Too much screentime for kids.

Are kids able to read anything further than three sentences or more exactly do they EVER read more than three sentences strung together? Like … things called ideas, instruction, information?

We as adults are kidding ourselves and more particularly kids themselves are kidding us all that this is ‘work’ or education or learning … when it is mostly anything but. I don’t mean the bright kids or those from motivated households, but I mean the kids from households where theres never any utterance of anything remotely connected to learning.

I can think of instances in even my limited social interaction where the adults seem apparently unable to contribute anything to a childs intellectual development. And then of course once age sixteen has passed them by and the exams fizzled to nothing everyone exhibits collective blindness as to how a valuable life opportunity/ waymarker has been allowed to drift past beyond reach. A vacuum of any hope to human potential.

We also as adults in this present age collectively somehow retain this silly notion that a laptop is ‘now essential’ for learning …. WHAT UTTER RUBBISH. What most average kids learn, or more correctly attempt to learn in a day I’m sure could quite easily be typed on one side of a sheet of A4; maybe even A5.

Perhaps the Russians are right on this, no child under eighteen is allowed to use a mobile phone.

Paper and books retain the images, facts and explanations forever, no matter how many times it takes until eventually ‘it sinks in’ and I know this myself from at later middle age still retaining the pleasure of ‘finding things out’ to quote Richard Feynman, making it a hobby to memorise things, little bits of foreign language, technical theory of various sorts. How we learn has been a fascination of mine most of my life, half a century and more. It is the ability to open the page again, to revisit again and again that sets it into ones mind, the weak point of screen based learning is that mostly its a once only experience, theres no pages to flick! Another weak point of screen learning is that theres too much faffing about to find what it is you want, I reckon any serious for instance medical student or professional engineer intending to pass exams will jettison the screen for a hard copy set text in book form, but anyway they will be bright and know the material already when plunged into exam prep.

And what of writing itself, gone is the effort and eventual mastery of a ‘good hand’ likewise the ability to make quick and efficient sketches and so many times we realise already kids and young adults can barely spell. Theres too many lame excuses from all concerned why this that and the other cannot be made to happen. The antidote is called hard effort and application and this means the ordinary and the struggling are now worse off than they have ever been and to my mind certainly book based learning can be called the most efficient reward for time spent, little in life that is valuable is gained without a little pain or effort.

Minds eye visualisation is hardly mentioned but once developed sets you apart from the vast majority, its also my experience minds eye visualisation is much reduced by an overwhelming reliance on a screen. This I believe is under-reported and under-researched.

I came from a ‘humble’ background, I recall vividly over fifty years ago meeting a slick new potential uncle that was technically literate (college ‘n suchlike) and could actually recall and set down on paper circuit diagrams and explain it all and most certainly had this ten year old enthralled.

Another case in point, an ex g/f has two grandchildren, age ten and fifteen, which up until December a web fascination fed only from a phone screen is now a laptop and x-box for the just turned ten year old girl (!) and a self bought laptop a few months ago for the boy of fifteen that now spends all night camped out in the parked caravan; I wonder at what time he eventually gets to sleep? I’ve already highlighted to the grandmother the dangers of all this, the reality of web addiction, and so what happens is yet more addictive gizmos are bought for them! Am I speaking a language they understand, does it sink in …. obviously not!

I predict the lively bright ten year old girl within three months will be solemn, uncommunicative and increasingly obese. She will be obsessed with the utterly pointless so called ‘social media’ and hobby activity will be a thing of the past. Progress? I think not.

The bright and advantaged will fly ahead as more than ever, the ordinary the slow are increasingly an underclass, disadvantaged by the over zealous application of screens and keyboards. Art, creativity and handicraft, modelmaking and inventive play for the younger kids and striving to make things with their hands and make them better each time is increasingly looking to be practically a Victorian oddity in its total abandonment. So does this mean the effort to do better with increasing skill in hand eye co-ordination and visualition are becoming near extinct … looks to be so!

I had two years ago when lockdown started produced two very good worksheets for them, intending to get them hopefully with my input to lay their work out better on paper, twenty questions or topics or mini projects were covered … did either of them do anything from this attention of mine ….. nothing, zilch.

