I am considering having my family nationalised. It seems a resonable prospect.
Several parts of the organisation are profitable, but other sections, including a move into feline acquisition and development appear to have been poor investments, and the management are concerned at a lack of confidence in the market place.
One would hate to see a run on my family, with depositors queueing to withdraw what they have invested in it over the years in the hope of a decent return.
The problem would be of course that its just possible that the government, having taken possesion of my family would want to break it up, selling the profitable elements off to foreign investors while retaining the liabilities for the time being until they make good.
While the current Mrs Breath and I would be more than happy to be sold off to the Spanish, I'm not sure it would be fair to allow the burden of two teenagers to be a drain on the exchequer.
And as for the cats, while they are a splendid shopfront for the organisation, they are, sadly not much good at anything, and unlikely to show a profit.
The only other option would be a merger with another, bigger and more profitable family, but I'm not convinced that essential quality of the Breath family might not be lost if such a proposal were to move forward.
I can't help a snigger, as one of those who have been surviving on damn all since the last recession, at all the current weeping and wailing. Some of us are used to living hand to mouth and will find the next few years a lot easier than others who have not.
Meanwhile, with the Frogs buying our energy business and the Spanish buying the banks, that whirring sound you can hear is Nelson, Wellington, Raleigh and Drake rotating in their resting places. Perhaps we should harness them and link them to the national grid. Or Le Gride Nationale, as I'm sure its about to be renamed.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
A grand day out
I'm a fan of pop festivals and folk festivals and the like. I suspect this is because I'm sadly trying to regain some vestige of those few glorious summers in the early eighties when I was in fact king of the world and nothing was going to stand in my way. Sad, Isn't it.
Festivals now have better toilets, better food and to be honest better music than we had back then.
But one thing that gets right on my wick is the way parents treat their children and their world around them.
Its not the children's fault, per se, but the parents.
At one recent folk festival a child penetrated my somewhat befuddled consciousness in the tent opposite. She had clearly spent the whole of the last year learning to play "she moved through the fair" on the recorder.
Now to be fair, it was quite a passable performance, but hearing it constantly did start to grate a bit. As it was the only tune she knew, she was obviously determined to let us all know how good she was at it, for two days.
The other incident was the 13-year-old brat who decided to have a screaming row with her parent right at the beginning of a performance by Richard Thompson of his classic anthem, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Fortunately for her she moved off at the end of the first stanza just as I was about to take her gently by the throat and explain that I'd been waiting for this moment for longer than she had been on the planet, and could she kindly shut the hell up.
It is a matter of some astonishment to me that parents would ever take their children to a festival of any kind at all, twice.
Little Jake and Saskia are not going to enjoy it, no matter what. No matter how many jugglers and story telling workshops, they're never going to enjoy it, because children only want to spend time with their parents away from home, TV and toys if they are going to be the centre of attention, and that's not going to happen if they are competing with Seth Lakeman or the Kooks. Its just not.
At one point I saw a parent at the festival lean down and scream into the face of his bawling five year old, who was clearly having some kind of crisis because the bubble blower he had been bought was the wrong colour and he'd actually wanted a blue one, and dad yelled that he was "never going to take him anywhere nice again if he was going to behave like this"
And the child stopped screaming and a wave of understanding came over his face and then he bawled louder and harder, till the snot came out his nose and he went bright red because he realised that if he did, his dad had said he'd take him home and away from these funny smelling people and these awful toilets with their funny blue water in, and he could curl up and go to sleep in the quiet with his teddies and his Nintendo, which is what he really wanted to do.
And if you look at a parent? with anything close to disapproval while their little charge is trying to emasculate you with a diablo the response is that you are clearly some kind of evil child hater who doesn't deserve to be breathing the same air as them.
Please don't take children to festivals once they've got past three. They hate the mud, the music, the food, the fact that mummy has lost her temper with dad because he's looked once too often at the pretty 20 year old in the crop top with the braids, living in a tent, the lack of fizzy pop, in fact everything about it.
And don't try to take them again until they say they really want to go.
You'll miss all the bands you want to see, and spend all your time making wicker fish and fairy wings.
Leave it. Its not worth it.
(with the grandparents)
Festivals now have better toilets, better food and to be honest better music than we had back then.
But one thing that gets right on my wick is the way parents treat their children and their world around them.
Its not the children's fault, per se, but the parents.
At one recent folk festival a child penetrated my somewhat befuddled consciousness in the tent opposite. She had clearly spent the whole of the last year learning to play "she moved through the fair" on the recorder.
Now to be fair, it was quite a passable performance, but hearing it constantly did start to grate a bit. As it was the only tune she knew, she was obviously determined to let us all know how good she was at it, for two days.
The other incident was the 13-year-old brat who decided to have a screaming row with her parent right at the beginning of a performance by Richard Thompson of his classic anthem, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Fortunately for her she moved off at the end of the first stanza just as I was about to take her gently by the throat and explain that I'd been waiting for this moment for longer than she had been on the planet, and could she kindly shut the hell up.
It is a matter of some astonishment to me that parents would ever take their children to a festival of any kind at all, twice.
Little Jake and Saskia are not going to enjoy it, no matter what. No matter how many jugglers and story telling workshops, they're never going to enjoy it, because children only want to spend time with their parents away from home, TV and toys if they are going to be the centre of attention, and that's not going to happen if they are competing with Seth Lakeman or the Kooks. Its just not.
