It's been a while since my last confession/blog, all sorts of things going on at the moment, so where to begin, well at the beginning I suppose.

About a month ago I received an email from the college saying that my role (Instructor) was being made redundant, now as an instructor I only need to support the kids and Lecture when required, which turned out to be 90% of the time.  So as they had to pay extra for the lecturing they can save money by making me a Lecturer, heres how, at my current pay scale which is at the top of it I earn £**.000 however because I will be placed on the lowest lecturing scale as this will be a new contract i would be £1,500.00 worse off?  When I mentioned this to them they replied yes but I had to remember that this was a money saving exercise, so I did what any self respecting human would do and told them to Fuck Off and make me redundant, to which they replied, this college has a no redundancy policy so they would find me a job with equivalent pay scale to my current role, that was 5 weeks ago, I return to work tomorrow after a 3 week break so I will see what happens.  The college is a complete and fucking shambles since the new Principle arrive, I am pretty sure he is playing with figures (money) that when he leaves, which he will soon, the shit will hit the fan as we discover his miss-dealings.  Anyway we shall wait and see.

OUCH

Yes my ouch moment, while I have been on holiday I have been doing all the things around the house/shed that I have been meaning to do, so with 3 weeks holiday I thought I would tackle the tasks, task 1, the double doors on my shed/log cabin/garage where catching at the top, so with plane in had I climbed the step ladder to the top about 8 feet so I was about 10 off the ground and started shaving off the top of the door, the next thing I know or remember is that the ladder has given way and I am falling backwards towards a concrete slab (shed foundations), the next thing I remember is a blinding flash of light and a pain at the back of my head.
I opened my eyes and saw the clear blue sky, not knowing how long I had been laying there I decided to wait a minute before attempting to get up.  Now if you have been following my blogs you will know that I had a broken neck and had plates and pins fitted just over 2 months ago, so I am lying in the warm or should I say scorching heat worried if I have damaged the neck again, so I gently run my hand around the back of my neck to see if there was any obvious problems, apart from some blood on the back of my head I thought I had escaped with very little injury.
So I tried to get up, OUCH, having landed flat on my back which took most of the fall and my head obviously hitting the ground, the pain in my back was to say the least "OUCH", I already have 3 vertebrae mis-aligned in my lower back giving me sciatica, so I thought better of it and just laid there for a few more minutes, I then picked up my phone which had fallen out of my pocket and was laying beside me a called my partner explaining that I needed some help as I had just fallen from the ladder.
Now, I know that the ladies here have to look good before leaving the house so that they get the attention they think they deserve, controversial, yeah, but true, anyway, about 30 minutes, yes half an hour later my partner arrives, I asked where the hell have you been, she answers that she had to do her hair and makeup and put on some clothes as she was in her jimjams when I called, WTF, she then started having a go at me for calling her as she was sending emails, if I could have I would have dragged her to the roof of the shed and thrown her off, so she helps me to my feet but I know I am in trouble, so she phones for an ambulance which arrives with a Paramedic in tow.  They check me over and take me to the local hospital for a CT and MRI because of the neck thing and now the back, about an hour later a Doctor comes to give me the news, my neck is fine, the graze on my head is minor, but I do have a minor concussion but my lower back is fucked, I tell him about my previous problems and he said that the fall had not helped but I was OK to go, he prescribed some pain killers which I already have and tells me to go home and rest, if I start to feel sick or pass out to come back.  So with my soon to be ex-partner at home sending more emails to her friends I phone for a cab and make my way home.  Update, My head and neck are fine but my back is definitely screwed.

About a week after the skydiving incident, I climb a ladder again, this time 20 feet to attached a 30 foot antenna to the house, all goes well this time and I am soon chatting to people from Europe, however my aim is to conquer the world, radio wise that is.
SO my new 80 foot antenna arrived this morning, so It's up the ladder again at the weekend, watch this space.