Jaron Lanier who knows all about things tech implores us all to dump the screen and keyboard to dump facebook and phony titled ‘social media’ … and how very right he is.

postscript, lets bullet point a few ideas of what troubles me of endless screentime for kids and the obscenity of mindless parents desperate to buy them more crap at every opportunity …

reduced attention span.
inability to follow a thread of educational information or explanation nor any desire to do so.
reduced vocabulary.
a world view and view of life formed by less than ideal pundits and other such nonsense makers, advertising and clever attention grabbing algorithms.
reduced interaction with parents and family relations, no sense of past, no anecdotal recollection.
becoming isolated from realtime face to face human interaction, losing the ability to evaluate who is kosha, who is spouting nonsense or fantasy.
impaired ability with pen and paper, cannot sketch, writing poor, atrocious layout on paper.
blind to any decent tutoring coming from another adult, if it don’t come off a screen they just don’t want to know.
seldom if ever visiting the same page twice ie for reinforcement of material learnt.
a world devoid of Art, of the achievements of human endeavour, many things of beauty and creativity since the Stone Age all eradicated in a generation.
hanging on to extremely trivial social media posts, curled up in a chair with zero exercise.
an acute sense of living in the here and now, trivia rules okay; history eliminated.
kids do nothing to please their elders, their focus or loci is the screen.
and parents that are no different from the kids.

Not a pretty picture is it?

These are not correct …

…. its no big deal but certainly I think these two examples show misunderstanding.

Dr Fauci tells us that trump a supposed ‘macho man’ would not wear a mask. No, d.j.trump is certainly no macho man, quite a wimp actually but what he is … is belligerent, obstructive, nonsensical, corrosive, cruel, immoral, destructive and crude. trump is a showman and certainly multi-faced and Janus faced with no idea of or respect or recognition of ordinary people, he plays and toys with crowds of people, basking in the attention and knows exactly how to win them and have them swallow whatever he says.

trump is brass-faced but not a ‘macho-man’.

Ask his creditors, ask his many many ex-contractors, all his unpaid or fifty cents in the dollar transactions, ask Atlantic City etc etc.

Dear Dr Fauci I believe you have the situation misunderstood, its my belief d.j.trump is most certainly not a macho man but what is certain is that trump has an obsession with his image in the media. This to my mind is the one and only reason d.j.trump will not wear a mask. Its a tv obsession gone mad and quite logical when one considers his totally ‘me focused’ narcissism.

The other great big fallacy being promulgated is that laptops are the necessary for schoolkids to learn, which to my mind this is nonsense. This idea is being kept in the air because teachers and educationalists and governments cannot think of anything else. The only thing that can get through to most kids is chalk and talk and particularly with todays screen hopping two second attention span a laptop will prove useless. What kids do need are worksheets and workbooks, the requirement to write your answer on paper, to structure your workings and answers.

Its a lockdown, what a great opportunity to acquire some knowledge, to practice sketching, to write a neater hand, to do these things daily to a routine. Or as with Newton, to fill a notebook with activity and also I suggest as with many of these likely topics an older text book of 1960 or even 1900 can often suprisingly offer better explanations and succinct visual presentation that is easily memorised rather than for the latter day explosion of colour in diagrams that often overcomplicate and are a hindrance. An example of this is James Lovelocks ‘Gaia’ …. its overuse of colour for diagrams irritates. Its overkill, a bit like requiring teachers to have a degree in their specialist subject, this is quite ludicrous for teaching arithmetic to twelve year olds!

Memory and the value of memorisation is much undervalued, the more average child and the under achievers being allowed off the hook, to be excused from actually having to memorise anything. The Chinese are very big on the ability to memorise, they have to …. look at their writing system!

Grumble over.

The nonsense we are told.

bbc r4 this morning devoted a few minutes to some top medical bod telling us we mostly all carry too much weight (yes I agree) and need to look at calories and not particularly look at fat or sugar content (I don’t agree). There was no mention of sedentary tv and i-phone lifestyle, that kids seldom if ever play outside, that so many are hooked on the battery chicken Disney lifestyle, browsing, never making or doing much in particular. Particularly there was no condemnation of off-the-shelf meals, an over-reliance of frozen as opposed to fresh and the resultant lack of good quality nutrition.

My immediate reaction to this un-thinking piece of low grade journalistic nonsense was how unquestioning the interviewer was. As the famous Mr Meatloaf was quoted recently all you need do is look at sugar and fat….. to which I would add get into home-cooking and some vigorous walking exercise. The latter is so now desperately needed that a few weeks previous again bbc r4 ran a piece that Docs are desperate for pre-op patients wherever possible to get into exercise and a healthier lifestyle. This I concur entirely. It must be hellish to have to deal with raw material ie patients that are so tragically unfit.

