So here in brief is an update on things, some of which will be covered a little more in depth another time perhaps.

Universal shredder – still alive and thankfully past the “I’m going to eat everything stage”.

Her Who Must Be Obeyed – promoted to MD at Just Recycling, I’m saying nothing.

Mavis – traded in for Belinda. 

Garden project 90% finished, just 15 square metres of block paving left to go.

Recent riots – we need to give the offenders more money and stop moaning at them to get jobs.  How can you hold down a full time job when you are up most of the night having bonfires and looting ?

Free advice – don’t park and overstay in the 15 minute pick up and drop off zone at an airport unless you have your credit card with you, boy do they know how to charge!

Anyhow, as always I’m not short of a story or tale to tell but in this edition I’m going to devote it almost entirely to a letter that popped into my inbox from a colleague of ours.

You might find it funny

You might find it worrying  

You might find it offensive

You might find it too close to the truth

You might find it instigates venom in your mind for the needless do gooding parasites that bleed to death the tax paying fools of this once proud nation.

Anyway, see what you think.  If you are offended, oh bless you, get a job with a bank or local authority – they will soon toughen you up or turn you into the sort of person who forgets that for every stupid rule or regulation that comes out of the public sector, the fools in the private sector are paying for it to be dreamt up, written, instigated and enforced.

If you think it’s funny trust me it will only last a while until the venom creeps into your head.

So here goes – lets see how many people we offend …

Letter to Mr David Cameron:

Please find below our suggestion for fixing the UK ‘s economy.

Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan.

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.

Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire.
Result – Ten million job openings – unemployment fixed

2) They MUST buy a new British car.
Result – Ten million cars ordered – Car Industry fixed

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -
Result – Housing Crisis fixed

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university -
Result – Crime rate fixed

5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol / tobacco a week …..
And there’s your money back in duty/tax etc

It can’t get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know.

Also………..

Let’s put the pensioners in jail and the criminals into nursing homes.

This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.

They’d receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheelchairs etc and they’d receive money instead of paying it out.

They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance.

Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them.

A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell.

They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.

They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counselling, pool and education.

Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ’s and legal aid would be free, on request.

Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens.

Each pensioner would have a PC, a TV, radio and daily phone calls.

There would be a board of Directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.

The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised. Lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and pay £600.00 per week and have no hope of ever getting out.

Think about this (more points of contention):

COWS
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Appleby almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the county of Cumbria?

And, they even tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 125,000 illegal immigrants wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

Also;

If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone — YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!  It is time for us grumpy old folk of Britain to speak up!

Anyhow, they say things such as this come in threes.  The second one I’ll not bore you with but the third, well, there are times when you have to look on the bright side or you would just give up.

This third event involves our universal shredder (Alfie the Springer Spaniel) who for a couple of days had not been on top form.  He was a wee bit subdued and not quite the hurricane we’ve come to appreciate.

Well, subdued moved on to looking pretty sick.

Then he was sick, vomiting, not eating and not drinking, and it’s time to go to the veterinarians.  There was a bit of poking and prodding and they decided to keep him in.  Knowing that he is a lively chap and pretty keen to chew and eat almost anything that comes his way, a scan of his stomach and intestine is the only way to go.

To be honest, what with one thing and another, we could have done without a canine situation but you know what it’s like – you just get attached to the damn things, and considering other events of recent times Alfie was just about keeping us all sane.

Scan showed an obstruction from stomach to bowel and so out comes the knife and vet says he will give us a call when the op’s over.

Later that day we are informed they have removed: 

A piece of plastic bottle 

A piece of blue blanket 

A very. very long piece of nylon string

Several other nondescript items of plastic material 

The vet in question was a very nice, that’s very nice, young Polish lady and her English is far better than my Polish.

So she’s listing the removed obstructions and telling me that Alfie will have to have a muzzle until he gets out of the “I’ll eat everything” stage, and this is costing a fortune etc etc!

Now you know I have issues, so when I repeated the list of removed objects I politely asked if she had also found a small child and a bicycle too, as we hadn’t seen the neighbour’s child recently.

You know when you say things, when the mouth just overrides the brain?  The question just came straight out and I know, yes God I know, I should have known better.