So as our Prime minister prepares to meet and face the other 27 EU counties at a summit in Brussels I hope she plays hard ball with them, everyone in parliament are scared of a no deal and want Mrs May to back down on certain deals that we want and comply with what the EU want, first of all we are not French, we will not capitulate as they have done 3 times now WW1, WW2 and now with Emmanuel Macron gripping onto Angela Merkels apron like a little boy needing his nanny.
Well, all I have to say about the above is 'FUCK EM', we do not need the EU, they need us more than we need them.  I think we should pull out now, no deal or otherwise.
|Lets look at out wins, and the EU's losses, First lets ban all European cars being imported into the UK, no more shitty BMW's, Renault's etc, Lets buy Japanese (Great Cars) Chinese, etc so without mentioning a load of other stuff, the EU's revenue goes south, a large part of their sales of cars are to the UK, we are a bit like the Americans, we do love our vehicles.
Lets close our boarders to EU immigrants, lets just tell them to go fuck off and drain someone elses resources.   Yeah yeah I know about fresh veg etc, but we can grow our own, we have some of the best meat in the world, the UK was built on Meat and 2 veg, Spuds and Peas, Cabbage, any veg really, so we can do it, we have the best Steel in the world, lets rebuild our steel industry, I know i am ranting, but that's the way I feel and it's the truth.

Germany.
'Did anyone see the Germany game last night' that's the first question that people here are asking as they arrive for work, the answer is a big yes from most of the people here.  2 nil, not much more to say about it really, South Korea put on a reasonable show and made the Germans pay when they panicked in the last 10 minutes, however the GREAT NEWS is Germany are out, gone, goodbye see you in 4 years time, LOL.
The other good news related to this is that it would appear that everything in Germany is connected to the national football team, when they do bad so does the country, Merkel faces the possible collapse of the coalition government because the other leader in her coalition want her to close the boarders, add to that they are out of the world cup, I don't see her coming back from this one, also, I predict that she will just disappear into obscurity.  Once again the UK has to take on the world, we will succeed, we will win, we are good at winning wars.

Nanobots
Engineers have developed tiny ultrasound-powered robots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria along with the toxins they produce. These proof-of-concept nanorobots could one day offer a safe and efficient way to detoxify and decontaminate biological fluids.
Wow, they are now here, the future is looking better for medical cures, imagine a nanobot that seeks out cancer and destroys it, I am too old to maybe see this technology put into practice, but for my sons generation this is a reality, it's going to happen, the futures bright.

There have been many reports this week about a large orange bright light in the sky, BUFORA British UFO Research Association have made a statement that the object is infact 

If you have been following my posts, you will have seen me talk about CB and Amateur Radio, so I purchased a nice antenna last week, a 5/8th wave 10/11m vertical, it's a bit of a monster at 20.5 feet, plus the mast which is 10 feet making a total of about 30 feet give or take a few inches.
​
I also got hold of the K&T bracket for mounting the antenna to the side of the house, so I had to get up 25 feet to drill the walls for said K&T brackets, my ladder only goes up 15 feet, so I asked my neighbour an ex-fire woman if I could loan her super ladder a 40 footer, no problem, so i stick ladder against wall and start to climb, now I am doing this all by myself, number one rule when using a ladder is to get someone at the bottom to hold it for you, I have no one around, so I go solo.
When I get to the top, I make the mistake of looking down, WTF, that's a long way to fall if something goes wrong. Long story short last year my other neighbour, a roofer, fell from a roof the same height as mine, I now watch him in his wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down after breaking his neck and damaging his spinal cord, his doctors say he will never recover.  So at the top of this ladder I start to get a bit wobbly and decide to call it a day, I think before tempting this again I need help as holding onto a 30 foot antenna, drilling holes and mounting the brackets will be a major undertaking for me, I am not looking forward to it.  I am getting dizzy just thinking about it.

​So after the wobbly ladder episode on Saturday, I decided to watch the England game on Sunday, I think I entered the Twilight Zone, as the football team in white scored 6 goals and made it look easy?  So, who the hell were they, yes, it was the England team, playing football properly and scoring 6, yes, 6 goals, WTF, and the manager said he was not really happy with the performance???????
I'm not sure whether its real or not, I need to check the BBC news, just to make sure.