I personally do not enjoy eating out whatsoever to the extent I would dread such an invitation. Surely its more fun to cook and learn at home, the beautiful aromas, the tweaking and experience gained in getting something ‘just right’, a friend and a drink surely what more could you want … and think of the money saved! Yes it takes time but at least we are not sat in front of the tv or dreaded I-phone and are somehow active and building a skill.

Likewise other moans today, American propaganda in general and specifically the downed airliner. I am increasingly highly sceptical of any intel or pronouncements offered from the Americans, particularly anything with the taint of trump attached to it. I personally think it was truly shameful that trump upped the tensions in the Middle East with the assassination Soleimani. And as the third article suggests, its probable the Americans can fool enemy radar into mis-identifying the data they see on their radar screens.

Heres some brain food ….

I Helped Sell the False Choice of War in Iraq. It’s Happening Again

Remember Iran Air Flight 655

https://limitlesslife.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/iran-jet-disaster-setup/

Those clever bbc r4 people.

Greta Thunberg was Guest Editor this morning on the bbc r4 ‘Today’ programme.

Does everyone know this? I was very impressed, I only caught the last half hour but is available to listen again and download over on the bbc radio website. Only drawback is that these days we have to perform the dreaded ‘log-in’; this I shall in this instance do. At one time it was merely click and play; everyone every organisation wants their stats. ‘The Cloud’ I read is running at 4% of annual electricity consumption and of course is set to rise!

I’m v impressed with Greta, she is erudite in English, has a v good brain and implores everyone note EVERYONE to read the science. We would hope a certain donald trump and his crooked coterie would likewise read the science but of course we know of his unshakable inability to read, inability to accept experts and inability to learn.

Science we know can be achingingly slow at coming back from the ‘front line’, we now have to stay on the up-curve, work hard to be near the crest of real-time feedbacks and data. Science too is full of vested interest, funding sensitivities, viewpoints and stances of all forms of regard and hue.

I wish Greta the greatest good luck and good health in maintaining ‘the message’. She is much too valuable to go back into a schoolroom, it would horrifying for me to see her having to plod along at dated quite needless material when her real task is elsewhere ie the whole world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na1aHtv0OKI

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z/episodes/player

For a ‘no punches pulled’ instructional overview on climate change and what we need do, the best I can think of is anything from Prof Kevin Anderson, full of intelligent content; it is a no waffle, pure condensed informative and knowledgeable overview. He speaks with the directness and brevity of a top class experienced engineer.

My own ethos is, in my own immediate little world:-

no more long drives out into the countryside, I walk and ramble much closer to home.
make clothes last, wear them out.
cook quick meals, seldom any longwinded oven cooking (and for me certainly no baking).
I wash everything by hand, wring dry and use a bamboo pole across the kitchen ceiling and/ or my washing line outside. No tumbler, no spinner.
get rid of the SUV…. and something that particularly irritates me, forget about letting the diesel idle pointlessly in the supermarket car park!
forget about airflights.
pester the Council, some carriageways are far too overlit at night.
eat less red meat; move away from ready-bought ‘burger culture’ its a con !
I actually prefer a £15 Melissa bench-top oven, the main oven hasn’t been used in twenty years.
slim down web posts, keep it brief, therefore reduces charging and ‘cloud’.

Endlessly explaining.

It really bugs me that so much hot air is continually expended endlessly repeating the basics of what climate change and mass extinction is all about, ie methane, changing weather systems, ocean food chain die-off, red meat production, forest clearance etc with so many (in the end) irrelevant ‘actors’ to use the trendy term who keep poking their stick into the spokes while times runs through our fingers like water.

Maybe communications and punditry are too easy nowadays; just as I am here adding my pennyworth; but at least we can voice our concerns in some way, cross-influence and develop dialogue, to reach out.

Yet still we have deniers to climate change itself!

The complete overhaul and re-alignment of human mind-set looks in my opinion to be impossible; consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses has too great a hold, ego rules peoples lives, western ‘face’ is everything. So many ppl seem unable to resist advertising pressure; good salaries are expended on forgotten tomorrow high end gifts and short term fixes, gizmos kids don’t need. We’ve become too slick, too mindless; we cannot it seems move the decades back to a cannier closer lifestyle of smaller pleasures and more modest activities.