Well five minutes later when she had explained that Alfie is not a very big dog, he’s only a puppy, and a child and a bicycle would not fit, I’m beginning to think that the child / bicycle joke had not been a good idea.

“Clearly you are mentally deranged, and if you can quite manage (should you really own a dog at all?) Alfie can be collected Wednesday morning,” is how she finished the conversation, well more or less!

About six weeks previous to this particular event, Alfie had had to wear one of those ridiculous see through collars; I call them lampshades, to stop him licking a row of stitches from another small situation.

He had to have one on for a week, well these things are £3.00 a time and he destroyed at least one a day, 2 most days was the normal.

Subsequently we built up quite a rapport with the receptionist when collecting replacement lampshades, and so when I asked if they did them in any different flavours, as in, would there be one he might not like eating so much, she got a handle on my mentality.

Sadly the same cannot be said of our young Polish vet.  So I just knew that it was going to be an interesting conversation when I picked the little devil up on the Wednesday morning.

Oh, I’d better end by saying that Alfie is on the mend, getting back to his normal self. The word the vet uses a lot in the daily updates is active, yes, when he’s on song “active” is a word you could possibly use, we tend to use the word “psychopathic”.

I’m using the royal “We” but I’m not going to clean two spades as I’m sure only one will be needed, together with a spot of deafness to endure the female garden planner’s managerial dictatorship!

We’ve always spent a fair amount of time outside in our garden, eating, socializing and so on.  We had, now remember that word HAD, a vegetable plantation full of lettuce, onions, tomatoes and the like.  Well, an area about 6ft by 5ft to be honest, but it was a plantation to me.

You may recall that about 6 months ago we added a new member to our family – a springer spaniel pup, Alfie,  I scribbled about him a while back,  referring to Alfie as the “universal shredder” for under £500.00.

Well, he’s decimated the once immaculate garden at Camp IKEA; grass, plants, shrubs, fruit trees, herbs, plant pots and as for the veg plot – well trust me, don’t even go there.

The lawn’s turned into a mud bath which has then been transferred to the kitchen floor, walls, cupboard doors and it just gets worse, much worse.

So in short, the grass or the remains of it is coming up, the borders have already gone and hard landscaping is the order of the day; gravel, paving and creamy white round pebbles are going in together with a larger office, but that’s another story entirely.

The garden’s on a bit of a slope so we are doing a bit of levelling up, and I’m making gabion baskets filled with the creamy white round pebbles to create narrow low retaining walls from one level to the next.

Unfortunately the weather has put a halt to this particular project.  Only bonus of this ridiculously cold spell, with the lowest temperature recorded at the homestead of  -18.5 degrees, is that temporarily at least, the mud bath is not the sticky issue it once was.  We’re dreading the thaw however.

Weather: Worst snow we’ve ever seen, 2ft in one night, car didn’t move for 4 days and when I came to dig Mavis (the Mercedes) out it took most of one day to liberate her.

Being the world’s worst cynic I’ll have to tell the digging out of the car story which renewed a bit of my faith in humanity.

There I am digging away, Her Who Must Be Obeyed managing the situation from the warmth and comfort of the sitting room, offering the usual completely useless words of wisdom via the occasionally ajar window.

I did get a coffee brought out though.

Fair play, 2 hours later she appeared brush in hand to take charge and as Mavis was unearthed we were now getting close to Her Who Must Be Obeyed’s set of wheels.

We dug and swept and finally made it to the driver’s door of the trusty Vauxhall, which incidentally doesn’t have a name as its “HER” car whereas Mavis is the shared transport of the house and needs a name to eradicate individual ownership.

We get entry to the Vauxhall and strike her up and get her thawed out and I continue the digging and sweeping of snow.

On my side it continues.  At the other side of the car Her Who Must Be Obeyed is now in conversation with a couple of the neighbours it appears.

While I’m engrossed in the digging department I’d not noticed the arrival of said neighbours who had appeared complete with shovels, salt and de-icer and had proceeded to join in.

Seems that this couple who live at the bottom of our road had helped dig out most of the people in our wee settlement.