Monday, today, brings the start of the mini summer, so my hay fever has kicked in and I am itching all over, I hate summer, give me a cool showery day any time.

Off to mark papers now, my week can only get better, I hope. 

Star Wars, this post isn't about the films this is about Trump reviving the Star Wars defence system.
The Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars, was first set up in 1984, as far as I am concerned the Americans and Russians can blow the shit out of each other in space, as long as they don't play their war games here on earth, I am reminded of the film 'The day the earth stood still', not the Keano Reeves crappy remake the original, where the alien and his robot threaten to destroy earth if we didn't stop fucking it up with the nukes we have, as the aliens would see this as a threat to the universe.
So, Trump the war mongering arshole wants to set up a new space force, he said  "I'm hereby directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces," what a twat.

In response I am expecting in the next couple of months a 'cold space war' with the Russians where they do the same thing, I am sure that the secret military missions using the space shuttle was to build these space weapons so I believe that they are already there.

My favorite weapon to come out of the SDI was Thor, the 'Rods of God'.

Lazy Dog projectiles (aka "kinetic bombardment") a smaller version of Thor is that the projectiles could reach speeds of up to 500 mph as they fell to the ground and could penetrate nine inches of concrete after being dropped from as little as 3,000 feet
The idea is like shooting bullets at a target, except instead of losing velocity as it travels, the projectile is gaining velocity and energy that will be expended on impact. They were shotgunning a large swath of jungle, raining bullet-sized death at high speeds.
That's how Project Thor came to be.
Instead of hundreds of small projectiles from a few thousand feet, Thor uses a large projectile from a few thousand miles above the Earth. The "rods from god" idea was a bundle of telephone-pole sized (20 feet long, one foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to ten times the speed of sound.
The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites. More than that, when the rod hits, the explosion would be on par with the magnitude of a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon – but with no fallout.  It would take 15 minutes to destroy a target with such a weapon.

So Trump beware of those UFO's that your government has been hiding, they may just pop into the White House and kick your arse.  Or even better drop a rod on you there.

It is unfortunately inevitable that SDI will in a few years be operational and the USA, Russia, China and India will all have these weapons, scary thought eh?

Once again after 4 years of nothing interesting happening in the football world, the world cup returns.  I would not say I am a big fan of football but I do love the Euros and the World Cup, once again England's hopes for a miracle that we don't get kicked out in the first round are improved by a win in our first game, could it be that Southgate has worked out a magic formula for getting to the semi's?  Who knows but we played well on Monday evening even when the proverbial hit the fan when Tunisia scored making it 1-1,  however, the amazing Harry Kane came up with a great goal into extra time to give us the win, now, we should have been so far in front by half time that the Tunisians would have not come out for the second half, but once again our finishing let us down, Sterling and Lingard just don't have that final touch, however Kane is the new Lineker, and got us out of the shit with a typical poachers goal to save the day.  Rashford and Loftus-Cheek gave us the driving force we needed, in my opinion both theses players plus Dier and Rose should start the next match, Sterling, Henderson, Young and Maguire should be on the sidelines, this I feel would make a really good dynamic team. Trippier was without man on the match.

​Me Vs Ofcom, interesting battle, me in the blue cornerf asking what the hell is the delay in

Many years ago I was really into CB and became a qualified Ham Radio operator, I would spend hours fiddling with transceivers and the like, but what I was really good at was making antennas, at one point I had people from all over the country asking me to build them custom antennas, and I loved it.
I then moved from London into Hertfordshire and had my equipment in a box in the loft for years, I then decided to sell it all, BIG MISTAKE, anyway onto the present, I was searching through eBay looking for some components to make a power supply for my workshop when I came across a 5/8th antenna for free, yeah, that's correct for free, the only problem was it was in Ely, that's not a problem, however it was still attached to the ladies chimney, she wanted it gone so free to anyone who could recover it.

