Rhossilli evening walk

Yesterday it was a lovely still fine evening so I managed to get an evening stroll at Rhossilli Gower (Wales UK)  it was a smashing evening, I could cheerfully have stayed there all night.
Heres some pics, there was an incident on the clifftop with someone injured but not seriously I'm glad to say.

Benefits street

What can you say, C4 plumbs new depths with Benefits street, the program which teaches viewers how to shoplift among other things is appalling. 
Taking advantage of the local people isn't new to C4, one only has to look at programs like the un-datable and other C4 programs where the poor subjects are made to look stupid and  exploited, but showing them actually trying to commit a crime is going to far.  Benefits street showed how to make a bag to fool the shops anti shoplifting devices and how to remove the security tags, it then went on to show one person actually trying the door of a tesco delivery van (if I was tescos I'd be pretty pissed off)  Thats more or less aiding and abeting, and certainly Ofcom should be putting a stop to this terrible excuse for a program

Army recruitment

The British army is having trouble recruiting new soldiers.  This news comes despite the army getting rid of some 20.000 existing soldiers, why recruit new soldiers when your sacking so many?  The answer is because the army wants part time "reserve" soldiers rather than have to pay full time soldiers (the cheap answer as usual)  But the problem is it's having a hard time recruiting reserve soldiers.

Theres a few reasons for this, one is that people who join the reserve do so mostly for extra money and a bit of fun soldiering...... but they mostly have full time jobs as well. And while the employers don't mind them being part time soldiers (missing some weekends and 2 weeks a year) they don't want them missing for 6 months at a time, this puts a huge strain on a small business.  Remember the clue is in the word reserve, they should only be used as a last resort, not used to replace normal soldiers to save money.

Oh if world war 3 started these reserve soldiers would be happy enough to fight for their country, but it's not quite the same thing sending them to other counrties for the oil and then putting them in jail when they actually kill an emeny who has just been shooting at them, lets face it thats not really a war, it's a sort of fucked up bad joke, and the army wonders why it's hard to recruit...........

Cree / Refrakta ( torch review )

I'm one of those people who like to "be prepared" so I always carry a torch of some sort, for Christmas I had the Refrakta 580 lumen's torch (Cree)  So here's a brief review.

The torch is 580 lumen's, a lot for a small pocket torch, it has 5 modes, low, medium, high, SOS and 8htz strobe, and has a rechargeable battery.

In use the torch is solidly built and feels comfortable in the hand, it lasts a good time on a battery over an hour on high power. 

The light output is frankly staggering, even low power is plenty bright enough for normal things including finding your way around in total darkness, as for high power... think car headlight and your close, seriously I'm pretty sure you could drive home with one of these taped to your car, ok you wouldn't be driving fast but you'll see ok.  It lights up about 50 yards (meters) clearly with a good spread of light.

If you can't think in lumens (and I can't) I figure 580 lemens looks about equivelient to an 8w torch (aprox), now that doesn't sound a lot but trust me it's got tons of light. 

Whether it's for finding something dropped behind the fridge, or finding your way down off a mountain in bad weather at night you'll be glad your got one of these in your pocket.

Waynes rating 9/10  (wish I'd had one years ago)

Stay away from A & E says NHS

Well the Muppet's at the NHS have come up with some great advice, "stay away from accident and emergency" they tell us.... Curiously most of us don't actually want an accident or emergency so the advice shows just how stupid these people are. 
The A & E departments are overstressed, yes well thats hardly a supprise when you closed half of the ones you had in the first place, maybe keeping ALL the A&E's open would have been a better idea than telling people not to have accidents, the clues in the freaking title ACCIDENT for God's sake, thats why people can't really avoid having them.
Two of my four local hospitals that used to have A&E have now closed them, thats doubled the workload on the two remaining ones, it should hardly supprise anyone with even basic maths that theres going to be a problem, indeed plenty of people told them this would happen, but then they had to save a few quid for all the stupid things they waste money on, like building a brand new hospital only to close most of a few months later.

Begging adverts

I saw a recent tv advert that went something like.... Ula has six children, the eldest has a two hours walk every day for water, and thats a contaminated spring.... Please give etc etc.
Sever point people, first off was having lots of children where theres bugger all water and food a good idea? Secondly your living in a bloody mud hut, why build it so far away from water in the first place (and where did you get the water for the mud)  It's called natural selection, the dumbest die out. 

But sadder, even if we wish to help these people (and frankly I don't) theres pretty well nothing we can do, your £3 (or whatever) isn't really going to help.  Why you ask?  Because the first 50.000 or so peoples £3 will just about pay the CEO's wages, then theres his company car, secretary, 10 million pound offices all the other paid staff, phone bill the cost of the adverts etc etc etc.  Millions and millions of our... well your money is just going on the overheads, bugger all actually reaches the starving thirsty people... Oh a bit dribbels through but you'd be supprised just what percentage many of these charities take out first.  And thats why I won't help most of them.  There are two I will donate to and only two.

Happy new year and beach pics

I went out for a short walk yesterday on my local beach and took these pics.