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9 November 2011

Posted by DMC on 10 November 2011 in Diary |

I’m glad to say that I am suffering from minimal night pain in my joints since the injection in my shoulder.. Why on earth that should affect my knees and hips . I am still at a loss to fathom.. The thing that is given in most pain is getting this laptop to log-on to Dragon at the beginning of each day. For example I have spent half an hour this morning trying to get it to work and as a result had to close it down and re- booted it several times before it worked.

I sent a full report to the MND Association yesterday (prepared by Paul ‘the computer’) who I believe did a great job in analysing the problem but is not in a position to resolve it. The covering e-mail to MND Association t mentioned the 9 attempts to get onto the voice activation and they were ready shocked. Fortunately, they appear to be fully behind me in reporting Nuance to the trading standards people, so now we must just wait and see what happens.

The financial world is certainly in crisis at the moment. We don’t need agitators camping around the forecourt of St Pauls Cathedral to tell us that. The latest scare is the rate at which iItaly is now having to borrow money to service its debts. 7% is equivalent to 20% of its GDP, which is clearly unsustainable. I think Berlusconi has come to the end of a long run and Italy could well be the first casualty of the Eurozone. If it goes under, and is followed by one or two others like Greece and Portugal, then I suspect the whole Eurozone will crumble. Heaven knows what financial tsunami will follow. It is u-trodden ground. I do know some people who have liquidated their shareholding into cash which I cannot believe is a good idea long-term.

One only has to cast one’s my back to the last depression when the Deutschmark went through horrendous devaluation and people were literally taking barrow loads of money to the baker to buy a loaf of bread. I suspect that our knowledge of the global financial market is far more sophisticated than it was in those days, and that the powers that be may well be able to avoid such a harsh outcome. But, in the meantime it is very difficult to know what personal measures one can take, to safeguard one’s own interests, other than to hang on and hope. Interestingly enough, so far, the stock market has held up relatively well. The FTSE in excess of 5000 whereas in the last recession, it went down to around 3500. Well, it’s pointless worrying about something that I cannot do anything about. I shall just ride the waves with everyone else.

When I do know is that strikes against the measures that governments are being forced to takeare futile and can only exacerbate the situation. Alarmingly, the Head teachers are now going on strike and a series of other strikes are planned for the forthcoming months. What a poor example that is to children under their care.. Surely the members of those trade unions must realise what a mess we are in and that exceptions cannot be made. For example, the long-term plan of extending the pension age and increasingly the amount of contributions by a relatively small amount is imperative. It is a relatively small sacrifice to make now that if not implemented now, there would come a time when there was simply not enough money in the kitty to pay the pensioners s,o the situation would be far worse than the small amount of pain that has to be suffered at this stage.

As if there were not enough bad news about to frighten people. We were told that three day ago that there was a asteroid ,Yu55, the size of an aircraft carrier .hurtling past the Earth, at 30,000 mph and only avoided us by 200,000 miles, the nearest an asteroid has been to us for 200 years. Fortunately, these astronomers seem to know what they’re talking about as an asteroid that size, striking the Earth could well knock it off. it’s orbit and spell the end for all of us.

In the same vein, we were told that the debris from a defunct satellite would be falling to in the next day or two but they knew not where. Click here to see a little speculative video showing what might happen if it comes anywhere near you!.

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