I read yesterday of how at present ‘the cloud’ consumes 4% of existing electricity produced and will something like triple in a decade! Likewise bitcoin mining, soaks up electricity at a bizarre and frightening amount, equivelant to a small European country.

I just do not know how we can wean humans away from needless consumerism wanting to buy ‘new things’ and excessive sprawling carbon footprint. Disney has a lot to answer for, brain washing then screwing its customers for the ‘Disney experience’ FLA Paris etc and its pointless merchandise. I can imagine cars, personal transport and red meat consumption will shift to the rich only, such things will still exist right to the end but at a price.

Everyone seems to have a viewpoint, yet for most of these their viewpoint merely slows change, treacles up the process to an aching slowness.

We lose Arctic ice and all that seems to mean is territorial affirmation, commercial exploitation, big corporate self interest; witness trump and his shenanigans. I feel sorry for the Australians, I feel sorry for the coming El Nino.

Absurd election pledges.

If it cannot be solved commercially then its utter folly to guarantee broadband to EVERY household in the UK, a wide open pledge that will most certainly come to haunt Labour if God forbid they were in power. Are we not suffering sufficiently already with web addiction?

My smug hapless and bragging IR35 friend a posturing keen to be seen Labour voter likewise will regret the tightening of iffy tax loopholes, much as Diane Abbot realised on radio interview a couple of years ago its essential you can ‘do numbers’ when promising expenditure (re increase on police recruitment). There was austerity for a reason, but its a shame much Council and Social Services were lost, pity the madness of bailing out the Banks or Gordon Brown selling the UK gold reserves at the lowest price !

Inducements like candy for voters go back a long time, originally it was “Vote for me and you get a loaf of bread” possibly a better option than in these ‘modern times’ as the compliant cannot be duped, cannot be brushed aside months or years later when the so-called election pledges are thin memories, they get their loaf.

The absurd simplemindedness of Labours pledges and bribes beggars belief …

a shorter working week,

huge extra money for the NHS,

funding lifelong learning,

comprehensive childcare,

the compulsory purchase of the jewel ie BT broadband.

I might otherwise have been thinking of voting Labour as when you get a ‘good’ or effective Labour MP they shine, but theres too many Labour crew that are woefully and dreadfully lacking. A lot of the above pledges are wide open to manipulation and potentially a needless take-up by the dishonest that is taking for taking sake. Why do we have to fund lifelong learning for someone at taxpayer expense when in fact they would never bother to pick up a book and teach themselves, to gain a groundwork of the subject at home.

For instance personal health and how common sense can save a lot of money later in life, Doctors increasingly encourage people to get out and exercise, to walk as a regular hobby, many will not do this. Look around see the epidemic of obesity. Instead for a near zero cost preventative measure in later life the NHS will have to step in and pick up the pieces.

Corbyn is a master of the soundbite, of the indignant response to injustice and failings of his adversaries, but I think his own travelling caravan of Government would be wasteful, nonsensical, quite a charade.

Its a bad way to run any system, country or business by continually reversing the work of the previous encumbants every few years. Thank God for the Upper House.

Why is it theres so much nonsense around, witness the determination on HS2 to pursue the not needed max upper speed when lowering the upper operating speed a few percent will save billions and possibly save lives and stress in the longterm for everyone.

The one thing no-one is talking about, the increase in UK retirement age which is a scandalous stratification and divisive act of cruelty, this needs to be stopped.

Raising the retirement age hits the honest and the ordinary, the little people, in the worst way possible. If we are so-called ‘civilised’ then the retirement age should be reduced, not increased. The Chinese for instance find it incredulous we work beyond age fifty. Its all very well politicians that have the opportunity to rest their backsides on occasion to pursue the aged, the hurting and crack the whip further, but can they not realise how quite scandalous and very cruel this policy actually is. Also realise anyone with sufficient money has no need to work any more at some tedious or fatiguing low status job, those that can have already ‘got out’ therefore this stupid retirement age increase hits those that already are hurting, the most vulnerable.

Permafrost is one quarter of northen hemisphere landmass.

Just read the fact that a quarter of all northern hemisphere land mass is permafrost over at National Geographic; this is quite staggering really.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment/2018/08/exclusive-some-arctic-ground-no-longer-freezing-even-winter

Thinking aloud … if we factor in the permafrost that lies beneath shallow seas ie the East Siberian ice-shelf then I assume the at present mostly frozen but rapidly thawing methane hydrate and impending microbial activity might well account for half land mass in the northern hemisphere that is likely to massively overtake man made contributions to rising CO2?

