Now I realise that the British Legion that organises the sale of poppies does an amazing job and helps us in many ways to remember those that have been killed in wars, and whatever you remember them for: whether as comrades, family members or the destruction of a good life, you remember them. Many I know wear both poppies as a remembrance of those lost in war and a desire to see a future peace. Other wear them as a mark of respect and for those that have fought, because they have seen and shared things in a way to keep us safe in our beds and so we do not have to se these things.

“Where Poppies Grow: A World War I Companion” (Linda Granfield)

I think many are wearing the poppy now because they are paying their respects to those who have fought in Irag and Afghanistan, in the hope of defending democracy. A year or so ago I watched some of the Sussex regiment parade through Lewes, they all seemed so very young to be fighting and face with the horror of war.

For me this quote sums up the horror

Kurtz: I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother.

“Apocalypse Now (3-disc Special Edition including Hearts of Darkness) [Blu-ray] [1979]” (Francis Ford Coppola)

I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

This journey into the heart of darkness is what we expect of many of our servicemen and women, we hope and need a better more peaceful world, and it is only be remembering that war brings death and social justice and joy brings peace that we can progress.

Wear your poppy with pride and support the work of the British Legion, who helped those who have served, and help us to remember them.

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On the way out I had to wait for my wife and our daughter and decided to try out the sales pitch, which was a back massage chair, it was actually pretty cool made by HoMedics and I liked the idea, but then had to go.

So recently I have had to stop playing tennis and badminton and going to the gym because my back had been quite bad, I went to the osteopath who helped a lot and then I thought about this back massager and looked for it on Amazon. It came today and its amazing. I had it delivered at the office and tried it out there and then brought it home and set it up for my wife to have a try. She was sceptical until it came on the shiatsu session and then I had trouble getting her off it.

This is quite the best thing I have ever bought for my back and i have suffered on and off for years with back problems, tensions and sports injuries from my past excesses. It really feels like someone giving you an incredible massage and i just recommend it enough.

Below is the link to a couple of different ones, to be honest we got the 300 version, which was on offer on amazon.

“HoMedics SBM-600H-GB Shiatsu Ultimate Back and Shoulder Massager” (HoMedics)

“HoMedics SBM-300H-3GB Shiatsu+ Massager with Heat” (Salter)

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As one historian said we like to think of England as this civilised place, all royal weddings and cricket, when riots have been common place down the recent years, even more so in our history. Of course in our deep past it’s why ‘The Riot Act’ was introduced by Parliament and where ‘reading someone the riot act’ as an expression came from, as before shots could be fired, the riot act had to be read demanding dispersal of the rioting crowd.

Lets look at those who have been filmed, photographed and apprehended, predominantly young maybe, but in all there was a mixture of ages. Certainly a mixture of social classes and ethnicity. Some seemingly educated middle class people were looting and some very working class people suffered from the effects.

Some taking part, were actually quite well off, some deprived, some had active involved parents, others did not, some were politicised, others blatantly not so. So some took part in violence and no looting, some in looting but no active violence and some both. Some black, some white, some asian; there were those unfraid to show a face and those who were covered (some even wearing gloves). Some organised and set the thing in motion, others were caught up in mass hysteria of sorts and others went long for the ride, or came to it by chance.

However 3 things for me stand out for the perpetrators

1. An intense uncontrolled anger at something, perhaps authority and officialdom, this anger in its extreme from was murderous

2. The use of fire when it was not really needed other than to destroy

3. Greed, the desire to take, even when things were not needed.

And 3 things for the victims

1 The majority of those suffering were hardworking families, respectable working people and small business owners

2. People were killed who stood up tot the mob

3. Places that were destroyed (beside an attack on a police station) were shops, not the bastions of authority.

The answer lies as ever for me in community and what we understand by it. Our lives and communities whether we consider ourselves law abiding, respectable or on the fringes of crime or as law breakers, are fragmented and ill defined. Many of us do not really know each other, or for that matter care. There is little to bind us together and what does is often shared intense experience.

Most younger people are disempowered and alienated and it was ever thus. However what has changed is whilst as older more established people and perhaps parents we can envisage ourselves as members of a community defined by housing, streets, shops, and of course people….many of the young cannot. They can see a community based in technology and their ability to communicate and organise using it. So their community is anyone that will communicate via twitter, Facebook, phone messenger and text, or what ever is the rising and latest technology. It is what turns you on and tunes you in (to use an anachronistic phrase) to others even when you are not connected the the net.

