Post 321. ANOTHER YEAR ANOTHER OUTLOOK.

HOME.
Our Roz.

Good news all you kind supporters who have been wishing Roz well in her battle with cancer. On 16 Jan she had the first meeting with her consultant since that double mastectomy and was informed – verbally to be followed in writing – that she is currently free of all cancerous cells. I cannot describe the relief. 
Please keep wishing her well, my dears, it's obviously working.
Thank you.
Nephew Phil. My Leader's nephew, Phil Butler, who has been a stalwart supporter of his cousin Roz throughout her illness, has phoned from his home on the mainland to say that initial stage cancer cells have now been discovered in his liver and lungs. We can only wish him safe recovery. Good luck and keep fighting, mate. You're a star. 
BLOODY TECHNOLOGY.

Internet Explorer keeps telling me (via a little box on Facebook) that Internet Explorer has stopped working. 'A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.' (It says) 'Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.'
Beneath that a smaller box invites me to 'Close program.'
If I've offended 'em I don't know how.
Bloody technology! 
ONLINE IS AWASH.
With competitors.

Now that newspapers are passé and banks are almost lost from the high street I am wondering how long it will be before the Ban Everything brigade moves into Wipe the Web mode and seeks legislation to rid online of any company or individual with an annual income of less than £400m.
The legislation lobby strengthens under the groaning weight of daily newspaper journalists now flooding the web and understandably keen to establish it as a place legally occupied only by their own kind, i.e. paid purveyors of politically bigoted bosh. 
This country really does get more like America every day.
TELEVISION.
Good tele? 

If you are English you should know, if you are American you may not, that Father Brown - based on the fictional character invented by writer and broadcaster G.K. Chesterton KC*SG (1874 – 1936) - bears resemblance neither to this England at any time in the its pre or post WW2 history, nor to the popular-in-their-day stories written by Chesterton. I mention this to amend my earlier description of the series as: 'a watchable dose of dated hokum.'
It is watchable and it is hokum, but it is not dated. The age depicted has simply never existed. It is just a fantasy age drummed up by television producers and directors. In avoiding such notions of what constitutes 'good tele,' I now avoid any programme (antiques, snooker, quiz...whatever) wherein participants are given bloody silly nicknames, any competition finale where I am expected to wait longer than it would take to make a cup of tea to find out, after I have been told “the winner is,” just who the bloody winner actually is, and any show where the 'witty' presenter has clearly been instructed to take the piss out of fellow performers because 'that's what the public wants.'
If that's what the public wants, it deserves what it gets: dumbed down television.
I watch more films and repeats on my planner now.
And if you think I've written all this before, your memory is better than mine.
Watch your step and avoid road racing.