Now isn’t that refreshing?  Doesn’t that go against the norm of what usually happens?  How many times have I heard people say they don’t even know the names of the people living next door, across the road etc?

It was jolly nice to see that a bout of the worst weather for years had brought back a bit of the community spirit of yesteryear.

The problems start when the end product just won’t give a return that’s financially viable on the initial investment.  One of the processes that’s subject to this more so than some of the others is shredders.

The most common request we get at Just-Recycling is for machinery that will shred everything you throw at it, and it has to take the material down to some ridiculously small pieces in one go.  Oh, and it must do it faster than the speed of sound with running costs of next to bugger all, please.

Life, as you know, is something of a compromise and in most circumstances what you want and what you can get will be somewhere amidships of the best and worst of what’s on offer.

I’ll admit that the Big Boys Toys element of our beloved industry are the things that float my boat, and when something new arrives on the market I get all excited and can’t wait to get a look at the latest greatest technical innovation.

In recent years our Italian and German friends have been the fathers of invention; their abilities with hydraulics and wear resistant steels and fancy electronics have been sights to behold.

Well, that’s something that I believe is about to change, dear reader, because I have come across a machine, no, a beast that’s absolutely unbelievable, and I mean that, it’s absolutely unbelievable!

Look at this for a spec sheet:

Manufacturer: Made in UK

Power: Less than 1 Hp

Running costs: around 50p per day based on a 12 hour working day

Noise level: 65-75 dB (A)

Purchase price: Less than £500.00

Insurance: Around £100.00 per year

Warranty: Absolutely none

Operator manual: You’re having a laugh

Feed stock:

Stone, bricks, concrete, paper, cardboard, plastics, green waste, timber, man made board, carpet, clothes, shoes, all textiles, plasterboard, rubber, ferrous, non ferrous and some other things we haven’t tested yet, but no doubt we certainly will be testing other material in the days to come.

Sounds too good to be true?

Well, I’ve got one and believe me it’s true – it’s absolutely 100 percent solid gold true.

I’ve had it now for two weeks and it’s still amazing me.  Amazing yes, a little frustrating and a little trying occasionally I’ll admit, but yes it does exactly what I’ve written.

So what is this hungry processing beast of wonder?

It’s a 10 week old Springer Spaniel pup who goes by the name of Alfie.  Jesus, how can something so cute destroy so much material?

Alfie, if you don’t change your ways soon you’ll have a stock number and be available immediately with free delivery to site, anywhere, UK, worldwide, just anywhere and complete with a kennel that took me all weekend to make.

Alfie, leave that!

Where technology is concerned I like to keep up with what is hot and what is not, and one of the few things that has not floated my boat is the quest for space exploration.

I have to confess that I don’t think man has ever walked on the moon at all; those jolly nice pictures of Louie Armstrong or whoever on the moon were done in a studio I reckon; good editing though!

But I do have a bit of a bent for the technology stuff, but just sometimes, every now and then something crops up and it makes me think “You are having a laugh”.

Take for instance the Americans, now them good old boys don’t do things by halves do they, they have the biggest of everything and so it goes with oil spillages it seems.

They have a bit of a leak going on over there at the moment.  Now I’ve been around the waste and recycling industry for quite a few summers, and I know the sort of trouble you can get into by spilling a bit of oil in a scrap yard or a vehicle dismantlers yard.

Many of our clients can tell a good few stories about EA inspectors who have thrown a wobbler over an oil spillage, and for this reason among some others, I have followed the oil well head problem that’s vomiting a barrel or two of crude into the ocean.

So there’s a hole in the sea bed leaking oil – do we send some fancy submarine in?  No.  Do we use some super duper cutting edge technology that’s never been seen before with a name that mere mortals can’t even pronounce?  No.

We are stopping this major, no, sorry we are trying to stop this horrendous cock up with golf balls and shredded tyres; are you really serious or are you having a laugh?

In days gone by they would have got on the phone to Red Adair,  “I say old boy, could you put your wellies on and pop over and bung our leak up, there’s a dash fine chap”.  The conversation would probably be with a bit of an American twang but you’re getting the picture.

You see Red Adair and our Fred Dibnah are a couple of my heroes – men of substance and cunning plans, with the added spice of a bit of daring and gung ho.