David Cameron or David Milliband are as about as far removed from these people as you can get in our society and this is a major challenge because the gap between not just the rich and poor or the law abiding and the law breaking has become so wide as to be almost unbridgeable.

However, there has been a back lash, one that is based in community and national pride, that is trying to express another aspect to this divide, that we can bridge it, that not everyone has fallen and that we are willing to pick up the pieces. However the immediate knee-jerk and draconian reaction to the crimes committed may seem just right now and people must understand their responsibilities in our community and country, but we must understand our responsibility to them. Young people are not the future of this country they are the Now.

So my 3 outcomes and actions are these:

1. We hold some responsibility for allowing a situation like this to arise, of seeing gangs and drugs, anger and alienation as someone else’s problem, to be dealt with by authority or hidden in estates and brushed under the carpet.

2. Whilst the middle classes wring their hands over eco issues and green bling,the division in our society and communities is getting wider and the one division i am talking about is RESPONSIBILITY. Its a thing we always want to tell someone else that they should have, but never accept for ourselves. Like a friend who explained to me that maybe if all those parents who took their kids 5 minutes in the car to school stopped the demand on petrol and resources might not be so great that we had to go to war over oil. Yes the connection is tenuous but I understood the point he was trying to make.

3. The economic and political climate will divide use.  Camerons coalition want us to all be in this together.  If so they must be seen to request of the rich (through tax and coercion) that they contribute.  Yes they should be tough on this kind of criminal activity but we need to know the cause also.  Tony Blair may have used this phrase too often, but it still rings true, “we must be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

When Elvis sings “In the Ghetto” it might be smaltz, but lyricists have a way of getting to the truth

People, don’t you understand
the child needs a helping hand
or he’ll grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me,
are we too blind to see,
do we simply turn our heads
and look the other way

Its not our job to tell others what responsibility they should have, its to work out what our own is. The greed and alienation starts with us, and own responsibility to the community and society.  Its all too reactive to come out with a broom after the event, to give money to help people and so on, we need to be doing this kind of thing in a community minded proactive way. It is only this way that we can start on a path that asks a question, not ‘how did this begin’  but ‘when are we going to make it stop’.

Ok thats easy to say, and perhaps you want to do something in your community, perhaps you have ideas, of how to organise people to build community, but don’t know where to take it.  May be lines of communication are broken down so you have no idea how to reach out to your wider neighbours, a good start might be to put your idea here and then tell other about it and see whether it gets a reaction, the rioters used this technology and more to organise, why shouldn’t we.

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We are very lucky now in that we live in a lovely old building that we probably now take too much for granted. That aside, we have always wanted our own project so we could have the house we wanted built, decorated and furnished in a way we liked but a lot more sustainable and ecological.

We found a lovely house on the market that look good for renovation and extension and was owned by the County Council. They appeared to be putting buyers under pressure to exchange contracts on the property by the beginning of September and the whole process went to sealed bids to be handed in at the council offices. The council then took nearly two weeks to come up with a decision which did not go in our favour. Sealed bids is never a transparent process, and the mixed message between the desire to exchange contracts and the time it took to come to a decision appeared confusing to us.

So after missing out we looked again at the idea of a “self-build” or a “turn-key” project and found that the cost was very manageable and mortgages were available and a number of companiles were producing houses from Scandia Hus to Border Oak.

If you have land you are willing to sell or a property about to come to market, why not contact us first and avoid the agents fees.

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Horribly hurt by this are really quite ordinary people who have suffered like the Dowler family, caught in the excesses of a news media rampaging through peoples lives to get a story.

“Wireless IP camera Pan/Tilt 2-ways Audio Mobile Viewing WEP/WPA/WAP2 wireless Wi-Fi Pan/Tilt internet IP camera day and night vision CCTV security monitor built-in microphone and speaker allow you to communicate with people directly support mobile phone viewing” (Top SPY device)

In all of this no one asks why the security of personal and private messages held on each and every phone across the globe was accessible by simple 4 digit number, why this number stayed the same or if it was changed who was working inside or for the phone companies that made it available to the press. Do you really trust your mobile/cell phone company? You know the people who have ripped you of for years with ridiculous roaming charges and a heap more exploitation.