Our slick western values and means of doing things seems that we live in our own self-aggrandised bubble, think trump at its extreme. For years I’ve never been easy with the constant hop on idea of air travel, thirty years since I’ve flown. Why do you need a second home in another country, another continent? The gravity of what is to unfold cannot justify selfish long distance vehicular travel in any form.

Likewise all my washing of clothes is by hand in a bucket and drip dry on a washing line. Depths of winter will not be so easy but since Feb ie north east England quite do-able, I actually enjoy the process. The extra time it takes costs zero as opposed to the electricity needed and factored cost of depreciation/ replacement etc of the washing machine and people say my shirts, my towels look so clean! Maybe with constantly thinking technology and cleverer washing machines are always ‘better’ we have long forgotten what the original basic approach can achieve. Think also the obsession with ipads, iphones, connectivity, I have little or nothing of those things (detest the idea of 5G) and I think pen and paper are still worthwhile particularly if you wish to learn and memorise. I cut up old Bonio boxes and dog feed cartons and these are admirable carry-in-your-pocket crib sheets.

I’m happy I’ve halved my car miles, older, have explored my county sufficiently, have a rich ‘capital of happiness’ to draw from. Ten miles radius provides all I need, twenty miles would be a special outing!

Green up – carbon down!

The limits of knowledge …

… its quite a high falutin’ term and has been used many times in the past, but mostly toward ‘advanced thinking’ by academics and philosophers but in my post here I mean it toward how it is often so difficult to put across in a few words areas of interest that I think others should also explore, ideas for children to build upon with activity and focused attention, a potential source of interest, joy and knowledge.

The limit of knowledge is that they are not interested and parents often now will view it as if witchcraft, ie the unusual, the less trodden pathway !!!

A case in point is encouraging young people to get a little more art and craft orientated in a practical manner, to explore images and artists from the past, to get practical whether its cutting and pasting or sketching or modelling, clay, plaster whatever. To develop manual dexterity, to open pathways of thinking and co-ordination. If by age ten they are not so inclined or have never known such activity then its not a given they will show any interest whatsoever in their lifetime. The curse of the screen has in a decade destroyed centuries of skill development that each child could experience so that in life they can have some facility with their hands, sketch, visualise, convey their meaning. Nursery rhymes, simple songs and poetry have for most children fizzled to nothing, become non-existent, needlework, helping with mother… all gone. Knowing the latest pop video release or minute nuanced trend in pop fashion is not building or development for rounded able citizens, just candyfloss, so much smoke and mirrors based on fantasy, endless escapism.

Looking at the Times newspaper April 29th p.29 print edition we find not even experts can agree, for instance counter to any common sense the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health decided this year there was no evidence that screen time itself was harmful!! This beggars belief. April 2019 the World Health Organisation injected some sanity to ask parents to greatly control and limit the amount of screen time children experience. Hurrah for the World Health Organisation !

Surely even a few brief seconds of seeing children hooked and over-enthusing on this junk can tell a parent or concerned adult all they need to know. Dear knows how poor their abilities will be as they progress through school, I’ve a feeling performance could be assessed as two and three years behind. Even the use of paper and being able to practice handwriting, sketch convey ideas is seen as arcane and marginal to requirements!!!

More enlightened parents will see to it Little Jonny does not skip the fundamentals the basics and will realise among other things paper and bookbased learning is essential. Theres an element of social class and background here that is being amplified and widened. A screen just cannot provide the depth quality or reinforcement to learning that is required, or the joyous serendipity of say a paper based textbook or encyclopedia.

This means there is an increasing gulf and stratification between those that can and those that cannot. An increase in differences of social class and performance. This unravels the efforts made to increase opportunity and pull up the poor performing, particularly since the Second War.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/well/world-health-organization-guidance-limiting-kids-screen-time/

Yet still in the above we hear of groups asking for evidence … answer = watch the bloody kids and see how skewed their behaviour actually is !!!

Likewise the UK Guardian in its often emotive woolly nonsensical fashion asks for evidence – as if again do they not use their eyes and ears to see things are amiss!

Kids cannot even ride in the car without having a screen installed right in front of their faces, to suck on the digital pap as they journey along; God forbid, more junk from Hollywood and endless animated crap. What we could describe as using that dire term of modern times ‘a targeted audience’. Or maybe a film about journeying thro Monument Valley … as they drive thro Monument Valley ?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/24/limit-screen-time-hour-day-5s-none-2s-says/

Why do diesel drivers do this?

