Post 260. SHORT POST TO END A SHORT MONTH.

TELEVISION.
Mostly old ones.

Father Brown came back; a new series followed immediately by the repeat of an old one. I liked Mark Williams (above) in the Harry Potter films and I like him in this, even if the story lines do remind me how very dated so many of my boyhood favourites now are.
By the same token, I like Claire Goose who, in The Coroner, is surely the most unlikely law representative on television since Brenda Blethyn's Vera. Claire's Coroner is showing daily as I write, but it's the old stuff (series 1) again.
Anyone trapped into watching daytime television may also wonder that the ubiquitous Tim Wonnacott (him of the colour co-ordinated clothes, bow ties and silly hats) is still regularly fronting episodes of Bargain Hunt.
I guess the Beeb has too many hours to fill not to join in the internationally indulged plethora of ancient repeats and use of material fronted by ego-driven people they claim to have removed for one or another disciplinary reason.
It's a bit of a farce, but I doubt any of it will be more than a ripple on the sand by this time next year.
With any luck the same will apply to whatever sycophantic shit has been spouted by tabloid journalist Piers Morgan and his fellow Trump disciple Nigel Farage.
Say no more: I wish they would.
IN MEMORIAM.
Peter Skellern.

                    14.03.1947 - 17.02.2017
I am sitting here listening to Peter Skellern's CD Sentimentally yours which contains 20 impeccably (as always) presented songs including the moving Still Magic, a favourite of ours for many years.
Peter died of cancer - that wretched disease again - at the age of 69. He was a haunting singer, gifted songwriter and an extremely accomplished musician who studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His song You're A Lady brought him to prominence in 1972 and he then enjoyed a steadily successful career.
Last October it was revealed that he had a brain cancer and it was inoperable: on the 26th of that month he was ordained by the Bishop of Truro as a deacon and priest of the Church of England.
He is survived by his wife, two children and four grandchildren.
The charming Sentimentally yours will continue to be given the occasional airing in this house for as long this old geezer is around to listen to it and Still Magic will forever leave the hint of a tear in this old geezer's eye.
                RIP Rev. Peter Skellern
   entertainer extraordinary and a good man.

 

Post 259. BACK IN THE OLD ROUTINE.

HOME.
Change of IW council leader.

Councillor Jonathan Bacon (Independent) resigned last month as leader of the council over here.
I was sorry to hear it.
Back in 2015 I wrote to Councillor Bacon expressing my displeasure at the poor facilities afforded elderly citizens using the council's refuse tip in Forest Road on the Island. It was a carping old guy's letter of the sort a busy public representative must receive far too often and I figured it would end up tidily filed in a wastepaper basket.
Imagine my surprise when I received a polite and informative reply from the council leader.
I concluded that he was an all right person (even if his political group did appear to have no more grip on things than any of them ever do) and that he would certainly get my vote if the opportunity arose in the future.
His resignation (together with that of his deputy) came about because the government is squeezing the financial life out of county authorities nearly everywhere and, to add to the usual problems here, the Conservative group, rejected at the last local election, has consistently thrown its toys out of the political playpen.
Mr. Bacon has now been replaced as council leader by the Tory leader of the Conservative - Ukip alliance (God help us).
It will not be a change for the better.
ABROAD.
To Wales.

Swansea: where, if my elderly memory serves me aright, the DVLA resides.
I received a letter last week from one of those debt collection firms which every public body now seems to employ (at Christ knows what cost to the taxpayer) to chase up anybody who, for whatever reason, has ignored or overlooked making a payment to them.
It seems I had failed to cough up the road fund licence fee due on our little car last October. (Something which, throughout the close on sixty years I was issued with - and required to display - an annual disc, I never once failed to deal with.)
I phoned the debt collection agency and a pleasant voiced young woman informed me that I would be required to pay a fixed penalty of £80 to them and then get in touch with the Authority to pay the thirty-or-so quid licence fee due.
I there and then made arrangements for payment of the fixed penalty and left the rest to the More Intelligent Half (MIH) of our marriage who had been out when I opened the post.
The MIH rang the DVLA and, in more reasonable tones than I would ever have conjured up, pointed out that we have at no time received notice of our road fund fee being due.
But notice was sent, she was told, to the address on DVLA records (which was, it transpired, our address before we moved here).
But why, inquired my MIH patiently, was said notice sent to that address when the Agency has since been notified of our new one?
Because no such notification has been received by us, asserted the DVLA telephone spokesperson.
That's very strange, countered the MIH, when you consider that we each possess a driving licence bearing our new address.
The glib and clearly oft-repeated reply broached no further discourse.
"Oh, that's not the same department."
NOTE TO DVLA MANAGERS.
No matter how many £s billion your Agency deals in annually, if you are incapable of installing a computer system that concurrently amends the records held by all your departments, you are really no more than a bunch of technically inept twats, are you?
And on the clear understanding that the planks in parliament will never abandon the road fund licence in favour of 10p on every gallon of petrol, bring back the bloody tax disc!