At one point I saw a parent at the festival lean down and scream into the face of his bawling five year old, who was clearly having some kind of crisis because the bubble blower he had been bought was the wrong colour and he'd actually wanted a blue one, and dad yelled that he was "never going to take him anywhere nice again if he was going to behave like this"
And the child stopped screaming and a wave of understanding came over his face and then he bawled louder and harder, till the snot came out his nose and he went bright red because he realised that if he did, his dad had said he'd take him home and away from these funny smelling people and these awful toilets with their funny blue water in, and he could curl up and go to sleep in the quiet with his teddies and his Nintendo, which is what he really wanted to do.
And if you look at a parent? with anything close to disapproval while their little charge is trying to emasculate you with a diablo the response is that you are clearly some kind of evil child hater who doesn't deserve to be breathing the same air as them.
Please don't take children to festivals once they've got past three. They hate the mud, the music, the food, the fact that mummy has lost her temper with dad because he's looked once too often at the pretty 20 year old in the crop top with the braids, living in a tent, the lack of fizzy pop, in fact everything about it.
And don't try to take them again until they say they really want to go.
You'll miss all the bands you want to see, and spend all your time making wicker fish and fairy wings.
Leave it. Its not worth it.
(with the grandparents)
Getting up steam
"Locomotive Breath"
In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath,
Runs the all-time loser,
Headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping --
Steam breaking on his brow --
Thank God, he stole the handle and
The train won't stop going
No way to slow down.
Ian Anderson.
Time to introduce a spot of bile and invective into these somewhat moribund blogs. Here I am pushing 50 - which I am assured is a lot easier than dragging it - and I find myself getting crosser by the day.
Everything enrages me, and I'm shouting at things. The shelves in supermarkets for example. Bicycles (not cyclists, just bicycles). Happy little sparrows, just for being so damn chirpy. Computer monitors. Actually I think everyone must bellow at their computer monitors once in a while. But doing it four times an hour may be excessive.
This morning I was shouting at the radio because some idiot politician (Des "two jobs" Browne) was justifying Gordon Brown's continuing tenure by blathering on about how some changes or other were good for the environment.
"Don't you realise that right now people don't give a flying stuff about the environment?" I raged "Not unless they live in a hedge and knit yoghurt for a living? What people care about is whether they can pay the damn mortgage this month."
And then I got told to shut up because I was disturbing the cat. And we don't even have a cat.
Not that I have a political view on this. I don't think politicians are crooks, or liars, just that they are blindingly incompetent. All of them.
With his background and education, if David Cameron was any good at something he'd have been snapped up by a merchant bank called Slater Mulhone Mdingo Osterriech and making a billion pounds a year instead of leading the Tory Party.
This shouting at things can be particularly dangerous in traffic at this time of year, as we drive with our windows open. One day I'm going to let loose a stream of invective, and some man-mountain will unfold himself from his smart car and beat me to a pulp with a wheel brace.
But on the plus side, at least the missus will get my pension early. Which is nice. I feel increasingly like Micheal Douglas in Falling Down, going madder and madder as I head into the fourth recession I've experienced, and I feeling increasingly sorry for my children, who unlike I did in the early '80s won't be allowed to have the luxury of a dole-cheque to fall back upon.
Not that I'm saying I'm about to go into a burger joint with a sub-machine gun and take out the breakfast display. But that's only because I don't have a sub-machine gun.
Hey ho, on with the motley
In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath,
Runs the all-time loser,
Headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping --
Steam breaking on his brow --
Thank God, he stole the handle and
The train won't stop going
No way to slow down.
Ian Anderson.
Time to introduce a spot of bile and invective into these somewhat moribund blogs. Here I am pushing 50 - which I am assured is a lot easier than dragging it - and I find myself getting crosser by the day.
Everything enrages me, and I'm shouting at things. The shelves in supermarkets for example. Bicycles (not cyclists, just bicycles). Happy little sparrows, just for being so damn chirpy. Computer monitors. Actually I think everyone must bellow at their computer monitors once in a while. But doing it four times an hour may be excessive.
This morning I was shouting at the radio because some idiot politician (Des "two jobs" Browne) was justifying Gordon Brown's continuing tenure by blathering on about how some changes or other were good for the environment.
"Don't you realise that right now people don't give a flying stuff about the environment?" I raged "Not unless they live in a hedge and knit yoghurt for a living? What people care about is whether they can pay the damn mortgage this month."
And then I got told to shut up because I was disturbing the cat. And we don't even have a cat.
Not that I have a political view on this. I don't think politicians are crooks, or liars, just that they are blindingly incompetent. All of them.
With his background and education, if David Cameron was any good at something he'd have been snapped up by a merchant bank called Slater Mulhone Mdingo Osterriech and making a billion pounds a year instead of leading the Tory Party.
This shouting at things can be particularly dangerous in traffic at this time of year, as we drive with our windows open. One day I'm going to let loose a stream of invective, and some man-mountain will unfold himself from his smart car and beat me to a pulp with a wheel brace.
But on the plus side, at least the missus will get my pension early. Which is nice. I feel increasingly like Micheal Douglas in Falling Down, going madder and madder as I head into the fourth recession I've experienced, and I feeling increasingly sorry for my children, who unlike I did in the early '80s won't be allowed to have the luxury of a dole-cheque to fall back upon.
Not that I'm saying I'm about to go into a burger joint with a sub-machine gun and take out the breakfast display. But that's only because I don't have a sub-machine gun.
Hey ho, on with the motley
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