​That advert then got me thinking, should I buy a radio and have a go at the CB Ham world again, so I did a little research, I have found out that the bands i.e. AM and FM are now available to CBers and B licensed amateurs now have access to HF so effectively becoming A licensed, the difference before was A's had to pass a Morse Code test, so I never bothered with it and settled for a B, however I friend of mine on CB 'The Space Invader" and I would use morse over CB to learn and try out our morse, we would make sure no one else was using that frequency and away we would go, after a while we both became quite proficient in the keying of the code, in fact we were better than some A license holders but we never got around to doing the test, I believe Alan 'The Space Invader' did in fact take his test and was successful some years later.
SO, after a little more research I found the CB in the UK is almost dead,  which believe it or not is a good thing, less idiots playing music, and buggering about, that completely ruined it some some of the CBers I used to know.  Anyway, I have taken the plunge and purchased 2 transceivers, 1 CB and 1 10 meter band, a really good antenna and some other bits I need to set things up.

So, what am I expecting? I have to be honest and say I don't really know, for the money I have paid it's worth a try, it may light my fire for this interesting hobby again, at one point I talked to a guy in LA every morning on CB, quite an achievement, and that's what it was all about, experimentation, I got a lot from it, my maths became a hell of a lot better, I learnt to build a transceiver from scratch, very useful when electronic equipment fails I can now fix most things, and met a couple of people who are now very good friends, so after 30 years I will soon be back on the air waves, so to speak, question is do I use my Licensed call sign or my old CB handle, should be an interesting few weeks.

So 10:4 good buddies, see you on the flip side? 'What ever that means'.

So, over the next couple of weeks myself and my colleagues will be marking loads of papers and view lots of films handed in by our students, we have already started on the early entries, but, it does not look good at the moment, most of the students are struggling to even get a pass, at this time we have a 90% fail rate, why? I will tell you, because they are lazy little shits who have no problems with failing, when we talk to them its a case of 'Well, what do you want me to do'? I will tell you, 'DO SOME FUCKING WORK INSTEAD OF PISSING ABOUT WITH YOUR MATES, SMOKING AND DRINKING'.

We just cant get across to them that what they do now will effect them for the rest of their lives, but they don't give a shit, people ask me why I am thinking of leaving this college, it's simple, in my 30 years of working in education I have never met so many student with low grades from school, without Maths and English, and generally being complete numpties.

So, what can I do, nothing is the answer, I have tried being the good cop, the bad cop, the caring cop, mummy & Daddy cop, nothing works, so now I have lost the will to put effort into these little shits with no return.  Do I care, yes of course I do, i feel that O have failed in my job as their educator, but I can't do any more than I have already done.  I need to retire from this place, sit in my shed and enjoy what's left of my life.

​I feel my grumpiness returning, big time.

I was really surprised at how many people are following this blog. I am getting about a 1000 a week so thank you for that, my mission with this blog has always been to tell it as I see it, be it good or bad, but mostly because no one really wants to listen to a grumpy old man moaning, its easier to skip over a blog and take in the bits you want, so here I go, again.

For the new people to my blog I am a Lecturer, so have daily contact with students from 16 to 25, it keeps me young (that,s a lie but is sounds good), however the little shits have this week given me the one thing I really don't want at my age, 'A VIRUS', it started with a bit of a sniffle, which then turned into a raging cold, followed by feeling like a tank had run over me, now I have a cough and a chest problem, you know, the proverbial coughing up the gold watch stuff. where do they pick up this shit from?  We have had several kids go down with this Bug over the last 3 weeks I thought I had got away with it, but NO, it now has me firmly in its's evil grip.  A little dramatic I know, but hey, it's my age.

So I thought I would Google my symptoms, so far |I have worked out that I have a cross between, Berry Berry and swamp water fever, I had strawberry's last week and I did make the mistake of taking a glass of water from the canteen at the college. digging deeper I may also have the Plague & something I cant even spell or pronounce.  so i will leave it there, really I am sure it's just a cold, but the little shits never give us teachers anything other than grief and Viruses. 

THANK YOU TRUMP you arsehole.

