Sunday, 11th May, 2025
I’ve got to stop saying it is another glorious day … but it is. The sun is up. The sky is blue. The sea is still and it is a day custom made for small boat immigration.
Immigration seems to be high on the agenda at the moment although, I must state from the outset that I welcome immigrants and lots of them. The UK desperately needs immigrants to fill the huge gaps in economic activity of native population. A rapidly aging population desperately needs workers to perform the tasks, pay the tax to fund the services and to support the pensions of the senior sector of which I am a member. As Joseph Stiglitz, the American, Nobel prize Economist has just said, without immigration, the whole US economy would cease to be. It is that important.
Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. It has been central for the past 30+ years. In fact, it goes back centuries to the slave trade and Colonialism, to inviting the Windrush generation of post-war labour shortage and to Asian immigrants in the Northern Textile Trade. Economies desperately need immigration. Contrary to popular belief, immigrants come here to work and contribute to the host country. It is on their backs that the relatively wealthier, indigenous population thrive.
As the graph shows, Blair-Brown were the last government to openly acknowledge the importance of immigration to the economy. Those following have done one thing and said another because they recognised the bind between economic development and electoral popularity. The Starmer government will be no different. It’s whole raison d’être is growth. Growth requires skilled labour. One of the central planks (no pun intended) of its growth plan is housing. Where does all the skilled labour come from? It needs skilled immigrants.
Next door to me lives a lovely German/Australian lady who lectures in a local college. Across the road lives an Italian man who works in IT and Pharmaceuticals. Just down the road lives a Cypriot who is an Accountant. They are lovely people who work hard, earn lots of money and pay lots of tax which funds my pension. Thank you. Thank you. That’s one of the reasons I am giving back by cutting their lawns, planting up their flower beds, etc..
Planting out this afternoon under a baking sun. It’s hot work but I’m not complaining. I’m getting my immediate home in order so I can go on my travels without worry. I’ve got 8 flights and 4 long drives booked/planned already and who knows what extra is to come. It is important to expand one’s horizons, Dear Reader, not narrow them.
Monday, 12th May, 2025
Expand horizons not narrow them, Dear Reader. Today, our world is so expansive because of the internet and mobile technology. I’ve just walked through one of our local parks where a huge 5G mobile phone tower stands in one corner. It serves a massive area. Our house is probably 2 miles away but the signal is still good.
You might say it is an eyesore but no more than an electricity pylon and just as useful. In the early 1990s, I was living in Huddersfield and desperate for all the latest technology. I took out a mobile contract but had to drive a mile away from home to use it. There was no signal at home in the countryside. That was more than 30 years ago and we have gone through 2G, 3G, 4G and some of us are now enjoying 5G speeds of signal delivery.
I was reminded of this by a story from the Manchester Evening News this morning. There are still completely dead areas up there.
Thirty years ago, we were living on the Pennines and might have been excused a poor signal but this report is of Middleton in Manchester. How can that be a dead area? If the Labour Government are to achieve growth, they cannot afford dead areas.
Last night – joy of joys – we had rain. The land everywhere could be heard cheering and drinking in equal measures. It is a drop in the ocean but it is welcome nonetheless.
We think we’ve been dry and we are reputationally drier and sunnier than most in UK but the distribution map featured in The Times this morning illustrates the spine if England is really suffering. For so many decades under a privatised water distribution system, supplies have been drying up while leaks have not been fixed.
This is in a temperate climate with wet winters providing lots of water on a usual basis. Few new reservoirs have been created. Little action has been undertaken to divert and transport water from wetter areas to dryer ones. We could be using Welsh water down here if the work had been done. I’m sure it wouldn’t be so much inferior as to be undrinkable.
Ironically, I will soon be flying off to a much drier, hotter and sunnier place – Thessaloniki in Northern Greece. In contrast to the early days of Greek flying and although I am still taking Easyjet, I booked, paid for and have just checked-in all on my mobile phone. Isn’t progress wonderful, Dear Reader, just as long as you don’t live in the North.
Tuesday, 13th May, 2025
Gorgeous morning. Quite a contrast with yesterday which started off grey and damp as I took my Housekeeper to the station. She went up to London to meet up with an old friend and have Lunch in the Darwin Brasserie in the Sky Garden building.
Alright for some while ate my Cannellini Bean & Prawn salad with sparkling water. Of course, my Housekeeper has infinite powers. She not only jinxed the weather for one day, she also caused a major shutdown of the London transport system.
Just for one day – the day she was there – a major power outage on the National Grid closed the Underground and led to the cancellation of many mainline trains as well.
Now, I don’t do this very often, Dear Reader, but a self-portrait has been demanded this morning. A passport to knocking on doors. I always aim to please.
Wednesday, 14th May, 2025
A Reunion of men in their mid 70s from more than 50 years ago. It is sobering to see the effects of time but surprising to see the spirit of survival.
Today in the most beautiful sunlight, the band of 20 men – the first in the women’s College – met again in the beautiful grounds of The Ripon Inn.
Nature renews itself in the sunlight. Not so old men’s bodies. A dwindling band met today and dined on Burger & Chips with Yorkshire Bitter. Friendships renewed and old bonds reinforced.
