Mega HMP thought

The thing that is most relevant these days in Britain is  some criminals are being let out early because we're running out of space in our jails. Sometimes they even let out murderers before they let out thieves: don't ask me why, I have no idea. 

We might need to build what I call Mega HMPs (mega his majesty's prisons). We may need to build tower block with more than 50 floors filled with prison cells. 

If we did, I would advise making the standard cells  bigger than normal, I would make them U shaped and interlocking  so they share water lines with a slightly partitioned toilet and another slightly portioned sitting area and work space to give them some dignity and encourage them into a new profession. I would also add oubliette type cells, they would be small box cells that are a hole in the floor and the door to the cell is the ceiling. Those cells would be for shoplifters to stay for 3 days or people that commit crimes in prison to stay for a month. 

A prison in my world would be to rehabilitate offenders into a new lifestyle.

Be a Patriot

There's nothing wrong with caring about your country and nation in my view. There is a list of things you can do to be a patriot. 

1) Don't be a litter bug. I believe there is a negative butterfly effect caused when people drop litter on the floor. If someone was a tourist and saw a small pile of rubbish on the floor they could return to their homeland and tell their friends that England is a dirty disorderly place and that would put off other tourists from visiting. The other problem would be rats, you could help to cause outbreaks of a disease and things like that. 

2) Visit Piers from time to time. One thing that makes the Island of Great Britain special is we have a very high concentration of piers for our size. If you go on a day trip to the coast, visit the pier knowing the toll they charge or the money from a cup of tea will go towards maintaining and improving the pier. Have a coffee or Tea sitting on a Pier. 

3) Buy British:  If you can, buy things that are made in Britain. Buy tomatoes that are grown on British farms, buy t-shirts that are made in British factories. 

4) Be Nice: it will cause a ripple of goodness that will spread through the country. You don't have to do favours for people, you can just return a greeting or not have an angry outburst when someone making you feel impatient. 

5) Know our good history. We did bad things in the past but we also did good things that should merit some pride. Some people only want to talk about the bad things Brits did in the past. There are countless  innovations and medical breakthroughs that occurred right here in Britain. The world condems slavery because of Britain and we pioneered democracy. 

A British Pier

One thing that is outstanding about Britain is we have a lot of sea side piers, more than any other country in the world.  We constantly work to improve  them, paint them, add things to them, modernise them. I think that is why they charge money to go on them. Some of them even have little trains running on them. It is one of the things I'm proud of, we have something that makes us different to everyone else. 

When I approach a pier, I expect to see an arcade on there and some adventure mini golf. One could walk out onto the pier and look out into the horizon at the ocean beyond. You could sit at a café and look out at the sea while you eat your chips with coffee. 

I wonder what pier is the best? There are so many peirs out there that I have never seen before. Perhaps I could do some research on British piers. 

I will peer into the online brochures, excuse the pun.

Sleeper Wonders

I recently learned there are two sleeper train services here in Britain; to me this is amazing because the island of Great Britain is less than 250,000 square kilometres in area. Britain is a small island, you can drive across the longest part of the Island in less than 6 hours. The idea is you get a small room on a train and sleep on the train overnight while you travel to your destination, I think the train deliberately goes slowly so you can sleep better. You would do this as a tourist experience or if you needed to be up and about when you arrive there and only wanted to stay one day. If you booked early then you would condense your travel and hotel stay into one and save money, perhaps you were an elite journalist or something like that. 

Scottish Rail owns the Caledonian sleeper train service and Great Western Railways owns the Riviera Sleeper (London in the East to Cornwall in the West). The Caledonian Sleeper goes from Euston Terminal Station in London and Riviera Sleeper Goes From Paddington Station. 

Sleeper trains are fascinating because they're small boxes on trains that are fitted out as hotel rooms. They use lots of clever designs and features to use the limited space effectively. Both the Companies found different ways to solve the space problems. The riviera service has a cover that turns the small sink basin into a table and has a folding bunk bed that comes out of the wall. The Caledonian one has similar features but I think they managed to add a small on suite bathroom toilet bit into the space of a cupboard. 

Let me show you two videos so you can see for yourself. 

Caledonian Sleeper video

Reviera Sleeper Video

It makes me think about my own hospitality. If guests come over to visit me, would they enjoy their stay? Perhaps I should have my mind set on getting fluffy cushy couches with leg rests. Guests could visit and they would have a relaxing experience. I could bring them baked pasties and coffee with sugar free syrup barista style regularly. 

I imagined running a sleeper train service. Perhaps they could board the train long before it leaves the station. The train could use a lay-by platform in a less busy station instead of a grand terminal one in the city centre. It could stay there for 5 hours at a time. I wonder if they have sleeper coaches. 

Trump Gets to Work

During these last two weeks of January, President Donald Trump has been busy implementing his policies. I recall he sent American soldiers to the border to make sure the cartel gangs could not get their drugs across. I think he also told the Colombian government that he would increase import tariffs if they didn't allow their illegal migrants to be returned to their country. He's not messing about, he was serious about what he said.

It was while this was happening that a powerful storm called Erowin(welsh Name) moved across the north side of my island nation. It damaged buildings and toppled many trees. Some people were fatally injured by the storm. At the same time I also noticed at night the planet Mars was visible at the same time as Venus. I could see both the planets. I think Jupiter and Saturn were also visible. Mars looks like a star with a pink hue in the sky. Venus looks like a small version of the moon but always sits on the horizon at sunrise and dawn. 