So, this year we are taking our film student to Hollywood as part of their course (Film & TV), hopefully they will find it interesting as we plan to visit studios and other interesting places, however, thanks to Trump one of my students has been refused a visa Twice, the cheeky bastards have taken his money even though they have refused him entry, add to that the £400 deposit the travel agency won't return, I will name and shame them in another blog, this student, who's parents up and left him with 3 younger siblings that he works really hard to take care of them, really needed some time away to not only learn but chill with his class mates, he is 22, I will not name him however, it turns out the only reason given for refusal was his name, WTF, he can't help having a name that admittedly does probably sound a bit like a terrorist, I know, I know, that sounds bad but that's the only reason I can think of, but come on Trump, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
I will now go find this racist bastard on twitter and swamp his feed with insults and everything else I can throw at him, trust me Trump, what I say will not be false news, you made most of your money from illegal deals, bribery and probably sleeping with your wig maker.

Watch this space. Fuck I'm angry.

So, it's been a long weekend, in more ways than one, first of all the weather, what's going on, 28C the hottest early May bank holiday since 1972? WoW, enough to fry an egg on my black workshop roof, so did I get out into the glorious heat wave, first of all I am allergic to the sun, I mean, if I go out in the sun within 5 minutes my skin is lobster red and my head become a giant blister so a hat long sleeved shirt are normally the order of the day.
Secondly, I went down with some disgusting virus on Friday, it's like flu, but with the added extra of feeling like a chieftain tank ran over me, add to that tummy issues from both ends. So the weekend was a bit of a disaster for me, spent most of my time moaning about everything as is my right as the Grumpy Old Man.

They also say that only mad dogs and englishman go out in the midday sun?  What about young londoners with a need to use a gun or knife, what the hell is going on?  When I was a kid firearms were never a thing, the odd armed bank robbery but that was it, very rarely was a shot fired, I can remember being in the scouts and carrying a shelf knife on my belt, no-one would question why, we used them when needed, cooking, whittling and other scouty things, to stab someone with it was the last thing on my mind or any of my friends minds for that matter, maybe we were a different breed, maybe we respected the law and the police, I can remember getting a clip around the ear from the local bobby who then told my dad what I had done then I got a good hiding from him for one getting clipped around the ear by a policeman and then having him knock on the door to talk to my dad, shit I was in trouble, so where has it all gone wrong?

First let me say that my thoughts are with those injured over the weekend in the firearm attacks, but who do we blame, I think the blame lies firmly with the parents, then the teachers, then the law in this country, first of all the family, they are ultimately responsible, these kids are dragged up not brought up, the parents don't give a fuck about their kids, the teachers must take some responsibility. what the hell are they teaching these kids, I have moaned before about the declining standards of teaching and schools, an last but not least the law, we should arm all our police, if your seen having or using a gun the the police should have the right to shoot the gunman, no arguments, it's illegal to carry a gun, if your caught then you deserve everything you get, including a bullet from a policeman gun.
Controversial yeah, but the only reason you carry a gun is to shoot, kill someone, so be it on you if you get shot by a policeman.

So whats the answer?  Arm the police, bring back the death penalty, I quite like the idea of stoning.

Moan over, a now need a lie down with a cup of lemsip.

First of all I would like to say my thoughts are with the families of those killed and injured in this cowardly act.

So, lets get into this, there seems to be a trend at the moment for people be it terrorists, activists or just plain sick fucks jumping in a van and running people down in the streets, we have had 2 similar incidents not too long ago in London, and I get this creepy feeling that this is the new weapon of choice for those looking to create havoc around the world.

As I see it, if there is a bomb, there maybe a chance that it's found and it dwelt with, a gunman you may have a chance of hiding from, but a 1.5 town truck/van ploughing people down, your chances of avoiding it if the driver wants to hurt you are very slim.   So whats the answer, I don't know, what I do know is that these arseholes are cowards, as are most people who won't goes face to face with their intended victims, before or after their atrocities.

​Maybe it's time we armed our police, but thats another story.

Nough said.