I think this is awesome. So many old people have problems that could just be solved by them living with family or at least not living on their own – like for the most part being able to look after themselves, but just getting anxious because they live alone.
There should be more of this. Totally.
So. Today is polling day. I will, of course, be voting.
The only problem is that the candidates that I get to pick from for my ward all kind of SUCK.
Aldenham West
Caroline Boydell – Green
Sandra Huff – Labour
Simon Patnick – Conservative
Out of these three, only Simon Patnick has bothered to get a leaflet dropped through my letter box and he does seem to have made some comment to the Jewish Cronicle. Caroline Boydell doesn’t seem to exist on the internet other than as a “Representatives of the Green Party were not immediately available for comment.” note on the Borehamwood Times website. Sandra Huff, I suspect, does things in Aldenham, but again, I can’t seem to find any kind of comment from her anywhere.
You see my dilemma. Vote for a candidate who I have heard from, but whose policies I don’t really agree with and whose leaflet was full of boring personal details that I just don’t care about. Or vote for someone I know nothing about.
Augh.
On a more fun note:
The Hives were AWESOME. 
Caught up with a friend from back in the day. Well. Not that far back.
Awesome enough that I really should get hold of some of their music. 
My cousin and a mate of his are cycling and running (respectively) from London to Liverpool. It’s quite a long way and they’re doing it for Macmillan Cancer Relief, so if you’re feeling particularly charitable feel free to sponsor them a couple of quid. My cousin’s the one on the left. It’s a very tiny picture, but that really is him.
They start running/cycling tomorrow.
Jose Gonzalez last friday was AWESOMETASTIC.
And that’s all I have to say.
I suppose this is probably something that only really affects me, but generally it’s a bit annoying when you do some action which does something in one browser and…nothing happens because you’re using a completely different web browser.
Petty, I know.
What prompted this you might ask?
Well! Even if you don’t ask, I’m going to talk about it.
In Opera, mouse-clicking on the left edge of the browser window pops up a sidebar filled with all sorts of things – favourites, history, transfers…the rest of it. In Internet Explorer, nothing happens. At all.
Oh I know that there is something kind of similar, where you can click on the star to drop down a favourites or history sidebar, but it’s not the same is it?
And with Opera being my browser of choice, it does grate a bit when I’m forced to use other browsers.
Then there’s the differences which I can’t quite remember between Opera and Firefox and the keyboard shortcuts for scrolling through open tabs. I haven’t even got a clue what the shortcut to do that in Internet Explorer is.
And I’ll probably never find out.
I figured that I should resurrect the hate list – I kept one on my final year project blog and it at least kept me entertained in programming/dissertation purgetory.
So here it is! Ta-da!
…yeah.
Coughing then.
I’ve got some kind of virus, plague whatever and I keep coughing. Not enough to warrant running off to the chemist to get some sort of cough linctus yet and not enough to be painful, but just enough that it makes me feel sick.
It’s annoying to say the least. I can only think that if I just threw up, then the coughing wouldn’t be so bad – but I’m not coughing enough for that. Just ALMOST enough.
Augh.
“Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.” – Hyman Rickover
Peace One Day is an organisation initially set up to get a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, a “Peace Day”, recognised.
They decided that the best way to go about it would be to get the UN to do something and subsequently found that the UN already had one of these Peace Days, only… nothing really got done on this day. So stuff happened and eventually they got it ratified as this day of global ceasefire and non-violence and got it a fixed day rather than a vague third-tuesday-in-September,-but-maybe-we’ll-celebrate-early affair.
ANYWAY. They did it. And a documentary was made about it and broadcast on tv. Quite late at night. Which was when I caught the last two thirds of it when it was first broadcast, as I was uncharacteristically watching tv downstairs, late at night, rather than browsing the net in my room. I was fascinated, not just because it’s a really well-made and well-constructed documentary or because Jeremy Gilley is an infectiously driven dreamer-hero of the story, but because it’s a damn good idea.
A day of actual peace. Where children can be immunised without health workers fearing that they will be hurt. Where aid can be delivered to places that need it but are usually too difficult to get to. Where one person does not kill another person.
Because to achieve world peace, you have to start somewhere. And why not start with just one day.
“The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” – Thomas Edison
Over the last few years, I have been able to celebrate this global day of peace more, well, vocally I guess. Being a student, I always had plenty of time to get something sorted out. This year however, while I did manage to do something to strive towards peace, I didn’t have the time to be vocal about it or remind every body I knew that it was coming.
The tragedy of no longer being a student and having days full of… slacking between lectures. Stupid work.
Anyway, to remedy this, I have decided I am going to start early. In fact I am going to start planning now. This way I’ll have plenty of time between work, church, the two courses I am doing and whatever else life throws at me to get something done.
And hopefully, it’ll be nice and big and vocal and spread the world and encourage people who don’t know about Peace One Day or the day of global ceasefire and non-violence or all the good that gets done and CAN be done on such a day to celebrate it and DO something.
“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.” – The Buddha
Peace One Day is a nice idea. However, if it is only an idea, it is worthless. An idea this vital, this important must be put into action. It is not enough to think about it and do nothing. Do something, even if all it is it telling someone else about it.
Lives depend on it.
“The other thing about this Wednesday is that it appears to have quite a serious hangover.
Alcohol…
Always seems like such a good idea at the time. The problem, of course, is that the brain that thinks it’s a good idea is one suffering from increasingly impaired judgment. You start the evening as a sophisticated gentleman, judiciously sipping a jaunty beer as you discuss the dominant cultural forces in seventeenth century Flanders, and next thing you know you’re dressed up like a nun and running around the town baying at the moon. Unless you started the evening as a nun, I guess, in which case maybe you wind up dressed as a writer. I don’t know. I’ll have to find a nun and ask her. Seems like a high mountain to climb right now, though.
On the upside, I got my week’s exercise done by standing up for the whole evening. So on balance I think I can feel pretty virtuous about the whole thing.”
It’s stuff like this that makes me wish he wrote stuff more often.
image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace
