This is something that has always been on mind and I’ve always been keen on right from the start of my life:
PHOTOS:
I was born in March 1969 – thinking all you have to do is rotate the 9 and you’ve got a 6 – 1966 – the Victory Year for the originator country of football: England. It looks like I’m in goal here!!
Many years ago, in the 1990s I thought of something I called FOOTBALL FOOT SQUARES this was inspired by playing the game of RISK where you played to gain territories, clearly the territories on the RISK board game are not FOOT SQUARES, a foot is 12 inches or 30 centimetres, they are enormous.
I was considering Mediaeval Jousts in the field and Roman Gladiatorial Contests in the Colosseums all over the Roman Empire. Men who liked a fight did so in the less lethal field of play. This did not mean killing other people who did not want to join in.
PICTURES OF JOUSTS AND CONTESTS:
Current ways of doing war are certainly not playing well. This was also the case with the Royal Families of Europe which led up to World War One. I’ll explain.
If only things were played differently.
King Edward VII and the Kaiser loved to sail. The Kaiser was the Kings nephew and the King was the Kaiser’s Uncle. They were closely related. The King was not the oldest child of Queen Victoria but he was a boy and boys came first in those days, his sister also called Victoria, Princess Victoria was older than him. She was also better behaved and more of a good pupil too, hard working and diligent. She instead of becoming Queen like her Mother went to live in Germany where her Father Prince Albert had come from. When the Kaiser was being born there were problems with this and he ended up with a Disability of a withered arm. Still he carried on his life in good humour.
Now back to the sailing. They competed in Cowes every year, sailing around the Isle of Wight. Each one wanted to be the winner, that bit is reasonable, but when in his joy and jubilation Kaiser Wilhelm got excited and said “I am the Winner!” King Edward did not play well, he thumped him in the face and floored him to the ground. Many similar encounters made the Kaiser think that perhaps he was not good enough and that he had to prove himself all the more, Britain was The Superpower in the World at that time, they had a massive Navy. The Kaiser started to build up the Navy of Germany in order to gain respect for him and his land.
In addition to all of this All the Royal Families of Europe gathered in Denmark every Summer. The reason they chose Denmark was that this was where the King’s wife Alexandra had come from. When I say All it was all apart from the Kaiser’s family, the German part of their family – they were all related – was not invited. So they did not play well here. This must have really upset Princess Victoria and her son Kaiser Wilhelm. Discriminated against for being born a girl and disabled, cruel and unkind.
This was all before Lego had been invented. Lego is Danish. It comes from the Danish words leg godt which means play well. The company commenced in 1932 after the First World War. The Lego brick was launched in 1958 after the Second.
In 1949 A Briton, Hilary Fisher Page, and his company Kiddicraft has invented the plastic bricks that Ole Kirk and his son Godtfred are presented with. In the late 1950s, the LEGO Group contacts Kiddicraft to ask whether they object to the LEGO® brick. They do not. On the contrary, they wish the company good luck with the bricks, as they have not enjoyed much success with their product. In 1981, the LEGO Group purchases the rights to the Kiddicraft bricks and trademark from the descendants of Hilary Fisher Page.
This is a football pitch, and the idea I’m pitching it that instead of fighting with weapons – which is not entertaining to spectators, in fact it is quite dangerous –- we win with sport – this would be more constructive. People have always preferred playing football to archery practice just in case an enemy entered the land, football was banned a long time ago and people were forced by law to practice archery every Sunday after Church. “You’ll have someone’s eye out with that!”
BATTLE OF HASTINGS:
They were not at all happy about this. They would have far rather played with who the elites said were their enemies, after all from what the elites did to them, ruining their Sundays they reckoned that the enemies were a lot better and from all this they liked the thought of playing with them a lot. One example, on Christmas Day in Trenchland of World War One is where the Germans and the English decided they’d have enough of the game of soldiers and wanted to give it a break and play football with each other instead. They were very happy, had a great time, and got on with each other as though they were all on the same team with the same goal in mind. They did not want to go back to fighting the war. I do not know the results of that game, but suffice to say we enjoy playing each other to this day.
So what I’d do it divide the disputed ground up into foot squares. A foot is 12 inches or 30cm. If you win a match that land area is yours. This is a bit like gaining ground pixel by pixel. Clearly the other team can also gain ground too. Then they may play for your ground. This could go on for a long time, and at the end of the day and most probably the middle and the beginning too you’d all become great mates and go to the pub and drink to your friendships, continue to get on and prosper in unity. Worth a try!? Rugby and other sports can be played too so no-one feels left out, wouldn’t want that to happen again would we, we definitely know the result of leaving people out.
A less risky risk.
MAP IN SQUARES:
Taking sides is sometimes a bad thing, and it is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes being on side or off side is a tediously complex thing, people say. They may not be looking at it the right way. It is really very basic. As basic as a Key Words Reading Scheme Book where: Jane has the ball. Peter sees the ball. and Pat wants the ball. You know the word s-i-d-e side. The new word I wish to introduce is the word e-n-d end. I also wish to introduce the words on and off.
(You can add a ball on the side line – that is on side and another that is not – that is off side. Use anything round you have to hand for a ball.)
Okay so when they say, and discuss at unnecessary length that the ball is off side when it is still on the pitch that is inaccurate. There is no need for VAR for this. Also if the off side rule is to apply here it would have to go off the sides not the ends for that to additionally apply. As it does not all their weird waffle is irrelevant and pretty boring – play on is what I say and get more goals that is the goal of the game I would have thought. And I would like to see more goals, a goalless game is a pointless exercise in my book. I like loads of goals. They are fun. We like fun. Jane likes fun. Peter likes fun. Pat the dog likes fun too. Pat the dog likes balls and he likes to play with balls in the park. It is fun to play with balls in the park.
MULTICOURT
CASUAL FOOTBALL PITCH:
This is another idea I have had in my mind for years:
Looking at the League it takes many years to go up and down it, I’m more concerned with the lack of ability to rise up it fast – your team is trapped by the Divisions – you can only go so far in a year. Then there is the chasmic gap of wealth so even if you go up you’re struggling like a child moved up a set in class where everything is so different, the learning styles, the speed, the fact that those already there are totally with it as they learned all the supporting stuff in their brains whilst you were doing boring slower work in a different way in a lower set. A more incremental change would be preferrable and an evening out of the vast inequalities with the constant possibility of rising coupled with a lesser devastation of going down. Going down a Division does feel like a criminal sentence and you feel you’ve let yourself down, you’ve let your team down, you’ve let your town down, it is an all time low. There really is no need for this sort of stuff. This is not fun.
What I would do is have One Unitary League with all teams from all sorts of backgrounds, ages, genders and abilities could play in. Obviously there will need to be parameters to ensure safe play, so you have rules on manner of play say when there are young men at full strength on one team and women or kids or walking footballers at the other end of the age range on the other team. Clearly close tackle contact is not permissible – a bit like tag rugby being better and wearing of helmets as it is a seriously dangerous game – so instead you go for stricter time limits on having the ball, not even allowing dribbling by one person for long, passing gives opportunities for the other team to fairly take possession. It’ll be a different kind of game with players being required to stay 1 metre plus away – to help the referees something that lights up could be worn by players to warn them when they are getting too close and flash when boundaries have been breached.
Player numbers on the pitch is something I’d give a variable to too. Players can be individually rated. Peak fitness young men would have the highest rating and would play with 12 players on the pitch. Ratings would include leg length as one example. The others are more obvious like muscle amounts, heart fitness, bone mass, age – both ends as the bone type of the young is weak and in the old brittle and unmendable and other medical attributes and disabilities – you’d want to keep running blades well away from other players! There could be roller chair football Rollerball with a kicker at the front, a bit like Subbuteo for real! To preserve the pitch instead of wheels they could roll on balls a bit like Dyson’s Ballbarrow, but more manoeuvrable like BB-8 in Star Wars. I can see a design in my mind.
IMAGES OF THEM:
Walking footballers would need loads on the pitch for a full size pitch so their game would be mainly passing to each other. Little kids too, they can run and run but little legs are not long and are growing so they need to be taken care of.
Pitch size can be edited for this, so if you were playing with peak men at 12 to a full size pitch their numbers would need to be reduced, say 5 to a side.
So you may have 24 walking footballers on one side and 12 peak men on the other, on a full sized pitch.
Pitches could be placed anywhere, from school astroturf to a muddy field in the country, this makes this more inclusive cost wise, obviously you are also going to include current and historic league pitches like Accrington Stanley and the Mega Premier League ones at Man United. Everyone can dream of playing at Wembley with a much more realistic possibility of that dream actually coming true.
Pitches did used to be muddy:
MUDDY FOOTBALL PITCHES:
They survived!
Pitches are also on Astro-turf, Clay, Sand, Gravel, Wood, Rubber, Tarmac and combinations – a bit like tennis really.
The way the Uni-League would work is you’d put all the teams on it in their current end of season league position.
Then you would merge all of that together.
That would be the starting positions of all the teams.
Then instead of playing hither and thither and only with a limited number of teams you would play with the teams adjacent to you in the Uni League.
There would be alternate defence and attack weeks.
You would always defend away so that it is easiest and cheapest for your fans to see new teams and you winning your way up potentially at your home grounds, so the attack would be there, and if you lost your defensive position it would be less of a home humiliation.
I’ll name the teams after letters of the alphabet to make this clearer – it is certainly easier to understand than the current system!
A
B
C
D
E
F
Week 1 Defend for A C and E Attack for B D and F …
A loses B wins C wins D loses E loses F wins :
B
A
C
D
F
E
So the movement is immediate.
Each team alternates attacking and defending games. That gives them the next team to beat. So you aim up the league to attack and down to defend. You will build relationships with close teams until one of you goes one way and the other another. There will be weeks when the top team of the League does not play. But this will be helped by 1) the fact that further up Continental teams can be added and then Worldwide, so International standard players can be always playing international games which will be more stretching and fulfilling for them. And 2) part of this system rewards you for up to 12 teams you have been in and have won a higher position for when you were playing for them. A player in one team need not accept being on the bench for that team, instead they could go and play for one of their other teams they carried onward that week, to help them further along in their journey upwards. So International players will have game control and get to choose what they do that week, an overstocked team is a frustration for a dedicated player who just wants to play football not just sit there gawping thinking let me on let me on I could do a better job than that *** on the pitch right now et cetera…
The carrying upwards is a royalty players can be paid – so less of a mega deal by agents and more based simply on results on the pitch, fairer and squarer, equal rewards for all, and no silly sums a young one couldn’t handle – larger sums could be proscribed to be put in trust for younger players to ensure secure futures for them. Every team player gets the same. That Match players get a fixed amount for a win and a compensation for a lose too.
So you started in a school team, it is going up but as it is lower down the league it gets a small amount, pocket money perhaps, 50% can go to kit and grounds, but 50% must go to those who played, so this is your team 1. Your team 2 and 3 are your secondary and college teams, they earn you progressively more in Carrying Upwards Royalties, but you still need to work at the moment to pay your way. Next you apply for your first adult team telling them how good you’ve been and you’ll do them proud, they say Yes to you joining, this is your team 4. They do well and start to go further up with you on the pitch. Another team you play pitches for you to play with them and you think that this is an exciting prospect and join them, this is your team 5, you continue going up. Teams 6 7 and 8 are further up the league. You get asked to help out for your team 4 as a couple of their players are ill, you ask your team 8 if they can spare you, they can and you go and catch up with your mates there and play with them and for them again that week. 9 and on lead you up to International level so you move around more, sometimes there is an international game on, though you do have free weeks, so you keep your other teams rising as much as you are free to do so.
There will be many more Internationals – no more waiting for four years for the next chance, so few opportunities for top players right now, it would be exciting to see world class players playing each other many more times. That is also the goal of this set up.
The Carrying Upwards Royalty amount for each of your teams will be their position in the league that week, and this will be automatically in your account there and then, happy days.
The good thing about this is that you can join retiring from peak teams as you age and still be in it to win it. You could possibly get a Carrying pension of 10% for all your teams once you stop playing.
There could be a little league for little ones not able to do the full 90 minutes – they could not do this within the main Uni-League as that would not be fair on all the other participants – this could also be local so that this stage is not too over-whelming for them. On a small pitch with a small, say six, on the team, so that there is not too much to deal with and be aware of too soon, so they enjoy the play without the pressure, fun for the little ones.
That’s how I’d line the league up!
It’s like the FA Cup of possibility in a permanent structure and the Leagues without the bad luck play-offs where you do so well but don’t quite make it. It means that every match matters and teams don’t take years getting from one league to another in a stuck in the mud way. It also means an evening out of the money, in many cases a rising team cannot hack it when it goes up a step in the leagues because the money the other teams have had means they are at an unfair disadvantage, and this is not money by the players all the time. There does need to be hope.
In the current National League there are 3 Divisions, National, and below that equally North and South. This is a recognition of the fact that there is less money to travel with at this level. I would do something similar based on where your team is, going further at the top and nearer at the bottom, to regional, your own personal region which your location would be placed at the centre of with the distances based on the transport network from your site.
You will see your position in the Uni League and using your distance to travel requirement will see who have next got to play. Bearing in mind we’ve got computers now it is not getting a map out, the computer will tell you. The App will give you many moves in advance like a Chess programme, of who you will play if you win and lose.
What will happen is you will see that as there are lots of teams, perhaps across the world, you will not have to travel that far, unless you are at the top of the Uni League, so you will play Attack and Defend games with teams many places above and below your position. The result will be a straight swap, it would seem sad to go so far down when you lose, though going up far would be fun. If your team could play another team but chose not to, at any level, you would forgo your position and swap it with the lower team you could have played, if you were playing at Attack game to go up your next Defence team would be chosen for this swap. If there is bad weather then the travel distances required would adjust reasonably, and this could be very local, and at all levels, so little local teams may play big ones these weeks, which would be amazing.
I’ve always thought penalties were rather unfair and unsuitable for a team game, this is not singles at Wimbledon but football at Wembley. There are better deciders. Like coloured cards your team members get. They could act as a goal deducter. Certainly add them up and if at full time the score’s even take these into account and the best behaved team is the winner! In games where technology is available and all being equal at this point then attempts on goal could be counted, then team possession, more possession more control of the game, will win at this point, that’ll end it there. With this still being equal or no tech available, the attempts on goal is a possibility as these could be agreed to and added up as the game progresses, then a team test of running fastest around and or across the pitch, fastest team all in wins, and team goal scoring from a certain point if all else fails, say from the centre point in threes so no one individual is seen to be at fault – I’ve never felt that was fair, in particular in Nationally televised games – it is like being put in the stocks having all sorts of muck thrown at you, worldwide:
PICTURE OF STOCKS:
WITH SOMEONE IN THEM:
3 WORLDS IN A ROW LIKE THE HOLES IN STOCKS:
Goals rather than gaols – the old spelling of jails
Now onto the coloured cards:.
We have the Yellow one
And we have the Red one
We know roughly what these are for
We also see players acting like they are dying when a blade of grass has scratched their little finger, and they writhe in agony all curled up like a caterpillar under attack. It is all so melodramatic. And all so fake. Ham acting on your ham string being pulled. Pull the other one mate, I’m not falling for it!
There is a card for acting, an actors’ card called the Equity Card, which you can get if you act professionally. It is called a Green Card.
I think when players play up in this manner they should be shown the Green Card. This will keep both the Scene and the Act length to a minimum and the Play can play on! Referees could show this from a distance to show he or she knows what you are playing at and that they are fully aware that you are acting up. In many ways this behaviour is not fair play, it is dishonesty, trickery, not plausible nor acceptable.
People can get very bored and the game can get a bit depressing to view when you pay good money to see it, or waste your time on the side lines as a spectator, it starts to feel like you’re wasting your life, when the players do what you could do in your own free time for free in the park, a kickabout Elton John might sing “I guess that’s why they call it the blues” It certainly gives you the blues. So when players aren’t really playing for real, and I’m not interested if they think we’ve won now and the other team rolls over and takes it giving up, I’d give the offending half of the pitch a blue card, or all of it, or if it is just one or two players just them.
With this new Uni-League cards will deduct cumulated goals so they will really matter, as follows:
Red Card 4 goals
Yellow 3 goals
Green 2 goals
Blue 1 goal
So – bearing in mind that I think the offside rule should go, because it makes no sense – more goals will be scored, but more can be lost with bad behaviour. Good conduct was always the core aim of the game at the inception of the Rules based game, rules drawn up by the Football Association, hence the name Soccer for it too.
Before that there was what I jokingly call “Original Rules Football” there were no rules then, anything goes was the disorder of the day. Villages played and all you had to do is score 1 goal at one end of the village and get the ball there in whatever way you had in mind and body including unruly rugby scrums – batten down the hatches and board up the windows, they were bound to trash the place. This was a part of the reason it was banned in places. This plays out now in riots away from the pitch.
REFERENCE TO OLD FOOTBALL – ONE OF MANY LINKS TO IT :
The way I’d sort out the riots is to ban that team playing with this Uni-League so that they would go down. This could be for a certain time, serving a sentence. In the current system I’d ban all spectators and television and close the team shop so they’d lose revenue from it, so that it would not pay. I suppose spectators of teams who thought they were being ripped off might try this on, but if they had voiced a grievance it is worth listening to it, and reasoning reasonably if that grief is not founded. This will certainly save on Policing, Policing only makes attendees feel like they’re special, VIPs and the like, turns them on, excites them, it must be that important. It is also a cost to the local community, this is both paid for by Council Tax Payers, the Police precept goes up 5% every year, it means Police shifts are used up in this, it also influences them to think of these men more important than women being hurt by men, they do not have time left to help these women. To simmer it down it is best to not ratchet it up and to call a silence for calm contemplation. Obviously where this has been provoked by external forces then that is extremely serious and needs to be accounted for and the spectators are blameless.
That is the stick this is the carrot:
With this Uni-League some of the teams playing for places could be fan teams – and they could call themselves as such, a calling to make their mega team the best overall including fan teams. Those who do this or who are actively involved in some other sport could be offered the best front row seats at matches so that they conduct the conduct at the match. Then the distracting fluorescent bright clothed could melt away and civilised treatment of all as respected and respectable spectators relax and enjoy the game feeling human and fully welcome again.
Hopefully all will more actively participate and more will play the game this way and the globe will be a more positive place. That is my goal here.
BECKHAM ACADEMY:
Another way that more people can play is if very rich footballers bought up land that would otherwise be used for development, building yet more housing housing housing and yet more boring housing. They do talk about doing good, every Sunday’s Match of the Day covers an element of this from the Premier League, but yet only one footballer, David Beckham, with his Academy, had put his name to this, but this has now closed and it is yet more boring housing. It’s like not one of them cares if we are fat or fit. It is quite simple, see some land up for sale, buy it, name the field after yourself e.g Gary’s Line Acre, that sort of thing, whatever you fancy, your name will go down in history in perpetuity, and stipulate in legal documents and in your will, if that is what will work, to make sure that this land is to be used for the purpose of playing football, sorted, instantaneously more sports facilities for all. You could form ‘stadium’ seating out of swings so you exercise when you watch football, it would be fun to kick it back swinging low and high on your sweet chariot coming for to carry the cup home.
That’s it, that’s what it’s all about really.
My photos with me on the ball and with the ball at my home again (second half) :
I’ve thought that they ought not to be on the same forums with adults. I know this from early experience in the early days of the internet in that on my historic site orionparty.org 1990s to early 2000s I proposed a Planetary People’s Parliament I would have been massive now and a millionaire if this had not been abused but it was used as a porn ring. Personally women were excluded from the creation of the internet in this way, and this pervasive influence still affects the engagement of women in social media, and the judgement of us on it, we are more likely to be sanctioned for opinions, a social corset, whilst men are given liberal licence so when we report on them on behaviours that breach, they are given allowance and we are informed that they do not incorrectly. In order to gather in the 51% and to create balance you should allow women total freedom of thought for a while and simultaneously discipline men’s licentious and controlling condescending images and speech – that would make twitter more civil – facebook is losing users as many have given up – I am only still on there for the bargains that can be had on marketplace.
For children I would take them off the main twitter and allow them to engage in conversation with their peer age group. I’ve thought about this and have created groupings which I have called:
Egg up to 5
Hatchlings 6-9
Chicks 10-13
Fledglings 14-17
They do want to use the real thing, I gave my niece a kiddie phone when she was a toddler as she was using my brothers and she was not impressed, and I equally was not with a kiddie dictionary, and was only satisfied when at 11 I got the real thing with the real definitions.
In order for this to work a date of birth or part of one would be required. A year of birth would let you up to the next group on January 1st, and a year and month on the 1st of the next month, a full date of birth on your birthday. This information would need to go through schools and parents, and you would be given a temporary @user which you can change if you want to at 18 when you are in the main twitter. Teachers and Parents would be locked followers so that they can monitor, control, and edit conversation appropriately to their age group. No other adults would be allowed to view nor interact with them.
I’ve thought of imagery to help with this. The youngsters would have these pictures where the egg now is where a photo has not been uploaded, and the egg would be replaced with a nebulous cloud, the unknown, the shady and where birds fly high to too.
I’ve made them cute, red, yellow and green to differentiate them from the blue bird.
The first egg one I’ve made into a coloured in emoji baby bird with a little embryonic beak.
I’ve made the hatchling realistic with wide eyes.
The chick is standard, I have used the same egg and yolk shapes to create all the images.
The fledgling is a pared down design, transitioning to the real thing ready to take off, when a bird is on its side it seem like there is one merged set of legs, and when a bird is at rest it sleeps on one leg, so this works. It flows into the real thing.
I checked the colours match real birds too.
These images would go where our circular photos are, and this will give an additional layer of protection for the children, as if they are searched and found then only these images will show and users searching will know that this account is inaccessible to them – they will be able to customise the long rectangle picture.
Different communications capabilities will be allocated based on age, appropriately, for example, for their own safety not being about to search or post gifs from other sources and having photos being pre-vetted by parents and teachers before they appear, there could be this capability for posts too. Monitoring this way and authorities commenting on how we behave online, particularly useful in disciplining older boys in how to treat girls with respect and thereby allowing girls complete positive freedom of thought through this which they can take with them to the adult interest making it a more pleasant place.
Perhaps for the younger ones a drawing a colouring in post creation could be available, so each could create a picture the other could engage with and reply to with it coloured in.
Educators could use this in the place where advertising is for adults with facts and activities they could learn from. In the older examination age groups this could be used constructively to assist revision and to ask pertinent questions so they learn as much as they can from them and do well as a result.
Time online could be checked and ensured that responsible care-givers limit this for their charges own good, and to aid relief of addictive use whilst their brains are still flexible. Sports providers could invite youngsters to get out and play and interact positively in the real world, so they have something proper to tell about online later. Show off posts could be dissuaded as this is the seed of pain and anger, and mainly what facebook is all about, divisions could be eased off and become more like interlocking pieces of a jigsaw, so that the big picture becomes so much more unified and genuinely pretty attractive.
If this ups the number of users and their positive engagement on Twitter I’d appreciate a payment so I could investment my time into my work in getting my ideas to save the planet out there and done. Many of which are on the websites in my profile. I would also love to work with you on them. Thank you.
Follow me and I’ll message you the .jpg s (+ .cdr s. if you’d like them)
Diversity is what it is all about – when I was writing about how you use the book I concluded with :
Love Life in all its Differences, in all its Diversity.
That is what makes it Interesting, what make it Desirable.
Do what you can, Do your best.
I did consider after a bit that it was a bit over the top, and then I did not look at the book for a bit, when I published the book 7 years later in 2005 I left it in. Again I did not read this for years and in the interim laughed at the woke, then I read it again and laughed at myelf, I think I invented woke and Diversity lol !:-)!
I started to write the following book as I was recovering from an eating disorder which my friends thought was Anorexia – you’d find that hard to perceive now – and on my way to school waiting at East Croydon train station I saw my English teacher Miss Hurley – Majella Hurley is her full name – and as I was in 4th year – now Year 10 – I thought I’m not revising, I should be revising, so I got my rough book out and started to write. The 1st and 2nd question verses were written then and a different ending which had 5 lines in it which I found unsatisfactory, it was printed in our school student led magazine with one verse not there, to fit in on the page, and then I looked at the whole poem and felt it had other verses missing which I needed to write, the 3rd question verses were written then when I was 17 with the current ending which I am satisfied with. The introduction pages were written in 1998 and I published it online in the early days of it with Booksurge, which Amazon bought up and called CreateSpace, now it is Kindle Direct Publishing KDP. I had to do the maths to work out how thick all the paper would be to design the spine, I did all this myself using Corel Draw and the front cover features in
It is number 875 of 1351 of internationally appreciated book covers.
You can buy a hardcopy to write on and colour in on your local Amazon. This is the link to the US edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1419617990 various prices internationally, this one is $14.99
I’d appreciate a review on Amazon.
It is a political primer – asking questions whether a difference really matters, or not, it is up to you to decide. The text follows, and you can download the pdfs, both the cover and the inside text here:
They can be printed out and given out to your school pupils and used in your PHSE and RSHE – that is personal, health, social, economic and relationships, sex, health education – lessons, as a vehicle to cover many topics. It is worded in a way that it is appropriate for all ages, in particular primary pupils and as it was written by a secondary school student would suit how they feel, they can completely customise this text and make it their own.
The internal format has many different fonts to go with the text, text in a simple easy to read font, 2 sets of 4 lines so that pupils and students can design their own font and write what they think. The illustrations are greyscale borders and add to designs, so that they can draw their own conclusions artistically and add colour in as they see fit.
I would appreciate donations as then I can go on and invest my time and talents into my saving the planet ideas and making these come true too, so that your children have a better future and that will be good for their children too.
Would you like it if your shopping centre was your local public house or somewhere you could have a nice cup of tea or coffee and cake? Would you like your home deliveries to be delivered there so that you don’t have to be in all the time to receive them?
Would you like to cancel all your online subscriptions to things you rarely use but need occasionally but still be able to get these things easily? Would you like to effectively share your subscription with others and for others to be able to share their subscriptions with you?
Would you like your Public House to become a genuine Public House – a home from home for everyone, with books, music, games to play, all good fun?
Have you ever dreamed of having an ice cream machine like the soft swirls sold from vans but then looked at the price of one and thought maybe not? Would you rather have another Italian invention a posh sophisticated coffee machine off your wish list and into reality?
Do you have loads of books or know someone who does and would like to share them with others? Did you stop borrowing books from your public library because you were so engrossed in them and other aspects of your life you forgot to return them and were fined so put off permanently?
This could be the case. Your dreams could be reality. Also other dreams could come true too. The dreams about going green and getting stuff quicker too. Sounds far fetched but here were go:
Horses for courses as they say.
Food delivery costs as you have to buy £40 worth of food in order to get it delivered. You might not need £40 worth of food. People are often forced to buy say a bag of vegetable in one go when they actually only need one of those vegetables in that bag. It is better when they are fresher. Frozen food in the 70s was like a pick and mix, you only bought what you needed https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02mp4f3
like this:
The same could apply to tinned food. It can be cheaper and use less metal from a bigger can, many of us have used half a can of beans and saved the other in the fridge not to fancy them again until they are off. If there was somewhere so near home where you could get just what you needed then the other half of the can would not go to waste. They may be near enough for you to go to to have a full English made for you without you having to wake up too much to be reasonable before you started it, and know you well enough to remember what you like and when, you could just say you’re on your way.
When I have seen the recent dry goods zero plastic non-packaged shops I’ve done the maths and found them to be far too pricey for me. I do remember a shop in Swindon called Gran’s where you could get all sorts of stuff including different cake mixes, soup mixes, cereals, flour, sugars, fruit, nuts, sweets, and many others – you put these into a simple plastic bag, it was weighed and sealed, it was very good value. And then there are the pick and mixes we used to get in Woolies. We need to be able to only buy what we need, but in order for this to happen it needs to be at the correct price for what its worth. Eco purchasing should not be the preserve of a select few.
I ordered for a friend an old fashioned car barber chair for children for her business as I thought that would be good for it, we could have paid over £150 to have it flown in quite quickly, we both thought that this was unreasonable so chose land and sea. This did take a lot of time but it eventually arrived (it was post pandemic so we factored that in and were patient) We could track this as soon as it arrived in the UK but not before.
There are plane trackers and there are ship trackers, so with a simple QR code scanned on the item at the start, then when it goes into a container, then the container when it goes into a ship, the ship and the lorry can be tracked, I have worked at Amazon and from the driver’s phone location triangulation data the van your item is on is tracked all the way, you know where it is at home when it is 9 stops away. So this is simply possible for any organisation for whatever transport mode your item is being moved with.
I think knowing your item is moving and whereabouts it is helps you opt for the slower greener option. This is because you tend to go for next day delivery for reassurance that you will not have to worry for so long that it will arrive. Some items you do need quickly, most you don’t.
There would be different distribution streams:
Frozen
Refrigerated
Ambient Food
Non-Food
Oversized
Specialist
I did think of a 3rd class Green Postage Stamp before they did a recent barcode stamps which now include a green colour. The reason for the 3rd class is due to the speed guarantee of the 1st and the 2nd.
Instead of vans I’m dreaming of riders on horseback, cyclists, walkers, canal boaters, rowers, sailors, people on their daily commute making it pay for itself by carrying a rucksack along the way, so not only them but someone else’s personal post or parcel is also getting closer to its destination too. These backpacks would have QR codes on them like the containers, and the individual who picks it up would need to scan the train they are getting on and scan the station when they arrive, and place it where told for it to continue to go where it needs to, to get paid for the journey. This system would operate in a similar way but with scanning a location post, the bag, then travel, then the location place post at the end of the journey. These journeys could be very short, a few local streets. These local streets could have personal properties who make it their business to act as local delivery points. They could deliver to their local streets all times of the day as items arrive or keep them in their homes or businesses to be picked up, whatever the recipient would like.
The postage would be cheap for this. The packages and bags to be carried would be priced up clearly, so you could choose a lighter lower paying one or a heavier better paying one or more than one at a time. You could make this weight-lifting a part of your exercise routine, make work of your work-outs and work outside too! It all adds up.
Really as long as an item is moving then it is on its way. In Victorian England people were able to get post within a day and the motor can, van and lorry had not been invented – there were ships, trains, horsepower and runners on foot.
The way this would be organised is a bit like an atomic structure many hub with major and minor hubs and multi spoke connections. Items would flow through like electrons, up to the largest hub necessary to be delivered back down to the smallest local hub. Items can also connect to form the shortest possible route. Currently major postal organisations lorry items miles away and then back to deliver them, this is neither efficient, nor green or quick.
What would happen with your item is that you would take it to your local delivery point. You would either address it there or at home. The address would also be a desired delivery path. The postage would be paid and a QR code of the destination address printed and placed on it. The QR code would direct delivery like a homing pigeon heads for home. It would allow itself to be picked up if the person picking up the item (with other items) is heading in the correct direction. There are 2 options for this; 1 as the bird flies it is going forward to that location, 2 it is getting nearer to a more major hub, upping its number of opportunities to take it on further. Many deliverers would head to more major hubs to get more work, some could concentrate on major hub to major hub, others perhaps prefer local interactions to make friends as a bonus. Some massive hub to massive hub work can be taken up by those with lorries and vans to fill on an empty return journey from, for example, a factory parts delivery, they can really pack items in to make that pay, in that sense their fuel filled journeys at least have a purpose to them so in that way they are more green. Bus companies at major commuting periods have the passengers bearing the loads, when they are quieter and less revenue raising, which would create viability for rural routes, they could fill their seats with parcels, and some of them in rarely used routes, allowing all people to move freely from village to village, under used farm barns could act as major hubs when the season suited them. Shire horses and other rare breeds like pack horses could be brought back into action and human use here and pay for their keep. It’ll be lovely for all to hear the relaxing sounds of horses hooves and the valuable fertilizer compost they produce will be good for rhubarb and other growers.
Talking about farms and produce, most food we buy is often packaged at the same place, it is the same product inside. I worked at Anchor butter and it was the same butter inside the economy brand, the own label, the branded and the up market, you are paying more for a different piece of paper. A tray of Mediterranean vegetables looks the same at Waitrose and Aldi because it is the same, you pay for posh packaging. Walkers make crisps for others, different quality same factory. This is pretty much universal, especially products with very specific and expensive manufacturing machinery. In essence you are paying for a label.
I used to love the mostly white packaging of economy foods in the early 1990s as they all went with each other and with my white kitchen, so much so I convinced myself that I preferred some that initially I didn’t as they looked so good. I do wonder why tinned goods labels are plastic covered paper so it’s shiny as that does not help food preservation in any way and makes it not recyclable. Really the food facts are all that is required – a name of what it is, a barcode for transactions and a QR code for information. If the information is to be written it helps if the text size is large enough to actually be read.
I like the green part of leaks and the green leathery leaves of cabbage and lettuce, yet these are missing and only the whiter less tasty parts are left and then these are packaged in plastic to make them sweat to go off faster. This is a surreal practice as the plant packages itself with protection and prior to transportation this plant protection is stripped away, no wonder it goes off so fast. Also a soil film and a bit of root makes it think it is still in the ground, it keeps growing a bit as it moves closer to you so that could be fresh on arrival.
Again the labelling of these is very simple, and as they are one ingredient only one name is necessary for it. A label stuck on the bottom with what it is, a barcode and a QR code for further information. Strawberries go off not in straw or a dry, breathable package, though people have tried glass jars which works very well, on the move in a cardboard and straw combination would be best, if farmers grew cereals with slightly higher stems good use could be made of them.
With this community cupboard it could mean that people like me who liked the green bits best could buy only those and those who preferred the white hearts could eat those to their hearts desires. Everybody’s happy. With this public public house idea as they would be serving food in the proximity, unlike in a supermarket vegetable area, they could cut the leeks as you required. When you buy cut cabbage and lettuce in a bag from a shop you can really tell that they have just been chucked into a machine and hacked to shreds, this also goes off faster than anything else. Cut up vegetables as you can get cuts from a butcher could happen here easily.
When it comes to distribution farmers do not need to go via the middle man, so they get the full cut of worth of their item. The only thing they’d need to factor in is the costs of moving the item from farm to near fork, the one that would fork out for that would be the person buying the goods. This would mean that the price would be right and the profit for the farmer too. Also the silly supermarket says they’ll buy your produce than backs off leaving it unsold without the contract allowing you to sell it elsewhere will be gone, and all the waste of it with it. They can also leave items in the ground to keep growing until they get a sale, this would mean it is fresher. As they are not selling to specific requirements putting stuff in plastic bags requiring them to wash off what with preserve the item best in transit it’ll be an easier deal all round. The Public Houses could have large Belfast sinks with wide drain pipes so they won’t get blocked, with an exit to the ground so any product that takes this route can be retrieved, also the muddy water will be good for the ground for growing flowers for a beautiful environment. The farmers will be able to sell all their stock and would be free to rate it differently for, for example schools and care homes. They could sell in multiple classes of product, broadening possibility.
People make choices based on supermarkets near them and ones that it is possible to have items delivered from – providing they want a tonne of stuff all at once from them, 40 quid’s worth usually. When you roam around, or travel elsewhere you can find exciting products that you cannot buy near to you. Some supermarkets that are good do not display what they have to offer online, so you cannot do an online shop around, which is what I usually do, some I only know about via a leaflet drop. Others are overseas items, some you love but can only get when you are on holiday. I see it as a possibility that you could request that these are sold via a system that could link to Embassies. The specific product I kept trying to find is Nocilla Leche with a pale blue lid, a product from España it was only available in bulk for diplomats which I did not think was very diplomatic. Now shipping costs are prohibitive. Travelling to France I found many products I fancied which I could not buy at home, many in tins, so it would be perfectly reasonable to have these shipped. Some requests could await a bulk transport for a good price, like the different speed classes for mail. It would be possible to get tins of Irish Stew from Ireland this way, so you know that you’ve got the real thing. Some items for example rabbit are hard to purchase in England, so these requests could be published so that those who could provide this product but were uncertain about a market for it would have this risk lessened so could go ahead confidently.
Also during covid I experienced discrimination in stores that was unwarranted as I was doing all things as required, I worked throughout, it seemed that those that didn’t got better treatment. This is why I cannot obtain what I previously could, including specialist and seasonal fruit and vegetables. I do not see it as fair that this should exclude me from what I want and I do not feel it is a just or sensible response to shop in these places again, if they don’t want me then they should not have my money. If this idea bears fruit then all that suffering is a blessing in disguise for all. I hope it does.
I watch cooking programmes and find Saturday Kitchen to be my relaxing weekend viewing. Chefs come in and prep and cook their dishes in the set kitchen there. Cooking programmes feature chefs touring and cooking in all sorts of places and venues. Yet many of these same chefs house static restaurants which can be a bit of a trek to reach. They have a certain number of covers, places they can serve a meal for, numbers of meals they can serve in their location. Popular ones have a waiting list, fully booked up for weeks, sometimes months, meaning you cannot get in and the restauranteur cannot profit from their skills to the benefit of their diners. Other professions go on tour to work, musicians, comedians, trades persons and so on. With getting entertainment you pay for this in advance, with this idea proposal it would be more workable done this way. So it would be perfectly possible for chefs to do likewise. When you organise a workplace Christmas meal colleagues choose what they want to eat from the menu well in advance at work, usually they are told to decide by a certain date, with keen pressure applied to be fairly fast about it. So chefs could do the same with these Public Houses and as there would be quite a few in a local area they could perhaps do a few Public Houses on the same day. I’m thinking that they may like to pre-prepare their starters. I’m imagining they would do nearly all prep before they arrive, chopping things and measuring for example. All items could be delivered early to all locations. The dessert course could be cooked whilst the main is being enjoyed. The touring Head Chef could be there only for the Mains introducing themselves to the diners, and for them to only be there for an hour if they wanted to get round a town full of venues on the same date, sittings could start for an early lunch or a late breakfast and go on to late into the night. A huge plus for them is the bill savings for a permanent restaurant venue. With this comes the freedom to go on holiday when you feel like it, and to not have to endure the gruelling hours day after day after day, which will be both a blessing for them and a boon for recruitment for the sector. Getting around is much more fun too, you get to meet a lot more people.
Requesting is something that is done in libraries, when you cannot find the book that you are after but another library has it or another reader, so you get to be able to read that particular book as soon as possible. These Public Houses could have books to read too, many characterful pubs do have books, but they are mainly for looking at, you want to pick them up and read them, if only you could. I’m thinking a library room or area in these Public Houses would be great complete with comfy sofas, great light and a cosy warm room. This would certainly save on heating at home and it is green to share the same created heat with others.
Other rooms could be hobby rooms for sewing and art, if people needed things repairing others could do this for them, and they could reciprocate their talents with others. Some could casually bake cakes for people to eat and cups of tea and coffee.
We subscribe to many things, Amazon is about £8 so with this providing so much more and you could delete that one, and probably many others too, so Public Houses would, quite reasonably, require their members to pay something, £10, £15, £20 per month, that sort of thing, whatever pays the bills, which could be posted on a notice board alongside membership subscriptions paid so everyone is kept informed of outgoings and incomings. Someone would hold responsibility and make decisions, but barring people on personal preference would not be allowed, only unreasonable destructive behaviour on site, so everyone feels included and does not fear a humiliating exclusion on entry. The more the merrier, in the right sort of way, these are daytime Public Houses, not drinking dens. I think part of the demise of pubs is the behaviour of drunks, and disturbance in the local areas is not acceptable, people have a human right to a good night’s sleep. These Public Houses could be open at night for the benefit of insomniacs, night shift workers and another example I can think of is new parents woken up at night by babies who are not in a pleasant pattern of sleep for parents, yet. There could be plenty of board games so no-one gets bored, for kids, for grown-ups and for those in their second childhoods. When people have done a jigsaw to death they could pass this one on to another Public House. Perhaps people could play fair to the creators of these who are still with us and get together to give them a little something to encourage them on and allow them to have a fun life too. This is so easy these days.
As regards dancing to music, this could be done if you have an appropriate floor and good sound insulation during the day, you can get energy to recharge for this and rehydration too. People could learn musical instruments together and sing too in this same room. They could even give impromptu or prepared performances for the benefit of their public in these Public Houses! Happy Days!
Health Hydro – start of NHS included Swimming Pools
I’ll start my train of thought on this topic on the railways. Swindon specifically, the town named after a Danish King Swein Forkbeard who brought us home his Danish bacon – we have all heard of Wiltshire Ham, we ate Wild Boar before similar to Asterix and Obelix in Roman times. As in this town railway workers collectively pooled their funds to improve the health of both themselves, the workers and the health of their families. They built what is now known as the Health Hydro right by the Railway Village. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1382135 This started with funding one Doctor in 1847, and by 1868 a swimming pool was included + washing facilities in 1869. This was the inspiration for the NHS. Only the NHS only embraced the sickness bit, not the health bit, and looking at Covid cases with obesity it is clear that this needs to happen.
‘There it was. A complete health service in Swindon. All we had to do was expand it to the whole country.’ Nye Bevan.
Currently the small pool is closed, which we have had to fight locally for this part of the building to be turned into flats, what with people getting fat more flats are not required but sporting facilities are and also the Oasis just down the road is not open We are still fighting for that one, @SaveOasis https://www.saveoasisswindon.co.uk/ which started using Covid as a reason which was engineered into an excuse with a prospective ‘rebuild’ for closure, incredible. Both facilities used to be owned outright by the Council, but what with 80% of funds going into housing increasing population numbers, particularly in less well off areas who are too busy working to have the energy to fight back at the end of the day, and social care not being funded as a National Health Service Department responsibility, but it being regressively placed on Council Tax funds, which means the poor that work to pay for everything experience nothing positive themselves. Sports facilities have been degraded and as they have been sold off we are priced out of our own facilities, the entry fees have risen. We paid for these in the first place, then when most can’t afford to go they threaten to flatten them or turn them into flats making us fatter and fatter. Council have sold off these assets so we have lost out on our health and gained further restricting weight. We deserve to be cared about. They don’t care about us. Where is their duty of care to us?
I think all the food based ideas lack something, like Marcus Rashford and the still a bit fat Tom Kerridge – now Josceline and David Dimbleby’s son Henry have also joined in with The National Food Strategy, he owns the London based restaurant chain Leon which when I looked had fried food on the intro-loop – they are somewhat detached from reality. One recipe, I noticed in an Aldi magazine, of Tom’s and Marcus’s Full time: Get Cooking contains American Mustard. I thought “what’s that?” which sums it up really, they also contain one specific item that will need buying, something not simple, and have many steps to prepare them, certainly not fast food from Rashford and Kerridge. The recipes are a hodge podge of weirdity, not standard fare that could be done day after day at minimal cost and a growth of self-confidence in catering for yourself – unlike Delia Smith’s approach in How to Cook – explaining, non-patronisingly about everything including how to boil an egg. Not everyone has had this guidance, this does not make them thick, it just makes them ready to consume at high cost to themselves food that others have made and who want to sell it to you, a great business model for them, which probably explains the plethora of personalities wishing to get engaged in making people feel low about their skills in this area, which they do not want them to gain. There have been more than one generation without food education, so as there is no-one to teach you how are you supposed to learn. In the midst of this there was a trend I remember, that of space food of the future, dried food is one example, freeing women mainly from the kitchen, though ironically we are being ‘led’ by men in this field. Misled perhaps by this. France which used to be slim is not so much any more. I did notice in recent years that schools were no longer creating their orderly meals but were, like us, buying them in pre-made from a massive factory. Personally I’d recommend them to return to being more French with food.
Loads of Nurses in NHS are fat 25% in fact, so clearly all the knowledge in the world is not helping either.
There’s probably a lifestyle issue here, with the rewards of food presents patients give them, it is hard to be rude and say no, particularly when you’re hungry and especially when you’re on a night shift and all decent catering has closed. Catering within the ‘Health’ service is scientific rather than good, it is not nutritional. Many top chefs have tried, for years. It seems that when you think you know it all, I’m thinking the consultants and hospital managers you are not open to learning from others. We all need to learn from others.
Tonnes of apps: https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/ clearly not working so needs an original approach. We also use and subscribe to apps like we subscribe to gyms – some are free others cost a lot, clearly, looking at all the evidence around about few are effectively working.
Talking about it might be part of the problem, not the solution it sells itself to be. I think we need a different way to weigh less. Not a lose weight loser approach, more one focussed on winning, upbeat, happy, non supressional freezing all action. Often the reaction to when a fat person starts to get excited and move about in a lively way is to consider their behaviour indisciplined and to order them to stop, to freeze, to never burn up calories. Whereas we encourage the slim, we do not give them our additional burdens, often we support them in every way. To change we need to change our attitudes to this and our approach.
SOLUTIONS
Here we go with my List of Ideas for this:
Fitness dipping in and out rather than full on dangerous and off-putting – too much too soon – instructional rather than dictational.
Often when you start to go to a fitness class – they push you too far and make you feel you can’t stop even if it is a bit much for you, you agonisingly finish the lesson, say see you next time and never go back there.
I’ve had this book by Lyn Marshall, Yoga for your Children for years, I had it as a child and was inspired by it. In it, it says if it is hurting in any way to stop. This is a very good approach at the start when you need to not have injuries and you need it to feel fun to encourage you to do more in the future. I’d have round the clock Yoga sessions where the instructors could change periodically, like sign language interpreters do, and people can go in and out of the class as it suits them, no pressure to keep going for an hour when you did nothing last week – no-one does a couch to 5K in a day, it’s unrealistic and unsafe.
We all like watching telly. On telly in the breaks between programmes I think there should be transition exercises demonstrated – some will need 4D cartoons to show the inner workings as pulling your bum in repeatedly whilst on your seat is not very visible on the exterior – 3D obviously with the 4th the interior dimensions to show you how it’s done, a constant ‘Don’t Just Sit There (Why Don’t You Do Something Less Sedentary Instead)’ mini length series – little exercises you can do whilst doing other stuff – every little helps as they say in Tesco’s.
Once or twice I’ve wanted to have a go on the swings, they are surprisingly good exercise in that, like swimming, they support all your body, and they use all your muscles in your body at once, both exhilarating and exhausting. Last time I did this in an area just off a playground I really enjoyed it but when kids came along intending to use them from afar I got off and focussed down at the grass whilst walking away, I wished they had not turned up just yet. Those swings are now gone which is a pity, they were sturdy Wicksteed ones, certainly strong enough to carry an equally sturdy grown-up and out. I’d plant loads of those plus some wide boys with thick chains for big chaps all across the land, we could all have a whale of a time turning out fat into fit.
Only last week I saw a crop circle as evening was drawing in, on my way there I went past a play park in Upham Hampshire. I was tempted to try the slides, thinking one would be too narrow from a distance, when I got close I happy found out it was not, and another bumpy slide and a tunnel I just had to crawl through – I tried the adult gym stuff too after that (the swings looked too fragile for me to be fair, I did not give them a go) The thing is with all this I did a fair few steps with the reward being the thrill of it all. We need more slides, much less boring than steps on a counter. I’ve seen a hill at my local community centre in Swindon that would be perfect for a snakes and ladders arrangement, I remember as a kid going up concrete domes with stones on them – mini Silbury Hills – in Bradford, with slides down, in the 70s when I went to stay with my Grandma, memories of great joy.
I think it would be good to have open to use gym mats too, with a large floor area and other proper gymnastic gym equipment to use too. And many of those multi-sport mini arenas everywhere.
It would certainly be great and Schools would certainly score A*s all the way if their sports facilities were open to all, they have a lot of fantastic facilities that lie dormant in the late afternoons, evenings, all weekends and loads of weeks when it is perfect weather to be playing outdoors and yet children are stuck indoors on screens with snacks in hand getting fatter when they should be out and about safely independent getting fitter. Most people, what with the increased population number do not have the space at home for much, so their lack of movement is also making the population bigger, leading to loss of more space to move around. This is doing their heads in. So I would open up not only the sports facilities but for mental and social health the art and craft, music and science labs – most science is observed as if it were on telly, it needs to be experienced and experiments need to be done to learn discernment of facts from fiction, in the long term this steadies the nerve. Also social education in the form of board games, they are only bored when played by one or sat in their boxes, the real fun comes with the banter and chatting you get to have with others without the awkwardness of having to come up with another detail of your life until nothing newsworthy to share exists, this sort of activity makes you realise that you do have friends to play with which is a real boost to your mental health. These should be open to all, all the time when the schools are not using them with pupils.
I’d even put Public Libraries in schools, there are a decreasing band of people who want to keep them as they are, this is because we get our Reference Library information online now, and there are little sharing libraries, without fines – that’s what lost me; all the money I was losing getting a life and forgetting to return them on time. I’d let everyone register the books they had at home they were willing to share too, so this becomes a mega-library. Many public libraries seem to attract less lively personalities, learning should be a fun, lively and active experience. I feel a bit dull going out of them sometimes. And Silence is so hard to do too. Putting them in schools would wake them up a bit. You should be able to access University Standard Literature and Facts from anywhere, you have after all paid for all of that in your taxes, so why should you be denied access to your estate, and then be termed in derision the uneducated uninformed masses, when your work and due diligence created all of that. Equality of education is essential. We all need to travel in the mind and up our game career wise.
People often say it is a Free Country – I would like it to be. Free Swims and Everything Else
In the UK we pay a lot of tax for and to the NHS- the National Health Service – it is supposed to be free at the point of use – other countries have different Health provision models, but as we are not getting healthier, in fact the exact opposite, it’s clearly evidentially obvious medical medicines are not the only solutions. We need free access to exercise facilities like swimming pools, that is the solution I’m thinking of.
In the countryside in order to provide sufficient sporting facilities I would return Council Tax payments and other tax rebates for those who share their home facilities with others. There are those with swimming pools in their gardens or attached to their houses, and others with tennis courts too. There are those with tiny gardens in the country too. Farm land could be turned into foot ball pitches, cricket grounds, and to return some outdoor space to those backing on to their fields to become better back gardens. They could grow some healthy fresh vegetables there too. I would include free access too to Horse Riding out in the country as it is not as easy to form a team with fewer numbers to enable social sports. For the heavier rider Shire horses, a rare breed these days, should be available – to a point to be fair on the horse of course. Horse Riding is very relaxing both for the rider and those that hear the sound of hooves as they go past. I would require farmers to have a better attitude to dog walkers and joggers to make them provide good off road tracks and spaces where they felt welcome to be free within, as to most the countryside is in reality a prohibitive place. This land did, at one point, belong to us all collectively and we have paid the subsidies more that sufficiently, we ought not be turfed off our own land!
Rich footballers and sports fields – I always think when seeing their high salaries and fast cars, that they could think of others and make their mark across the land whilst preventing green fields from disappearing by buying them up and putting their names on them. David Beckham has his Academy which is very good. But acres are being built over as more people become overweight – Lineker’s Acres does have a happy ring to it, I’m thinking of a location in Leicester for that one, good for both Walkers, Runners and Football players and others. Once you’re on the map there is a permanent record of your presence on the planet, which personally I think is great!
Newton work in gyms – no work done at all not going anywhere not achieving anything – so like I said in my Balloon post where I discuss lots of little ways of saving the planet via energy generation – a workout here would be much more fulfilling if it have an actual purpose, other than making you look great and sooo attractive to others – personally I analyse the torsos of men – that is what I am attracted to, and being political am impressed by fit leaders – I think those that find ladies attractive also are looking at their physical attributes and enjoying them, so making yourself look great is not an entirely selfish activity because the result gives others a lot of pleasure, with them taking photos and videos in their minds to store to view later to make themselves smile on a grey day.
The design of gyms could improve, what I’m thinking is if you did weights, lifting stuff, could that not be uplifting water to then see it flow from on high – hydraulic power powered by you – my mind is on the Pompidou Centre exterior right now when I’m thinking this – how about rowing machines that take you up rivers and across seas, and make you feel like you are actually there – the sound of water, visuals and buffeting as in reality – ace preparation for a mission. Bikes that could take you on Le Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Britain and on and on – colourful gym equipment, a bit of fun to ease away and distract from the pain, a much more attractive environment, less torture chamber more force for good.
Many people with good resolution at the time of purchase create their own gyms at home. They could using this system – your NHS QR Code card scanned on entry to pay the person whose equipment it is from the NHS as above for the country, both for the town. You may well make friends and can gear each other up for better performances.
Accessible access to walk in and jog in and run in and around your local area – particularly in the countryside and specifically to enable positive dog walking.
Borough and Country Parks car parking charges = exclusivity = many poor people getting out and about in these place less – again paid for by Council Tax in the main: so so unfair. People must be encouraged not prohibited at all times to move about freely. As organisations have sought to profit from fresh air people have become staler and fed up with it too – this affects their reactions to external activities, for example, why should the increasingly restricted person have the desire to back the freedom of movement across an entire continent for others when they are losing freedoms to many places locally, they need to look after themselves and to be allowed to do this.
I look at places like Buckingham Palace and think they’ve got a swimming pool, tennis courts and potential for a football pitch – I really don’t know why One hasn’t drawn one on the lawn for all the people for all of the time (if you’re not keen on us there then we want a different ruler over us) that isn’t otherwise used for anything else but Summer Garden parties where food is eaten, why not something permanently active. It is really weird that this has not happened what with William’s Football Association connections, why would he not associate such thoughts here, very odd? I’ve thought for a while that Buck House would make an Ace Sports Centre what with the complete square corridor – an all year round indoor running track is what I have been thinking for years.
I have also imagined a game I call in my own mind Quickie Footie where you need to have no kit but a ball to kick, using all the widths as goals and it only being off side if it goes off the long sides – at least with this cheap version a decent number of goals would be scored!
I think it would help too if you can make your own dream for others a dream you can achieve. What I not in the spectators at football matches are some spectacularly huge stomachs, yes I do know of the good goalkeeper who really did eat all the pies, he was questioned on this a lot, by supporters, no-one and nothing got past him! I’m thinking that the Football and other ball sports should have Uni-Leagues – no separations – so all can move to get to the Top faster in our own rights, not just sat on your bottoms watching others get to the top – try to join them, aim higher !-!
I have thought through the detail of this e.g. more players on the pitch for little people – a kind of Paralympics comparison of all sorts to create a level playing field.
New cards to add to the Red and Yellow – I have thought of the cheats Green card for acting – like the Equity card. When players fake what they act up as a fatal injury, then as soon as the referee gives a Yellow or Red to the other side they Miraculously Fully Recover! And now a Blue, was inspired to think of this watching vicious criminal behaviour against England – Actual Bodily Harm, arrestable normally, so this Blue card will be a massive penalty to ensure all play with all sorts is safe – the Police are called the People in Blue, hence the colour of the card.
I’ve got other details – lots of them – to make this work – please do ask. What we need is Constant Contests for all those who like that sort of thing. Fight it out in sport not as a spectator. Join Fight Club – you choose whether or not you talk about it or not!
Minilympics – this would be The most appropriate contest for us all to hold up and down the land, Pierre de Coubertin was actually inspired by our recreation of the Olympics in Ancient Greece, we were seriously into the Classics whilst firing up the World with our Industrial Revolution. The Modern Olympics started at Much Wenlock and The Paralympics at Stoke Mandeville, hence the mascots having the letters W and M on their taxi light foreheads.
I’m thinking in terms of teams, like Houses in School, Red, Blue, Green and Yellow:
You can locally call your own what you like,
You can choose or make up your own sports – as long as they are physically active – no exertion nor exercise activities are not allowed
The scores each Colour makes can be added to the local and national scores (I remember in Primary School not being motivated to do anything just for me, when I went up to the next level everything we did went towards the House scores, that made me feel good, doing it for the team, we won together)
You can make your own medals – for kids or for fun for adults – out of whatever you can find – I made cookie medals for London 2012 – after a lot of rigorous vigorous activity they might well be deserved and would go down well!
I have thought of a new logo for a parallel Olympics – being that people are becoming more aware of all sorts of categories of people and even though you may be keen on a sport your body type does not win in it, kind of bodyframist – it does combine elements of each + both contests I dream of being conducted simultaneously, like the Commonwealth Games now are.
A ring of solid dots like emoji heads in all the colours of the rainbow with paralympic swirls (like commas) like arms reaching out to hold each other in all the skin tones of the world. A conversation of togetherness. That’s how I see it.
All are included together. It would be a dream if that could happen in time for Paris 2024.
….. …. … .. .
Certificates and Badges – rewards for all sports, not just martial arts colours – currency incentives, with the certificates being like bank notes and the badges coins: I think the reason that martial arts are so popular with many people is that you can work towards different belt colours. There is a syllabus, an aim, a goal. There are schemes in most sports, it’s just they are seldom open to adults, so that it takes parental support as a child for you to participate in these. I have researched and desired to do them since I was 18 – probably because they weren’t openly generous with them when I was a child. I have imaged a lovely collection of them.
I did do Gymnastics and Swimming, I managed to complete B.A.G.A. up to 2 when I was 18 and then complete the set in 2005 though 1 was issued if you had done 7-2. I was planning on continuing. I was doing the Swim Fit accumulative awards, sending off for the next one when I needed to motivate myself. They stopped this without warning and kept my last record card, and tried to subscribe me onto a new now Sponsored by British Gas computer based thing, I’ve got Excel so thought I could do that at home. When they were sponsored by Frosties they were great. Soon after Al Qaeda did what looked like a bit of a gym display in the desert, they released their training video of this and at the same time the World Trade centre memorial pools had just been created – so I had to stop and get real – did not want to though – I would have preferred a more positive life in a dream, not a nightmare. I should have died on 9/11 because I had suggested a new oil free, totally green transport system – still no-one is doing this as I imagined, batteries are very heavy, I factored that in from the start and thought of a better way. They knew I was a real threat to their funding model with my ideas for freedom. An additional one suggested at the time was and still is Power to the People which would include Electricity Generating Bicycles and other purposeful gym equipment which with your own purposeful power would power up the grid. You cannot be more motivated than that, your Calories or Kilo Joules burnt up to save the planet from burning. My transport system also included a way to cycle powerfully on it. Please get in touch I want to make this dream come true.
People need different motivations to get them moving and we are all different in that, I wrote a letter to Madonna with this as part of the content of it:
Psycho-Physical Famine Disorder – skinny news presenters in war zones or presenting miserable doom and gloom news you can do nothing about affecting viewers – powerlessness = vulnerability > build yourself up to survive the disaster & repeat > piling on the pounds ad infinitum …
and sent her a Love Hearts sweets coat hook pair with Hung up on You on one and Hooked on You on the other, the first one referencing a song called Hung Up of hers, she released her album Hard Candy after this with the same font. It took me a while to realise that the sweets were muscles from sweats from Dancing on and on. Night Clubs are a thing to fling yourself in to. I give you:
Day Clubs
I love the buzzing sound of electronic and other DJ led Night Club music, I love the LED lights and other ones too. I don’t love that I have to wait all day to go and I prefer chocolate, tea, milk, soft drinks and water to alcohol any day – drugged up sorts scare me and they are unpredictable too. If Night Clubs became Day Clubs I’d be in my element.
I love dancing to music, I got myself a new rainbow pair of Sketchers sneakers for Coldplay’s Head Full of Dreams tour as they had memory foam in so I could jump, jump, jump on in songs that went with – most of them – the colours went with the album art. When I’m dancing to music I can go on and on and on – here’s me quoting Give It To Me from Madonna’s Hard Candy album. It’s all pleasure and no pain. I know I’m not alone in finding this my motivation to move.
I did dream of doing Ballet as a discipline which I thought would help me get the mindset of control to get slimmer. I suggested this to a BBC journalist Andrew Marr, who lived near the Royal Ballet School in the disciplined Sheen at the time. His response was a funny mention of hippos doing ballet on his Sunday Morning Programme AM – I laughed it off, but had serious intent, as they were always advising me on this front. He wasn’t as in control as I had previously assumed and had injuncted a lady to stay silent about an affair – which for a journalist (who I had obviously previously respected) who insisted others answer his pressing questions did not sit well with this role. He had a heart attack soon after and lost the use of one arm. He has now moved, with his wife, whom I really felt for, to the much more liberal Primrose Hill.
I did also try Rowing at Kingston University, I went there as a mature student after 9/11 as I thought – after I had publicly said that the world was a Financial Dictatorship that it was done for me as a result, that I did not wish to inspire such stuff – but the lady instructor was pushing me on my first outing there on the rowing machine, whilst simultaneously saying she had overdone it to permanent damage to her knees. I did not return because clearly that approach was not safe, I never got to row on the water like I was hoping to as a result.
On a lighter note me and my sister did want to get Athletes foot as kids because we thought it would make us run faster!!!
The Olympics and Paralympics are Like sets in school, the Gifted and Talented and the Special Needs, in that there is lots for the top and bottom but not a lot for those in the middle who are just perceived as ordinary, who do not get a mention, get far, far less spent on their needs, for both sports and education. This is not an equal approach and is probably one of the many reasons why the nation is too fat.
Income and job insecurity is another factor, as you cannot risk expending energy when your job may well end at any time, you certainly don’t invest in any membership scheme. And anyway the costs for admission, even for a one-off event are prohibitive, you could buy a lot of food for that, or if you dare with your budget, better quality food. And yet taxing the poor is the only approach the bullying rich with access to everything they need can voice as a solution, really they want this not to be solved so that they can go on and on justifyingly mocking in the eyes of their peers in their own judgemental aristocracy those less able than themselves – let them eat cake – if they are willing to pay through the nose for it!
There is also Maslow’s Needs Theorem, where you focus on the more basic needs first, and cannot focus higher until these are met, so when your basics are threatened, you are going to react in the exact opposite way to what is superficially the reaction that you were intended to do.
It is often said that ‘they’ don’t know how to cook. With an industry of instant meals that has been going on for more than two generations, and the cultural promotion of it on mainstream media, is that a surprise? In education the academic is looked up to the practical frowned down upon. So no help there to learn Home Economics – you don’t know just how true the title of that subject is, knowing how to sew, wire a plug, grow your own and how to cook as a few examples saves you loads of money – yet it is always perceived that this is a subject losers in academia take because they are too thick for anything else. Mmm, I wonder why we have a problem then?
I have a solution – one that is not patronising. You don’t get pushed or overwhelmed by being expected to learn it all, all at once. The current method of teaching is a bit like expecting someone to do School Leaver Exams when they do not know the alphabet or numbers, or to play in a band on stage when they do not know how to sing or play any sort of instrument. You begin with Do Re Mi, A B C, 1 2 3, e t c …
Elements – is what I am calling this. You need to learn to cook an element at a time, and bite by bit, ingredients to combinations you will understand what you are doing and have all the skills to do it.
Pasta and Potatoes – you would either boil a type or microwave, bake or fry one, and would eat what you have made simply with salt or if you have passed another element e.g. cooking tomatoes from a tin or fresh you could add these.
Boiling – e.g. peas and other vegetables, from a tin …
Microwave use
Chopping and Cutting – You would learn these skills and get to take home the chopped vegetable, fruit or other element as your reward.
Eggs in all their different ways
Spices – 1 at a time – when people prepare this food they mystify you with a long list of stuff they have put in – you would make a food item adding only one spice in it, so you can understand its properties.
Herbs – the same as spices, one at a time, for example carrots accompanied by coriander, tomatoes with basil
Baking – making your own cakes is not that unhealthy as you know what goes in them then, again simple ones first.
These are all examples – you would go to a place – say a sports centre, which with my proposals you would have exercised for free, and showered too, useful when you have a boiler breakdown or cannot feed the meter that week. and there you can also complete an Element. You could microwave a potato and then get to eat it with butter there. You’d give them your name so you can have what you have achieved recorded, so like sports awards when you have completed a set you can be given a certificate – you’ll also be able to see what you have learned when you return home, so you can repeat it easily. You can choose what you learn next as long as the foundation Elements for that choice have already been completed. Only one Element a day so like when you learn to read you can remember and recall what you have learned. This is the point. So as you achieve you also build up self-confidence in the kitchen and an independence from instant pre-prepared foods, you can wean yourself off them and fight away the providers of this who are addicted to your money which you also pay for in the detriment of your own health. You take back control of your own body.
Service station food – no cooked vegetables or boiled potatoes etc
What I would do is try to engage good food shops into providing something like this. I remember doing temporary work at Membury Service Station on the M4 on your way Eastbound from Swindon to Newbury, when I was a young adult, and there was a proper kitchen, selling proper food on proper plates like you could prepare for yourself at home or were provided for by decent employers with sufficient staff numbers to justify the scale and size. I’d call the place:
Good Food
As simple as that.
There is a lot you could do with the lettering making it into crockery and cutlery or items of food.
I’m thinking that it would be lovely to get a stew bowl or even that in a cup to take away easily. Possibly for practicality purposes and for freedom of choice the meat could be stewed separate to the prepared cooked vegetables which you could add to it – this may make hygiene simpler too, and freer from the concern of allergies. Stock sauces could also be in separate hot bottles for this reason. All items would have their own serving spoon and you would have your own to stir the items in together. The meat types would be separate, mutton, beef, chicken, vegan…
An all day hot buffet which could include breakfast items so you could choose a flat plate of food. The wisdom of separating the above would be obvious as these could be included in this. The only difference is that you’d be choosing a drier knife and fork meal. The cuts of protein could be stored closely together on different shelves, small and larger sizes. These could be takeaway in card boxes as we have experienced in pandemic lockdown.
Portions would be controlled via server size, and counted, the plates could have a pie chart design on them – fill vegetables within this part, starch for example potatoes in another, and these would be boiled in various ways, also mashed, other styles too including oven or pub chips.
Puddings or deserts of the at least 1 of 5 a day variety would also be available here – cooked fruit with toppings of your desire like crumble, pre-cooked and toasted through, pastry biscuits both short and puff, with porridge, custard, cream and yoghurt, and hot fruit tarts too like tatin. Healthy hot proper food.
Boils at fish and chip shops and other outlets.
Places that sell fried food should help their customers feel better by offering veg on the side. What I’m thinking, to be realistic and practical, is one part of the heating element instead of being filled with oil is filled with water boiling up vegetables. We call having fried food a fry up, so these are a boil up hence boils. I’m thinking to be reasonable of frozen garden peas, green veg and cabbage, tinned carrots, sweetcorn and tomatoes. The first 3 could be placed in a sieve like holder similar to the one chips go in, and boiled in that, the tinned ones would go in a catering metal serving pan and be heated beneath on a stove behind the scenes and then brought out and placed on one side of this bain marie for them, forming a formation of 6 vegetables.
When you order your food, say fish and chips you could order the peas and when you did you would get far fewer chips to make it a healthier meal for you. If you ordered sausage and chips you could have tinned tomatoes to go with that, a steak pie cabbage and carrots, perhaps having the option of a tiny portion of chips as you have got the pastry in the actual pie, with a chicken pie or portion you might prefer carrots and sweetcorn. If you are a Vegan you might want a fried onion – like an onion ring in a way but with a pro-cooked whole onion fried like the fish and have that with greens for iron and chips.
Condiments could be better, when we have fish at home we squeeze lemon on to it – so in addition to vinegar there could be bottles of lemon juice at takeaways – I do it that way now because it is less fiddly and the amount I like to add counts as one of my 5 a day. It would better for the environment if sachets were swapped for bottles, and more economical too, there are many tomatoes in tomato ketchup, tartare sauce in sachets now have no green bits, they could seriously up the pickles in it, that would be tasty and is yet another vegetable for you.
People who are not accustomed to eating vegetables as a regular part of their diet would find themselves enjoying them and forming a habit of eating them as a matter of course. They’ll feel better and might be happier too as your eyes start to sparkle when you’ve got the right nutrients in you, in a sense, what is seen as an old wives tale of carrots helping you to see in the dark, has an element of truth to it!
The Natural Health Service – Gardens – walking, beauty all around, physical, mental and spiritual
One type of exercise I really love is walking, I used to have a dog called Trixie who took me for walks, I am looking for another dog but they have to be one of her relatives as whenever I saw another dog or stroked them when she was here on earth, rather than in heaven all around me as she now is, she would get in between me and then, I would have to apologise and say I was not a two timing bitch, a bitch is the word we use to describe a female dog, we were in love, so I can only be with one of her family members as I wish to remain loyal to her. More photos of her at the end of this post. She looks like this:
Getting out of the house is immediately beneficial to ones mental health, just seeing the bright white sunlight even through a cloud, or the liquid sun in the form of rain, the relaxing patter, like the relaxing patter of horses hooves running, I always turn the volume up on Belinda Carlisle’s Runaway Horses, she also wrote Heaven on Earth. It is good to get out into paradise and to wonder at it, in the wind of the hills or a beautiful formal town garden, looking at all the lovely little flowers and great trees and bees and other things buzzing all around you – it makes you feel so much more alive, and you so want to live so much more.
You can contemplate the infinite or you can be inspired, as I am, to reflect or create ideas that will renew the face of the earth, as in the hymn Send Forth Your Spirit O Lord And Renew the Face Of The Earth.
Going into a quiet, or if liveliness is your preference, a lively church, can do wonders for your prioritization of things, the absolute silence can calm the buzz in your brain and allow it peace, that can make you well in many ways. A rest is as good as a change and yes it can change you. A day off can really change the world. Singing is a wonderful thing, and actually doing it is even better. Endorphins can come through exercise both spiritual and physical, physical and mental, mental and spiritual and all three united together.
An NHS for Pets – a version of the Natural Health Service in a way because part of the reason poorer people find it harder to have animals in their lives are the costs – yet this is the best greenest thing to do – also many poorer people may be money poor but they are less time poor, and the greatest richness you can give to an animal’s life is your time and your love. So I’d bring our pets, who are part of our families into the remit of the National Health Service, they can too be treated free at the point of use. Part of this would be a walking network if you have dogs so when you do have to be away it’ll be easy for your dogs to have a good time while you work. Advice forums with experienced carers, we are not owners as pets aren’t things, they’re people in a different format, from fish to birds, reptiles to rabbits, cats and mice, insects and smaller, ponies and bigger et cetera. When we say we wish to co-exist on this planet we really must mean it, and not just for another land. Plants too, gardening groups are great and weeding is a wonderful therapy. A wider perspective on health is a heathier outlook overall, a much better view for life.
Tough Love
Some people say we should stop people from buying certain foods because they are bad for them. Some people need that help, others do not. It is not fair to restrict everyone or make food taste bad or go off quicker by reducing preservative sugars and salts in them. It would be best to tailor these specifically according to need. This is how I would do it:
Heath MOTs will be conducted annually and by people who are appropriate for your previously known health status. This will be loaded up to your own NHS record. When you go food shopping it will ask you to scan this first at the checkout. If you have no weight or any other issues it will then just let you proceed as normal, if you do it will flag up items that may be of concern. This will be in the form of:
Guidance, Limiting, Rationing, Discipling, Barring and Banning:
Guidance – you will receive an e-mail when you get home which will advise on consumption of a particular foodstuff
Rationing – you will have a monthly, weekly … limit on for e/g high cholesterol foods, or a fat % limit or high calorie foods
Disciplining – this will take place when you are seriously overweight for example and are not making positive progress, you will not be able to over purchase items and warning triangles will flash up – this will also apply for diabetics and to allergies to make sure that you are safe
Barring – if you are very obese you will not be able to buy certain food categories at all, unless you are given an allowance as a result of doing a certain amount of exercise. This will be recorded on a device you wear in combination to you logging on with your NHS Card (plastic like a credit / debit card) at exercise venues
Banning – outright bans for the morbidly obese until they reach safety.
At the outset everyone will be on Guidance then over time, to give people a chance to change their habits progress to more restrictive types as relevant.
All of this will cost the NHS less than all the bariatric surgery and all the other programmes and books released by so-called experts who only exploit others health concerns to sell or make money from them on a cycle eg weight watchers, slimming world et cetera.
We all now have the facility of a NHS Covid pass – is your individual QR Code which links to your data – the example here is your vaccination record. As it accesses this data it can be a conduit both ways for other information.
Once you have had your Health MOT it will contain your weight and height and other inner info, such as your muscle mass, water % , bone mass, fat readings both overall and visceral, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and anything else that they find out. You could ask them to load up your measurements so when you buy clothes online or in a shop you will know what fits. Keeping an eye on your size is a clear barometer of overall shape, and with a 3D rendition would help you be more aware of yourself as others see you. It could to your benefit list your allergies, or preferences (so there is no need for provocative outward signs on packages) so that if you scan yourself in to any place where you buy food outside the home or if you are cooking at home you scan in the ingredients you will know which ones to include and which to exclude. It is a very easy task for manufacturers and processors to scan the QR code and type in the quantity added to any batch produced. They can also do readings say of nuts in the ambient atmosphere, these can be included as a %age even a fraction of one. The end product could also have a QR code on it. There is a really good use of these for traceability and for not needing as much food deteriorating plastic on a product – cabbages are kept better preserved and protected by leaving their outer leaves on – the label sticker could be attached to the stalk – you could find the grid reference for the field these were harvested from! How cool is that!
This is all inspired by hearing in the 1970s when I was a child grown-ups saying to each other in the supermarkets “ought you to be buying that!?” ie “I think you’re too fat and shouldn’t have that” they were quite explicit then and certainly didn’t hold back their opinions. People were a lot thinner in the 1970s. I think this helped.
I think these days what would also help as you can hide behind your computer screen and order whatever you like and nobody’s going to see you or judge you in your own best interests to keep you well that Online food ordering should also require a scan of your card. The minimum order (e.g. £30 / £40) should be minimised so you only order what you really need, you are not forced into the temptation of looking for foods you don’t need to buy them to add to most likely add your own weight. In order to make this worth the while of those food delivery supermarkets there should be local delivery points in public places, eg. Corner shops, pubs etc where the deliveries for many people could be boxed together into ambient, chilled and frozen and when the paid customer comes in with their own bags they quote their order number and their items are gathered together. They can reject substitutes and get an immediate refund for these, as before no-one needs what they don’t need.
People need different motivations to help them succeed. We could all compete to have the best health data. Like the daily Covid information we could get detailed data on the weight of the entire country, county, town etc. As when we are weighed for our Health MOTs the location information for that data on a zone level would be a known. From our height and other information it would be know how much overweight or obese we are, and that would be recordable as a number per zone in each category. When you are seen to be overweight you will be required to have more regular weigh-ins throughout the year, monthly for the mildly overweight, weekly for the very overweight and obese and more frequently for the morbidly obese – so we would have figures for all this. These could be broadcast on local and national news, shame might shift it and pride would be the result. This could also be detailed down to; Inter company – industrial estate – town , area , county – individual, family, community. A National contest where we all help each other to get better. Doing this as an individual effort is like putting smooth squares together, they may look individually perfect but they slide apart, a jigsaw is a better way, where we have bits of us sticking out and empty pockets, helping one another is containing the bulges and filling in the gaps, we lock firmly and surely, it is like a lovely hug for one another. We should help one another. I think it is very sad in history where people like George IV and Henry VIII were not disciplined by others, people were too scared to do so, like the Monarch – he inherited his role so that is the reality of his status – Kim Jong cheese face – clearly no-one dares or cares to take all the excess food from him, whilst many of his people are very hungry, the case with the historic monarchs, though as in all cases they all wanted to. It shows how out of control can be disastrous for others and also for the individual, we are all people.
We could help those living alone via a Eat with me app or zoom, online socialisation and company, like at a dinner party, this creates consciousness when eating, awareness as not alone and aware of others watching you, you also see what others are eating and feel increasingly uncomfortable eating more than them, they can also make you aware if you are not of how much you are eating and influence your food behaviour. Perhaps exercise done could come into the conversation. You never know you may find someone you could live with who could keep an eye on you and a lock on the kitchen door too!
This one may come across as controversial, but our baggage is weighed as we board a plane to make the aeroplane balanced so it flies safely. I have also seen objections by people who find others getting the space they paid for, so they are squeezed in. Yet we don’t do a Pay by weight for people. Really thinking Green Ecology and Fuel Economy when travelling by air you should be weighed with your luggage so you pay for what you are getting, light people carrying less should pay less – obviously the weight of the plane is something we all share equally – this might be just the push you need to get your personal health airborne – after all the staff on these flights are pushed to keep trim to slide through the aisles comfortably past each other without bumping into passengers spilling their drinks.
At Work donuts etc etc are given out as staff motivators, really people would prefer more pay. Often they are rewards for excellent performance too. This needs thinking through, okay where people are physically flat out it’s a good safety device, or in very poor weather this can give the energy out to ward off potential illnesses. Fun sport stuff at work e.g. inflatables which you allowed to go on at work without this being frowned upon or damaging to your own personal reputation or career chances.
Basically all in all, to sum this all up, sport needs to become the Reward and stop being the punishment for which having gone through it you reward yourself with a donut and a dense with sugars and fats coffee ironically afterwards. We need to amend our attitudes, this may be more taxing and tiring than a % on VAT on a product but the bottom line will be very actively productive.
Workplace discrimination of fat people – I know I’ve said what we need to do to get the fat off people, we also need not to discriminate forcing fat undercover, underground, under the radar. People who are prohibited attitudinally tend to put all their energies into getting what they cannot easily have. The Prohibition of Alcohol in the US of A in the 1920s and 30s is a case in point here. If someone is behaving well and performing well at work they do not need nor require a disciplinary from you, which happens often in the workplace, which perpetuates obesity is outright discrimination of fat people, often the poorly behaved thinner person who also is not pulling their weight in the team gets the promotion and the praise and whatever the fatter person has done which is really good is ignored, they are often paid less and do not progress. The trouble with this as a model for improvement is that it is a complete failure. The fat person is fat because they cannot afford the good food, they cannot afford to risk hunger as any further stresses will put them over the edge and cause them to have a meltdown at work – too many people are knocking them and saying they’re bad when they’re not, they are constantly dealing with all that stuff, so a lectureathon from anyone is going to have an absolute zero positive effect, in fact it’s just another thing to endure in the day, which means that when they go home at night they are absolutely knackered and need a cup of tea to calm down and a chocolate bar to up their mood. The cycle perpetuates. You need, instead to discipline the poorly performing team dragger downer, and make them feel shame, this will up the confidence of the one that lacks it, they’ll lighten up mentally and have the freedom to improve themselves, and will have the income to find a home with the space to move around more in – remember thin celebrities have massive mansions – they’ll feel great, they’ll look great, the team will do great, it’s all great this way.
Some sprinklings from the herbs and spices cabinet – food for thought:
Maslow’s Needs Theorem – plus Job insecurity constant new ones having to reapply – from abroad not affecting basic needs of those at the top – constant change of lunch break times for the business – damages metabolism and control – eat to survive – cold workplaces
Over-burdening in your local area by the rich who give out the burdens but do not take them e.g. housing incomers
Bodies are input and output devices – you need a balanced approach of both to solve and sort out the quantity and quality within
Invested in watching others hoping they would succeed, we need to invest time in ourselves too to also be successful
Calories are different for each and every individual – QR personalised ratings for each food item
Work should not see the fat as indisciplined as this is inaccurate and this constant threat of losing your job means you cannot risk spending money on better food or paying to exercise
Representation on tv and award scheme literature affects you feeling welcome and can participate in each sport and sports in general
Jeremy Hunt’s dancefloor in his house – a Health Secretary with a secret or private dancefloor in his own home, a house that is living the dream!
There is also the Moral Dimension too.
Many churches and other religious places feast in what might be perceived as sinful in a deadly capacity. Let me lead you to the 7 deadly sins. To quote Robbie Williams “I’ve got my Catholic Shame…” Here is the list
Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
These are the Seven Virtues:
Faith is belief in the right things (including the virtues
Hope is taking a positive future view, that good will prevail.
Charity is concern for, and active helping of, others
Fortitude is never giving up.
Justice is being fair and equitable with others.
Prudence is care of and moderation with money.
Temperance is moderation of needed things and abstinence from things which are not needed.
Serious
If all the above does not work, the final idea does get increasingly serious. A kind of Cruel to Be Kind approach, no-one wants to go there but needs must as they say.
Illegalisation of Feedering – Out of Controlling behaviour that requires prosecution to Free the Food addict and the fixated feeder to live more normal lives in sanity rather than insanity
Child-overfeeding to be defined as abuse – positive guidance away from this for the child ensuring both they and their peers know that this is not the child’s fault and discipline to the parents for their bad behaviour in allowing this to happen to a minor in their care. Threat of adoption, for a new start for the child if repairs and a new proper parental relationship is not forthcoming. Schools must be monitored to ensure they compel another child or and other children to play with them in a lively way, so they are not sat still alone and isolated at all – selecting play groups for this purpose at every breaktime, so the child destroys what is holding them back and builds happy healthy relationships with others.
Personal
Early neglect – Mary currency at 2 me teacher spotting I could not see what with the fact that I’d gone into French windows when 2
My Grandparents used to say that it was bad that I went to help myself to milk from the fridge when I was 2. My parents sent me to bed too early I think so I woke up too early. I also had to be stitched up after going through French Windows too when I was 2. My eyesight was not good, but they were unaware of this then, the stitches were needed close to my eyes, so I might have been blinded. I think they were generally blind to my needs, yet the same Grandparents went on an on about poor Mary, my sister having to relearn the currency when it decimalised, when she was 2. The differences between an elder and younger sibling’s love, care, attention and education are quite stark. I was further behind at school than my sister, it was a teacher who noticed from my reading style that I could not see, my eyesight has been corrected now, I would have had free cataract corrective surgery on the NHS if my eyes were only 1 point worse. I think from the rigidity of my sister’s brain structure and thinking that I am probably brighter than her, and from my imagination and ability to generate new ideas, but this early neglect which did lead to abuse – though this neglect is clearly an abuse in itself and must be addressed. Spoiling elder children by over-praising to give them an artificially unearned ego to the detriment and bullying of the younger ones must stop – this harms both mental and physical health and drives all people apart, in the workplace and politically, so global relationship health is harmed from the littlest of events, so this is extremely important. No-one must be told that they ‘have’ a brother or sister any more, no-one is a toy of their sibling, and no child goes to work so they should neither command or demand respect from their co-dependents, nor should any adult put them in command being in charge because they’re the eldest, they have not been elected to that position, being bigger and therefore more scarier is a recipe for bullying of all, and stating that form of conduct is condoned. Respect should be earned based on gifts given by that person to others not by demands made by them. Really eldests are the perpetual babies of their families being the centre of everything, other offspring take a more middle aged approach from the outset, being more humoured and easy going – this team led thinking should be encouraged. Schools should correct the over inflated egos of first borns and rise the smiles, hopes and confidence of those that followed them without the indulged priviledge 100% attention paid to them, whereas the progress made by those that followed, 2nds in particular having to start their lives to the screams of toddlers and them doing stuff to them that hurt, so they start not at 100% but probably 30% so teachers need to balance this out and make the eldests less self-centered sods, make them less selfish and a bit more humble as soon as they enter education and keep that up, to create a world of love and peace – harmony, teamwork, togetherness.
Personal stuff 8 and 14
I’ve been on the edges of both extremes, like the rhyme Michael Finnigan who first grew fat and them grew thin again, as a child. I was sent away to a mainly boys school too early at 7 years old, by the time I was 8 I was the fattest in the school, they used to weigh us in form groups, at the start and end of every term, and put the average of this in our reports, I was a stone over the others, I remember not enjoying this. I also remember being so stressed that I thought I may as well enjoy eating as it was the only joy I experienced. None of the issues that lead to my stress were addressed positively. I did experience being in trouble but being far too young for the experience did not help. Really if they had instead of punishments like work squad, detentions and standing still in the corner, they had given me 1 hour extra exercise a day all the issues I had would have melted away and all would have been much happier, both me and them. I did put on more and most weight in the shorter holidays to be fair and grow taller in the longer terms, they needed to face my parents and not blame me for the consequences of their neglect. 6 Years later when I was only just 14 I was abused by a family member who squeezed my tummy whilst kissing me with his tongue in my mouth, he was drunk at the time and has not recalled this, though I know from subsequent actions he does remember this. I had been slimming gradually being slim at 12 as standard but I remember my Mum using the word plump to the shop assistant when getting school uniform for my new school at 11, which I looked up in the dictionary later. I reacted, with inspiration from my hero at the time, Ghandi, and starved myself – I thought he cheated what with drinking the lemon infused water – I decided at 14 nearly a year after the abuse, to not drink. I had managed to not eat for 2 and a half days at 11 but the water made me feel dizzy. So this did make it less visible, but as we had to attend meals, a school friend told a teacher and they sent me to the infirmary. They treated this as anorexia, and as I was hungry, emotional and influentable I started to believe this. I used to smuggle away my Doctor Mum’s medical books and transpose the graph data on to my own graph paper – one of my school friends threw these books away, I was worried I’d get caught now, as I couldn’t return them to the shelf, I did try to replace one, and managed to, pre-internet this was quite an achievement. It was this book: Obesity and Anorexia Nervosa: A Question of Shape by Peter Daly and Joan Gomez. I was a stone lighter than the lightest in my class. They used to weigh us here but one by one in the infirmary consultation room, and I’d like most curious adolescents had had a stealthy quick unseen look at others results with their characteristic interest. The reading work I did here was very educational. I used to keep a diary of what I had eaten, trying to make this as little as possible, if I wrote too much I must have eaten too much, it was tedious with even the little I did eat at the time. In the recovery process I did develop oedema, you see this is post-famine people and whilst I was ill with it one of my eyes briefly went black and white only – I casually thought that this would be good for photography. It must be noted that being fat or thin is not just physical food based, it is clearly both sport and equally mentally and emotionally based too. Most schemes tackle this from a simplistic, instant gratification perspective – whilst ironically criticizing the lack of control over instant gratification of their target – this is the term I’d use, and this creates a defensive non-engaging characteristic, which is not helpful for resolution of the issue. Also that information digested without instructional advice can be dangerous, and the dangerous influence can appear very good on the surface. This is very confusing and can, after trying multiple times, create an effect that leads to giving up, hopelessly. The relationship with food should not be dismissed as people are not robotic things where you fix nuts and bolts and just like that they’re all fine again, there are many layers and they are much more complex than that.
I did write this book as a result of my experiences at 14 as it starts with the words Does it really matter, whether you’re fat or thin, it is what is deep inside, the person that is within. That and waiting at East Croydon railway station for the connecting train to school and seeing my English teacher Miss Hurley and feeling a bit guilty I wasn’t studying so I got my rough book out and started to write.
https://www.amazon.com/Indecision-Decisions-Elizabeth-Angela-Kingston/dp/1419617990 You can see this there, and the introduction that inspired Diversity in many fields, I thought I might have gone on too long in this bit and at the end before the book started a year or so after publication, but now I’m really proud of that bit. The book is designed to be coloured in and written all over and photocopied for classes to discuss these things in a fun way as a politics primer. The price has gone strangely high so I will be seeing what I can do about this fast, so that this text is freely available.
Colouring and art and discussing and talking about things are very good for mental health (as long as it’s not those fiddly tiny you’ll definitely go over the lines colouring in books for grown-ups in my opinion, they look stressful to me)
With respect we all will love each other better, without the sibling rivalry which can lead to markedly different lives, including a life of crime out of sheer frustration and constantly being told to fight to be as good as you should be by now. It is extremely difficult to be held back by a bully of a big sister or brother and to have this affect your entire life because everyone else is indoctrinated to do the same.
Most savings schemes for children and the untrained are really gift gathering into your account. You are not really learning how to save. Saving starts small. It then builds big. This scheme allows the learner saver to save from the smallest unit of their currency – most banks like you to have a bigger sum to start an account with them before they will let you open one.
When you are little you like to buy sweets, usually a very small quantity in a small bag.
When I was little I was given 10p for sweets 0.10 GBP chocolate bars were 11p so I tended to only have chocolate at Easter and Christmas or whenever a grown-up gave me some. There wasn’t a system to save that I understood at that age – saving was for when you were older, so when grown-ups gave you big sums of present money it went into your investment account for then. You never experienced the benefit in your childhood.
The sweets I could buy cost 1p some 2 for 1p and even 4 for 1p there was a half penny coin at the time, but I didn’t think of saving even that.
Saving is a life skill.
You may have heard of savings stamps, here is an example grown-ups used to use when I was a child – we asked, as children do, if we could stick the sticker in the book or the card. Children like stickers. Look it is Green!
The stamps were used as a way of saving for items to be bought.
This scheme is simply saving. We are not aiming to spend but to invest, for the future.
For this scheme children would buy stamps of all values and all colours and stick them on postcards. The postcards would be stamped on with a hand stamper and the amount they are worth added up and put into their account. The reason I thought of postcards is that we all sent them to each other at the time of my first thinking of this idea. Now people send fewer cards but it could be a good pleasure if children asked people to send them some, then they could reuse them licking and sticking stamps on them. I want the lick and stick stamp types used as then later on in their lives when those people have gone to the airport for destination Heaven they can carefully remove the stamps to remember them, this can be an inheritance of love for them then.
Postcards have other purposes in this educational experience as post is usually bills, okay a lot comes electronically but historically this was not the case and children are at a lower stage of development so this might aid their understanding of bills coming through. Postcards are also a positive thing in that they symbolise Holidays, which you have to save for. Also travel and trade requires travel.
Businesses might start to invite young people to request that they send them a postcard at their home – something to look forward to too.
It will also help shops and kiosks in holiday destinations to be able to sell these again, what with digital cameras and mobile phones, the market is virtually non-existent now. Also selling stamps from other countries which is an education in currency trading. This scheme could go international with being able to save stamps in different currency denominations and for these to be added and translated into your currency. We would obviously have to recognise them one by one to only use legitimate currency so we can derive the funds, say in ¥ € $ that looks like the word YES which is very positive!
For the postcards to be stamped and an account opened 10p or your lowest currency denominator x 10 e.g. 10c worth of stamps needs to be stuck onto one postcard.
You would then get a Savings Record Book with 10p as what you have saved in it. Then the next 9 times, unless you have put more 1p stamps you will have 9 more entries in it of 10p which will mean that you have saved £1 or 100p.
You can then go to the next stage where you can get certificates for your achievements. This is an historic Savings Certificate which gives you an idea of what I mean.
But what I was thinking was more of a sports award certificate like these:
Congratulations You (your name) have saved…
£1 for 1 Week
£2 for a Fortnight
£5 for a Month
£10 for 2 Months
£20 for 3 Months
£50 for 6 Months
£75 for 9 Months
£100 for 1 Year
£200 for 2 Years
£500 for 3 Years
£1000 for 4 Years
You will have to have £50 in your account for a complete 6 months. This is not I have saved £50 you know that as that is in your Savings Record Book. So the minimum time to get all of these is 7 weeks plus 20 months plus 10 years if you achieve these one at a time.
Once you have achieved certain Savings Certificates you will also be rewarded with Interest.
But not this type of interest where more money is added on, more like what is of interest to you. You will get these interesting things once a month.
At £10 for 2 Months:
The first interest you will be rewarded with are colouring sheets based on what you are interested in. At the place where you get your stamps stamped you will go and pick these up. You will have decided before you go online – a first introduction to online banking in a way that is understood simply. If you like dinosaurs this could be a colour-in-able fact sheet on dinosaurs. If you like dressing up your dolls you could choose one of those old-fashioned cut out paper doll to dress with clothes with tabs on them. These will be printed out in black and white like a statement is printed out in black and white
too.
At £100 for 1 Year:
The next level will allow you to have a monthly mini book in colour sent to you, with this you will learn the value of research and knowledge for investments. Again this will be material in a chosen subject. This will be accompanied by an exercise foldout for financial education to learn from. People always say that they should teach this in schools but owing to various reasons this never happens. It will include maths puzzles of real life financial scenarios so you are prepared for life in these matters. Shopping around – doing the maths to work out which product is the cheapest, is one example. Saving for a mortgage for a house and paying it off, the comparisons between renting and buying, all sorts of ways to convey what it is best to do. All these will be suited to the child’s age and abilities – the parents can select suitable worksheets for their child to learn from mentally actively.
At £200 for 2 Years
£500 for 3 Years
And £1000 for 4 Years
Stage three of rewards, in 3 stages, 3 levels, you will see the value of your savings in actual physical items. This will work with you entering in a monthly draw – a bit like a lottery but without money rewards, which an adult could take anyway from you, so to gain something you want, this will be visible and will be known by your peers that you get stuff if you save for it. The prizes you could get become better depending on your Savings Certificates. These will be little toys or items you are interested in which you will bid for on an online catalogue, sometimes you will win big, sometimes you won’t, you will get a little gift which you can pick up at the Stamping Point – like an online delivery, and as such this will be in brown paper packaging – it may or may not be tied up with string – but hopefully it will be a favourite thing! This will inspire an understanding of investments – sometimes they do well and sometimes not so well. As they are children at a fragile stage so you do not want them to perceive investments as bad things or losses, a poor return (a bit rubbish toy gift – as the wooden spoon) will be a more positive start I feel.
At 5 Years – so 1 Year after they have got the £1000 for 4 Years Savings Certificate – this period length could be different, the time length is geared at when they may feel ready to move on to the next stage – the child could be rewarded by joining a Savings Club – they will have their own Account – with very favourable interest rates – they will know the value of this. The stamps will turn into App icons. This will include an online forum where they can discuss financial things of interest to them, for example crypto currency, investing in art, could be anything. This is the adolescent stage of saving. They will need to bring their A game to the field. They will have access to financial advisors to learn from. They could be referred to as Apprentices, a young worker term, which will make them feel like they are being treated like adults which they will respect. They will have Access to All Areas in this Club. The Aim is to make their savings Ascend to even higher levels, so one thing we all aim for, owning our own home, can be Achieved.
For e.g.s:
But ours will be more fun, more interactive, a bit like eToro where I have invested in Bitcoins and other Crypto etc.
I did feel and think that when I first thought of this idea that this could also be an Introduction to Savings Scheme for adults too, as I have experience with helping poor people with basics, and one of the things that crops up is the lack of basic financial education. The interests for adults would be skills training from cooking from scratch to workplace training – maybe we could negotiate to allow these savings saved here to be discounted by benefits agencies to help people permanently out of their own particular ruts – along with a locked Savings Scheme with the same Forum and Free Financial Advice as in the Adolescent Scheme part. The locked element can be unlocked only with an investment in your own home – this is because that is the way out to Firm Financial Freedom – and then we could get investment from the Government to Aid the higher than normal interest rates, which will Save them in the long term too, as mortgage interest payments on unemployment in the long term tend to be lower than rent payments, saving the taxpayer from paying out, which I’m sure they will declare an interest in and owning your own home is far more interesting than the bland monochrome décor of a home you do not own, you can colour it in as you like.
Image big light blue balloon with a littler dark blue balloon looking like O2 what we want in the air.
This is a new crypto currency and it’s purpose is to save the planet in lots of little increments with lots of little power generators, lots of little greening and cooling initiatives.
I’ve chosen Balloon as a name as this is how crypto currency works. This is different from other types of investment as what you put in can shrink or grow, it cannot entirely disappear. The value of what you hold is in the volume of the air. You can choose to be paid interest in the form of air in the Balloons you hold, or you can be paid in Balloons. This can be good in the long run as when the value increases all Balloons increase their value with the same volume of air, so by being paid in more Balloons your air volume or value will increase faster each time. You could choose to get an income of your currency, deriving the value, at any point.
Crypto is mined by miners, these are people who more than double check transactions to keep them safe, they dozen check them, they are good eggs, and what they do in the process is secure them, encrypting them, turning numbers into 1s and 0s so no-one can listen in to the trading conversation and hack it, stealing the money away, in a sense they are giving your liquid assets a tougher shell. This is highly technical using computer programming knowledge. A little bit of your investment would pay them then they would invest your investment into something that will generate funds as it generates electricity, and people pay for that electricity, which will then be returned to you, your return on your investment.
Picture of egg balloon egg balloon egg balloon – of 3 different ascending sizes – illustrating how the derivation V of your investment pays in the value going up
The 3 letter name of this currency will be o0O as in lower case o number 0 upper case O as that is Balloons expanding.
I thought in Covid that on seeing the skies so clearly and having people stuck sitting in their homes that they should have been put to good use generating change. I was and am thinking of piece work at home mostly though this I also visualise being done in small workshops. Some people could make the elements of the kits, for example nuts bolts boards panels blades et cetera. Other people could assemble these small parts, they would in the most part be small – lots of little – into little kits with a sheet of instructions. These would be sent to locations like homes where people would put them together, it could be
Really oil energy is in reality lots of little leaves converted over a long period of time into oil – we see a slight rainbow film of oil from leaves when they have turned dark brown in puddles of rain. Coal is tree trunks turned into compressed carbon – more compressed coal is a diamond, that’s what they are, coal under immense pressure.
This power generation system is lots of little adding up to a lot. Like lots of little breaths of air inflating a balloon until it is quite big, that sort of thing. It all adds up and it all makes sense, quite simply really.
an electricity generating bicycle transformer – so you can transform your gym equipment with resistor resistors instead of weights, where the terrific calorific energy you put in is turned into real power on the grid.
This is the real Newtonian Power of Forces where Work Done is for real – not just a vain pointless waste of energy, okay, yes you Do Look Good, with this you can both Look Good and Do Good.
This is what another group of people could be doing – generating power
Another group could be installing these little generators everywhere, including their own homes.
Each of these generators produces power which could pay all individuals involved in making them.
They could be paid in Balloons.
The investors would be investing currency into Balloon.
Invested currency going into Balloon could pay for the Balloons to be paid out.
Eventually the money would be made from the products generated from the power of all the lots of little generators; examples are metal products, high energy usage industries, totally electric transportation, and taxes on energy consumption creates revenue for government projects – nothing comes entirely for free – and this creates a better life for us all.
In the 1990s I suggested on my old school political website orionparty.org – up in 1997 so one of the earlier websites – I’ve kept it as is as a historical document – this idea:
Tide flow mills – a bit like water mills and wind mills – the only difference being that the water flow is at sea. The tides around the UK are constant, and no energy derivation device will stop this, though to slow it a bit slows the speed of the sea a tiny amount, and all these tiny amounts add up
Just like every drop of rain
Many drops can someday make a river
And many rivers go down to the sea
And the sea rolls on forever, forever
Chris de Burgh, so the ocean currents will have less energy in them, and the slower flow means that freezing is more possible, which is very good to counteract global warming.
This could be done by placing lots of little piers out into the sea – an added bonus is that if you fancied canoeing around the coast it’d be a bit less treacherous and possibly swim off them too, as long as safety cages around the energy generators were placed – an absolute must in my opinion for all the wildlife that also swims in the sea – and these as they are effectively like sieves you use in the kitchen will not affect flow at all, the oceans currents are unstoppable, I know I have been on a boat around Dover saying it was going at 7 knots, against the tide, the coastline view hardly changed in hours.
The devices are placed under these piers. They will be lovely places to walk to get a bit of fresh air too, which is the main purpose of these piers, as this form of generation will make all the air fresher by their actions:
These are larger scale projects that cost more money, I’m still thinking lots of little, it is a lot quicker too – you could use old pallets to make the piers for example.
I’m not proposing barrage systems where river life would be affected or unique phenomenon like the Severn bore would be ceased – as there must be a reason in nature for these which would not be wise to stop – also rivers must flow freely and as barrages stop the flow at the estuary point silting up would occur causing flooding – not good
And as you can see from the pictures there are lots of different ideas, lots of different ways power can be generated at sea without the need to affect this environment adversely – I would protect the little fish in the picture with the sieve protection so that in rough seas they are not cut up by any of this – yes I have thought all of this through.
Green Garden Sieves to protect the fish and dolphins and whales. Another good thing about this is that the energy produced could mean whales are left at peace in the sea as this produces opportunities for other food production using this energy.
There is in town infrastructure already there for wind generators – street lamps – when I stood for the local Council I stuck posters on the street lamp posts – This could also be a windmill they said with an illustration of a wind turbine. This could be a great revenue and power generation idea for local governments === and really handy for my new transport system idea going forward === I’d add reflector solar panels on top on the light source – which would be placed lower to light the street not people’s bedrooms – the new lights are as bright as day and you can see them wastefully lighting up space – like a roof with light reflectors underneath. The wind generators would go up the top half and at the top – pipe and blade style.
Look at the tree wind generator in the next section. Really the old fuel source of oil is in fact time decayed leaves (gas is a part of this process) then darken once they are off the tree, then decay, look at the rainbow film of oil on puddles in late Winter and you’ll see what I am saying.
Here is a very clear example more oily than I have ever seen:
Coal is the wood, the trunks, long decayed, as dead things go that colour over time – fire oddly has that same effect – maybe to do with energy – and if you pressurise that coal over time, it is already pressurised wood, it becomes diamonds.
To add these substances back into the soil repairs our act of releasing their dead spirits. It also gives ideas to your mind if you need to reproduce particular chemicals for specialised purposes.
This also illustrates that my lots of little approach makes sense, as all the ‘immediate’ fuels you consume where made of lots of little leaves, long growing trees and a very long time.
One way to generate power in the Winter when it is most needed is to use fields where crops grow, at the time when they are dormant. I would stripe the wires along the tramlines, to not disturb the vegetation, and use these to place the generators. Wind generators could be pipe style turbines so that they are very easy to store in the barns in the Summer when the barns will be empty and go out as the harvest comes in to be stored there. Transparent window solar panels could protect vulnerable crops for example vines from frosts too, some of the power that they generate could warm them too. With the cost of living crisis this would help keep bills down without going for the nuclear option. I also think to help people, instead of subsidising the food generators, it would be better to subsidise the food price itself, then the funds would go to where they are appreciated satisfying need not greed. Large landowners do not need help, the little people do.
When someone wants one of these little devices to generate electricity for their homes there could be a formula or a formal system to pay for them one by one.
The way this would work is that the cost of the item and its installation would be known, a simple example £10
They pay say £1000 a year.
Their energy supplier buys the item for them.
Their bill goes down by £11
They pay £999 that year and the energy supplier has had their money back.
So the person at this home sees that this is good and invests in another item and then after they have paid for this one by one adding on and on and the financial rewards add up bit by bit. They have then invested £100 and their bills have gradually fallen so now what they need to pay is £888.
They keep going and keep doing this. They have a gas boiler and are now thinking of going totally electric, gas is a bit dangerous anyway they acknowledge. With a few more investments, some are direct ones where they simply pay for the item which makes their bill go down without them needing to pay anyone back. This brings them closer and closer to that green goal. They take the plunge, as they can now afford to go totally electric. Initially their electricity bill goes up, but they factor this in as they no longer have a separate gas bill, even though to start with, yes they are paying more. They do some more one by one energy supplier investments which gradually changes that to the point where they again have the spare funds to pay up front for this.
Their house is buzzing with lots of little energy generating devices, like lots of little bees buzzing in a hive making money honey. They start to worry about bills less, and also soon start to feel free like a bird on the wing. It’s like they are a balloon rising in the clean clear air. Uplifting stuff.
Balloon could also be an investor, where people who invest in balloon act as the energy supplier. After all energy suppliers have an addiction to keeping you hooked, they will not have money flowing into themselves if you do become emancipated. Some people, perhaps who understand this technology less and who would be less confident in maintaining it to keep it going might wish to go totally balloon, so they gain from free energy in the long term and the surplus is sold off so the money gained from that is reinvested. That would be ideal, as once homes are on the way to being sorted a lower energy transport network can be worked on, in fact, one of the aims of the gains from this I have imagined is that the transport grid could be fuelled by electrons directly from all these little local sources, one example I campaigned for at the Millenium was that street lights could also be windmills, they could also have solar panels placed above their lights, reflecting the light down rather than wasting it, and lighting themselves up via the light of the Sun. There is a lot that could be done. Doing it little by little it can get done.
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Another Aspect of power is to keep the hot air in – I’m not talking about parliamentary hot air here but simply air that you have paid to heat up in your home, to keep it in there. If you don’t you are effectively taxing yourself because you did not do the less taxing task of insulating your home. You are also part of the planet’s global warming – directly.
Lovely to hear the Green leader Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas, who represents Brighton, agree with me on this, this is what she said:
Today of course has seen a new report from the Met Office that the climate emergency is accelerating even faster than people feared and so what I want to see is tackling that climate emergency front and centre of this Queen’s Speech. From what we’ve heard it doesn’t look likely, uhmm, what we are told about is an energy security bill, but if that’s anything like the energy security strategy which was launched last month then there’s nothing there to help home owner’s, there’s nothing in terms of a proper house by house, street by street, home insulation program, which would get people’s fuel bills down, it will tackle the cost of living crisis, create hundreds and thousands of jobs and tackle the climate emergency as well. So I do fear that once again there’s going to be a climate shaped hole at the heart of the Queen’s Speech.
Farmers have been complaining for a long time now that they do not have a market for their wool – how it used to be the most valuable part of a sheep – a lot of the wealth in England was on the backs of wool – in the House of Lords there is a woolsack that is a powerful place to sit. The Cotswolds is a wool wealthy area where The Prince of Wales, who sat on a throne, in the House of Lords, to give the Queen’s Speech, lives.
Polystyrene is hard to recycle and so are plastic bags – so an easy solution is to put polystyrene into these plastic bags – as smoothly as possible – then lay these in your loft leaving no gaps – polystyrene is also light so your ceiling will not cave in with this. Perhaps local groups in each local government administration area could be formed with an ability to gather these together and pair them, then distribute these to homes that need them.
I’ve seen fast fashion being transported in a not green way far away which no-one anywhere in the world wants to wear. What could be done here is to shred the clothing up and put it into clothing bags like pillowcases – these can then be laid in lofts to keep you all cosy and warm at home.
Some card is hard to put back into the recycling system – like those tetra pak cartons for liquid food. Also mixed materials which are a fiddley job to sort out into their component parts – they could be cut up into lots of little bits and paper bagged up with a brown cardboard box around that to stop the paper tearing in transit – these blocks could be stacked up high in your house so your heating bills don’t have to skyrocket any more.
Fibreglass is made of sand as glass is made of sand and there is plenty of sand in the world. To do all insulating quickly we need to use all our resources, and it is better to use what is to hand and will be wasted first and to not need to transport rocks, however small, around the world, using energy up to save energy. We could grow things in that sand, and that is definitely a green thing to do.
Countryfile Children in Need woolly hat contest: You were allowed a design using 4 colours in total.
Patrick, judge, Great British Sewing Bee: We are looking for a design that is eye catching, that is original, we want something that is fun, and we want something that people are really going to want to wear.
The winning design:
It gives a nod to the Pudsey colours, it’s like the landscape, with the green fields, and the blue sky, but there’s also a hint of rainbow in there, I think it’s really beautiful.
And what’s more it’s going to be manufactured in the UK.
Penelope Blogg: As a spinner and a knitter I’m so happy to hear that! I’m really happy.
Adam Henson: Congratulations!
I feel pleased that they incorporated the concepts of my design in the final result of someone else’s design, so that it became the colour of crops in fields and a rainbow, we need both rain and sun to grow crops. I did e-mail Adam Henson : (following this there are photos of different crops in fields in the UK)
Countryfile hats, conservation ideas, environmental concepts, food production and electricity generation
Wed 12/01/2022 14:30 To: hello@cotswoldfarmpark.co.uk
I was lucky to be able to go to the Countryfile at Christmas event as I was working that day, it was so near to where I live, we finished early so I got my chance. I wear my Countryfile bobble hat at work goes with what I wear and keeps my ears warm too, felt a bit like a groupie being the only one wearing one, but I was a warm one. I have created a design that illustrates the Countryside throughout the Seasons and the Industry of Farming too, which I will submit, photo of it attached here.
The reason for this e-mail is that I have some ideas to create electric power in the fields in Winter and non-growing months when it is most needed. I needed to see if I could work with you at the event, glad I got to walk with you in the Woodland Walk, and by chance saw you two more times later, the quiz and carol singing. It was a much needed relief from some stress stemming from supermarket experiences which I am working through, though this has reminded me of an idea to get produce to all in a better way I’ve had embryonically before, I’m thinking creatively there. I did enjoy a Cockerel at Christmas from Aldi. A larger tastier chicken – there are products like this which we used to get and one I’ve thought about which reduce food waste and the pointlessness of killing a male animal that could create great food. I’ve also had a concept for years of a more productive use of the land – to be honest I thought the complacency of the subsidy benefit system was a bit of a closed shop union which disenabled innovators from entering the field, literally, and thought no-one would respond positively until they felt a personal need to do so, I’ve been waiting until I would not be told to get off the land before I could release it. I am about your age, so time is of the essence!
Fortunately it’s not too far for me to travel to reach you, as I live in Swindon, I’d love to meet all your animal family too. I used to have a dog friend who taught me a lot and when we can travel again I’ll be on a quest to find her family. She taught me how to forage, and caught rabbits so we were privileged to be invited to view artifacts as locals from a dig in the Avenue at Avebury because of this. She is the inspiration of this :
and as she is rare, I cannot see a dog that looks exactly like her anywhere yet, she looked like a teddy bear like Pudsey, she was called Trixie, she reminded me of this idea, which your farm could be a beneficiary of :
This has had an influence as they offered finance to developing world countries at the COP in Glasgow, to pay them to preserve the environment, I’m not thinking in terms of charity here, as we are the beneficiary of the result, but of a respecting business deal here, as wildlife does mean less produce money and less left for consumption and people need money for food to eat.
I’m also working on this idea, I did note Sting was on TV at the same time as the Countryfile Christmas in the Park with a programme on a musical based on his Ship Building town childhood “When the last Ship Sails”, he now lives in Wilsford-cum-Lake in Wiltshire near Stonehenge. We could return to ship building with this idea. I can demonstrate how it works with you.
I would be grateful if you could help me make this idea happen, I think it may well help with coastal erosion prevention :
Decarbonization of air and maritime transport, development of “zero emission” cars, strengthening of the carbon market, support for households, fight against imported deforestation: our mobilization must not waver for a moment.
This is a series of ideas for the place where I am currently located, it does need a bit of an upgrade to feel good about itself and to be greater respected. I hope these are deemed to be ideas that will make Swindon sWINdon!
The first one concerns the building called The Locarno which has been unoccupied and unused for far too long, and the surrounding car parks. First the building itself. I’ve looked at the front of the building and thought the ground floor could be like a gentlemen’s club, in that there good be leather seats or similar, old cloth books around the walls, deep dark masculine decor – somewhere where men can be themselves – though these days all those who feel more at home in this environment would be equally welcome – it’s just to give you an idea of the atmospheric of the place. The place could be a coffee house and a place – not to compete with current venues unfairly – a serious non-alcoholic drink establishment – neither of these sweet or sickly stuff, more adult equivalents. Somewhere where both Brunel and Bond would make tracks to.
Upstairs an old-fashioned light Georgian style tearoom – with all the ingredients you would have got in a Lyons establishment, lovely sandwiches, savouries and cakes that were tasty for the grown up palate – again there are others who do sticky and sweet, this is more subtle in that, though if it were a ginger cake it would really be strongly flavoured – that sort of thing. The clock tower could be arranged so that three separate private rooms for both purposes so that ladies and gentlemen – or other relationship arrangements could enjoy an engagement using the high tea and or culinary provisions that gentlemen relish as supplied by the club and a good view solitary in their own company. They would be lifted up – that’s how they’d get there with stairs going up and down left and right of the square rooms looking face on too.
The large rectangle I think would make a good dance floor. Many people love Strictly Come Dancing and adore period dramas where they perform formal dancing and would love to experience this. A surrounding upper floor viewing balcony will add to the pleasure and participation, this could be accessed both via a lift and a formal staircase within.
The triangle would make an ace auction room – we did have a smaller one nearby at The Planks. It could be two storey. We watch those antiques programmes online and personally I’d love it if we had one of those places so we could again join in this pleasurable journey into the past. I know we do have charity shops where gems can be found, this sort of establishment could help these charities realise the full worth of donated assets to benefit their charities more this way.
There are surrounding car parks currently, I would transform them. I do have a better idea for parking just up the road, that’s next after this! This design would provide for disabled parking by narrowing the bit too wide pavement by the co-op and widening it on the Locarno side of the road. The roundabout will need a little shift too. The blue badge parking would be in the widened Locarno side at 45 degrees to the traffic making it easy to slot in and giving good visibility on going out. I’m considering an activated traffic light with a crossing system for a bit up the road so that as disabled drivers start to move, they then pause, and the traffic is stopped by the movement of their vehicles, that sort of thing, though most have managed in many traffic environments.
The idea for the car parks is a permanent Farmers’ Market, with permanent structures. I’m thinking like the permanent tents outside the Houses of Parliament by the River Thames for the Commons and the Lords, with their green and white and red and white striped tents that are always there. Meat is marketed in colour themes, which for this I would stick to. There are also various sensitivities that people have so to have individual tents where there is a door at either end, one to enter and the other to pay and go from, will help both flow within and allow real choices. The tents internally will be wide enough for a good walkway, then the width of two chest freezers either side and staffing space, taking into account tall people’s needs – the triangle bit of the tent will come down at the side at a good height. 4 of these structures will be placed in the larger car park accessed via Marlborough Road by that road in a row with the exits by that pavement, there will be sufficient space in between each tent to walk through to enter another. They will be in this order, starting with the one closest to the building:
Blue for Pork, including wild boar, sausages, bacon, pork charcuterie and pork products
Red for Beef, including bison, and all beef products in all their varieties, no dairy produce.
Green for Lamb, mutton, venison, goat, alpaca, and all products from that type of meat
Yellow for Chicken, cockerel, duck, goose, and all bird meat, but not eggs.
An Egg structure would be adjacent to the Yellow tent, with the pointy end (exit and entrance) adjacent to the Green tent. It would be a domed brown egg at the top and have a white wall coming down with a transparent quality about it so you could see within a globe of yellow yolk within. You would pay in the centre and the eggs would be displayed around the sides.
Next to that on the corner would be a round Big Cheese, with a triangle slice opening for entry and exit, allowing cheeses that required warmer temperatures to be near this and those that needed to be kept cool all the way around to the closed side of the triangle. You would enter in and be channelled in towards the edge at first, then to get out you would go past the checkout loop centrally located then exiting the same way.
On the other side of the Big Cheese would be these:
A Walnut shape for nuts and non-meat based protein products. This is the best nut shape as the sides rise high to form a roof and will in appearance complement the egg on the other side. You would enter and exit via a sliding door on the cheese side.
A Fish shape with a rear fin entrance and exit next to the side of the walnut without a door on it, this would narrow in to go into the main body of the Fish. The fish would curve around the natural contours, the concave side would be Turquoise and the convex silver Grey.
A Fruit Basket would be formed in the area next to the egg, cheese and walnut, in between the beef pork and fish. This would be a rectangular woven basket with a handle which would be the support structure for the roof that would look like a cloth covering within the woven outer frame which would have curved edges. The wide side nearest the vegetable plot would have an opening in it.
A Vegetable Plot with wooden sides like a raised bed, this will be another rectangle with square edges. I had an initial idea for using leaves as coverings to sell vegetables in the open. This concept will give that atmospheric whilst protecting people from being overly watered! Most of the sides and the roof will be see through with an under canopy of vegetable leaves with a solid structure stem to hold it all up. We will try to sell e.g. carrots under what looks like their tops as much as we can. The entrance for this will be on the same side of the fruit basket entrance. Deliveries can use the other side safely then and the whole site is more easily securable.
A Bread Basket – as bread needs to be kept dry – could be situated in where HSBC once was – there is a wheelchair lift outside. This could also be situated within the co-op. They already sell frozen items like you find at Lotmead pick your own Farm and do homemade style cakes within the store. With bread I was thinking mainly not too sweet stuff, could include pastries, sweet cakes can be bought at Glamo Rose along the same High Street – none of what I am suggesting here is in competition with current offerings, it is what people would wish to be able to purchase in town. In this same building where I am suggesting a Bread Basket – though I think it would be preferrable to have this located within the co-op as there does need to be a Staff Welfare break and rest area away from the customers, its accessibility is necessary for inclusivity, I think it would be ideal for that. The rest of the building has been proposed to be living accommodation which looks perfectly reasonable to me.
Paying for everything would be via barcode, basketing items as you go, QR codes will be required on all produce for their information, at the checkout you can request QR information print-outs. The sellers would be paid automatically by this system, they do not always have to be present. They can choose how to group themselves with others when they build up relationships. They can choose to leave items overnight at the market – security systems would be designed to keep the site safe with them – once they are happy to do so.
I was thinking of locating the vegan items separately around the other side of the Locarno – this is a possibility, with the Fruit Basket in the Apps Broker car park, the vegetables and nuts sold at the front of the building. So you know I kept that in mind, and at the outset of working out the placings at the start of this idea. This front of Locarno area could be a sitting out plaza zone or additional disabled blue badge parking.
I will be following this up as soon as I can with my parking proposal – watch this space!
Parking for the new Locarno or Old Town Hall, Cornmarket and surrounding fields is just up the road. Yes, disabled parking is on the spot nearby, and there will clearly be some at this new parking place. It is currently a car park but I think not the best organised one and it has the potential to have many more spaces. This is the one next to the co-op. What I would do to make it fit into the area beautifully is to design it to look like the surrounding houses. To do this I’d have floors named after rooms in homes, A Cellar, Gym and Games Room fully underground, the next floor up, which would be underground at one end and in the light at the Garden end would be called the Kitchen, Conservatory, Dining Room, the Entrance Hallway through the Garage doors that matched the arched curvature of the old buildings on Newport Street, the next one the Living Room, Lounge, Toyroom and Study zone, the next Bedrooms and Bathrooms, and the final one the Rooftop Loft. These would be decorated with decorated tiles to make you feel you were in these rooms – the good thing about kilned tiles is that graffiti drawn on them could be easily removed – also if they are damaged they can be replaced with replicas. The Kitchen, Conservatory Dining room floor would have kitchen cabinet designs and dining room tables on tiles on the all underground side, and front door facias with French windows on toughened glass with the design panels created from translucent materials – a secured enclosed ground floor area but looking like doors going out into the street to mirror those across the road and plants matching the actual real plants outside, which will remain. The next floor up will have in addition to the entry and exit arched entrances – which can lock overnight – could be useful if the car park was used as a venue on the odd occasion – front doors that look like real doors made of steel. The brickwork on this side will match the simple style it mirrors, and on the other side a row of uniquely designed houses, with different outer casing bricks to give that effect. The windows on each floor would be openings with tough metal frames looking like a 12 window pane window, 6 up 6 down. The inner structure would be the standard concrete, with the ramps at the road side, going up the one end and down the other, with drivers driving as they do in most car parks on each floor to reach the next one. There could be a small number of small ventilation windows on this side of houses bit to look like a side of a house. And to make it more authentic an actual – preferably living – green wall – pleasant. The co-op shop end, where people could walk up and down slopes and a lift which would be useful on icey days when the slope gets slippery – a slope would be more relaxing a safe than stairs and there could be artwork you could then safely look at going up and down to entertain you too, whilst holding on to the banister rail. This could have clear toughed glass windows too so you can enjoy the view and see that you’re near to the ground as you would know at home. The roof loft would be tiled going up in a slope high enough to not allow people to climb up it to jump off without a ladder so we could stop them trying in good time and would be open to the elements. The flooring could be different colours on each floor, like Bus Lane red, Green, Blue, Beige, Grey and Black, all tarmac colours currently available. If the car park were quiet and it was a lovely sunny day people could be allowed to have picnics on the Roof top! The construction plan would allow use before it is all complete as once the concrete inner structure is done, complete with ramps and slopes, initially the lines could be drawn on this to make it useable, and each floor could be cut-off for use in parts when the tiling is done, the flooring colour of the Entrance floor will need to be done first prior to opening, then the multiple upper floors one at a time, then the cellar, so there are to start with 2 floors available to park in then this increases. The outer casing can be constructed at any time. The Way In would be near the far end where the pedestrian slopes are and the lorries go to unload – with a give way sign or if deemed necessary a motion sensor traffic light to control the flow. The Way Out would be a little way along so when you turn left to go out you are already on the correct side of the road and exit is quick and efficient. Ticketing could be a simple card payment and key your car registration number, with a camera to sense how long you’ve been in the car park as you go out, where it will inform you how much it is debiting from your account – with minute by minute charging – so as soon as you are done with what you are doing or buying you can go back to your car and save yourself some money and at the same time free up another space for other people. On the odd occasion or more regularly if that’s what people want the place could be used to car boot sales – even if you’ve not got a car, you could get together with others if you like to pay as a pool of people for one car parking space and sell your stuff there – could be handicrafts you have made. This is just one example of the possible potential of the place.
Old Town is what I call in my own mind Uptown as you go up the hill to get there – Billy Joel fancied an Uptown Girl, he thought he was a Downtown man, “that’s what I am“ he said. Petula Clark thought it was good to go Downtown as it cheered you up!
When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go – downtown.
When you’ve got worries all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help I know downtown.
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown
Things will be great when you’re downtown
No finer place for sure downtown
Everything’s waiting for you.
I’ve wandered around the pedestrianised bit of the town centre and a few streets beyond, and in those streets beyond, mainly, I’ve seen quite a number of International Supermarkets – and then this super idea came into my mind, mainly because other supermarkets had closed or the road had been blocked off to us so the access was no longer easy, I remember when I bought my house in the 90s how thrilled I was that major chains were my local stores, mostly no more, they have gone out of town, free parking I reckon, but they have freed up this space for something else, something new. I’d also had a dream of a new kind of accommodation using old shops – illustrated here using what was once Laura Ashley, where I remember buying dresses I loved when they came into town – it was a buzz then – it can be again – in a different way – on-line has changed things dramatically. This building could be several homes using a concept of what I call Conservatory Gardens – where the completely windowed ground old-shop floor could be a garden, you’d enter in that way, I’m sure it would be possible to put a door in there without removing the light. You’d have stair up the back wall into your raised house, 3 floors in this case, the loft can be converted for an extra bedroom, living room kitchen on the 1st floor, bathroom and bedroom on the 2nd.
In addition to the conservatory garden housing, apartments within large blocks, bigger broader shop space on the ground type of places, could have an allocated square of space on the roof as their garden, a patio garden plot.
This concept could be completed where possible in the town centre to give it a lived in life. I remember when I was young trying to get to live in the David Murray John Tower Building – the flats and top maisonettes – I was on the list – ideal when you’re young, they look lovely, the business bit at the bottom could also be this by making the non-curved top windows openable so ventilating – what a super cool place to live. The apartment format the same as the ones above it.
Many of the International Supermarkets and other businesses on Commercial Road could be converted into housing. I am not the only one who has thought this. I’m not the only one who thinks they could be located better together in the centre of town either.
I also watch TV, as we all do, and look longingly at the street food and want to try it – if only I could afford the flights to get to it! I love those Global restaurants that have a buffet of the world, so you get to try little bits of everything, they are fantastic!
Here is my dream! :
What I’m thinking is of both a massive International Supermarket and… – comprising of many stores from all over the world – local e.g. Wiltshire, Yorkshire, Somerset; national for e.g. France, Polski, Italia, España; international e.g.s Indian, African, American, Chinese, Japanese – by countries and regions – lots of little stores selling all the stereotypical stuff we understand and want to keep buying at a reasonable price and posh specialist items that are otherwise hard to source. …And an International Restaurant consisting of street food, classy cuisine, regular fare for the regions, et cetera… consider your own concept. Where you can get items in small quantities – to prevent food waste – though there will be food only bins so they can be processed locally to become pigswill as there are locally producers that would benefit from this. Tables – I’m thinking that the large stores that could not be converted to housing could be reimagined to be anywhere you wanted to be – a fakeation, like a staycation but pretending you are actually abroad, fun! Pop-ups, tents, gazebos, could be all over the place – a permanent German Christmas market with their log cabins selling German sausages year round, marquees with bushmeat style barbeques just outside. The buzz of shopping up to the 90s was the business, the hustle and bustle and being with other people, it was so lively and lovely. This is the kind of atmospheric I am after.
Alongside the International food countries and regions could sell tourist items, arts and crafts from their country and other stuff we might fancy, also postcards with their national stamps, I thought it would be fun if people could post them there all stamped as if they were abroad to go to someone – no-one gets much through their letterboxes these days, so I think this would be most welcome mail on their mats. > : – ) =
There could also be language schools here, and certainly they can sell books and other media to help you learn – perhaps total immersion experiences so you practice as if you are abroad, so you can make mistakes here, learn from them and then when you travel be able to socialise confidently showing complete courtesy to your hosts by conversing in the language of their country, which is polite so you will be welcomed.
For those thinking Venetian right now = Some people say they want the canal to go through town = I have studied another route for that = one that does not disturb the traffic.
It will travel nearby here, at this point, so those on it can park their boats here (where the blue line is thicker – will be straight, the waves are water!) (I’ll map out the rest of the route later, 1 thing at a time) and buy stuff at the Designer Outlet Village and visit what could be called it’S Win Don or something else corny or less corny than that! People could go away with cloth bags full of goodies with that on it / they could bring their own + they could also be encouraged to bring their own cutlery, straws and plates if they fancy (for our plates etc. we can have centralised wash up for safety, hygiene and efficiency) some may well prefer Tupperware and go home with a takeaway from all over the world and pig out there on Swindon’s finest!As I these concepts were inspired whilst walking my dog – see also Free Food and Stuff on this blog site too – we must allow them into the outdoor space, this is a relaxed street space not an artificial island devoid of life, after all it is all that is natural we are consuming and benefitting from, so we must respect that – they also will help out – willingly – with keeping the street floor / ground free of food! There will be in this design people with pets tents so they can share their goodies together in love.
Some say places like what was Morrisons would make a good museum space, which will follow next, I have a better idea for the museums we need in Swindon – this store space is a good place for this world wide restaurant idea.
Alongside the International Shops, Supermarkets and Restaurants Cultural Entertainments should be shown – really brings it all to life, visitors could choose to pay them via app, card or cash (the set-up would pay them for being there and if a visitor felt they merited it they could top this up – all applicable taxes and pension savings would be correctly contributed to giving the performers rights and securities) from Peruvian Pipe Players to Russian Ballet, all sorts from everywhere, a Mela of melas, a complete mix of cultures – this could be a permanent Mela a meal of the senses, Reggae in Swindon Town and Pride could parade here every day of the year too – the ground is tough enough to take it. They’ve both been at the Town Gardens on and off and this does damage the grass – people go to gardens to switch off and get some peace – here many can mingle to get lively and lovely – and for those that love life this is The Place for that! To help the locals appreciate it too (I have had drunks really late at night and heard ladies and men in distress) I think a curfew of 10pm is in order, people would have time to disperse pre the REM sleep of others in the area. This would also be good for those travelling far on public transport, as there would be some available at this time, I’ve been to pop concerts at stadiums and arenas (we could have these in Swindon, yes, I have thought of that) and when they finish too late it can be really tough getting home, sometimes this rules out public transport, which is not good. I’m imagining people flocking from all over to Swindon for this fun and what they can get here to cook and have fun with when they get home that is a major trek to obtain elsewhere and telling all their friends too – happy faces all round. Talking of round I really can imagine the Stonehenge and Avebury tours with International tourists stopping off here for a bite to eat – satisfies all palates (you’ll be able to try and taste all sorts from all over, a culinary journey) and appetites (portion sizing will have proportionate pricing so you are encouraged to pay for only what you can eat and no more). They’ll be hungry for it after all that touring walking. There’s plenty of space for coach drop offs nearby – gathering beacons could be sited around the periphery to help tired tourists gather (perhaps trackers – wristbands / lanyards / clip-ons – could be borrowed for this too)
So businesses can establish themselves – this does take a bit of time to gain a reputation payment of the rent and rates combination would be as you earn it for international downtown. So a percentage of earnings would be deducted each transaction. To make this fair and dynamic more popular and higher paying businesses would be located in the most popular spots and those whose interest in their product is waning will be moved to the periphery, if interest in their offering waxes again they can move back in more centrally. This’ll encourage keenness and enthusiasm. When others ask for a spot those failing at the edges will lose their place entirely. Businesses will be given a time period to prove themselves to give themselves a chance. All providers will be checked for all the standard hygiene certification – but with far greater frequency than the norm, they will be expected to sign up to this. There are many reasons for this, with such a diversity of choice in multiple locations it is going to be hard to pinpoint a culprit, so the standard must be at the top end for this all of the time. An allergy and food info app will be available. I’m about to suggest something that includes this on another National HEALTH Service blog on this unin.us United in Us blogsite. You can read my thoughts on that there when it’s up for all to see.
Now I wish to travel across the tracks to the Oasis, yes the band is named after this place. It is, or currently was – due to lockdowns and lockouts – a paradise. They say they want to knock it down and build a new one, I say is to make it better at the back of the building, to enhance the good offering we have already got. To give you the picture of what a wonderful place I would make it I will take you on a journey of what I see, and sea too! :
You enter in up the current slope weaving your way curving from side to side in the form of the effect of a drop of rain on a pond, the cover above would ripple as such. Either side there would be places to purchase swimwear on one side and accessories on the other such as goggles and armbands – to access these you would leave the queue at one point and if you purchase something you would re-enter further up – the crew would see you have safe passage back into the queue – the exit on one side would be followed by the entrance at the other – tickets and time wristbands – where up until near the engineered closure you wore a colour and were called to exit when your colour came up – would be issued within this flow, so once you were within the building you would go straight to the changing rooms – coins used to be used on the lockers which we don’t carry anymore – these wristbands would have locker numbers on them – they would issue you one suitable for your needs, and if they weren’t returned you’d pay and that one would be deactivated soon after, you would leave them in the lockers to be gathered by the crew, if you returned with it you would get your deposit back.
You would travel inside through a tunnel that featured a sea scene screen on a slope downwards, meandering like a mature river to where the current steps open at the bottom are to the changing areas and a lift in the same place as required. You’d exit later via a return tunnel, parallel but would go out via either side of the entry cone, along the straight wall or if you choose an outer path that will take you onto the dome hill a bit for the last little thrill. The changing areas would be reorganised in lines of latitude – the 1st the actual changing area (outdoor shoes would now be back and allowed in to this area – outdoor shoes were out towards the end – it was fiddly trying to get your socks and shoes on slightly damp feet) You would change. Then you’d enter the 2nd latitude the locker area – a light above would direct your way to you colour area and arrows lit up too, after you’d done that you’d pass through the drying zone 3rd latitude, a few years before the final time I saw some splendid drying machines, you had to pay to use them, I was going to give them a go – these would be part of the package, it would be a bit breezy here! Then the 4th the shower area – many types of shampoo, conditioner and bodywash would be on tap – like handwash when you go to the loo, they would be piped through and topped up from above. So you would not need to bring bottles of stuff nor towels, there would be small towels to use there if you preferred and these would be laundered professionally. Completely palaver free fun! These areas would be unisex. Toilets for all sorts, male, female, disabled and child sized, would be available throughout the site as water can make you want to go, so you have no need to rush dangerously and slip to get to one. There could be places with shower heads you can move like in your bathrooms at home in sites with grid drainage where you could stand and go to the toilet in your swimwear and wash it all off – so you don’t have the grim and grippy task of undressing and dressing again and sitting on a damp toilet seat – we’ve all done this when at an outside swimming venue holding it in until we get to the showers then making it not obvious by showering at the same time. You will be back in the nice water all cleaned up and not desperate swiftly.
You would enter in at the current wave and beach pool via a small tunnel entrance. This would be familiar, as would the relatively quiet toddler pool. The 3 side slides would be increased in number – these used to be all orange, then blue was added – I’d have a rainbow of them! They could be in a diversity of textures, bumpy and wavy, not all straight and smooth, more interesting because now when you have done one you have done them all. You could access them via rainbow stairs too which would be again freely unlocked – they started to put a chained gate on them where you would have to wait in the cold from someone to come to open them, the spontaneous fun evaporated, this would return.
The newer gentle slide around and over the pool would be placed elsewhere and a new one with its source near the entrance to the pool for a different reason – we would not waste this one and put it in another zone. This enhanced design would be in individual zones, like a lively museum of water experiences. So take that one out of your mind right now and follow me. On the left side of the opening to the pools there would a square of waterfalls – the water from this would go through a grid and be pumped back up. This would be an experience of being inside a waterfall, Niagara Falls from the inside – though a bit warmer – walking up it in a square staircase going up 4 steps then a square landing up another 4, 4 of these and you above where you were. This will allow those who want to put their hands into the actual waterfall to do so and those who want to wander in wonder in the centre of the square can enjoy that too. You will see the main waterfall falling over a transparent strong plastic spout over you on the final landing and the other side pumped out like a linear watering can at different levels too – these would have varying volumes of water flowing from them. Once you are at the top – a staircase from this up 4 more steps will bring you to the next zone – a Roman aqueduct – the water pumped up will go in here first, some will go straight up to the main waterfall, this is as the 3 other waterfall sides will be lower and slower so the physics works. This aqueduct will have a bit of moving water flow clearly but it will be allowed out throughout the structure for safety – the entry will be hosed in and the outflow narrow slits. It will be shallow with edges you can sit on along it. Most people will be able to punt themselves along it with their own arms. You will be able to walk by the side of it and see it looks like a real aqueduct on one side – the other viewable to those coming in. At the end of this aqueduct would be a Roman Baths in the form of a Roman temple. There would be 4 baths of 4 different temperatures – none too extreme to allow children to go in safely. They would be named after Roman Gods:
Mars – the hot baths – like a hot bath at home – the mosaic floor would be Red and orange with a huge picture of the God, the planet Mars, volcanic flow like Vesuvius, also flames and chilli peppers – a modern twist in each one.
Venus – the comfortably cosy warm baths, with the Goddess Venus on a Shell, a beach scene of Yellow sand, couples in love both human and animal partners, together happy rather than intimate, and the planet Venus which has a sandy hue too.
Diana – the cool swimming pool, you’ll need to move around to keep warm, Green River and Lake scenes with wild animals and fields and forests like around Northern climes, all under a full Moon in a small portion of the day sky
Neptune – the cold pond – not too cold to be dangerous for the young – a bit like entering into the sea around the UK, ooo that’s freezing sort of thing, Blue Sea scenes; whales, sharks, silvery fish and scenes out in the ocean. Including a portrayal of the planet Neptune.
These would be in the form of 4 rectangles like the flag of St. George, forming a Cross Roads – the long bit would be called Fosse Way – and would start at the end of the Aqueduct – this would be great as the word means ditch in Latin. The short length would be an edit of Watling Street – another Roman Road, with an italic er in it Waterling Street!
To move on to the next zones – these will be situated in what is now the sports halls and election count venue area – there will be a bridge over the canal – I’ll go back to that in detail – this one to transition from Roman to Later Eras will be a mini replica of the Venetian Rialto Bridge.
The return journey will take you from the Fountain Park zone – again I’ll get back to that – via a Fountain you can go in! This is a reflection of the other side of going inside a Waterfall – this is where the water goes up! This will have a different wide spiral staircase – again with breaks in it – so you can stand and wonder at the view. The Fountain will come up in the centre and the flow will be designed to have its main spurt going right out away from the staircase, with little spurts being sent out to you growing as you go up, so you will get wet, with that mainly being like being in a shower, no heavy amounts of water going on any heads – you can reach out and put your hands into the flow. The spiral staircase will be like one in a castle but with a wide central circle so there are no bits with barely any stair as is the case at home when they curve round a corner – for function and safety. The steps will be wide and low so you will be able to stop and stare as you go up – large landings will take away from the aesthetic pleasure of a good appearance, I think, every 3 steps the next one will be wider for this, as wide as 3 steps. To gather the water at the bottom to pump it back up there will be a porous pavement cambered like a dew pond or bowl, then under the staircase there will be a grid to gather it in and pump it up again. There will need to be a tank there too.
When you get to the top there will be a Spring at the start of a Stream, this Stream will go in a fairly straight line with a little natural unevenness. You can walk on it and feel – minus the slime – as if you were walking in a stream – this could be a chalk stream – clear and clean – it’ll grow wider and additional flow will be added as would be the case in nature – the floor will feel a bit bumpy but will not contain any sharp elements. Any natural things like plants will be placed to the sides and will be realistically solid in form. Prehistoric Silbury Hill could be painted on the Fountain wall side by the Spring. This will continue on the flat until you reach the other edge. The name – it will be unnamed on the flat but it is obviously a replica of the Kennet at its source – and the nature of it will change then, although the clarity of the water will not, it will be called the River Ray at the start which will change to The Thames – a sign above will say The Thames when you get to that point – decorative features could be either to each side of the slide or as a part of it factoring in endurance and maintenance to work out what is realistic and practical. This is the replacement waterslide. It will be green like going down a river, and its course and style will match and mirror a river’s standard course. It’ll go out straight and do a bit of a turn to follow its current course over the rainbow slides and then start to go from side to side and turn and increasingly meander down and exit into the sand flats of The Thames Estuary – the sand flats could take the form of spongy shapes in a pool shaped like a trapezoid going outwards. You could travers along this on brown log pool noodle like rafts – so you can grip it and feel like it’s the real thing.
Returning to the brand new area, going past the Domebusters pool – I will get back to that – and close to the toddler quiet pool – there will be a calm Aquarium tunnel – you’ll be able to find Nemo, Dora and loads of other fish and sea life – these would be mainly in small tanks so each fish type is in its own friendly environment for it. This would be particularly lovely for the little ones and anyway it would not be safe for them to go on the upper route, yet. The floor could be sensory.
As they come out the other side they will come into the Fountain Park Zone – this is one rectangle on one side of the over route (the bit you can see as you enter the centre) We’ve all been tempted to, but know we mustn’t, get into a fountain in a city or park, we’d get caught and told off if we did, that’s what stops us. You can go in these!!! The floor of this zone will be colourised slightly bouncy rubber, giving way a bit like in small children’s areas – this is needed for grip and to ensure little ones bounce and do not get hurt, I see this area as being very useful for parents of mixed aged children where they have a little one to hold and entertain whilst keeping an eye on the bigger kids. This area will be one of two – the other spanning the other side which will be useful for this, you’ll see or sea what I have planned for in front of this fairly zen zone and will understand. There will be posh and slightly princessy scenes in the backdrop walls. They will have a dual function as fountains themselves. Fountains can come in many forms, the formal we all know and the fun. They can be interactive like the one outside Wembley Arena where you can press buttons to the side of it to soak others walking over it as you are on your way to a Madonna (Confessions tour) concert!!!! There is plenty of space for a densely packed splash park. Around the edges there will be soft padded stone (looks like) and recycled plastic park benches in places for those who did not sleep well last night to sit as their active children play, and others within. I’m imagining formal by the wall, mini iconic fountains from capital cities, perhaps some so small you could use your fingers as feet and others closer to scale. There could be a slightly 3D rendition, with water of the Tivoli Gardens in Rome on that wall, and also their Trevi fountain, moving on to the wide wall with stately home spectaculars and memorial city ones old and new, subtle and bright. The elements of the Pompidou centre one could be in the park at the bright side on the ground. So the interactive parts could be art and also engineering. There will be four fountains on the Tivoli Trevi side to sit in and around and go under the spout – these will be iconic park designs with a central spout design making sure they are 4 completely different designs.
On the other side there will be a quiet adults only fully zen zone. This will need to be adults only as it will contain jacuzzis. This is the Boats at Dock zone. This will give the appearance of both a quiet dock containing dreamboat yachts and a pond going up the flight of Caen Hill locks on the Kennet and Avon canal at Devizes. Though the floor will be completely white so as to be calm for the grow-ups and provide no attraction to the lively young, it will be shallow, quiet and restful – like the waters in The Lord’s My Shepherd. Artificial grass could emulate fields, plus slate and sandstone, edging and a bit of a raised border, with photographic scenery both of Milk Hill and white horses near the Kennet and Avon canal and cliffs sloping to beaches behind the yacht. The sides around it will be underwater side seating – with small zone control of the flows and bubbles of the jacuzzi equipment you are personally benefitting from. By all the side walls will be boats – a yacht (for cocktails), a canal boat (or pub), where within them you will be able to get a drink. Unfortunately due to safety concerns these will need to be totally tee total but what with the flavours and styles available now that is not too much of a sacrifice and it will save us the quandary of what to do with a drunken sailor, a question not yet answered, as if it had been people would have stopped asking it years ago! As this area is a fair size we could also incorporate stabilised anchored pocket pool loungers in the central area where the pillow could be raised above the water and with designed holes within them to allow massaging water flows – another jacuzzi in reality. All of these would be transparent or white, again. There could be a boring lane section on the side away from the wall in this sort of format so it is one way ( ——– ) your wristband will also double up as a tracker, when you enter in prior to being issued with one you will provide your e-mail address and or phone number plus for children their date of birth and height (I bought a Ocean sea creature themed Wallchart in Aldi recently that goes up to 160cm and 64 inches which could be handy here) so we can use these as entries or bar to entry for safety to certain areas – they will also be used as a storage of activities if you wish to get certificates and badges on exit or delivered to your home – tracker distances will be delivered this way. You may wish to use previous data next time you visit so machines about the place can tell you what you’ve already done and what they recommend you challenge yourself with next, via a QR code sent to you after the event which you can show next time you visit. Alternatively or additionally there could be a constant flow pool – which would know how far you had travelled based on the speed of the flow you had selected, or both. Again an adults only option.
The next sections will be called collectively Longitude and The Map – there will be a map of zones, like a treasure map in a Minecraft squared style, as each section will be a rectangle of some dimension. The whole box could be decorated outside to attract and awe the young as a treasure chest, placed on the ocean floor, treasure spilling out of the lid, this could have a curve upwards to it, which will hide the structural beams beneath – but allowing them ventilation – as they look rusty when in reality it is the coat of red paint beneath. Having its setting on the ocean floor means it can also at the same time double up as an aquarium, with 3D fish around it, and 3 Mermaids swimming nearby, these could be, with other fish raised detached artwork so it all looks very massively real.
Surrounding the map would be a canal, a stream, a river system complete with a dock where you can pick up a soft one person pedal paddle boat, inflatable canoes with hand flipper oars – like feet flippers for swimming, punts with fixed position central poles, mini dinghies with sails on – not functional sails but they’ll look like the real thing so will be fun (we could have wind blowers en route so they do get to work, very realistic too), and surf and paddle boards – there will be a flow stream to the water – so you can move without moving yourself and you can be less lazy and challenge the current. This will rise and fall, starting from a mountain scene, a lock system can get you down from the top – though this bit can be avoided and will only be permitted to old and mature enough people who have the strength to handle it sensibly, via a calm canal keeping you on a level, a bit like the flows you cause stirring up your own bath. This canal is the reason for that bridge – there can be other bridges e.g. London Bridge, hopefully it won’t fall down! This canal would be about as wide as in between the width and the length of one car parking space.
Now I will tell you about the rest of the treasures that lie within. The first will be on the side that is furthest away from the entrance. We had the Domebusters at around the same time as Richmond had a set of slides – without a swimming pool attached, they also used to have an ice rink, now sadly just a Tesco, we have a lovely swimming pool here, which I want unbusted and made even better. Outdoor Aqua Parks and indoor ones compete on the number and variety of slides they have on offer, we can offer a Wall of them! These will gradually graduate from gentle entry to the lethal Enema Enemy – I tried one of these at Agua Brava in Roses Catalunya, very brave. There will be pairs of slides with age, height and experience restrictions, your wristband will give us that information (Yes we will know if you’re wearing somebody else’s so don’t bother to try that one on!) :
The 1st 2 will enter into the water so you will be eased in, they will be short starting the other side of the box – they will go over the canal first before going into the water. And as in all of these slides they will be tubed, no danger of falling out in anyway.
Number 1 the drinking Straw will be completely straight, so you can see the end of your journey. You will, as you used to be able to go head first, I always went head first, I felt I had more control, sort of swimming come diving into the water, like a dolphin, fewer and fewer until there were none used the domebusters when it was all feet first, it was all fearful and not fun.
Number 2 the a bit Wavy, will be a bit wavy – the same length plus the bit the waviness makes, swishing slightly from side to side.
For the next 2 you will need to climb some more stairs – these will be reached by getting out of the exit pool and going over the bridge – perhaps London Bridge as it is iconic and will be aesthetically pleasing near to Fountain Park. You would travel up in a curve on air as it were via see through stairs to the higher level and the opening gates would be left raised as it would be a thrill to travel under that in a boat.
Number 3, Bumpy, will add the elements of step bumping down and
Number 4, Swervy, will both swerve and then swerve and fall a bit.
These will enter the pool with the lip at the water level.
The next 2 will add lights and sounds in 2 Seasonal themes
Number 5 will be a Christmas themed one – dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh. A long slow ride with lights looking like falling snow and illuminations of Christmas decorations.