A flash new diesel SUV in the supermarket and as happens so often the remaining nitwit in the SUV insists on the diesel engine continuing to run, I was away from my own small car and twenty minutes later he’s still got the running !!!

I think some form of bye-law banning this would be in order.

This always annoys me, diesel drivers parked at the supermarket yet the engine running. I was starting to get vocal, the driver oblivious, never mind, gave him a good peep on the horn as I pulled away and twenty yards further on spoke to total strangers … “Theres catastrophic global warming and for twenty minutes he’s been sat there with the engine running”!! Thankfully they agreed.

My own carbon footprint is improving, my walks and nature rambles happily closer to home, saves petrol too and since my washing machine broke down a couple of months ago i actually do prefer the simple manual activity of a plastic bucket. I have that ‘wonder-gizmo’ called a washing line and gravity drains my clothes and the breeze dries them, even on cold days its okay as long as not actual ice. Anyone that can should be encouraged to do likewise. there never has been a tumble drier here and these last few years it has always bugged me as to how long the washing machine took to spin. now, i don’t think i could tolerate its noise. i also do think that my towels seem cleaner and fresher by virtue of manual plastic bucket over electricity consuming washing machine.

What we now need to see is a reduction in street lighting and a reduction in needless use of security lighting for homes as well as industrial. Homeowners often have glaring security lighting for yards / gardens they never hardly enter and that no sane burglar would ever wish to go there ie the place is bare, bereft.

bbc r4 news tells us theres moves afoot here in the UK to be carbon neutral by 2050. Fine, if we are still here (which I personally doubt ie Arctic methane, etc) … but the cringing inadaquecy of the brief news piece at the top of the hour was that we “May have to turn the thermostat down to 19” and also that “We may have to eat less red meat” … wow talk about inadequate!

Ideas for reducing carbon foortprint …

halve red meat consumption every two years, get inventive in the kitchen.
ban diesels idling in car parks.
wash a few items in the sink, get a washing line if feasible.
drastically reduce street lighting / security lighting and home outdoor lighting say to one third.
drastically reduce air flights, encourage limiting personal mobility from engine powered devices.
limit acceleration on bigger SUV type vehicles on open roads / motorways.
police more effectively forest elimination ie for red meat production.
population control, a one child policy.

footnote: we read this morning how prescient tv presenter James Burke actually was, particularly the negative side of web and connectivity … https://www.indy100.com/article/james-burke-internet-politics-1985-video-viral-8894851

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_%28science_historian%29

The Great Entanglement … oops the web.

Increasingly i think the web is in fact the Entanglement … The Great Entanglement, to be spoken of in future generations such as the Enlightenment, a signal of change but this time its for the worse. We are heading toward a situation that we read predictions indicate a major part of world power generation will be consumed with online data surveillance / storage and whacko ‘get rich schemes’ as bitcoin.

We do something, some small activity and that alone warrants a followup posting and texting and endless selfies, I’m slightly guilty re this blogging but its mostly me writing to myself, collecting useful material and pushing forward, developing my ideas.

We are losing the point of what life is about, endless consumerism, mindless ‘enjoying’ viewing, sampling and nothing beyond; browsing the immediate. A major ‘de-tech’ would do us all good. Admittedly i realise business demands connectivity, thank God I can choose my own level, I have the benefit of having practical work to perform in a very old fashioned manner,that cannot easily be displaced or altered.

Yesterdays radio news tells us Uber being floated has never made a profit and possibly will never generate a profit. Be mindful its costs are being covered and salaries, fees, fixed and variable costs being met; but all the same asking punters to put money in to something that on the face of it generates no return on capital is again just plain whacko! When things such as this are happening its time to eliminate exposure to stock market fluctuations. I likewise dread the American crash once trumps shenaigans and inability with Economic Management comes home to roost. That little old thing called debt, a self proclaimed ‘King of Debt’ should NOT be President and his denigration and belittling of overseas trading partners is crass beyond belief, but hey … its djt !

Useful reading …

Consumerism, human disregard … https://opensociet.org/2019/04/12/the-man-who-saw-trump-coming-a-century-ago-a-readers-guide-for-the-distraught/

Surveillence capitalism … https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/84273524/posts/2240984298