October 2022

It was during October that I realized that the conservative government had made a mistake, they appointed a new leader that produced a temporary budget that caused chaos. Liz Truss Resigned when she saw that her budget had caused every financial product to inflate in cost and negatively affected the markets. 

soon after Rishi Sunak was appointed the leader of the conservative party. He inherited chaos and a huge weight on his shoulder, a country that was facing a cost of living crisis. I wish him good luck and clear thoughts. 

During October, every type of hydrocarbon that we know of had become more expensive, methane, ethane, propane, butane, food starches, petrol solvents, diesel and everything we know of that powers our machines and heats our homes and food we eat had become more expensive. 

The war in Ukraine continued to happen and there was more tension in the Pacific Ocean as well. The Chinese consider the island of Taiwan to be a renegade province that must be absorbed back into the Chinese state. The island of Taiwan considers itself an independent country. The two nations are at loggerheads right now. 

Try not to think about it. 

New Leader Rishi

I learned last night that Rishi Sunak is the new Leader of the conservative party and Prime Minister of the UK. I wish him the best of luck and clear thoughts during his time as leader of the UK. The conservative party is very unpopular at the moment, they have a bad reputation, they broke their own rules and are considered by many people not to have integrity. I think that is the reason why Boris resigned. 

I have changed my mind about votes I would make now and would have made in the past if I had a choice. If I was American, I would have voted for  Hillary Clinton because she seemed to know what she is doing and she has experience with American leadership. If I was American and the same election was now, I would have voted for Donald Trump because I learned that Hillary wanted to expand the  birth control abortion window to the third Trimester. I would have overlooked the politically incorrect phrases he made like "Mexicans are sending their worst, their rapists" and things like that.  I would call that the lesser of two evils. In pregnancy, the duration is divided up into 3 trimesters, each with 3 months. The first trimester, the embryo takes a humanoid shape and gets a heart beat. In the second Trimester, the fetus starts to move voluntarily and begins to hear sounds. I consider the fetus in the 3rd Trimester to be an infant only smaller, it would likely survive if it was removed from the womb. 

Here in the UK, the abortion window for women with no health issues is half way through the second Trimester; about half way through pregnancy(about 22 weeks I think) , if it was my choice I would set the time window limit to the 1st Trimester (first 3 months) and I would try to discourage the abortion. I don't like abortions. Sometimes they are necessary for health issues but I don't like abortions being used as birth control so I would vote for someone on the same page as me. 

If I had a choice, the 'birth control' abortion time window would be the first trimester ( 3 months or 12 weeks). And I would try to discourage the abortion, giving free higher education for young parents and things like that. I don't see a fetus as a non human clump of cells. The 'health risk' abortion window would be left the same though on my watch. 

Resignations and QRs

The Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned and we are in a new conservative party leadership race, "yawn". Yes, we are once again looking for a new leader. The old way of boosting the economy isn't working in post Brexit Britain. They have to do things differently, they have to streamline everything and make Britain more globally competitive. 

A typical QR code. Three nested boxes in three corners to tell the software it is a QR code. 

A common thing I often see is QR codes on products. On most people's smart phones, the camera is constantly looking for the sign of a QR code; three little boxes that are nested in boxes, two at the top and one at the bottom. If the camera detects there is a QR code present, it will decide and extract the text from the nested bar codes. The text is usually a link to a web site. It is amazing to think that when you open your camera on your smart phone, the camera function is thinking. It is looking for QR bar codes and the best way to focus the lenz. 

Brexit Shambles

In my view, Brexit so far is a mess. The reason I think it is a mess is because we didn't have a clear direction. It took 3 and a half years just to decide what type of exit from the EU we will have. Parliament couldn't decide if we were going to make a clean break or a partial separation. They were treating it like a plunger on a detonator. They were worried pushing the plunger all the way down would blow up Britain. I guess this was never done before. It didn't help that people were taking the government to court when they first tried to make a clean break in the beginning. Being indecisive can be harmful I guess. 

Now we are left with a very basic trade deal. If a business wants to sell goods to the EU, they have to prove that all the parts of their product were made in the UK, otherwise they have to pay an import tariff. Sending goods in and out of the EU is quite slow.  The EU member states don't want us to bring products into the EU market that are from low inflation, low tax countries without paying an import tax. It would make their own products less competitive. 

Happy thoughts in the storm

Being a Brit is very challenging at the moment, we haven't worked out a good way to import and export goods with our neighbors in the continent; Brexit is a shambles. The energy costs have risen very high so the cost of everything has risen greatly.  I have spent six months in the highest inflation of cost that I have ever known in my life, at one point fuel cost me £2 per liter, I would pay £60 to fill up my car fuel tank. 

I'm not in control of it so I focus my energy where it works best, in an endless lake of creative thoughts. My mind is very much like a pendulum, the thoughts swing towards my worries, then they  swing back to happy thoughts. Thinking about things that don't quite work but I try to see how far they can go, they constantly change and beacon me to make them real. 

Drawing my happy thoughts without explaining what they are. They are just written as happy thoughts. They make no sense to anyone and that is how I like it. 

Happy little machines that don't quite work. Waiting for me to make them real. 

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. 

Shopping Paradox

When I go shopping and head towards the detergent section, I find there are many brands there but when I look closely at the products I find that there are just a few companies making all those different brands. The different brands look like they are competing against eachother but they aren't. 

I don't want to name any shops or manufacturers directly but I will say it is like that everywhere. When I look at the shelves I see many brands but there is just a few companies. This has a fishing net effect because the whole space is taken up by the products of just a few companies.  There may be 6 different brands of detergent on a shelf but they are all made by the same company so if you buy detergent A or detergent B, you are giving your money to the same company.