a major nuisance and this was just one little toe far away at the other end of my body. I can remember thinking that in future - when it had healed -  I would spend more time appreciating my toes.
Of course - I haven't.

I am so lucky and am so grateful that my whole body is all there and more or less fully functional.
We all should be - every day and every night.
A healthy body is the most wonderful thing in the world to have
Every day it is that way is the most amazing, miraculous gift.
We should never moan about any part of our body
because
You don't know what you've got till its gone.
Thank-you Melanie - for reminding us

To garden - or not - that is the question.

I am not sure that I really "get" gardening. I am constantly amazed by those around me who appear to achieve near total fulfillment by a near total involvement. Most daylight hour of most days, they are to be found bent over - tending their gardens. Their huge pride and pleasure in the result is quite obvious.

I can sort of understand the thrill of planting something and watching it grow. However - the amount of ongoing physical labour required definitely puts me off - in a big way. Perhaps I am just very lazy? For me a garden is a place to go and relax in a very motionless way and admire nature. I have observed that gardeners can never sit still in their gardens. They always see something that needs doing.

It is possible for a lazy gardener, with little pride, to arrange things so that only an occasional  mow of the grass is necessary. What a hateful job that is. I hate doing anything that has to be done again in what seems like just seconds later - like hoovering. Why does grass have to grow so quickly.

Perhaps I should change my attitude and view the growth of grass as something wonderful brought on by rain, that we are so lucky to have, unlike countries with drought issues.

Our grass here at the moment is about knee height. It possibly could be defined as hay. The sort of hay that a non-pensioner might go and have a roll in with someone.  A farmer would covet it for his animals.

However it looks quite beautiful. It is our own beautiful meadow - untouched by all the horrible insecticides and weedkillers that farmers use - it is a mass of wonderful wild flowers and butterflies. It is so beautiful I can't bear to cut it. And that is the best excuse for not getting out the strimmer that I have ever thought of.
It is my kind of garden and gardening.

We must vote with heads - not hearts

Flicking through the brochure for the Edinburgh Book Festival I came upon the name of an author I went to listen to before and will not be going to listen to again. He is a well known Scot who writes books I much enjoy about an Edinburgh detective.
When I had seen him before he had started his talk by saying that he must declare himself
"I will be voting for Scottish Independence" he said
"I do not feel that I have to list my reasons for you
because
I am voting with  my heart (he put his hand on his chest)
NOT
with  my head" (he put his hand on his head)
I could not believe what I had heard - from an obviously intelligent man.
We don't make many really important decisions in our lives - do we? We chose a career but that can be changed. We chose a spouse and nowadays that is pretty easy to change. Marriage is interesting because perhaps there is an acceptance in the West that we do chose our spouse with our hearts more than our heads. In an arranged marriage in India or Pakistan the decision is definitely made with the the head. When we buy a house we use a lot of head but also a bit of heart. However  it can be changed if wrong. When we buy that sweet little puppy, we are perhaps using heart more than head and a puppy is for life! When we have sex, most of us are not using our head  - but the resultant baby affects the heart the moment you hold it. I suppose there is abortion, as a last resort, if it is a big mistake. When we vote in general elections, we should vote with our heads. Many, however, vote with their hearts - for various reasons. Perhaps they are following tradition, perhaps they hate/fancy the candidate.
BUT
A vote in an election is just for a few years and then you get to vote again.
IN SCOTLAND in 2014
If there is a majority for Independence then
That is FOREVER
I think that deserves a bit of "head" - a bit of serious thinking about.
Especially as no-one yet knows what an independent Scotland would be like. Would it drop the pound for  the Euro, would it be part of the EU, would it have the Queen, would it have a central Bank, would it be part of NATO, would our pensions be protected etc etc - so many questions yet to be answered. Only then, with all the facts, can one look at both sides of the argument and make a judgement  -
The Status Quo  - which most of us Scots are quietly very happy with
or
Separation - as put forward by a loud intimidating minority

I have survived the death of my hard drive

It is the thing I have always most dreaded - the death of my hard drive. I would hear or read about it happening to someone and be filled with horror.
But it happened.
There was no warning -
it just died.
I was about to leave the country for 3 weeks and had no time to do anything except worry. I consoled myself that I had done a full back up about 2 weeks before (and had also put most of my most critical stuff on dropbox). But I had no idea whether my back-up was OK. I let Windows back stuff up for me, onto an external hide drive and it is done in such a way that I have never managed to get into the back-up to be able to check it.
So - 3 weeks on - I got home and discovered that I was just inside the 3 year extended warranty that I had bought from Dell. They were lovely and sent someone out in the next couple of days who replaced the drive. Sadly under the terms of the warranty the old drive had to be returned to Dell - so no chance of even trying to get anything off it. What is the point of that Dell?
So I now have a new hard drive and Dell also gave me a new Windows disk. Now was the terrifying moment of truth. Was all my data really there on my external drive? Would I be able to copy it across so that it would be accessible?
Well - Yes.
I plugged in the drive. Windows asked what I wanted to do. Did I want to restore the data. I clicked - Yes  - and it did it.
Thank-you Dell. Thank-you Windows. Thanks to you - I have survived.
Things are a bit different. The file path to my data is different, so dropbox is very confused, but I can work on that.
The worst thing has happened and I have survived

So what did I do next?
Well I had to leave the country again .So this time I decided to take my computer (a rather large laptop) with me.
AND
I left it behind at the place I was staying - not realising until I got home.
The moral is
Back-up Back-up Back-up
and then
Don't leave it behind!