If it was your bank or some other serious institution you would question why the phone companies security was so lax. Look at what secures your computers at work and think if it is a little more secure than the messages on your phone?

So the journos and their masters were guilty, the celebrity types had something to hide and the phone companies made it easy to get to.

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1. NavMii Italy

 Artikel wurde nicht gefunden Download here

I can’t speak highly enough about this app, not just the price, it is also a great app. Lets talk about the price first, as I investigated tom tom and other alternatives and found them to be 10 or 20 times as expensive and forcing me to buy maps for all of europe in some cases.

We went to southern Tuscany, a bit out in the wilds but wanted to visit a few of the sights whilst we were there. So flew in to pisa and it got me out of Pisa and on the Autopstrada in no time, but what was good about it was it found the place we were staying that was in the middle of nowhere. Then we used it on all our excursions from Saturnia to Siena and some wild and wonderful places in between. It didn’t flalter or fail, although sometimes the signal to the iphone was not that great.

The thing with these kind of apps is you try them and then build a trust in them, in our case this trust was built quickly and I would be happy to recommend it to anyone

2. If you are going to buy the above app for your iphone and use it as a sat nav system then you need a holder, to fit on the windscreen or dashboard. we bought the one below because it was low cost and good quality, easy to fit and it came with its own charger. We only have the Iphone 3GS, but a friend recommended the second one for the iPhone 4.

“Car Charger Windscreen Holder Mount For Apple iPhone 3G 3Gs” (greymobiles)

This is the one for the iPhone 4

“Mobilizers: 2 in 1 Dedicated In Car Windscreen Suction Mount Holder Cradle + Car Charger Kit For Apple iPhone 4 4G HD” (Mobilizers)

The navmii system combined with an iphone was an absolute must for getting around southern tuscany and with our limited Italian, we valued this and really something you should pack along with your tooth brush.

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“Slow North Yorkshire: Moors, Dales & Coast, including York (Bradt Travel Guides (Slow Guides))” (Mike Bagshaw)  

Pickering itself is a beautiful place, in the heart of the Yorkshire Moors. It also benefits from the North York Moors steam railway, which will take you on a journey by steam train into the centre of Whitby the historic port of Captain Cooke and where Bram Stokers Dracula first set foot in England. Or you can explore the moors, or take a drive to Scarborough on the coast.

The white swan itself is a great base to set out from, filled with their good yorkshire breakfasts…also try the resteraunt in the evening and you will not be disappointed. This was one of my best birthdays, I enjoyed the ambiance, from the moment we sat in their bar to eat lunch after a long drive, to the comfortable bed in a lovely room, to the way they accommodated our 4 year old daughter….a great time in Pickering and this lovely place to stay. Give it a try and you will never look at Yorkshire the same way again.

“North York Moors – Fantastic Guide to the Yorkshire Moors [DVD]” (North York Moors)

Technorati Tags: holiday, Yorkshire, Whitby, hotel, break, white swan, Pickering,North Yorkshire Moors

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The Cairn Terrier is one of the oldest of the terriers originating in the highlands of Scotland and recognized as one of Scotland’s earliest working dogs. It is used for hunting and burrowing prey among the cairns. Mainly as i understand it to drive out wildcats who attacked the sheep.

Although the breed had existed long before, the name Cairn Terrier was a compromise suggestion after the breed was originally brought to official shows in the United Kingdom in 1909 under the name Short-haired Skye terriers. This name was not acceptable to The Kennel Club due to opposition from Skye breeders, and the name Cairn Terrier was suggested as an alternative. The Cairn Terrier quickly became popular and has remained so ever since. They are usually left-pawed. Cairn Terriers are ratters. In Scotland they would search the cairns (large rock piles) for rats and other rodents. Thus if one is kept as a house hold pet it will do the job of a cat, specifically catching and killing mice, rabbits, and squirrels.

We also got the most excellent springer man in to give us some advice and Iwould thoroughly recommend him and his way with dogs.

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Speaking at the National Labour Party Conference he said the “new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics”.

A New Generation

“This generation wants to change our economy so that it works better for working people and doesn’t just serve the needs of the few at the top.”

“This generation wants to change our society so that it values community and family, not just work, because we understand there is more to life than the bottom line.”

