Cuts, Austerity and idiocy!

Pinner Park.

Well there's not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the fact that the British Government are actually selling the post office; can you believe that – they are selling the one stable thing that is beginning to work properly and which is starting to make money!

Not that making money is the main thing the post office is there for, it's supposed to be a service and not necessarily a money making machine.

The British Post Office is maybe the only post office in the world – maybe – that delivers first class mail the day after it's been posted to all parts of the country.

That is impossible in America because of its size but I know you could mail something in Santa Monica on one day, first class, and it might not reach its destination five miles away in the same week. And by the way they have no plans to privatise the American post office and that is the superior capitalist of countries – good or bad that's what it is!

Someone said on TV the other night that the modern post office is out of date – people buy things from Amazon and E Bay, these days, she said, and we can't wait for the post office to open to return them.

Can't wait for it to open???? Return them????

Give me a break!

Oh by the way – they say they are not selling the post office at all – they are selling the Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail is 497 years old and is owned by the government and every time they argue about it on the radio or TV the Conservatives say they are not selling the post office they are selling the Royal Mail – over and over they say this as if the one is nothing to do with the other.

Here's what it says on good old Wikipedia:

Royal Mail is the postal service in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that, as of 2013, is 497 years-old and government-owned Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail (letters) and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels). Post Office Ltd (counters) and General Logistics Systems, an international logistics company, are wholly owned subsidiaries of Royal Mail Holdings.

So they're not selling the post office.

If you go to Ealing, for example, in west London, there is no post office at all. It has been closed and put in to the back of the newsagents and stationers WH Smith. In Eastcote the post office is for sale and we – the population – are letting it happen.

Got it? Good!

As I say – not much to say at the moment about anything unless of course you are interested in the austerity policies and all the other government cuts that we don't really understand; let me give you a silly example.

Harrow Council have decided to close the public lavatories in the parks – it saves money. If the loo is closed you don't have to employ people to lock and open them each day; make sense??

Outside the loo, in the park, people take their dogs for walks and to help them keep the place tidy and encourage the owners to make sure the place isn't covered in defecation – shit - (I wanted to put a different word instead of defecation and the word 'shit' came up; made me laugh) – yes to make sure it's tidy the council provided bins. Well now, to save money, they have taken the bins away; it saves paying people to put them there each day, empty them and take them away.

These facilities – the public lavatories and the bins – are in the parks which usually get locked each evening and opened the next day; not any more. To save money Harrow Council are going to leave the parks open to save people having to open them in the mornings and locking them in the evening to save money; they don't think any harm will come to the parks as people would vandalise them whether they're locked or not so they say.

So they say!!

When darkness comes people will go in there; maybe lay around and drink? Smoke a joint? Maybe lay around and fornicate? Maybe lay around and . . . . no lavatories??? No bins for the dog shit??? No light??? I'll leave it to your imagination as to what state the clothes of the vandals, fornicators and boozers would be in by next morning; but will it save money?

If they hired people to do these jobs – let's say they pay them, shall we say, £650 per week and let's say, to be totally outrageous, that the people earning this money decided to spend £600 of that, each week, on booze and fags and squander the rest, the money that they would spend would attract a lot of tax which would go straight into the government's coffers and . . .

Well, you know, they are making stupid cuts to the NHS; spending many billions refurbishing hospitals, then saying they're not working – not paying their way - so they close them down and sell them.

True!!

In Northwick Park Hospital –  still in Harrow by the way – they are closing down the rheumatology department – closing it down!!!

So come on – come on Generation X or the Generation after that whatever you are called – the boomers have done enough; it's time to stop this lot.

Do you believe, American readers, that in Britain we have 'Virgin Medical' trying to edge its way in to the National Health Service and ruin it.

Nuff said!!