This is my first blog on Soulcast. I thought I'd done one before. I have done one before, somewhere else. The question is where? I'm English and so have that particular English sense of humour. Germans don't understand it at all usually. My friend in Poland is getting used to me! To make matters worse, I live in the black Country. That is in the heart of England, just north of Birmingham. We have a dialect that is sort of Olde English and a different sense of humour too.

I really want to write comedy. Some of the great comedy classics have come from England and although some popular television like Benny Hill was popular in the States; I can't say I particularly proud of that. But people who mention classics, like Only Fools and Horses and Allo Allo; both great BBC comedy classics make me wonder what happenned to our television. We now have lots of digital channels. Three devoted to pornography, about the same number to shopping, then three dedicated to children and then the bloody awful rip off quiz channels. They ask you a silly question and ask you to phone in the answer to a premium rate number. If you're lucky enough to be drawn you win a crappy prize. No wonder, Britain is being described as rip-off Britain.

You do need a sense of humour to live here. You would go totally crazy otherwise. Traffic calming is the latest craze by bureaucrats. Whoever makes the white paint for those lines on our roads is doing good business - invest now! Traffic lights, spring up everywhere. Speed cameras are the cops cash machines. Not only driving past them a few mile per hour over the limit will get you a fine. but points on your license! I think it's about 3 points for speeding and 12 points and you're banned from driving. For many people a ban from driving also means losing their emploment too.

I tend to know where you local speed cameras are so slow to 28 MPH and lead a convoy of vehicles through and then go like a bat out of hell to try and catch the next set of traffic lights on green!

We are of course in the European Community. We didn't adopt the Euro. I have the Euro symbol on my keyboard - I got it to work once, forget how..... No, we stuck to the good old pound sterling. We have an advantage with that. On the notes it says: "WE promise to pay the bearer the sum of five pounds"; it used to be one pound - but the smallest note is a fiver now. Five pounds of what? I hear you ask. Gold of course. No, they won't pay you out. If you take your $1 to Fort Knox or the US treasury, they won't pay up either. The days when currencies were backed up by gold are long gone, in fact Gordon Brown sold off a lot of our gold reserves a few years ago. Of course, currencies need something to back them and it doesn't have to be gold. Property will do. Lots of things the government own in liquid assets will make the currency of some value. But currency only has the vallue the money markets put on it. Governments keep on printing money willy nilly! In the UK, it works OK. We don't get inflation because of too much money slushing around our economy. People borrow the newly printed money and buy bigger and better houses and property; even property to let. So property prices go up and up and up and people get richer and richer and richer - without doing any work. A great system! Of course if you own a house worth £250,000 - the banks are only too happy to loan you money and give you credit cards. So the people of the United Kingdom have never been richer, but they also have debts that make the debts of some developing countries look minor. Maybe, that's why we are being so generous and cancelling debt for developing countries - what's a few million here or there?

The government has introduced an Act of Parliament, ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights. That together with "regulations"; gives terrorists and criminals lots of rights. Meanwhile, lots of English people who have problems such as disability have their rights under these new laws ignored.

The UN will have a committee meeting in a week or two of it's ad hoc committee on it's ability and e-accessibilty initiative. These bureaucrats have lots of paid advisers, none of whom appear to be actually disabled. But they are making progress; they have defined disability! No mention yet of the Internet or computers and you leave their website wondering if the e in e-accessibility is what we think it is?

It's a good idea, after lunch on a Sunday. To sit and relax and do something not at all stenuous. I did this! I like to drive on a Sunday, it's the only day when the roads aren't grid-locked. The rush hour starts early on weekdays, followed closely, by the "school run", this is done in 4 wheel drive vehicles with 3 litre or bigger engines - complete with bull bars - in case one of the kids happens to run out into the road. The humps and traffic claming means most people have to drive one of these "Chelsea tractors" or "diesel baby buggies" asthey are called. I hate the humps, but they are now installing a kind of ramp and if you know how you can drive over these at 30 MPH without wrecking your suspension. Other stuff, you just have to treat as a challenge - a little like a chicane on a race track. Road planners are putting keep left signs on the roads everywhere. With a bit in between them for disabled people to cross the road. They catch people by surprise, and another one bites the dust! They cover the exposed electrics with a sign warning of the high voltage!

Britain does have assets however. These are not always obvious. A guy on the net wanted to have a well for water on his property. I advised him to hire a drill and drill down. He had been told water was close to the surface - maybe a natural spring? But if he had to pump it to the surface he could always use a wind turbine. But I think when I mentioned a license to pump water even on your own land cost at least £5,000 that may have taken the edge off his enthusiam!