Number 6 will be a darker (or more hopefully Harry Potter themed) Hallowe’en one with a night tube which will be illuminated by ghoulish ghostly scenes starting with witches on broomsticks or quidditch and woo-oo sounds etc. which will haunt you or Voldemort you, this will bump you from side to side and could be quite horrible, with the occasional taunt of trick or treat showing sweets and slime.
These will enter the water a few inches above the water line – to simulate flight! They will both speed up slightly at the end to facilitate that.
Number 7 will add extra jets of water on the ride, it’ll be the Rainforest Ride, you’ll travel through tree trunks in parts and see various wildlife in visuals and sounds.
Number 8 will be a Disco Party style themed – in stereo – you select a track theme, tracks choices or album by button prior to entry – lights and sounds all the way, and videos too.
All these rides will have been longer and higher as each pair progresses and will enter the water at different paired heights.
Number 9 will be The Challenger – elements that are more than slightly unnerving will be in this one, like going on a showy jet ski at speed.
Number 10 will be The Expert Diver – a twist and turn experience like underwater diving through rocks, over coral and a cave system: Do you come out at the end? Yes you do!
Some of these pairings could enter the exit pool in different places – unlike the current 3 – as the pool will be large so accommodating. The rule once in it will be to head out as soon as possible, 3 of it’s sides will be stepped all along them with handrails and a grippy rubber floor to walk along to get back to London Bridge for the next rides. On the stairs up there will be lanes, like as present and also directions to go up specific stairs for specific domed slides.
Adults will be able and allowed to start at Number 1, they will probably be nervous and need the easy start as much as a child. The next rides might suit them too, as these will be the longest but not always challenging in a robustly physical way. This is a Triptych rather than a Pair.
Number 11. The Nile, this will have lovely scenes of your passage on the River Styx on your journey to the underworld – quite beautiful Ancient Egyptian scenery and an ending that slows right down allowing you to choose which way you go at the Nile Delta. There will be 2 points along the route where you will also stop, the slide will rise slightly to help you, you must wait until a light goes from red to blue to travel through to the next stage (do not be in deNile about this or a crocodile will bite you on I dunno where, their choice to be frank! I have no control over that) – you will be detected here – this is so there are not too long waits at the source at the top.
Number 12. Rio – this one will take you on a tour of iconic river and water coursed canyons across the world to tracks like Duran Duran’s Rio and Enya’s Orinoco Flow, Hold back the River, James Bay, Don’t Pay the Ferryman, Chris de Burgh, …~~~… – great scenes great sounds.
Number 13. Aqua Vitae – this is a Culture trip through an iconic River (or rivers) The Ganges, a travel down it (or them), seeing and hearing on audio video screens what you would experience there.
These ones the worst for the most daring, you will be advised against them. They would be accessed by the highest steps, their journeys are both swift and scary.
Number 14 – the Mega-Lethal – like a series of mini bungee jumps in that you’d feel like you were in freefall which will be frightening and totally mental, you’d have to ride your mind that this would eventually end.
Number 15 – the Enema Enemy / NMANME – this is one slide down at such a high % gradient which produces such speed that the water literally and actually goes right up you – it really does – I have experienced this once at Agua Brava – note I said once not twice.
Both of these will allow you to brake at the end via 4 things, 1st a little lake, 2nd jets of water being pushed onto your feet and 3rd the slide going up a bit at the end, it will widen and flatten at this point and all of this will then 4th gently turn and be under the water level of the exit pool so you can enter calmly – you will need that.
You’re probably now thinking she was going to say about the old Domebusters, here I do. They were brilliant when they first came out, I will never forget them, but on the apparent refurb they were just painted over outside, which made them darker, and the original tube of lights in the fastest one had gone. The steps could be repurposed for the new construction. I found out from a friend that where they were, where you can see portholes I think – I reckon these were what to aim for at the bottom, the ocean floor – where the steps to the open slide within the Dome go up, was a deep pool where the challenge was that you tried to see how for you could go down in it. I did think of a deep diving element in the longitude map area but thought with all the noise and busy ness that would be dangerous, so this could be recreated here, in a different way, as then they used to hold their breaths for as long as they could and see how far down they could go. The Dome had not been busted at this point. I’m thinking that this would be an ideal true diving training experience, in this the calm zone of the place. I’m thinking that an experienced diver should be in the tank all the time watching on, that the experience time will be very short, minutes (queues, possible potential risk-taking over time) and that the breathing equipment would be part of the solid structure. The experienced diver would carry a well-protected so the inexperienced divers don’t get hurt by it oxygen supply, but the novices would not. I’m thinking that air could be supplied via tubes that have a bottom ending like a sink plunger, you put your head in it to breathe – these would be placed around the edges at various depths, and would be clearly visible. There would be 3 ladders around the edge too, taking you from the bottom to the top, with pool noodles on the handling grip so prevent head injuries on a hard thing jutting out. The novices would freedive the rest. There would a mini-model to be shown before you dive in and a training session too each time. You will only be guided down to a depth as instructed. The in-tank experienced diver will have air supply tubes for novices to use too, if they avail themselves of this it will be deemed they are struggling and they will be guided, without humiliation out for their own safety. At any time the experienced diver could hold them by the waist for a lift to the surface if they decided to. They will referee this at their discretion. Novices will be given these rules at the outset of the experience.
While I’m in this vicinity I will alter the infant pool. I will take out the pirate ship – this era will be executed in The Map. I’ll put a Noah’s Ark in it’s place. There is currently an elephant slide there. I will have elephant slides but will change this one for something new. Noah’s animals came in two by twos. So I will have 4 animal slides in pairs. One of these pairs will be wide enough for a Mummy or Daddy to hold their baby to slide down together, the other will be infant width but within infant hold Mummy’s or Daddy’s hand length, so they can go down on their own holding their parents’ hands for their own security and then go on their own with confidence. The slides will gradually get a little more steep. The green crocodile pair will be nearly horizontal, the pink hippos with a teeny tiny slope, the blue elephants a bit more with a little uptick at the end of their noses, the yellow giraffes’ necks would slope down going up the most. In the pool itself there would be a partly in water turtle dome so you can place your babies on it and let them experience a little dip right into your arms. Also a sit on dolphin which bumps forward and rear up and down like they are swimming in the sea and a whale which you can make squirt a fountain. Around the edge there will be a crawl around rainbow, this will dip down in steps from red through to purple so that you crawl along wet in red and are nearly swimming in purple, a little nearly swimming splashy simulation readying your muscles for the task. Swim support fins would be available to borrow in this area too – the pool where the Domebuster riders used to land in can be used as a swimming training pool too, so you are sure they can swim at a depth beyond themselves. Proving this competence will allow them access to Longitude and other areas available to other older children. Above the pool will be a rain cloud which you can choose to go under which will shower you with rain, and a super sun that will warm you up again. The Ark will be in 2 halves – the water side will have windows in it with pairs of animals at the windows – you can make them squirt water too. The other half will be a useful very quiet area for calming little ones and for any changing and feeding you may need to do – those with little ones will be able to bring stuff in to the pool area and leave it there supervised, you’ll get a number band to tie around it which will be the same as your wristband number, so staff can ask you for this to ensure it is there for you when you need it.
I think it would be nice for the little ones to have a place where they can play with bath toys with other tiny toddlers, a “big baby bath” is what I was thinking. Perhaps this could be placed in the dome behind where the plants are on the ground to the right of what will be the Rainbow Slides. This will make this area prohibitive to older children so hard plastic toys can be played with, I do not think it is safe for older children to play with these on their own in such a lively environment in The Map, Longitude area. And perhaps a “little bubble dome” where you go in and get to make bubbles and pop bubbles with an overflowing bubble bath within it – possibly no water just foam – this does need to be separately enclosed with a shower down rinse on exiting to stop this washing up water getting into any pools. These could look like a mini Oasis and reservoir in effect as the river above is going from side to side in its middle phase. Another aspect for the toddlers to key stage one infants in the area – like a train set – a canal water set, – Aquaplay, an extensive one with all they’ve got, Playmobil makes mini ones this with characters, these could be included too.
As you may remember I said I would use the blue slide currently in the Dome elsewhere, I would put the steps up to it starting in Zone 4, but making them narrower and in more of a line up to launch in Zone 1 where the slides are to go over the obstacle course in Zone 2 and be in the midst of water all around you in Zone 3 to land at the far end of the High Seas in Zone 4, fairly near the Fountain Park side.
I’ll now return to Longitude and the next places on The Map. These will be a lot more lively.
The next Zone, number 2 (as Zone 1 is the Waterslides) will be made up of a floating inflatable obstacle course. Inflatable play would take place all around with all sorts of inflatables. You can slide on flat water sliders in this zone too and compete with your friends.
Either side will be on one side a snakes and ladders with pool noodle ladders and snake slides that go directly into the water. This will both consist of 100 squares of 4 rows of 25 each – so not too high, they will then reach the length of the Zone.
And on the other a Wonderwall with elements in each square with slides you could slide away on, could be similar to – they will look like sponge school gym equipment triangles. You can climb around, on and in this engineering feature – you can control the water flow – pipes like a marble run where instead of marbles water, containing a bright industrial landscape including cogwheels, waterwheels, Archimedes’ screws, to draw water up and down – all sorts of taps. A wall of wonder – literally.
Zone 3 is chuck it all at me – jets from the side, water dumped from above, geysers from below, an all over fully immersive experience and sometimes somewhat unexpected! Beach Balls might fly. Balls that bounce on water will be in play. Body Bumpers could be worn. Water Polo could be played. Bungee pinging in and out of the water too and possibly being flown into the water via a chair that chucks you in it – chuck me at it all! On either side on this Zone will be elements of the water based game show Total Wipeout to try to succeed at!
Zone 4. X 2 = Pieces of Eight will be a pirate cove complete with a pirate ship moored to a central island and that island only being accessible via a climbing wall. You will be forced to walk the plank to get off the boat. Punishment dunkings will be administered by the Georgian looking authorities (staff) – this could be via chair or tied to a rope (safely in reality) and will be dropped in the water and pulled out 6 times – 6 of the best. You can fire water cannons at those who want your treasure or issue some friendly fire for fun. The parrots are very friendly and like to chat. You can dive for contraband – well at least you can touch it and make arrangements to rake it in incognito under the light of the moon! On the same side as the blue slide goes into this zone on the other corner I would put a red and white lighthouse – you’d climb up in the centre – with lots of portholes to look out from – and at the working lit light bit at the top you would descend via a red spiral slide to it’s base, over a couple of harmless slightly bumpy relatively smooth rocks back into the water.
Zone 5 could involve wet sponges. I’m hoping to have a Spongebob Squarepants world on one half of it, on the other also within the seas a Finding Nemo themed area, and on the surface scenes in islands of Lilliput, Brobdingag, and the Houyhnhnms & Yahoos on and above Laputa, you reach this via see-through stairs so it feels like you’re flying, all the kingdoms in Gulliver’s Travels – Swimming the dream.
The next Zone 6 allows you to experience what it really feels like to swim in the deep and to be an Astro Naut a Star Sailor. On one side of the dark tiled pond there will be a submerged yellow submarine with a scene of fluorescent creatures from the depths, on the other a space ship within the waters with a view of reflected metallic lit stars and rounds of planets you can space walk around – being in water is the closest thing to weightlessness you can get on earth. You’ll be given a head piece – both the deep diver and space suit head sets look remarkably similar, with an extended snorkel or pipe to the surface so you can really experience this. You may be given flippers so you can steer yourself effortlessly so you can study your newly discovered environment easily.
Zone 7 is the Synchronised Swimming, skills school and stroke experimentation zone. I’ve had fun swimming like a dolphin or seal, I have a whale of a time doing that. I use a clam butterfly stroke for my feet and use my hands and arms as pulling flippers through the water and bend my body creasing it up and sometimes head to the bottom floor to touch my tummy onto it, like they do. I also, for a break from backstroke to breathe when doing lengths, innovated what I call Boat Stroke, it is feet first, with them raised up together like the front or forward of a ship, I then row with my hands and arms. It’s not fast but adjusting your body position you can speed yourself up. You could try out things like mermaid flippers so you can swim like a mermaid or merman, or your fins could make you a pod of dolphins or whales. Swim support fins would only be available in the Dome area as you would have to be a competent swimmer to swim in the Longitude Zones for safety. Synchronised Swimming moves can be taught, both individually and as a team. Water Skills Awards can be aimed for – the good thing about the interactive wristbands with your data on them is that they can store what you’ve achieved and give you your certificates and badges once you’re all dried off.
Zone 8 is for Diving – an Olympic dimension regulation pool of the required depth and boards of standard heights above it – because the pool bottom is at ground level (we cannot undermine foundations) we may need to raise the roof a bit. The pool surrounds will be bolstered by a wide wall which will be topped by the canal river stream being in mountain mode, in that it will be raised up and can have a very solid base to contain it. The canal will go up a cave above which will be the diving board platforms, the individual springboards will also double up as wooden plank bridges across a fast flowing stream. These would be placed on the other side near the Boats at Dock Zone. The actual diving platform structure can be made to look like the peak of a mountain top, grey topped with a white cone. If the roof needs raising a bit a few fluffy clouds could be surrounding it so it looks like you’re flying from heaven. An additional diving confidence builder training slide could be added here, in sky blue where it would open up to a flat Y shape so you can start your flight with arms to your side like an aeroplane then point your arms forward like the nose of a rocket to land in the deep blue sea. This may make doing the dives a more relaxing and thrilling experience, the scenery may distract you and calm you from the fear.
The canal would take the experiences of water courses, in a straight line. The water would be pumped up to the top starting just after the cross over canal that stays level – so you have a choice to go up or remain relaxed in the slow flow. So in the realms of Zone 7. With a range of pumps in series, both to keep the water up and to keep it flowing around. Like a water jet pack, staff will be on hand for nozzle control, to make sure the power rating and direction makes it safe for individual users to ride. Hydro flight in water. So you will rise in your boat through the cave or a replica of the Box tunnel – could be a combo of the two, up into the open, onto the top in the calm and the quiet. Then it all starts to move down again, quite naturally and fast! In order to stem the flow, a bit, there will be bump locks, these will be plastic, the kind of soft firm plastic you have on traffic cones, so they hold back the water to let you traverse in stages, as you do in Devizes, you bump a button and they open, they close automatically before opening the next one for you – this area will always be well watched over. They’ll be on the level by the time they reach the Docks for them in an adjacent small zone to the Boats at Dock Zone. This is where the various craft will be stored, selected, advised upon and issued. The water would clearly be able to flow round on a level with all this other flow – either end of this will have staff with staffs in their hands to help people with their choices of water courses, to make sure they travel the way they wished to. The various bridges over it to reach each zone will mirror the characteristic of that zone, so you’ll be totally in the zone as it were. There will be a fairly narrow hard floor area at each point to stand upon each Pont d’Avignon or any other bridge from anywhere else. Around the wall side there will be scenery to match too – the flow can be interesting in parts perhaps making you mildly spin for example, with the flow of this engineered to take you out again with you thinking you’d done it all by yourself, you’re a survivor and you know you are! Right at the very top of the mountain where the flow is slow and calm proper reusable Christmas trees could be ‘planted’ they come in many varieties of tree you see.
Talking of Christmas and snow. I am thinking through both wacky and wonderful ideas for the snow dome concept that was aired. I will insert these here once fully formed. Off to work on another area, will be back shortly.
As regards the dry sports that are featured within the box area, I have noticed when watching urban explorer videos of the Oasis closed that the overhead drones spotted all the outdoor facilities being well utilized. I would put the squash courts outside; squash is seriously sweaty so that would be an improvement for all. We can fit each in the available gaps in the landscape we see. With the expansion of Swindon, the North now needs a sports centre – simple local pools are also needed, the Oasis has always been an experience venue, it should stay that way, I’m thinking Tadpole Farm way as I like the link with tadpoles and swimming, it’s a very clear link.
In order to build this I’d have the Oasis open Thursday to Sunday to allow major works to be done Monday to Wednesday. I think doing all the box – Longitude The Map and other Zones on that side first would be a good plan when The Oasis is open. Internal repairs can be made on the Dome side on closed days. Once all the Longitude Zones are in place I’d close to recreate the Dome side. Finally I’d do the works in the middle – using temporary changing tents as necessary and heated tube tunnels to link the two areas. This is so it can be swum in and money can come in to pay for the works in the interim.
I know there is a lot here, loads of activities, but the Oasis when it was opened had stuff that others did not so many travelled miles to get to experience this. In order to keep up we have to fill it up with fun. As The Oasis is near both the railway station and the bus station in an easy to get to by road town, we will have them flooding in here again and going back home exhilarated.
A quick journey up the hill back to Old Town before I continue with creative ideas in what was once know as Swindon New Town by the current Railway Station. This idea runs along the line which went into the Station in Old Town that no longer exists. It incorporates the pillars in the Baptist Tabernacle and all the other stones remaining that were salvaged and still kept. What I’m thinking is to recreate it, perhaps with all new masonry in the actual building and use the old pillar stones in an incorporated garden.
I’ve noted on maps that there is a current street name Roman Crescent and this is because there is a site of a Roman Villa there – viewable on old maps. So as this building which was situated near the New Town Hall (the Library attached to this building) looked Roman placing it around here would suit. I’m thinking of creating a Classical Music Venue alongside a Romantic Registry Office Wedding Venue. I can see that looking and sounding good. I would place it just down the road from the site of the Villa here at the Swindon red pointer:
To get to it you would travel in on the left hand side of the road on the steep footpath that goes under the railway bridge to a couple of houses. This is a one way system for cars at this point, you would keep going down the hill to exit where the currently blocked off bit by the bridge would be opened up and then turn right along Yardlee walk. At the point of another bridge there would be two way access for larger vehicles who would go straight up Stonehenge Road in a straight line to the venue, parking would be in the field just above the school’s playing field. Yardlee walk would be drivable and go onto Trecastle Road, then a new road would be built going across the field using the little sticking out bit of road that looks like it needs to continue to join up with the widening Mill Lane at the point where there is an entrance to it near the bridge with it being one way up the hill turning right, reopening the road for that where it was closed fairly recently, and two way with a priority for traffic already on the road at the bridge. You see there was no excuse to close the road to traffic, it was neither green (as this is an area of green fields being built on) nor necessary (due to increased traffic expected to the new buildings) as a little thinking which I have done solves this. The desire for safe cycling and pedestrian routes are served via the Old Railway Path, ironically the access path off this at Mill Lane, where the road is currently closed had it’s tarmac ripped out by what I remember as a bit of nimbyism. In fact all the little paths leading off or on the Old Railway Path need to be better, smoothed off, wider, slightly less steep so cyclists can safely leave and enter without awful effort and walkers can pass comfortably too. The concerns raised regarding motorbike use are easily solvable via simple cctv installed at these points. The railway path has an easy up slope and panoramic views, in some places it could be improved like the steep bit before the hedging near Mannington and that gate removed for smooth passage, that sort of thing, these are really substantial green improvements.
My train of thought now travels back down to the Railway Village. This is where I dream of putting the Museums, in the Heritage Quarter of our town. My reasoning for this location is that Locomotive transportation is located so close – when I have visited other towns for other reasons what I have wanted is that where I am going to be easy to get to without a lot of thinking, travel is tiring and too much to do can make you vulnerable to all sorts of things. This is so easy. The Museums would be visible from the track and so near to the bus station too, it’ll be a piece of cake or British Rail Danish Pastry – the town was named after a Dane King Swein after all – to reach. After travelling on the straight bit of track you would then leave the Station and move along a simple straight bit of road along the pavement and you would straightforwardly arrive.
I’m going to start on the Art Museum to house Swindon’s Spectacular Renowned Collection at the far end first. This would be located in the current Bristol Street Car Park. The building structure would go as far as the building structure of the next door UTC building as I wish to place the canal at the back of it in that space. The Ace thing about having a canal there is that it is brilliant security as trying to traverse a body of water to raid a building is hard and carrying stolen artwork over it would risk the value of the nicked asset, making it a relaxed form of wall, non-antagonistic so not threatening in appearance also. Another security feature is the fact that this is going to be a completely windowless box for the artwork within. This secures the treasured art itself as light and atmosphere needs to be controlled otherwise work can deteriorate. We will use the windows in the front for offices, these will be accessed via a separate entrance so that the staff cannot be coerced in any way in a heist. There will be a naturally lit rooftop studio, again with sharing the separate entrance with the offices, but in no way able to get into the collection space below. That’s the serious stuff covered.
This will be called THE SIGNAL BOX Art signposts and signifies, it directs thoughts and feelings, it uses a spectrum of colour to pass on a message. This name has a clear Railway Link. I’m sure your mind is buzzing with other concepts too, my mind is too, I’ll let it continue to move you and explain the structure of the place. The outer wrapper will be layered, the lower layer as it is with the station stone. The next a pebble dash of grey stones like on the tracks. Adding other stone to illustrate other structures at the bottom is a possibility, copper and plum stones just two examples, could look like little buildings and fields on a train set in a row. After this a couple of likes of interlinked track – my concept is an array of what this could be structured with but it must be something that will stay up there in a molecularly stable format needing not a lot of maintenance, so not wood. The layer on top of that a speed slate illusion, where slate slices are placed in such a way to look like trains travelling at speed with the sticking out slate and those inwardly placed creating a picture to show this, the trains could be quite narrow so you can get a good number of designs speeding past each other here. The top would be the glass crystal looking art studio for professionals who wished to use this space – could have schools in a space there, but this is primarily a quiet very well-lit space of non-interruption so you can do your best work. The glass crystal effect will be to produce a design that makes you feel you are in a train with scenery, would be a row of trains like in a station, the odd bird perhaps part of the design (discuss) using a metal frame and flat glass panels – so rainbow distorted light is not created – no colour would be used as this would be really annoying for the artists to know what colours they were using when creating their works. I can imagine different eras of trains with there carriages starting with one with a tall chimney stack to smooth recent designs, mainly the old however as they are more interesting and more detailed structurally. The angles and form would create a 3-D impression visible from satellites, amazing! The wall showing to the current live Railway Track could have a screen that looks like a massive station place sign which advertises what there is within which passengers will see as they pass – we should ask the station to allow people to stop off here for a break to carry on their travels later on in the day to allow them to do that with ease.
Inside I’m thinking of a flexible space Meccano structure so if we get large exhibits from time to time we can accommodate them. We can also easily engineer very small exhibitions within. To enter, I envision from one side, you could be transported on a conveyor belt with tracks drawn on it, this would be very accessible, seeing various visions of rural beauty as you go on your journey to be within. In order to process long crowds this would then keep going round the next 2 sides. The second side would be walked and be a night and day cities-scape and the third a vision of stations complete with bench seating, these are so if large numbers arrive at one time, they can be safely waiting to go in. You will be Signposted along the way! You will be Signalled in to The Box!
As an add on we could as we accommodate the Bodleian Library stored up in the Wroughton hangers, as a feature in this place, a book shelf somewhere on site, I think that would be lovely, to see a sample of all the academic books, inspirational literature, mindblowing scientific reports, transformational technical tomes et cetera would be rather a treat to see and mentally digest too.
This is a great transition too to the next Museum just down the road. From Bristles of Brushes on Bristol Street through London Road then Sheppard Street and on to Station Road. Here you will find THE ENGINE SHED. I’m housing this on what is currently the Main Car Park using the frontages visible on the street as part of the building, they were once part of a building, they will return to be part of a building again. This structure will be more of a rectangle shape, like a shed. You would enter via the gate at Minton Place, then progressing through the tunnel you’d go through a steam punk corridor, this would also act as a fun security device. I’m thinking of seeing before you as gates open and close the experience of being in an engine, with a firewall which you’d wait for it to stop, go through that, then a cogwheel knot you’d have to wait for it to unravel, lastly the steam zone where you’d wait for the clouds to clear. You’d be in capsules seeing this and this will awesomely encapsulate the experience you are about to see.
What would be within the Museum would be what is held at the London Science Museum stores up in Wroughton, they have loads of lovely engines up there. I remember going to an Open Day where they raced 3 cars dating from 1901-1909 one was Steam, as expected, one an early Petrol engine, the third car was Electric, with Batteries in the Boot – they ALL went fast – which goes to show we could have been green a century ago. I remember as a child seeing the children’s zone in the Museum at the time, the exhibits were very interactive with lots of buttons to press, I loved them, I would love to press the button on the train set which I thought if I press it faster it will go faster. I’m hopeful they have these stored somewhere so we can have these here. This locomotive shed is perfectly positioned to be seriously near to the science Research Council buildings and the UK Space Agency! I am all excited just thinking about it and all the amazing stuff they could put in here relating to all that! I could go on and on and on.
The shed could be Blueprint Blue on the outside with white line designs raised from this surface using pipes – this will make it easier to keep it looking good in the long term. Parts, tools and bits could appear to be screwed in, nailed to or hung on its structure too to make you think what you could do too if you put your mind to it. The shed will be a metal design similar in corrugation to very large warehouse structures being built now.
A lot of experiments could occur within, allowing the future and present scientists to have access to the full works Chemistry Set their Parents and Grandparents enjoyed and were inspired by, a very hands-on doing sort of place. Physics experiments on forces using your own body to fully immerse yourself in, you’ll physically really get in then! – a little bit of looking a lot of interaction In To Action!
The canal will be calmly flowing past here too, it’ll need a part of the Station Road West, the Staff and the Main car park. The canal will go into two in the West Car Park flowing over the wall to go down to re-join where it once flowed where there is a footpath and cycle path – don’t worry I’ve walked that through and worked that out and all can keep going there, I have a plan. I’ve also worked out how to get cars across and the best place for this so they can continue to park here a bit, I’m thinking of building up the building where the wall is for more capacity and other places and make it look nice too. It’ll cross over a bit to just beyond the tunnel, eventually heading in a straight line to go in front of Signal Point to provide an improved front of Station look in the form of a little Aqueduct – to cross over and go along considerately where the car parks are, over the low bridge and then on in the verge area of Station Road. I will describe its next paths later, I have had a very good look at all this. Just for clarity I have looked at the bit over Rodbourne Road, it will past behine the Vicarage Nursery and St. Mark’s Church along the line it is travelling as it goes over the bridge and it will enter this area at the back of the UTC. A small number of small buildings may need to be relocated, mostly the path is completely clear, which is great, and as these areas are not used a lot this route is not disruptive to industry, as would a route cutting off current transport routes, to me it has to do that, it makes good business sense.
Talking of business, which we will once we’ve crossed the road over to The Mechanics’ Institute. I think a practical use for it would be as a Conference Centre. It was always a place of learning, exploring, going forward, progress. It was the first Lending Library in the Country, 8 years before the one in Manchester. I did think once on the Millennium that this would be a perfect location for a library once again, in the centre of town near public transport. We have a new library now. I have been to quite a few Exhibitions and they usually are in large airless warehouses effectively, are very noisy and exhausting. That’s why this building lends itself better to this purpose. There is privacy and relative peace to think with its structure.
It is also perfectly located being an easy street along from the station and the buses go around it too, nearly all the time, so getting dropped off and picked up there is reassuring, you don’t have to remember where to go.
There are hotels of reasonable budgets in the area and a few new ones being built very near too, and there is also the potential of other office blocks being converted in this way; I’m thinking Signal Point at the Station, the Debenhams Bon Marche building, the old, new to me as an 1980s lady Zurich and Allied Dunbar buildings – I have been in rooms in big cities where you couldn’t open the window, you really don’t mind for a night or two or few as it means your space in an unfamiliar location is secure – air-conditioning ventilation could always be installed with instant personal temperature variation with fresh air. There are plentiful power points, plumbing is all that’s required, from my memory the ceilings have space gaps in them, possible to put this there. There’d be a good market for both high end and extreme budget places to be created to suit all comers. There are many other office blocks, a long list, what with increasing working from home, and there is a bus to Avebury from Swindon, as there is a bus to Stonehenge from Salisbury, we are also near the Cotswolds, so a safe hotel space allows you to explore great places, and Swindon is one of them.
I would keep the proposal structure up to a point, and the point is the wall between the Cinema and the Forum. The windows on the building housing the forum are aesthetically pleasing, the symmetry at this end needs to be preserved also it will look lovely that way. The forum is an open discussion and presentation zone, I would bring the presentation screen closer and make it retractable so it could perform other uses, it good act as a Greek theatre too. The open plan would allow a passage to walk by the windows to access the other side. An opening would be made in the wall for this by the left hand side entrance to the Cinema. As the forum has rising seating, which the Cinema auditorium would be better to have too for a good view, it would also be possible to have a walkway on this side too. There already is a corridor in the plan behind the Cinema, there just needs to be two openings at the left hand side of the Cinema, one from that corridor into the cinema room area, and one into the Forum room. You can them walk around the Forum surrounds and get to the other side both ways.
