Powerchair direction indicators…

Having finally had a good day yesterday, I installed the puncture sealant in my powerchair tyres and, today, I ventured out for the first time, in a break between showers, to post a letter. It’s the first time I’ve ridden a powerchair on the pavement for about 15 years – and the last. There weren’t [...]

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On March 1, Google starts harvesting users’ data…

This isn’t a secret, even Google have advertised the fact – but a surprising number of people seem unaware of it. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/24/pass-notes-browsing Based on what I’ve read, it’s next to impossible to prevent Google collecting data in this way. First of all, if you have a Google account, as I do, and also use [...]

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A venerable recipe, reborn – eat yer heart out, Heinz…

This is my take on a soup with a long history. Way back in the mists of time, when politicians were honest and I was young, Heinz made Kidney Soup, of which I was inordinately fond. And then they didn’t. I don’t know why – perhaps people were getting squeamish, as many still are, about [...]

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Workfare need not be slavery…

Despite what numpties like @EstherMcVeyMP seem to think – that objecting to workfare means that “This knee jerk, cheap political point scoring from those opposing work experience will have a negative effect for our youth,” workfare is simply slavery by another name. Dress it up in rhetoric all you like, a pig in a tux [...]

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A camera support for my powerchair…

I need some sort of support for my rather heavy d-SLR plus 140-600mm (35mm equivalent), zoom lens, which would also be capable of taking a spotting scope. My idea was to use an Opticron 42605 BC2 hide clamp, a relic of my birding days (used once, the day I discovered the nearest RSPB hide was at [...]

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Campaigning bloggers – want a louder voice?

Bloggers campaigning against the cuts, WRB, and Workfare, and let’s not forget the NHS are, for the most part, being drowned out by the government’s propaganda machine, the output of which is circulated by the right-wing press and even the BBC (though the Workfare tide appears to be turning, if slowly, and the dishonesty behind [...]

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The death of the Welfare State…

What bothers me, right now, is the degree to which unreality has taken over the WRB debate. There are those who, no matter how many House of Lords amendments Cameron reverses in the Commons, simply cannot see the writing on the wall, but cleave to the view that we are still going to win. Well, [...]

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Need to reduce your salt intake? Try this…

Looking for a way to reduce my salt intake – my current heart meds won’t allow me to use the usual suspects, like LoSalt, as the buggerdly things concentrate potassium to toxic levels, and LoSalt is two-thirds potassium chloride – I had a flash of inspiration. Towards the end of last year, I bought some [...]

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Chronicles of the Heart, Part 30 …

Having given the matter a lot of thought over the past few weeks, I’ve decided to pull out of the tests my cardio consultant is lining up for me. Partly this is a reaction to his snotty response to my telling him, politely, that I was withdrawing from a high-risk test, as I felt such [...]

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The future of the chronically sick and disabled after 2015…

It’s my feeling, especially if Cameron gets a majority at the next election in 2015 – and there’s a good chance he will unless things change dramatically (an effective leader of the opposition might help) – that there is a very strong likelihood of the sick and disabled being stripped of their benefits and housed [...]

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