Golf balls and shredded tyres sounds a bit like having the last miserable dry chips from the fish shop just as it closes on a Friday night, or maybe them that matter have just run out of bright ideas.

Do you think the golf balls used will be lake balls and the tyres of choice will be Pirelli because they grip better in the wet?

It’s as daft as saying, “It’s very cold there, but have you been to Iceland?”

And getting the reply: “Yes I have, the ready made meals are very good value and there’s loads of choice.”

If you can get a country mixed up with a frozen food store, you probably would try using golf balls and shredded tyres to avert the biggest disaster the world has seen since Blue Peter ran out of sticky back plastic.

Now there’s a thought – toilet roll tubes, empty cereal boxes, washing up liquid bottles and egg boxes …. where’s the number for BP – I’ll give them a ring.

Just when you think you have got what you want, or even a glimmer of genuine change for the better is on its way for you and your fellow man, you find you have got it wrong.  Really wrong,

It actually stinks.

Last Friday morning was one such day.  I should have been working but my mind was elsewhere and on overtime; many, many things to do.

Price required for rough sawn timber, nails, screws, a couple of hinges and best of all a good quality rope, nice and firm, no stretching, with a nice 20 mm’ish diameter should be perfect.

Straight on to the internet, should be able to get some drawings and layouts for the business end of the job and then on to the jazzing up section.

Union Jacks, bunting and fireworks – you can’t have a do these days without fireworks can you?   On the down side – we will have to take care of the health and safety aspects.

Crowd control and first aid for the onlookers only, as the stars of the show ain’t going to need to worry about health and safety much after the event are they?

I’d even got the music sorted and then only at that point did “Disappointment, being let down, or just plain getting it wrong” kick in.

Bugger, it seems a Hung parliament is not what I thought.

It’s not the magnificent sight of swinging corpses and mega change for all, but a view of muppets scurrying around trying to decide if it’s going to be sheets and blankets, double or king sized quilts, or even super sized quilts to be put on the bed before two of the three parties climb into bed for a political bonk.

This really is a bad day at Black Rock, (great Western film, just in case you don’t know).

It’s a fact of life that in any relationship you have to have many things – friendship, common interests, sexual attraction with a big dose of lust, and heaps of respect.

The latter (respect) is probably the most important thing, but to embark on a relationship through lust alone is a recipe for a rocky, short term relationship.

Lust for power and not a bonk is what is happening; this is a joining of parties that on Thursday loathed each other.

Fair to say that none of them would have extinguished the others, if one or them had been on fire, not even by using their own bodily fluid.

I think the country is going to be just as disappointed with a coalition government as I am with my misunderstanding of the used phrase “hung parliament”!

I’d even gone for natural rope, none of your nylon rubbish; I’m devastated.

I’d gone for BT automatic telephone systems as the running commentary.

As the victims waited in line, over the PA system comes, “Thank you for waiting; your hanging is very important to us – we will dangle you with the next available operator as soon as possible.  Please listen to the crap music while you wait.”

Or what about, “Press 1 for automatic lubrication of the trap door.

Press two for rope with a soft cotton neck lining.

Press three to donate your bodily organs.”

But my best was kept while last, just as the rope goes around their necks they would have had their council tax bill given to them with “suspended” written on it!

I tell you reader, I’m gutted, and my gloom and doom depression is not being helped by “her who must be obeyed” with her superior, smug expression and comment of “idiot”.

As usual with that particular Italian lady, she had a fair amount of cleavage on show according to the reporter, and I guess he must have commented on the cleavage.

Seems she has a strong philosophy on the looks of women, she says that a woman’s outfit should be likened to barbed wire.

According to Miss Loren a female outfit should be secure, but everything protected should be clearly on show; sounds all good to me even though I’m a legs and derriere man myself.

It’s only the last few years that “Her who must be obeyed” has ventured into the heels department again, as there is a wee bit of height difference between her and me.

I’m a 5’ 5” semi dwarf and she is a svelte 5’ 7” built for speed type of person; I think her current theory must be that as we are now in our fifties the height difference doesn’t really matter that much any more.