Yes, you need a license for just about everything. Any English readers please note, yes, I know how to spell licence. But check on your TV license and you will see that it's now politically correct to spell it license. Besides, citizens of the United sates may read this and stop for a moment to click an adsense advertisement. I'm not doing this for the money, just to pass the time. But if I get enough money in my adsense account I may spend it on - advertising! I have a plan. I get money from advertising on blogs and websites - I reinvest that advertising my websites and I create a vicious circle. Eventually, my revenue will increase to a level where i can afford to retire and then I'll take the money and sell all my websites and the copyrights and even my stamp collection.

On the subject of my little stamp collection. It's small because I'm fussy, I don't just collect anything. Amazingly, I was wrong. I'm not wrong very often; but I was wrong in assuming young people would not be interested in stamps and so the value of stamps would fall and our collections would be worthless. Young people haven't let us down. Stamps are part of our heritage and part of our artistic heritage and lot of young people studying art in universities the world over are a new generation who appreciate stamp collecting. Even more popular, are postcard or view cards as they are known in some countries. Although, cards showing views, especially of beaches have no interest to me and no artistic merit. I like cards with buildings on, cars, anything that shows the period that the card was from. PHQ cards are sold by the philatelic bureau in the UK and are copies of commemorative stamps. If you want to invest in something unusual then open an account with them and buy now just the stamps but the matching PHQ cards. A good tip here if you don't have lots of money to invest. When a set of commemorative stamps is issued with 10 in a set, usually with greeting stickers to match. Buy the book of stamps or the presentation pack. The former is more economical, the latter looks good and of course buy the PHQ cards to match. One day in years to come, you can have a table at a stamp and postcard collectors fair and sell them for a very good price and put the money in to your retirement fund. By that time however, you may have gotten quite fond of your collection and decided to leave it in your will to some ungrateful relative - who will sell it after you've gone!

On the subject of art. I have a 3D art gallery on my computer. It's great and I'm slowly filling it with works of art. I was going to print pictures on photo paper and hang them on the walls around my home. But they would need dusting and cleaning and a virtual gallery makes much more sense. I got it with software for doing jigsaws. take a good "computer" art picture or any image you find on the net. Turn it in to a jigsaw. You can even add music to listen to as you do te jigsaw. When it's finished you display it in this fantastic virtual art gallery. I was so impressed, I changed the video card in my desktop computer! The card that was in was getting a little old and was jerky. So now I have two galleries one on each computer. I have a wireless network. My desktop is in my "home office". But today, my after lunch rest is in the kitchen using a laptop, connected wirelessly to the moden/router. I can put a link in here to the company you get the jigsaw program from. But I'm too idle. It is Sunday afternoon! But write it down and do a download at sometime. It's a free trial and even if you register it's less than $10. I paid £6.80 including VAT. VAT is value added tax - a sort of sales tax.

On the subject of VAT..... They should increase that to 20% right across the EU and raise pensions for the elderly, benefits for the sick and disabled. It's 17.5% in the UK and 22% in most other States. It needs making the same in all States. Even a 25% rate would be OK. They could even put it on newspaper and magazines. But also raise tax on gasoline, diesel, aircraft fuel, politicians! Then with all the money they get in - sort out the mess we're in. Make life better for people who are retired, disabled, chronically sick and people who work. They could even scrap income tax. Silly to tax people for working anyway!

We need to get in tax from polluters to pay for improvements in our NHS, National Health Service. We need to change the concept of social security to social support. Especially for people with psychiatric and psychological problems. We have a lot of sociological problems that are effecting peoples psychological health - these need to be recognised and then maybe something can be done. bureacrats drive us all bloody nuts, with their hair brained schemes. It was some bureaucrat with access to a computer that wrote that itelligence report that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and got us to invade Iraq with the Americans and lots of other countries helping too. It turned out most of the bloody report was a copy and paste job from some students ramblings. of course, that prat saddam needed getting rid of. But a little more planning could have gone in to it. the SAS could have dropped in on him and blew his brains out - it would have saved all this messing around. Even MI6 are becoming pen pushers - where are all the james Bonds gone? Are the MI6 agents swopping their Walther PPK's for Parker PPK's?

I hope my next blog will be more humourous. When you live in the UK, especially England. You need a sense of humour. But I start with good intentions and still end up rambling! But perhaps I've given you an insight in to my thoughts. I still can't remember how to put an html link in. But to read my regular blog and look around my website go to www.mike10613.talktalk.net and leave a message in the guest book!