Upstairs access to the other side would be here past the forum on this side, in the area proposed to be an upstairs conservatory in The Mechanics’ Institute plans. Then travelled through a widened to double the width passage to a central access to the one room roof area to the other 1892 extension entrance side. It may be possible to do something similar on the stage lift side but I am concerned with both height and safety, the footfall may not need it. This would enable a stage access only area beyond the central access. If they needed one more width passage that wouldn’t impact on the stage area too greatly.
The roof room – accessible via steps and or an accessible slope, either side, as is slightly higher than the first floor owing to a part of The Forum (old Reading Room) ceiling – would be good for exhibitors, as they could use the triangular space behind them to store stuff, on shelves which could have locking roller blinds on them. The four rooms, two top two below could have doors open for additional exhibitors or closed as staff recovery zones to get away from it all and have a relaxing break off your feet.
Again like for The Forum and the Cinema I think the Theatre should have rising seating in a theatrical form, not a tables and chairs setting – though a few could be placed underneath. This should rise so that it meets the balcony, and continue to do so, so everyone gets a good view. This will be good for traffic flow at the end of a performance.
The theatre would make an excellent presentation area. Very good at conferences. Big enough for a discussive style of event. In this building there would therefore be three venues of differing style and size to suit multiple requirements.
There are further plans, sound structural proposals which are well thought through, photographs, diagrams and very interesting information to be found via this link https://www.swindon.gov.uk/info/20030/planning_and_regeneration/1016/the_swindon_heritage_action_zone/3 this helps visualise my thinking. My purpose is to propose a viable economic use for the building. This concept for a Conference Centre can colour your view on the conclusion of its restoration.
There wouldn’t be much of a need for catering bar drinks and very light refreshments because the town centre, very nearby would have plenty of these. In fact some of these town centre caterers could help the hotels providing breakfasts in the morning, perhaps specialising in providing one item, cooking it whilst they prep. So these elements can be removed. Also the small shops, there is no need for more competition so probably not a lot of calling for these. I wouldn’t have a specific Youth Wing. It is extra space, it could have a shallow stage with accessible slopes to it. I would make the dressing room area into an open plan zone. For theatrical shows the original dressing areas could be recreated with barrier boards. If we went up one more floor either side of the less interesting nor attractive middle block we could store these in a room above using the stage lift to move them. There could be other small stores on the other side accessed via a standard lift. I think structurally these would be better solid here. In order to show the lovely windows that enter the theatre area and to let in light, I’d have the upper first floor as conservatories either side, they could seem to match the David Murray John Building in curvature, where the ground floor is curved and be pointy with 5 matching buttresses to hold them up on the other side. It’s all nice and open and simple and flexible. With this sort of structure it would be possible to hold many events simultaneously to ensure full life on the site, or one big one. From having attended events both at Earls Court and the NEC the National Exhibition Centre, I think it would be capable of comparable events. Plus we have The Carriage Works nearby and potentially the Museums, both The Signal Box and The Engine Shed, if an event needed to stretch out a bit further. I wouldn’t have the Buffet Car here, you could use this concept for coffee and a Danish pastry by The Engine Shed, there could be a range of engines on a track and road actually moving here, that would be a thrill to watch.
The Local Community would have access to all these facilities to use whenever it is free, the Locals could be given a number of access passes to go to events here of their choosing. Having it as a Conference Centre means it’ll probably pay sufficiently to make free Community Events here very reasonable. The Mechanics’ Institute aims have always been about going forward, learning all the time, bettering yourself and socialising. So using the structure of the building to do this now for the people of the future is probably what they would want for it now if they were still alive. Let’s do it, like this, for them, in their memories. From the First Ever Public Library to The Library of Ideas!
Green, G. Peter M.; Swindon Railway Village, c.1935; STEAM – Museum of the Great Western Railway; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/swindon-railway-village-c-1935-65327
Now walk to the right of this picture from the yellow stone to the red brick where you will find the Inspiration for the National Health Service.
It used to have a Doctors’ Surgery in it. It also had 2 healthy swimming pools, one shallow and really warm, the other long and large and quite cool. The large pool is still open, as is the Turkish Baths. The Turkish Baths consist of hot rooms of varying temperatures, saunas, steam room and two dipping pools, one tepid, the other really cold.
The Turkish Baths consist of; 2 steam rooms, a spa pool, a cold plunge, 3 interconnecting hot rooms (tepidarium, caldarium & sudatorium), showers
I would make the most of this and keep all these features as they are with my new idea for the place, with additional elements to give it an enhanced purpose.
I would make it into a Climatic Immersion Experience. What I mean by that is that this place would be used to test yourself physically in various water and ice based experiences, so you could safely experience them prior to trying to do so in nature, to see if you were fit for it before putting yourself into unnecessary danger. I was lucky to be able to experience swimming in glacial waters in New Zealand whilst on a coach experience tour of different things including walking up a glacier. I thought that this was the only opportunity I’d have to do this, as it was only safe as there were other people around, I would never do this on my own because that would be dangerous. This is what I am visualising for this site, so people can dip into experiences on safe ground.
I would have 3 levels of experience, Relaxing – where you just casually go in to see what it’s like, Passive – where you’d go in for a time in a less insulated way – say cold experiences in a swimsuit. And Active – where you’d say go into a humid environment and cycle on a stationary pedal bike, perhaps wired up and monitored, to research your fitness levels prior to taking on and expedition or for personal curiosity.
I’d turn the warm small pool into a Caribbean experience, the long cold pool into an Atlantic experience. Both could have fun sessions with inflatables. I’m imagining the Atlantic pool could conduct rescue and life-saving exercises too.
There could be a large Room of Rain – the rain could be tropical or freezing – the floor could be squishy and hard to walk fast on with obstacles to simulate environments underfoot – the feel of creatures and plants but not actually real. There could be wind added, and trees and slopes. You could test yourself in here walking around in it for hours to see how you’d fare in the wild, and through doing so build up fitness for it (you could bring luggage on board to make it all the more real on your back) so when you arrive at location this is one less thing you have to factor in, that box has been ticked.
Similarly Snow and Ice Rooms – not necessarily in a fun way, much more seriously focussed. A continuous pool with icy water with an ice in it option could be available to swim in so you can see how long you would actually survive at sea in the Arctic or Antarctic. Perhaps a still pool with a lump of slippery ice you’ve got to climb onto. Another continuous pool could be really hot, where you’d need to see how long you can swim swiftly in it, perhaps being only able to drink water to replace sweat of the same high temperature as if you were in that environment fridge temperature water would not be available to you.
A Snow room with a Blizzard option to turn on so you get to experience how that feels like.
sWINdon
WINter
Wonderland
Mountain
This will be sited where Clare’s Equipment was, my name is also Clare! Previous to this it was a massive Great Western Railway Workshed!! From Rail tracks to Supermarket trolleys to Ski trails and beyond!!!
Another person whose name is Clare presented the Winter Olympics for the BBC as can be seen here:
This was Shed 24 of the GWR works Swindon
This site is across the road from the Oasis on A Massive triangular site:
The site is well shaped for this.
I will trace the above and sketch my plans for the 3 layers of the Mountain, Base, Inner and Top.
The Base will be dug to be underground – there are lovely trees I noted when doing a walk round of the site and digging down will dig these up, they can then be planted in Swindon parks, I was inspired by seeing previous pictures of the GWR Park on Faringdon Road to make a little woodland there or a sound and sight shield from the road, to make it more tranquil and beautiful (you’ll have to move the clever train spring bulb formation very carefully to be placed elsewhere in the park.
base level :
You can see from my sketch of The Base level that it is composed of mainly flat ice surface activities, plus slow and thoughtful ice related activities so the site is both completely inclusive and fun for all. You can also see from the lines coming from the following parts that they can accommodate spectators when events are on, most of the time they will specialise in introducing and training people to these disciplines. In the Speed Skating the slower people will be in the outer rings in normal leisure time. This means people can safely try their hand at Figure Skating moves without fear of collisions:
Curling Corner
Ice Hockey
Figure Skating
Speed Skating
This will be done in a sloping shelf format – so not too much room taken up and everyone is close to the action, imagine a book shelf where the shelves are sloping down at the front.
These activities are sited at the higher end of the Mountain.
At the lower end of the Mountain will be:
General Skating – Freedom to do what you like.
With all the specific activities on this level you can move between them, so you could choose to use this for warming up and cooling down or for skating friendly with others.
Frozen Land – like the movie set to look and feel like it. It’ll be designed to help the little and the slow to start on the ice. Actual Ice Skates with blades will not be present, we will use slidey shoes like they do in curling instead most of the time. However, if you show that you are good and it and sensible too we can let you do this to progress on dual blade skates and when we see you can skate well on these allow you to use the single blade skate. There will be times when each option is what you can only do at that time to help everyone learn at their own pace. There will be penguins for the little ones to balance on, Olaf snowmen for those a bit bigger. Polar Bears tall enough for a fully grown-up person for their Parents and Grandparents to support themselves whilst being around for their little ones. There will be items to aim for in the middle so your journeys do not have to be too long, like trees, Christmas trees, snowflake tables and doorways you can go through, log benches you can sit on for a rest, that sort of thing, a useful distraction from the fear with the words ‘Let it Go’ ‘Let it Snow’ ‘Grow Stronger’ ‘Go Faster’ on the perimeter walls to motivate the starter skaters.
Iceland – which I would love to be sponsored and run by Iceland the supermarket with a distribution depot nearby in part selling some small stuff – Ice Creams! And to look like Iceland the country with projection screens to make you think you are there and other icy lands too, with freezing breezes, not too fast nor too cold as this is meant to be fun. You could hear sounds of real animals and see some life size models. You can go into an igloo. Experience what it’s like in an Ice Hotel. You could learn how to make an igloo with an Eskimo and create you own Ice Sculptures too, you could walk on parts of glaciers and polar ice as if you were there – you’ll be provided with suitable footwear for this zone.
Fondue Fountain, Alpen Bowl, Slush Puppies – whilst with the Oasis next door I’ve said all food could be got at the International Street Food location nearby I concede that this place is cold all over and people will need something to keep themselves going – this is not a restaurant but a sampler site so you can get snack sized quantities to keep you going.
The Equipment store will be on this floor and also The Entrance.
Inner Middle :
In the Inner Middle at this point there will be a Take Off Platform – this will be quite high up, just below the ceiling. There will be a corridor from this Take Off Platform to get to the other areas, the Snowboard Cross and the Tobogganing For All Area.
The activities in this area going left to right or South West to North East are:
The Luge, BobSleigh, Skeleton Spaghetti – this will have one main run coursing its way around the entire large area. Because when these are placed on a hill there is space above them and space below – if you removed them from that hill and put them into a box, this is in a box, so that space can be filled with more tracks. These tracks can compose of elements of standard tracks, so athletes can practice each one individually, a mechanical speed pusher could be innovated so you can discover the difference each speed makes on your line for middle of track elements. A couple of shorter, safer, easier tracks could be included to introduce people to this in this space. It is probably clear to you now why I call this Spaghetti! To get to the top again follow the arrows to the large lift.
The Snowboard Cross zone is the next field of play. This will have 2 or 3 tracks, which for those who’d like it timer pads, press them at the start and finish to add the parts together to get your cumulative time. You go down the snowy slope and up the conveyor belt 3 times, the conveyor could be a passenger conveyor belt like at airports, smooth, but on a slope. Elements will be cumulated together compatibly. – called a magic carpet in the trade. They could cross over so using the curves you can create your own course, and add an element of danger – just like the real thing!
The next bit in the triangle shape at the end will be a Tobogganing For All area. This will have a low rope tow to get back to the top of the slope, which will have handles to hold onto, like as if you are holding a lead taking your dog for a walk, you stay on your toboggan and get a fun ride upwards. There will be a snow machine and also a mild wind machine to make it feel like you are in a snow dome globe or in a bit of a blizzard, which is also a bit of fun with it in your face. Sequences can be snow + wind , snow no wind , wind no snow , wait a while and repeat in any order. In a little corner of this area there could be a place for making real snowmen, with a place to colour in snow to add features.
TOP LAYER :
At the side starting at the top layer would be an Olympic sized Pipe, which you will be under when you enter the building and see from the take off platform in the middle.
This will be accessed via The Peak, which will be where everyone launches from.
On the side parallel to the Pipe will be The Moguls
Parallel and on one side at a slight angle a Snowboarding Course.
The next element on the top will be parallel to this and will be a Ski Jump in the form of a Big Air – as in a launching one from a ski slope where you perform tricks in the air – that sort of ski jump e.g. ski, take off, turn in the air, land hopefully successfully. Perhaps there could be 3 heights of the jump narrowly placed next to each other for progression.
A triangular Gentle Green level Ski Slope will be next.
Around from that a ‘Normal’ Ski Jump – and as these have numbered steps to launch from we could allow riders and flyers to take this a step at a time so that Normal would be at the 100th step and there would be others to build up to that, example names at specific steps I’ve thought of are Sub Normal, Long Subway – could be sponsored by Subway, perhaps these could be placed at 50 and 75 respectfully, others could think of other wacky names for the others e.g. 25 could be a Greggs – I’m on a roll here, a sausage roll!
To the side of that the Slalom – this could integrate a permanent giant and regular slalom – I did note at the Paralympics they used the very thin regular slalom poles for the partially sighted which did make me think that they should either use wider, brighter, lit up ones for them or even – if permitted and okay for the environment colour the snow for them – perhaps with a wide black ash line to weave in and out of – also the fact that most guides are men this would equalise participation for females.
After this the Blue level gradient Alpine ski slope – this could have integrated irregular camber in built – this would be a massive ask but it would be satisfying for regular users : a movable slope so as to create more variants of angles to practice on.
The Landing Zone would be at the bottom of the Green and Blue Ski Slopes. Slalom and Normal Ski Jump.
In order to get back to the top there would be travellators running around the edges starting with one at the bottom of the Moguls, Snowboarding Course, Big Air – maybe going one way to rise to The Peak at the side of the Moguls. Going the other way from the Green Ski Slope, the Normal Ski Jump, the Slalom and the Alpine Blue Ski Slope rounding off at the back of the Landing Zone, then up on the other side of the Alpine. They would need to be straight so there would be several with flat surface gaps in between these to allow people in and on and a waiting area from one to the other.
The roof above the top layer would be topped with blue solar panels, which would be at different angles to look like a crystalline mountain top, underneath this on the ceiling there would be many small snow machines * so the snow * could be * spread out * in each individual spout * there would be an array of spouts * like an asterisk * so it would fall light like snow * and be dispersed gently and evenly on the piste.
At early evening in the Winter nights the solar panels could become an aurora display, wonderous for all to behold.
The peak of the solar mountain top would be white snow capped topped by a six sided windmill looking like a rotating snowflake. This will pivot on a pole so this will be topped with a twinkling star:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
This WINter Wonderland Mountain is based in the North Star area of Swindon after all, which is named after a train, which was named after a Star, get my train of thought!?
Driving in to Swindon, you know you are getting near when you see the Christchurch spire and the modern David Murray John building, this will stick up a little bit more than them and inspire people to come into the town for a bit of fun, they will know exactly where to come!
Being right next door to the Oasis is excellent for this as all the slides I have suggested will be ideal training for the icy spaghetti track, and the diving and river will be good for the ski jumping and snow boarding.
Once people have tried out what is available at the centre of (the s can look like someone skiing, like the logo of Beijing 2022) sWINdon WINTER Wonderland Mountain (the M like a mountain!) they can go just outside our town for more experience. It is Ace that we have an outside Waterpark so near by where you can go water skiing. Knowing that those who ski jumped and did jumping tricks with their snow boards tried them out first in water is really handy here, as there could be a dedicated lake side facility for this, preferably a small lake as using a metallic grid in the water this could be frozen in the Winter for a more realistic experience and a snow machine activated to make the surface genuine.
It is also very handy that there is an Extreme Trampoline Park at the Link Centre as athletes practice and hone their moves from trampolines. Here also the Swindon Wildcats play their Ice Hockey at the side of the building there. I was thinking that 2 of 3 sides of the ice rink where they play and people skate on (I think this should remain as a budget venue) could be expanded outwards to create greater spectator seating to help support the team and allowing Swindon to have more than one team to train to be the best with each other.
I noted the shooting element in the Combined Event. We have a long-established shooting school by Barbury Castle, so they could manage the shooting element safely. I’ve been looking at appropriate hills to create artificial slopes on to, excluding all those that have archaeological features on them. I did happily find a hill suitable for practicing the combined event on very near to the Shooting School, Lower Upham Farm. They have got a little gallop there so I reckon they would be up for it.
I wanted to do a new kid of artificial snow slope, one that looked like and felt more like the real thing. And we have chalk on our hills and that is lovely and white. I was imagining in tribute to Swindon, in particular King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark who brought his Danish breed of pig here to this Hill or Dune (Swein’s Dune => Sweindune => Swindun => Swindon) with him to it’s new home in Wiltshire – hence Wiltshire Ham – we had Wild Boar before (in the days of Asterisk*! (*fictional but based on fact in fact) ) that the combined track design could look like a pig design in the hill, rather like the White Horses of Wiltshire.
The way this would be made is by mixing chalk with clear or white plastic making a hard surface. The next layer would be chalk plus plastic plus a shiny + glittery additive. Within these layers would be a metal grid, both holding it firmly in place and creating a cooling current, so we could bring the temperature of all of this freezing. Surrounding that could be a fuzz of metal to conduct this cold out widely. On top of all of this artificial snow could be pumped. If it’s good enough for the Olympics it will certainly do the trick here. We can pump natural water in and as is melts it will return to being natural water. The firm surface underneath this will have to be nice enough to use for Summer sports such as zorbing as it would be uneconomic and unnatural to keep it snowed under in the heat.
Other slopes could be made in this way for different reasons, Moguls just one example.
So everyone could launch their Winter Olympic and Paralympic careers here. Progression centres I have imagined could be for Swindon’s centre in the Brecon Beacons in South Wales.
I was thinking we needed to improve our national facilities if we were to do better at the Olympics going forward. It is because there are Curling facilities in Scotland that these people do so well in Curling. I was imagining sides across the country ultimately. Fortunately when I clicked on the Ordnance Survey shop page it came up with 3D maps of exactly the places I would put these for e.g.s:
Snowdon
The Peak District
The Big Ben Nevis National Winter World Standard Olympic Centre – it did seem very obvious to me that Scotland would be the place for a joint Professional and joyful Amateur site of the best standards, it is the UK’s highest peak after all.
Following on from the sketches for the arrangements of each base level, Inner Middle and TOP LAYER are the maps of possible Progression places nationally.
I will return to wet and watery things, water is the universal solvent, it carries the ingredients of life, the canal through the town which I talked of earlier on, but I first wish to walk through the town, from the Swindon Winter Wonderland Mountain, past the renewed and even more exciting Oasis, through the Art and Science Museums, The Signal Box and The Engine Shed by the Survival Centre, the Climatic Immersion Experience at the Health Hydro, having a bite to eat en route in town and then pausing at the top bit by the Wyvern Theatre. I’ll have talked to many people along the way to say hello. People have said we need a new venue in town, a new theatre, somewhere for big music names to play in town. I think I recall a rumour of them saying they wished to close and relocate the Magistrates, they are currently closed because there is a crack in the building, so that is a possibility. Looking at these two aerial photos you can see that the space available matches the space taken by Wembley Arena.
What I was thinking is that for massive music names and other genres of entertainment with very popular providers is that it is one mega venue.
This could be split into smaller theatres by the use of screens, so the stages are located in the centre, with dividers around, backstage and green rooms would be located under the seating surrounding this. One end would be a very well equipped big stage for the single artist events. The current Wyvern Theatre is a small venue, and a town the size of Swindon should have a bigger venue, particularly with its excellent transport links – easy to get in and out of generally speaking. The far end could have its seating formatted in the half round, so if you wished to stage Greek tragedies it would feel very real, and half of The Globe for Shakespeare comedies. The sides could have sliding screens so large professional and small school plays could be seen at the same site – which would be a thrill for a young thespian to think they had acted in exactly the same place as their hero worshipped idol.
The building choice of design could be either of these, perhaps put to a vote:
A love train – old steam engine design a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine
A flying pig – in tribute to Swein Forkbeard who brought Danish bacon to the town
A dune or hill – dune dun don – a simple design which could feature elements of the above in order to illustrate the Swine’s Dune history in a fun and captivating way.
At the rear and fore of the building training, dancing, rehearsal rooms, media and production facilities could be placed.
This is the ideal site for this as it is near all the eateries, which are in a roundabout way on the way to the station, and so near the bus boulevard too, so exiting the venue with minimal impact on locals will be very efficient. Their coaches could wait on each side facing the way that is ideal for their destination. Staff could be guide people individually to these points too. People could go for a park and ride option also as when I have been to Wembley industrial estates around charge people to park in their workplace car parks, there are plenty in Swindon which would be willing to make money from this, and they could deliver and pick up people, or there could be an arranged minibus service to all estates too.
Talking of driving, and thinking of Wembley Stadium, yes we could in the Borough of Swindon have a venue that size, if you go up to where the Princess Alexandra hospital at RAF Wroughton once was, I’m very familiar with this as my Mother Wing Cdr. Jo Kingston, was posted there as the Registrar and CMO, and this led me to live in Swindon, and the hangers on the airfield. When my Step Father retired – they’d met in the Falklands in the late 80s, he had fought in the conflict in 1984, he had a retirement party surrounded by fantastic artifacts, which I will remember all my life. This inspired me to create a green Mega Hanger in a location there. This could be the size of Wembley Stadium. Again see the aerial photos and you can see from the location that there is a lot of scope of where in the airfield site to place it from the photographs.
The great thing about this place as a venue is that it is really easy to get in and out of it at the end, and practically straight on to main roads and the motorway too. When you go to a major event in Wembley it can take about an hour to get out of the car park. With this location cars and coaches could be easily organised to go there directly, North, South, East and West. Designated zones to park on in the airfield based on where your home location is, and your car could face that way ready to go. I’ve imagined the system – even using temporary traffic lights for each line of traffic placed there.
To exit east you would travel from here 51.50489927562029, -1.7908405391880058
out along the farmtrack, turn right, then left, along some more, through the field turning right again to meet the Ridgeway road turning left, and on until you meet the A346 where you can go right to go south or left again to reach the M4 at Junction 15 and the east and the A419 to go further north.
To go West you’d exit at the A4361 and go left and then right and follow this road until you reached Junction 16. This could be your south west route too.
It all depends where you are coming from. Locals will know other routes to get in to this venue – there would be a lot of direction signs – I remember a high traffic sign for Madonna on the M4 into Cardiff which was exciting, lit venue signage – very useful if you are in the area for the first time ever or infrequently, reassuring and relaxing. We would recommend people turn up well in advance on the day, say in the morning or early afternoon, and then the venue will provide free in and out buses to the town centre street food eatery, so it will be possible for people to eat well. Many venues do not allow you to bring your own food it and then when you get inside it is just expensive rubbish, to think great and be fit to dance through the event you need to eat well. As events vary – you could have Winter inside equestrian for example – and they are not always on, it might be a better business plan to just go down the road – on event days another option could be to bring the street food to here – so there will be no need to provide permanent catering. Big matches of all sorts of sports could obviously use this space.
The design would completely blend in with the environment as the roof could be of grass or look like it. Perhaps people could walk on it and it could be decorated with real or artificial flowers occasionally, natural flowers are on chalk in short soil depths, so it would be possible to integrate this sort of thing, and that would be lovely. It could be dug down – archaeological preservation permitting – as Wembley is – air vents could look like trees like those on mounds nearby. The curve of the roof would gently land at ground level. One end would be enclosed and useful as a large space for stage trucks and could have massive doors as hangers do for aircraft – this will give great ventilation for the event, keeping everyone cool, and be a great fire escape. The other end could be a window with vents in it, and totally opening at the bottom of French windows for easy and speedy entry and exit – crowd processing could occur within streaming people in a lovely kind way – often this treatment is unnecessarily rough producing a male aggressive environment – they weirdly control liquids coming in yet booze flows far too freely, treating people more gently and with respect that they are here for a positive purpose, would generate a better more feminine friendly atmosphere. Rainbows of flowers would help too!
We can see economically things are not so good. We also know about Russia and Ukraine. You could see that Russia and Ukraine came after the EU and the UK. One thing leading to another. The big EU bullying the little UK and so on. Ukraine provides a lot of the world’s wheat and a lot of the world’s sunflower oil. The UK provided and still provides the EU with a lot of money:
From 2017:
Really everyone should work for what they get. There should be no transferrals – the account should be 0 zero – no bars going far to the left or far to the right. This is not fair.
We can also see China rising, this is through the hard work of their people in factories, so much so they have the money to empower themselves in other lands in the way that Europe used to be able to do before the two world wars. Europe is now about books and intellectualism not hard graft and it is becoming poorer relative to other world powers, even if it chooses to have its head in the sand about this. Really you could say that it has its head in a book, rather than reality. And this is rather sad as reality around it gets harder the less that it looks at it. Really it needs to put its body to work instead to survive. Nose to the grindstone, put your back into it, get on your bike, turn your hand at anything, anymore I find I’ll add to this list later… Head in the clouds or feet on the ground…
I’ve been thinking about how Europe as a Continent could survive and thrive. The trouble with the continent is that those who work hard for it don’t benefit from their work and those that don’t work benefit from this. This is demoralising and disincentivising.
There are a lot of travel options for the rich leisured youth of Europe, it’s a bit like the Grand Tour of Classical locations. This is all whilst poor youth work away, paying rent for small rooms, by the time they have enough money to travel they are too old to capitalize on this deal. And then they wonder why such people start to develop negative associations with abroad and then when they go abroad their holiday experiences are limited. They don’t feel welcome and wish to keep themselves safe, and need a drink to cope with the stress of it all. Then, to top it all they are subsidizing the trips, travel and personally profitable networking of others. The only costs the taxpayer should bear are ones that contribute to the collective treasury, not to a detached elite. I’m thinking of a weird dance display in the European Parliament when France handed over it’s Presidency, waste of money, awkward and disrespectful of all those who have paid in. The intellectual youth benefits, including the unlimited rail travel ticket should cease. If you want a holiday you pay for it. When these privileges started this was pre-internet, young people are always on their devices getting in touch with the world. Travel for working age people should only be for productive work related exchanges, to discover work practices elsewhere, and to build up useful business relationships, and the trips should be short, time is money, not everyone would be able to go but all of the business would benefit in real terms.
Notes : easy to travel to Europe – easy jet ryan air etc plus perhaps get the elderly with time on their hands and life experience, and lacking the benefits of the EU even though they have paid for it in their taxes for decades – to go and meet many people and build up links and twinning towns … paying for lunchtime meals at restaurants, visiting historical sites, staying at each other’s homes, building relationships – this brings the old excluded from all this fun, in, to do really productive work and bring in trade for others at the same time, and aid their own mental health as then they will be less lonely and have a great life purpose to the benefit of now and the future.
The UK would not have left the EU if it had been allowed to keep the money we worked for rather than our service being given to aristocratic takers who do no work. In terms of economics this makes no sense. The United Kingdom’s Empire was built on what is called “The Protestant Work Ethic” what this is is that you make a certain amount of money from your business, profit, and instead of spending it you reinvest it back into the business, and then the business makes more money, you grow in wealth. The merchant class emerged when the Black Death killed off the Feudal System. The Feudal System made those who did the most work at the bottom have the least, and those who benefitted from their work the most. Sheep were a third of the size then than now, I suspect the Lord of the Manor always took the biggest for themselves so gradually the stock got smaller. The cows the same, and cows were at least double the size they are now in the Stone Age, so these things do have both a short and long term effect.
In many ways also the threatening geo-politics would not have occurred if we had not stopped making things, and made another country that does, a country that is the size of a continent too, the supreme economic power in the world, we should have kept working for it, and now we must up our game, I’m not saying all of us are not working for it, but investments in the block are being directed towards the aristocratic types in the arts or intellectualism, though it is ironic and cruel that you get automatic copyright for books for a time after your death for free and free when you are alive, but if you invent something, and necessity is the mother of invention, usually inventors are poor or stem from poverty, you have to pay a lot to protect your rights, and pay more and more over time, than after a certain length of time you lose your rights. It is all prohibitive to prosperity. I did suggest an idea on my antique website started in 1997 orionparty.org with royalties being paid, with the state protecting, and varying royalty rates for different types of innovation so fewer sales of hospital equipment can obtain more money. I have suggested royalty software for videos, audio and text on this blogsite.
What I would demand is that everyone works for what they get in their land, so that it is fair, and so the countries who do not generate sufficient income for their benefits are pushed to do so, and those who work hard in rich countries do not lose all they have worked for when their factories are just given away, their jobs posted abroad as charity, this is demoralising and demotivating, and this is having and has had a negative effect on productivity.