Unfortunately, I was not there. I was more concerned with bodies and health. A comprehensive medical review took me away to the City and a meeting with a whole-body scanner which will provide me with 2,000 images of my body from all angles, recording every mole, freckle and vein.
Hooked up to ECGs, vials of my blood were taken to be analysed and my grip strength was tested. This was followed by an eye health check and an assessment of my heart and lungs. Futuristic and technological, the testing Centre is the antithesis of Beer, Burger & Chips but, hopefully, it will be helpful and I will be up in Ripon soon anyway.
The South of England saw 28C/83F today and it felt hot. These are days to savour and enjoy.
Thursday, 15th May, 2025
As an immediate contrast to yesterday’s High Tech experience, 16 years ago today, I had reason to seek medical advice. The difference was that I was living on a relatively remote, Greek island which brings its own challenges. They are things tourists rarely think about. Certainly young people rarely consider and 16 years ago, I was still only 58.
I found out that the island’s Medical Centre was hardly medical and definitely not really a centre. It had two, Junior Doctors neither of who could speak much English. The conditions and services were akin to Third World.
Most specialist services have to either be sought in Athens which involved long ferry journeys or waited for with specialists visiting the island occasionally. What about emergencies? You might well ask. At the age of 58, and after more than 30 years on the island, I really confronted that question for the first time. Greek island travel is a genuine risk in the case of medical emergency. Just routine treatment is problematic in a relatively poor country where top professionals would rather live in big city centres not find themselves marooned on remote islands.
There is no question that we made the right decision to not spend 6 months a year there anymore. Increasingly, age made it problematic. But, we are now marooned on our own island of Brexit isolation. The populations of Greek islands no longer want tourists buying up their scarce land and building on them. The residents of our island regularly make it clear that they would not want us to do what we did just over 25 years ago – buy a farmers field and build a large home that we would only live in for part of the year. That movement is being echoed on Canarian islands and in central Spain. The world is turning in upon itself. Even little Wales is getting sick of second homers.
Friday, 16th May, 2025
A gorgeous day to embrace life. Blue sky, strong sunshine and warm air. We all have so little time on this earth and then, I can assure you, all we know is oblivion as we go back to the earth. It is important to make the most of the living.
Vitamin D – the food of the sun – is now known to help us ward off Dementia and contribute to not only a longer life but a healthy longer life. We need to embrace it as much as we can. Shorts and teeshirt for 8 months a year really helps me do that. Walking outside for a couple of hours a day helps me to do that. Trips abroad give me that. I am and have been generally suntanned for 40 years.
Isolation shortens lives. We’ve recently learnt that isolation through deafness is a predicter of later Dementia. Certainly isolation from friendship groups brings on an earlier end to life. Embracing people is important. I have not always found that easy but I am trying much harder in my Retirement and beginning to enjoy it. I am constantly reaching out to people now I have the time although a lot of it is in communication at distance.
There are lessons for us as a nation, as a body politic in that. Isolation, Little England is not conducive to a long and healthy life. We need to embrace others, integrate with others, accept and enjoy the differences and similarities of humanity across the globe. In this light, Starmer’s descent into Faragist rhetoric is worrying and distasteful. If you are old enough to remember the Enoch Powell, Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, that racist sentiment got him thrown out of the Tory Party then. Now it would make him a leader. That is how far we have travelled.
And travelling is important not just to the British pubs of Benidorm but the the cultures and languages that are outside our everyday experiences. This moving article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the I-News illustrates how far some of us have travelled and others not so. That gulf has developed as politicians see the value and necessity of immigration to our economy but have not felt able to to teach their ill-educated electorates who feel fearful and challenged by the unknown.
An old friend sent me this photo today. He has definitely improved my appearance and he certainly understands me.
Saturday, 17th May, 2025
Good morning, Dear Reader, from Sparticus – your friendly Blogger. A warm morning but with only hazy sunshine. The blue sky is on its way as the day progresses. Went down to the beach for a change of scene. The sea was well out and people taking equipment out like dinghies and paddleboards were looking for assistance from the small, sand tractors.
The Saturday Beach Run was just starting at 9.00 am with lots of enthusiastic participants; the amusement park had opened its doors for hard pressed parents to entertain their young and Dads were by the Marina’s edge with little lads, buckets of water and crab lines starting out with hope.
Didn’t stay long. I’ve got another day of getting dirty, sweaty and shattered. I worked so hard yesterday that I lost 3lbs. I forgot to eat and was so tired at the end, I had no appetite at all. On today’s list we’ve got to plant out Basil plants I’ve been nurturing for about a month, thin out Lettuce seedlings and earth up potato plants which will be providing lovely, white, egg-sized new potatoes in about a month. I am beginning to look like a ghost from the past. Here are some more.
For years, we’ve done the National Lottery without any expectation of winning anything but it has helped to fund good causes. We do an NHS-funding Lottery on the same basis. We win small amounts reasonably frequently but I would guess never enough to break even. That doesn’t matter but, for once, something has come up that I will enter specifically to win.
The Omaze House Draw has a Beachfront House, worth £4,000,000 in Angmering on Sea just down the road from us. It would be a nice, spare house to have available.