I don't hate illegal immigrants, I just don't like the side effects of having many illegals. If a letting agent posts a property and 20 or 30 people show up, they take the property off the market and put the property back up again a week later at a much higher price. The high demand for property makes the property more expensive. People tell me this is not true but I have seen it happen with my own eyes.  This also makes commercial properties more expensive. The other problem is the pressure to increase wages in low paying jobs goes down. Warehouse workers get smaller pay rises when there are many immigrants because there isn't a shortage of workers. If there were a slight shortage of workers, companies would increase their wages more to keep their staff. This doesn't happen in an overcrowded area. 

White Flies and U-turns

During this last week the air was filled with tiny white flies, they are called white flies. They looked like little flecks of dust suspended in the air. 

It was while the air was filled with white flies that I learned the government u-turned on their recent budget change decisions, their temporary budget adjustment backfired, it caused the currency to devalue and all the money based products became more expensive. Mortgages, insurance, loans and things like that. I think the reason it didn't work was because of Brexit. The old ways to make Britain's economy grow won't work in post Brexit Britain. 

I think that Brexit has a self-harm affect on Britain. It is difficult to export products to countries in Europe, before it was very easy. Selling a product to Poland was almost as easy as selling a product to Kent. The same is true of importing goods. In post Brexit Britain, exporting and importing goods are very difficult. If you want the economy to grow in post Brexit Britain, you need to do things differently. I have a few ideas myself. We need to use technology to sell air freight space quickly, when passenger planes fly, they have two compartments a passenger compartment and luggage hold. Sometimes there is empty space in the luggage area that could be used to transport products. In half a day an airplane can travel a huge distance, America, the African continent, all of Europe and large parts of Asia. The other thing I would do is rent out public sector space, the government could raise revenue from renting out halls and empty spaces in public sector buildings like hospitals and schools. The revenue raised would be used to shrink VAT tax and help public sector workers get a pay rise. It's just a few ideas, many ordinary people have many ideas in their head to help the wellbeing of Britain. 

What September 2021 Means to me

To me, September 2021 was about disruption and inflation. Everything else was normal, the days were getting shorter, the nights were getting colder, condensation was settling on glass and grass, the start of Autumn that I am so familiar with. 

Some environmental activists were glueing themselves to transport infrastructure as usual, this time it was the entrances to motorways. I think they want all the homes to be insulated properly or something like that(Insulate Britain) When environmental activists glue themselves to things, I'm in two minds about my approval of them; Ordinary people are held up and that's not fair, it causes a lot of chaos for them. However, someone needs to speak up. Our Island of Great Britain has most of the average wind, we have many lakes and rivers, parts of Britain has the strongest tides on Earth. We should be world leaders in eco friendly energy production. Somewhere in Parliament, the house of Lords or house of commons there are lobbyists putting the breaks on our environmental tech progress. They have been doing so for decades I think. 

Our world is powered mostly by Hydrocarbons; every type of Hydrocarbon that we burn for fuel has been inflated in price globally, Methane, Ethane, Propane, Butane, Kerosine, Petroleum, Diesel. All of them are more expensive now. The countries that have significant renewable energy have a competitive edge over us because their companies will pay less money per kilowatt-hour so I think we need to act and make progress. 

Fuel supply was shaken slightly but at some point everyone started to panic and took all the fuel out of the petrol stations. They loaded their vehicles down with fuel and blocked up the roads, what can I say. It is like spring 2020 when everyone took all the toilet rolls. 

As for me, I felt lost. During the Pandemic, One of my sources of income imploded and I was left with just my job. I don't know what to do now. I don't know if I should wait till things clear up or try something else. I feel like I'm not young anymore and I'm not old, I'm a mature adult. Sometimes I would pace up and down like a caged tiger, other times I would just sit and accept the situation. 

What will happen in October? You probably know better than me.

Divided Britain and Kingdom

The year 2018 is coming to an end and my island of Great Britain is very divided with odd pairings. From the summer of 2016 the British people divided themselves into three groups. Brexiteers, Remainers and Abstainers. Brexiteers wanted the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Remainers wanted to stay in the European Union and Abstainers weren't sure or refused to vote.

The divide spanned across the British Island and spilled out to the edge of the Kingdom in northern Ireland and Gibraltar.

There was odd pairings and aliances  throughout the UK. London and Scotland wanted to remain. The rest of England and Wales wanted to leave. Northern Ireland wanted to remain and so did Gibraltar. Ultimately, leaving EU was the final verdict.

I have seen business leaders and politicians that were far from friends working together to achieve their goals. Rival politicians came together and was working as a team. Tony Blair and John Major were working together for the Remain Campaign, they were political rivals in the previous decades. It is a bit like Superman, Batman and Skeletor forming a group. I saw Tim Martin and Robert Dyson on the leave group. A pub chain owner and a vacuum cleaner manufacturer. People I would never see working together were drawn together by this strange situation.

Now the divide is about how we leave and the whether the Kingdom will be intact or if Great Britain will remain Great or be split in half across Hadrian's wall. My Island is filled with uncertainty. I can only hope that we work together and make the final decision work for us. Even a paralyzed man needs both his arms to push the wheels in the same direction, otherwise his wheelchair would just spin around and he would have no hope of getting anywhere.

When the Queen did her speech on Christmas, it made a lot of sense to me. We need to be united in the United Kingdom and the sons of Britain need to respect their brothers and sisters.

I can only hope for the best outcome.