So no export of funds no need for the exchange. So no contributors nor recipients. All hands on deck to save this ship, to stop it sinking, to make it sail well into the future. We’ll all be rich, loaded with treasures, and these will be perfectly legitimate treasures all well won. The British Empire was actually gained via re-investment of profits, this is called the Protestant Work Ethic. Catholic countries, and I am a Catholic, do far too much partying, they emphasise children more than the hard working adults, and in the heat they organise their day badly, in an endlessly tiring way, having 2 shifts per day with a rest in the middle, but we all know that we do not really rest when we know we have to go back. They do this because of the heat of the day. I have worked in the early hours of the morning, when it is always the coolest. I think instead of the manana manana approach they should get the work done in one early block, be back at home at the heat of the day and not have to go back later on that day. It is cruel to drain the funds of those in the cold north who are working hard to survive in that climate, to make them go cold and eat badly, you can only grow one crop per annum in the north, you can grow two in the south, so to be fair we need all that we work for, it is gross exploitation to take our wages away to the sun of others.
Personally we could see in the Covid pandemic that each Leader of each Country had to deal with it to suit the characters of the people in their land. This was noticeable, I did watch many of the different approaches with interest. Steering people with their own volition to comply is so very different with so many different people types. We have to take this into account when we consider our diplomatic and political relationships, and not try to force people to be what they’re not, Aesop’s The Wind and The Sun springs to my mind here.
Politically, and this is why I called this The United Nations of Europe, L’ is The in French, in French the word order is different, but I am thinking in terms of the Revelations Woman clothed with the Sun, with the Moon at her feet and a Crown of 12 stars on her head, and as Lune is Moon in French this is the real reason for this. Politically, this means that what I think would work best, and would be more workable as expansion increases. This is a bit like the United States, but as we are not States within one Nation this would not be accurate terminology, we are Nations that are United. We are United when we are not forced to be – the wind is force, the sun is when one is willingly in.
The debating chambers, there are two, I honestly think would make good concert venues. We could have a much better more beautiful set up. I love it when the world leaders go on summits in beautiful places with wonderful backdrops, it looks really good, it is also fun for them to get out and about and useful for them too to see people in the real world, to get them out of the political bubble. I know you’re thinking of the high level security at top events, but on an ongoing basis this would be much more subtle, Emmanuel Macron goes out and about a lot, pressing the flesh, absolutely actually, not just literally in a book or at a distance, and facing up to people’s concerns as they very robustly question him about absolutely anything. This is really good. No forms to fill, fewer gatekeepers, concerns addressed well before they fester within troublingly.
What I notice with those who are MEPs, Members of the European Parliament, is that they compose of new entrants and failed national politicians. This is also the case at the Commission. The Commission, with all their power, is not even elected, this is a disgrace!
What I would do is have Nationally elected European Commissioners ECs. They would be departmentally commissioned by their people for a specific task, for example Transport. Transport would be the mission of this particular Commissioner the co element being with the people. Rather than have the anonymous lists of people who we don’t know, these would be knowns who would stand for a department they have experience in, ideally a National Government Transport Secretary. This is what I am after, people who can hit the ground running as they know what they are doing. Each territorial area would have an allocation of ECs based on their population numbers so that there is fair representation. Smaller nations may need to amalgamate departmental roles or get together with other nations, the larger nations are effectively united groups, Benelux is one grouping I can imagine. So the Health ECs would meet up to discuss and decide Health policy and action co-ordination across the Nations. Education ECs might choose to have their summits in school locations to see what they could learn from them. Employment ECs may meet in factories and work while they work. Environment ECs in places that need improvement and shining examples. They could stay in local hotels creating business there. And rather than being stuck in two separate silos they would all be out and about with the people, places, plants and other wildlife, developing relationships, links and understanding. And rather than being an amalgam of what we’re not all the individual nations would be able to express their national characteristics too.
We should also call each country by what they call themselves. I have a map where every city, every town, every river, every country is the name that the people where it is put called it. I think that would aid respect and understanding.
The flag is another thing I would like to flag up.
This is an edit add on to the original post, as I have given further thought to the national representation of each country in the centre.
This was initially inspired by Italy at the Olympics in Toyko 2020 (2021). The way they did theirs as a circle, I looked at it and felt hungry. These were designed by Armani with EA7 which looks like EAT – Enlightening!
I felt like pizza, pasta and an ice cream – the centre being the ice cream, pesto, spinach and or basil in green and tomato in the red, the centre could also be a slice of Mozzarella too!
When I saw their G20 spaghetti yellow circle I had to have pasta for lunch that day!
I started thinking about how other countries could do this, but was held back by some due to their iconic historical significance, I’m specifically thinking of the flag of France and the revolution, then they, like Italia answered my prayers in their Olympic Uniforms in 2022:
Here the white could be a bottle of wine, or Camembert or Brie the blue blueberries, what they call myrtilles, or a bunch of grapes, the red strawberries which are the shape of hearts or rose wine, could be a Beef Bourguignon or a Ratatouille. It would be up to them what they represent. The surrounding yellow for France could be a slice of their iconic bread or a croissant cross section.
Another stripey flag, that of Ireland could be represented by an Irish Stew with cubes of potatoes in the centre, cubed carrots on one side, peas on the other swimming in mutton gravy and meat. A whole slice of a yellow skinned potato could represent their yellow ring perfectly, you cannot get enough potatoes in Ireland.
The Nederlands also have a stripey flag, but they prefer to represent themselves in their favourite colour orange, a Dutch word, so I’m imagining their centre to represent an orange, as in the House of Orange, William of Orange came to rule Great Britain and ordered our variegated, mostly purple carrots to be completely orange from now on, and this has spread worldwide, so the centre should have an inner ring like you see in a slice of carrot and this will render the orange to be 3D. Their yellow ring could be a yellow waxed cheese.
Danmark brought home the bacon for us all, I know as I currently live in a town named after a Danish King Swein Forkbeard, Swindon, and this is the start of what we call Wiltshire ham, before this there was a different pork product, Wild Boar, their pigs have pink skin, this is now the standard, worldwide. Their flag looks like bacon or ham, yummy. There is a railway running through the town, and an iconic item you can get from the Buffet car on British Rail are Danish Pastries, so their yellow ring could be a representative of these.
Wondering and worrying about how the United Kingdom would get around the complex Union Jack Flag whilst eating Jubilee cupcakes I was inspired, as we love to have our cake and eat it. We also like a good roast dinner and a Yorkshire pudding with it. The flag is in quarters (some could say 8ths) the UK is an amalgamation of 4 Nations, so the food could be a 2 course meal with the savoury yellow ring surrounds being pie and pudding with a red pork pie filling and a rare red beef filling, and the sweet the yellow ring being cake with white icing and decorations on the top and jam on cream (controversial to some) on a scone, all on a blue plate in effect!
España brought a lot of Latin American food to Europe – potatoes and tomatoes have been mentioned. They also introduced corn, sweetcorn, corn on the cob and colourful sweet peppers. Gazpacho and chorizo are Spanish classics, so are tortilla and paella, as are patatas bravas and crème caramel. It is quite handy that the flag is yellow and red. The yellow surround could be a tortilla.
Germany could have a meal of a frankfurter or hamburger or both with tomato ketchup and a slice of Black Forest Gateau with a drink of golden bier.
This is the start of the banquet, with some idea of the plates of some places. Clearly it is up to each place to present themselves to us all as they wish to.
Food is a pleasant experience we all get to enjoy, and having a different flag from our National ones to represent us all coming round the table to talk to each other and enjoy each other’s company.
Another aspect in this European Community is that there are those within the community who are bringing people from without of the Community via their own National entry systems who then have the right to enter other Nations without those other Nations being able to say No to this. An example that has seriously affected me is Goans getting Portuguese Passports who came straight to the UK and now their relatives are pouring in post Brexit. Portugal decided to keep hold of it’s Empire and entitled Goan Indians to a Portuguese Passport when they rescinded control of the State. As you can see from the bar chart the already burdening Portugal is burdening the contributing UK even more. And the Goans in India are far from reciprocating.
I used to go to this church, Holy Rood in Swindon, when it was happily international, we welcomed everyone, Goans got everyone to go, one accused me of racism in 2018 according to the priest (an ex-Lloyds banker whom we had bailed out to our costs in 2008, the taxpayer kept and funded his pension) whom I’d done a lot for (I reckon it was 1 man in a Council property, said he loved me, I rejected him, knowing he wanted my house really) the priest allowed Goan National Day of Independence to be celebrated in the Church. It is now all Goan, as are all but one Catholic Church in Swindon, that is Polish, International Catholics have nowhere to go. This is me in the front row in the pink cardigan:
Now:
There is also a Polish Catholic Community in Swindon. They have a Polish National Church in Swindon in Polish. I have been there twice, once as the only English person there, the other time with a few more English Nationals. In the appeal for Ukraine they felt overwhelmed with their facility being used to house donations after just two weeks or one fortnight. Please also look at the bar chart again to see they are the overwhelming takers in the European Community.
Schengen and Freedom of movement clearly isn’t fair, particularly on the poor in the contributory countries, Swindon where this occurs is a neglected working class town. When you go to work as an English National you are regarded as in the majority, and therefore not protected by legislation to protect minorities in the workplace, yet in your workplace you are not only in the minority, there are gangs of Poles and Goans who distance you from management and make your security of employment poor, they take twice.
What should be is that those, and Germany’s invitation which they later asked others to bear as they found the result of it too much to bear, is another big example, who invite people in or who get others to pay them for passports to enter in, should be only allowed and able to give these people freedom of their Nations for Fifty years at least for their Families. So those who gain or make policy decisions bear the costs and the consequences, Fully.
Also Freedom of movement, economically must be earned. Quite a few of our Factories in the UK who have been flooded with Eastern European Staff now have had their full facilities flow over there, all those long English hours of work over decades, all that investment in time, ingenuity and money, has been lost, it feels like the pillaging from Vikings of old, in effect it is the same thing. So only parallel movement may occur, with my model, with all taker states having to give, as the UK, even though we joined in dire straits, had to do, until their account is at neutral to the general exchequer, what I mean is giving what the UK contributed back to the UK. And the UK would reasonably return, fairly back to the fold, and it could be a member in its individual Nations, if that was what was desirable, the still small voice of English calm has been overwhelmingly drowned out by the incessant demands of others, hence the loud Brexit scream. The only voice we had was in the quiet of the ballot box, the vote stating what we would really volunteer for, what we wanted. All work based movement must be at the behest of the worker recipient Nation, as the reason they may say no is to ensure their own rights in reality. I have signed away the 48 hour rule in order to get work, some rights are not rights in practice for most people. Hence the anger, the desire for division. There is no point a worker in a contributor state to keep at it if this means their country gets in a more of a bad state the more work they put in, and for taker states they are winning without giving, they are becoming ever more spoiled and demanding. This is not a recipe for success nor good conduct. Those who bring food to the table should be able to eat, those who do not need to go to the farm and produce some before they come round the table with others to be fair.
1Then a great and mysterious sight appeared in the sky. There was a woman, whose dress was the sun and who had the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was soon to give birth, and the pains and suffering of childbirth made her cry out.
3Another mysterious sight appeared in the sky. There was a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and a crown on each of his heads.
4With his tail he dragged a third of the stars out of the sky and threw them down to the earth. He stood in front of the woman, in order to eat her child as soon as it was born.
L’ UNE – The United Nations of Europe
I have noticed with Covid that each nation across the world tackles controlling the virus differently. They understand their own people because they are one with them, because they are individually one of them. You can really sense their national characteristics in this, and this is very interesting. This is clear to see in Europe too. Each individual country is like a unique individual. It is plain to see. Going against their personalities has proved disastrous with solving this crisis, the vaccine roll-out is an obvious example. Whereas fully autonomous nations have got the %age graph of those vaccinated going at speed. Once a nation returns to thinking independently they thrive. It is as if they are now using the full %age of their brains to solve it and have deployed their full social muscle.
They go up a gear. I’ve noticed a correlation between size of country and its wealth too. Small countries thrive better than huge ones, there is more real control and less conflict. Ruling from a distance never works in the long term as is seen historically by the case of Britain trying to hold on to the taxation revenues of the United States. I’m sure they’d drink to that, and I am equally sure that coffee would be more their ‘cup of tea’ there.
The United States is a great model of how to order a vast nation together, as the individual states can create regulations, ruling in their own domain, to suit where they are. They come together via mutual consent.
With Europe we are not new States but very old Nations. You could argue that the U.S.A. – the United States of America – should encompass more original Nations in its State Structure. You could also make the point within Europe too. But to start allowing current Nations to control their own destiny and to work for their own betterment makes the whole more prosperous. A major reason for Brexit was that the working peoples who worked hard found that all the money they had worked for was sent away to those that had not worked for it. Also even after all of that control was not even allowed to be maintained by the income generating countries, they were additionally insulted by being dictated to by the taker states.
There was no incentive for the Workers in Contributor Countries to work hard as they never got to keep this money, they were in reality slaves, going out slaving away all day for others who did not treat them right. Then people flooded in to the expensive places with higher wages to send these home raising housing costs, providing relatively cheap labour, increasing competition for jobs, diminishing rights. The fights start there. A seasonal farm worker can earn enough in a few short weeks at a rate which would not sustain a local poor employee, to build massive mansions back home not needing to do any more work that year. Most of the employers in the wealthy lands have received subsidies via taxes via the very people they reject.
Then there is the efficiency issue. Large African countries the size of Europe usually lack control within their states, often wars break out over this, which lead to poverty. The cause of poverty is not without of the country, it is not another country’s fault, the problem lies within, and it is a matter of control. Uganda and Zimbabwe used to be the bread baskets of Africa – when they were over-controlled from without – when that left and they did not know what to do, how to handle it, they became basket cases of extreme poverty and lack of governmental control. Many African countries are the size of many European countries combined. No wonder they have problems, it’s not surprising, their land mass area is unmanageable. Europe is also struggling to manage the scope of the size. There is also the diversity of character. African Nations were not always that size, tribes operated in much smaller domains, the size of a tribal domain would better suit in terms of community and control. They would be so much better off that way. There are atmospheres of type too – expecting all of Africa to get together just because they are on one huge land mass is unreasonable, do we ever say the same about the Eurasian Plate on the planet – tonnes of difference there and no pressure to pretend to get together required.
Regarding the organisation of Europe collective responsibility needs to be that – each Nation needs to take responsibility so that as a collection of Nations more responsibility is taken. Currently this is not so. The daft 2 parliament locations, both in Brussels and Strasbourg is both stupid and inefficient. I think that model anyway, what with the internet, is dated. Also as this means that power is always located in certain Nations but not others this is a) going to annoy those Nations who never have them located where they are b) it is stuck and immovable, like a rock around a chain around the foot of progress, it is inflexible. If the current centre is at point c say, and then more join the club and so a different point d say was really the central point, power is pointing in the wrong direction. This is a constant issue. So having no central axis and allowing all to feel central and trusting this makes more feel at home in the club. Talking of clubs and entertainment just looking at the two parliamentary buildings I feel and think they would make great music and entertainment venues, everyone would get a good view, I hope the acoustics are great too!
Okay, now for the finances, the current accounting system does not work, it is not fair to pool resources and then pay people from that pool. If people want to represent themselves or their Nation they must put their money where their mouth is and pay for the privilege. If you cannot afford to have as much representation as another Nation you need to work hard, and become more productive, in order to do so. The manner it is done now is impoverishing. This is good business for the block and makes it prosperous. Thinking on the competitor countries everywhere else you simply cannot afford to rest on your laurels, partying like Nero as Roma burns. That is self-psychotic destruction. All hands on deck will make this ship sail smoothly. So if you want staff from your Nation to work at the core of this organisation you have to pay them, directly, yourself.
I think the MEP system is silly also, and does not make the best of your representatives work there. Usually the ones chosen to stand for the European parliament are those just starting out in their political careers, trying to prove themselves, getting their Curriculum Vitae or C.V. together to get a role in their home parliaments, their aim is to be the top in their own country, and the EU parliament is a mean to that end. You also find in the EU parliament failed to gain a seat at home sorts, yet they can win here, so not the dross, but second best. The Commission, even though it has a huge amount of power is unelected. This, in a democratic organisation, is not right. I am not comfortable about many of those who get to be Commissioners, nor do I remember Commissioning them, ever.
My way of doing this would be to allow those who had been at the top in their own lands to stand in their own lands to be elected as Commissioners for a Certain task. For example a Transport Secretary could stand for Transport Commissioner. To be Commissioned is to be sent out to do a task – like Missionaries are sent out by The Divine, Co-Missionaries are sent out by us, all the little people. There are all the obvious standard government departments to stand for, common across us all. If a Nation is small or cannot afford a large number they can be Commissioned by their own people for a number of departments. Large Nations might like to appoint or elect sub-commissioners, they will have power if elected but be only advisory if appointed, if advisory they will have not decisive capacity. Elections will take place at each Nations chosen timetable, each of us has major elections at different times, so not wishing to inconvenience anyone, or cause huge unnecessary costs, these can be held when other elections are being held, this will assist intra-National stability, which is clearly good.
There will be no set place for these Commissioners to meet, currently in Covid Zoom is the preferred location, so this shows that this form of governance is possible, as it has been done. It will be good for currently left out Regions to be able to host Commission meetings at great locations in their areas. Quite a lot of tensions across the continent have been caused by some places getting everything and others getting forgotten. They can show off what is good where they are, get trade from it and attract tourism. This looks good, rather than the boring same old same old, we need vibrancy and change, as change is the only constant in life in reality. And this will be fun for the Commissioners too.
The Commissioners will remain accountable to their respective leaders, Prime Ministers and Presidents the usual examples. The good thing about this model is that it is expandable as it is flexible, and the smaller numbers mean it is genuinely meet up able in that you actually can get to communicate properly with everyone present in the location. Huge parliaments do not work in this context as such a small %age of viewpoints can be heard I the time for debate. This isn’t purely a debating forum, this is an Action Station. We, the Commissioners meet up, discuss something about what we are going to do about an item, then in getting together agree a short and long term plan of Action, decide what everyone must have Achieved by the next time we all meet, individually, those Commissioners in that meeting then liase with their leaders who agree what is possible. They sign up to what they Will do, and go and get it done. Things like Gannt progress charts online can display their progress.
They will be called Commissioner then their name. Commissioners will also be known in their name like MEPS were and MPs in the UK are at the end of their name with the suffix Com, for Commissioner, Communication, Community, Company, Competence.
This is an upgrade of the old EU and the even older EC with an amalgamation of the natural Nation states, which whatever organisations spring up are resilient beings that want to carry on living. It is best to have the Serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the Courage to change the things we can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. This is what this does.
It allows Nations to decide for themselves on issues in their own land, for example immigration, one country currently may be letting a lot of people in knowing full well that they will not have to keep them all, some let them in knowing that they intend never to visit, but the incomers are using them as a tool of entry elsewhere, and that elsewhere has no say or control of its borders in this, numbers keep coming, then the afraid locals are labelled racists and they come rushing in. With this model every Nation will be able to Take Back Control of this and be free to say No, and if another Nation invites many in, they can maintain their Sovereignty by saying no to their continued free movement. In fact, the little people will be able to legitimately fight back the previous incursions by being free to demand incomers return to the country they paid for entry or allowed them to pass through borders that should not have been open to all comers. To do this a sweeping census to ascertain originality will take place. Those not having evidence will be swept out. They all know where they came from. Europe as a continent is over-populated – you can see this from satellite views of the continent. We have created a sustainable procreation. This followed a period of growth. We must not allow ourselves to be overtaken by those who come to take that all away wrecking the environment for our wildlife and cornering us into smaller and smaller spaces driving us mad in our imprisonment dictating what we all must think, feel and believe and to not be European at all in nature.
In order to illustrate this I have designed an amalgamation of our flags. There are the 12 stars surrounding the moon. I call this organisation The or in French L’ United Nations of Europe, L’UNE Lune is moon in French as you know, which is why the moon is central in this. We love each other and we love ourselves too, our Nations so there is the heart, in a current up-to-date emoji form, communication, and our own individual personal National flag in there with it, be beat a dual rhythm in and out, as a heart does, and that is what keeps it in balance. Each body part has its place, its location, and that is what make the whole body strong, it can defend itself against all evil incursions into its territory, it can face down all terrorism. Like a strong skin stops infections from without getting within and fights them off both within and without. A fort, a fortress, a strong bond which others will respect. It has Control.
I have written this over a period of time, and this timely recent entry is apt, and immediately reflects my ambition to have these venues for music, this is set in Strasbourg, Emmanuel Macron is speaking, there is a video of this on the link, second paragraph in:
“Je suis en effet très heureux de vous retrouver et que nous nous retrouvions ici aujourd’hui en cette journée de l’Europe. Très heureux aussi que nous la célébrions par un engagement politique commun, par la musique qui est sans doute notre langage universel et je remercie les artistes qui se sont également rendus disponibles. ”
“I am indeed very happy to see you again and that we are here today on this Europe Day. I am also very happy that we are celebrating it with a common political commitment, with music which is undoubtedly our universal language, and I thank the artists who have also made themselves available. ”
Mr Messy was cross. He was watching Eurovision. Britain hadn’t won again. He thought “it must be Brexit!” But then he looked online for previous results and found that despite Britain paying a lot for it they hadn’t won when we all were Europhiles. Perhaps that’s why people voted as they did, he pondered, no-one would like to keep paying for a party and then keep getting laughed at whilst those that hadn’t paid won all the prizes in the raffle without even having to pay for a ticket, you’d want to leave and go to another party where people shared the costs of it and you got to win a few times too. Mr Messy, however, did like the system of voting for the winner. It took ages, longer than the actual songs, Mr Messy wasn’t fussed about the songs, or the unity, he didn’t stay up all night for that. No, he enjoyed the endless formulaic scripted answers from the juries and people from all over Europe. He was thrilled when they added heats into the mix, as this meant two more days of voting, well one for the UK, so they got to express their opinion for 50% of the non-contributor entrants, which he thought was perfectly fair when one had foot – not feet, which foot is 50% of – themajority of the bill.
An individual who shall not be named, for clearly obvious reasons, said that the two – he loved Europe for this, duplicate copies of absolutely Everything – European parliamentary chambers could be chambers of music, music venues and that they could hold Eurovision at one or the other, a classical unus and a popular one. Someone else completely daft once suggested that it would be good to start an hour earlier, to have everyone singing on one night in union together, so it would be a singalong-a-marathon kind of thing. And then, even more ludicrously had the notion of allowing everyone to vote – not juries, “What were they thinking!?” – for every song they wanted to even their own (they said that it was not fair for the UK to never win as the whole of Europe came here to work and vote for themselves but as there was work in the UK, United Kingdom could not be abroad to vote for itself, they said it was rigged against us) And as people phoned in (which would pay for it all rather than the UK all the bloody time) the results would show real time, to encourage more phone calls, more money for those that staged it, they said that would be fun. And in the 12 minutes that was happening there could be a little fun show. Mr Messy thought that would take all the fun out for him, leaving only the boring bits.
Why were people always trying to rock the boat as it were, to clean up and streamline systems and processes that worked perfectly well, and had done so for years. Trying to relax in the bath, he needed that after Eurovision and hearing the suggestion repeated, again, on the News, he thought on those throughout history who had lost their Administrative Positions due to new technology, from Scribes when the Printing Press came in to now where paper is being replaced by screens.
Rent is in effect slavery; you go out to work and most of your money from that work goes to pay your rent. You have a little left, for food and for entertainment, these only help to sustain your morale which means you are ready to go out and do more work for more money to pay more rent, the cycle continues. Yet, for all your labours you are not free.
It takes ages, and a lot of sacrifices – and sometimes it is not possible – to save up enough for a deposit to buy your own home – usually you have to save up 5% or 10% of the total value for a mortgage to be considered on it. Yet, over time, and in many cases as soon as you start to pay the money back you are paying less than you would have done paying rent – you grow increasingly free. Also if you are beholden to a land lord or lady you have to ask their permission to set up a business there, because it is their property, so you cannot generate any more funds. The word mortgage is made up of two words mort meaning death and gage meaning pledge – yet we take out mortgages where we are expected to repay them during our lives so the correct old-fashioned term should be vifgage with vif meaning life.
Students are afforded loans in order to better themselves and these can be far more than the amount required to be saved for a deposit on a house. Okay they don’t have to be repaid if the educational investment did not pay off, but where it does they do. With a Life Loan this would be different, you would have to pledge to pay it off within your life, and my imagining thinks that a term of 10 years is reasonable. So if you obtained a Life Loan of £20,000 you would be required to pay back £2000 per annum for it. This would be as well as paying the rest of the payment plan for the property. You would be saving up and putting those savings directly in to their intended destination. £2000 ÷ 12 = £170 x 11 + £130 : so not too much per month. You would be paying about £1000 per month for the mortgage for a £200,000 property, so in total you would pay £1170 per month for 11 months of the year and £1130 for the final one = not impossible. After the 10 year Life Loan payment period obviously less.
Along with my Micro Mortgages and Macro Mortgages in my post A Property Owning Democracy – for those who do not feel the need for a bigger property at the time – this would mean all people would be free.
The UK Government has created assistance for the other 95% – that part could also be done by banks as I experienced in 1996 with my 5% – a much smaller amount was needed then both in actual and relative to salary terms – but they are not willing to do so (they are more willing to help buy to let and investment owners from overseas who will never live in the property leaving it empty so we have to build yet another home on nature’s land wrecking the environment again and again) (we in the UK bailed out these organisations to our great cost in for e.g. in 2008 – they owe us more and more)
This is for the savings element – the 5%
If you have parents who allow you to live rent free saving is easier and you also have to have the luck of getting on with them too and for them to be able to afford to. There are multiple variables. The differences between those who start out fortunately supported and those who do not are akin to those who are well supported educationally from birth to school which makes some in top set, some middling and others at the bottom, with that the learning speed and style differentials divide grows greater over time making leaps up impossible, I have thought about this since I was at school and these thoughts will be detailed in future posts. Equality of opportunity is systematic. Gordon Brown did introduce a from birth ‘savings’ scheme to be handed over to the child when they became an adult at 18. The trouble with that is that some got topped up and others didn’t, and it had to start somewhere, meaning many missed out, and what I saw from the outset was that there would be price rises of the exact amount the government had given, so not a training savings scheme at all, quite the opposite, the young adult would spend it, several not wisely, as there we no conditions to it. Years ago I did think of a savings scheme for children primarily, which I will create another post to tell you about.
With this the manner of paying back the loan would be a deduction from salary, whatever that salary was – if you were not working or claimed poverty you would be required to do work in kind for the government to pay for this or if that wasn’t available you would have to strictly look for all work or create your own money source selling something to pay for this. Flexibility creates more demands for flexibility and then this would not work. The amount required anyway per month is less than a week’s wages.
Those very fortunate to be in Council accommodation paying favourable rents would be signed up to a Savings Scheme to create this 5% deposit on a house, they would have to put away £2000 of their own money each year and have a maximum tenancy time of 10 years. They would be able to use this money to buy the properties they were living in if it were within their budgets. If not they would move out to a smaller one. Overpopulation is an extreme pressure on the environment – also on the more restrained taxpayers – which is not fair to nature or humanity alike. Council property will no longer be available to anyone at the end of these final tenancies. One detriment to rental accommodation zones is a lack of investment in the communities in these areas, people need to have a responsible stake in where they live, and be serious about making it and keeping it nice.
All the assistance will be in the form of loans – no other format will be available, everyone will get the same.
There will be location flexibility fixed into this – so that you can re-locate within the country for work – if you personally need (and this is a one way ticket only to avoid both way exploitation to the government and or you) to go abroad for an opportunity we will do all we can to release your investments whilst doing all good security checks to ensure they are safely saved for you.
The trouble is with renting is someone else is squirreling away your retirement funds and what you can leave as gifts when you go to heaven – this will allow anyone of any age to start this off – a little is always better than nothing – we’ll keep you informed about what %age of your property is yours and which is still ours (the government i.e. the taxpayers) this will depend on how much you have paid off and the current value of the physical property on the ground.
I haven’t ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I’m not in love
But it’s not as if I mind
That your heart ain’t exactly breaking
It’s just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
I’ve always thought
That I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
And live more simply
I have no idea what’s happened to that dream
‘Cause there’s really nothing left here to stop me
It’s just a thought, only a thought
But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
While my heart is a shield and I won’t let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won’t even try
Well, how can I say I’m alive?
If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
‘Cause nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
Nothing I have is truly mine
Nothing I have is truly mine
Nothing I have is truly mine
Nothing I have is truly mine
MULTICOURT
Walking footballers would need loads on the pitch for a full size pitch so their game would be mainly passing to each other. Little kids too, they can run and run but little legs are not long and are growing so they need to be taken care of.
I like the green part of leaks and the green leathery leaves of cabbage and lettuce, yet these are missing and only the whiter less tasty parts are left and then these are packaged in plastic to make them sweat to go off faster. This is a surreal practice as the plant packages itself with protection and prior to transportation this plant protection is stripped away, no wonder it goes off so fast. Also a soil film and a bit of root makes it think it is still in the ground, it keeps growing a bit as it moves closer to you so that could be fresh on arrival.
But not this type of interest where more money is added on, more like what is of interest to you. You will get these interesting things once a month.
The winning design:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18753376/tree-of-trees-how-many-buckingham-palace/
The site is well shaped for this.