“This generation wants to change our foreign policy so that it’s always based on values, not just alliances.”

“And this generation knows profoundly that to change Britain we need a new politics.”

The new Labour Party leader also acknowledged that mistakes had been made, pointing to Iraq he said that it was “wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that”.

Fighting the Con/Lib Cuts

Talking about the Government’s cuts he said “what we should not do as a country is make a bad situation worse by embarking on deficit reduction at a pace and in a way that endangers our recovery.

“When you cancel thousands of new school buildings at a stroke, it isn’t just bad for our kids, it’s bad for construction companies at a time when their order books are empty.”

New Members

Over 1,500 supporters have decided to join Labour in the past few days alone, while tens of thousands more have joined since the last election. In my own local Labour party they have nearly doubled their membership in the last year. As someone said to me recently Labour may have made some dreadful mistakes such as the Iraq war but this lot (The Liberal Tories)are about to make us go to war with ourselves.

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I found this interesting list of the top 10 reason s for marraige break up

Top 10 Reasons Why Marriages end in divorce or separation

10 – Not Doing the Little Things – films show marriages as grand loves. But, in the real world, marriages are made up of the little things – taking out the trash, picking up the kids from school, wiping down the shower or picking up your pants If there are frusterations over the little things, it can erode the whole marriage.

9 – Sweating the small stuff – As a counterpoint, if you stress out over unimportant things, you are dooming your marriage to the bin

8 – Spending too much time apart – If friends, work, or hobbies take too much time away from your marriage, the bonds can begin to erode.

7 – Criticising and nagging – These two things can eat away at the soul of a marriage, your comments to your partner need to build up not tear down.

6 – Not consulting the other person about purchases – The family budget must cover the family needs. If one person makes purchases that significantly impact the overall budget without consulting the other person, there is going to be hurt and anger.

5 – Letting yourself go – You spent a considerable amount of effort pursuing and attracting your spouse. That effort shouldn’t have ended on your wedding day or soon thereafter. If you are no longer working to make yourself attractive to your spouse, you must assume that he or she will look elsewhere.

4 – Playing the victim – Is it always his fault? Did she make you do it? If you feel like you are the victim in the relationship, it probably won’t last much longer.

3 – Not fighting fair – You are entitled to your legitimate feelings, but when disagreements occur, you must keep your arguments real and relevant. Avoid character assassination. Remain task oriented rather than accusatory. And, allow your partner to retreat with dignity.

2 – Spilling secrets – There are things in your marriage that should only be between the two of you. When you tell your friends or family members about things that shouldn’t be shared, you erode the bonds of the marriage. This is a matter of trust.

1 – No sex – When the sex has gone out of the marriage, the relationship is in trouble. Unless you can rekindle the flame, you are probably headed to divorce court.

Its simple really isn’t it, marriage takes alot of work, is a struggle, but has immense benefits, its not all plain sailing or getting your own way, its full of compromise but if it can be done with Love then you are on the way to success. So you have to ask…do you want to save your amrriage, are you willing to put in the real effort, that means change and compromise…not just for your partner but for you.

You could start by

Seeing Things From Positive point of view
When we are in the middle of an argument, it is easy for us to see everything in a negative way. A simple thing can arouse our anger and resentment, making your marriage situation even worse.

Try to cool your head and see things in a positive way, maybe laugh at whats going on, because really the way the toothpaste is squuezed is more funny than important.

Find The Reason To Keep Together

It is easy to say: “oh, I have enough with her, I want to divorce”. It takes strong reason to keep your marriage.

Find a reason why you want to keep your marriage. Maybe because they have things that compliment, support or even challenge your views or even deep down inside you still love your partner so much, or

Whatever the reason, you need to find a strong reason to keep your marriage from divorce first.

Watch Your Words

This does not mean keep deadly silent
Watch your words carefully. Because wrong words can make a disaster that you can never fix again.

When talking with your partner during this time, don’t try to make things worse with associating the wrong feeling. Always avoid confrontation whenever possible.

And always talk about the happy moments you two had at once. This will bring back association about the happy times you two had.

Find The Root Of The Problem

Whatever you do, there is a time when you have to face the root of the problem. Find the root of the problem and solve it once and for all. Don’t delay it or the same problem will arise again in the further.

When the same problem arise again, it will be harder to solve.

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