Music is another interest in which we have diverse likes and dislikes; she gets all revved up about new music.  Corrine Bailey Rae’s latest album is one of them, some of it I like but most of it reminds me of lift music.

Another favourite of hers is Regina Spektor; same again – some good, some not so good.  One such track is “That Time”, not a great song in my opinion but the video can be enjoyed with the sound turned down for the best effect.   Have a look and see what you think.

Looked on the web over the weekend at a UK map showing the areas in pretty colours where council services are going to be cut, and it also shows what percentage of services are going to be cut in these counties / areas.

We’re based in Lincolnshire – so what’s in store for one of the largest counties in the country?  Hey we don’t have a motorway yet, but let’s be honest we yellow bellies are still in awe of that stuff called electric which comes down little cables you know.

Street lights are a little scarce, litter bins are as rare as a tax rebates, and certainly in my area the local planning people are all ex Gestapo officers, whose complete vocabulary consists of “NO” preceded and followed by a sharp intake of breath and a scratch of the head.  But you’ve got to remember, we help to provide the country’s potatoes and wheat crops so you do need to put up with us Lincolnshire-ites.

I regularly travel down the A1 to our great capital city and beyond, into the southern wilderness, and I always grin when I pass the big sign on the side of the A1 travelling south of Peterborough that says, “You are heading south, have you got a clean hankie and did you switch the big light off before leaving home?”  This just about sums us Lincolnshire souls up.

Yep, fair to say Lincolnshire is not top of the list for trend setting, world leading Eureka projects or inventions.  I like to think of us lot over on the east as an easy going, say what you think bunch of country bumpkins, with an accent to amuse many.

So what have the powers that be got in store for us in the coming months and years?  A bloody 30 odd % cut in services, that’s what.

Jesus, we are not exactly a great drain on the bloody country, but as “her who must be obeyed” pointed out – 30 odd % cut of next to sod all ain’t going to be too bad to live with.  She’s got a good point and I’d better say she didn’t actually word it like that, a little more refined but it meant the same thing.

I think what made it instantly better was the next bloody thing I read about was the bonus payouts for the wank workers, sorry bank workers.  Just some days I think the world is taking the piss.

Oh yes, a litre per metre per hour, now that’s a little saying that quite nicely runs off the tongue, doesn’t it?

What’s it all about?  Well, we have an extrusion and moulding plant for sale at Just-Recycling which makes leaking water pipe for land irrigation, solid water pipe, sleeping policemen, barrow wheels, pet mats and heated mats to sit 45 and 5 gallon barrels on.

The plant produces the above end user products from recycled plastics and crumb rubber; it’s not our usual type of machinery but it’s very interesting and will provide a closed loop recycling system for anyone with plastic or rubber waste.

I took a couple of interested clients to see the plant the other day and yes, Brian and Kevin, you are as threatened, getting a mention, and among the many questions asked regarding the plant they wanted to know what the seepage rate of water is from the leaking water pipe.

Well it’s a litre per metre per hour, and the rate of leakage is adjustable with alterations to the amount of the two raw products used to make the pipe.

I’ve got to be honest, a lot of what was discussed regarding the plant went that far over my head planes were genuinely at risk, but rest assured dear reader, the very next time I’m at a garden centre and I come across some poor lost soul with a coil of new leaking water pipe I’m going to bore them to death with the leakage rate and the options that are available and the technology that is needed to produce said pipe.

It will also be added to my ever growing inventory of totally worthless conversation pieces.

Hey the world just got better!

There are plenty of new projects on the go, and some cunning plans afoot for new and unusual recycling schemes; plenty of recycling machinery enquiries and bucketfuls of positive thoughts bouncing around.

So to keep things on a cheery, forward thinking theme, it’s time to share some of my positive thoughts. Most days I have a word or saying of the day.

Today’s word is “nipples”.  Now you can take your pick – this could be a mechanical connection to supply oil or grease to a moving part of a machine, or it could well be an item of interest visited during the great pastime of foreplay.

As well as a word of the day I also tend to have a thought that I refer to over a given period.  As said, the weather’s pretty miserable, so the thought for this particular cold spell is “women’s beach volleyball”.  Now if that doesn’t make you think of summer I don’t know what will.