The trials and tribulations of travelling on the bus! Some outdated laws to get a little angry about.

 I was travelling on our local bus again today. It’s going through the village again now. Whether it was just a matter of time before they cut down the problematic overhanging branches which were preventing the bus turning in the village or whether my complaining influenced matters remains one of life’s mysteries. But it’s all running smoothly again now and remarkably to time.

I caught a bus at 1.00, not at the crossroads but a bit further along the road as I had time to spare, and travelled to Uppermill where I went to the library and the hardware shop. Then I walked through the park to the Tesco store in Greenfield (getting my Fitbit steps in!) and worked efficiently through my list of stuff to buy. With a couple of minutes to spare I was at the bus stop waiting for the 2.30 bus for home. It arrived on time. That was when the trouble started.

We have a single price ticket system on our bus network: £2 for an adult and £1 for a child. I discovered last week that you can re-use your single ticket for another journey provided you do so within one hour of the original purchase.  There’s also a day saver, possibly for tram as well bus: £5 for an adult and £2.50 for a child. The trouble today began when a young man got on the bus just after I did and asked for a child day saver. The driver asked to see his Igo pass, a special pass for 11- to 16-year-olds which entitles then to travel at children’s rates. He said he didn’t have it with him so the driver said he should pay full fare, maybe a £2 adult single. 

The young man protested and insisted he should have the child day saver. The driver went on to say that it was the fifth time this young man had tried to get away with this and insisted he should either pay the adult fare  or get off the bus. The young man became abusive, refused to alight and swore at the driver. A passenger at the back of the bus remonstrated with him, asked him not to swear in front of her child and reminded him to respect other people. 

He changed his tune: he doesn’t have an Igo pass because he couldn’t apply for one; mothers have to apply on behalf of their offspring and he doesn’t have a mother. Was the remonstrating lady going to apply for one for him? Of course not! I suggested that of he is only 15 there must be a responsible adult in his life who can help. No there isn’t: was I going to app,y for a pass on his behalf? No, of course not! And so it went on, back and forth. The driver threatened to call the police. The young man said he was happy to wait. 

Some 10 or 15 minutes later the driver gave in, sold him a £2.50 child day saver and off we went. The young man got off the bus in Uppermill. He could have walked there in the time he was arguing with the driver. He did have the good grace to apologise to the remonstrator with the small child … and then muttered that the child will no doubt hear much worse! Another young man got on in Uppermill, again without an Igo pass. When challenged, he politely paid the adult fare! 

Maybe if we all carried identity cards of some kind there would be no meed for Igo passes and arguments with bus drivers. 

The bus driver, by the way, was very calm and restrained. 

Fortunately the sun shone through all of this. Apparently we are in for a heatwave through the rest of this week and into the weekend. Emergency services are warning about the risk of wildfires. We must all be vigilant! 

I was reading an article about the need to decriminalise abortion, almost like a step back in time. It seems that even though the Abortion Act in 1967 gave widespread access to abortion, it was never made fully legal on the statute books. There is still a law that’s largely used to prosecute women for a suspected illegal abortion, a law that was written in 1861 – that’s before women had the right to vote or own property independently! And the number of court cases and convictions has actually increased in the 21st century. Between 1861 and 2022, only three women in Great Britain were convicted of an illegal abortion. Since December 2022 alone, seven women have been charged. One woman has been jailed.

That’s not all, frighteningly earlier this year, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which sets the strategic direction for policing across the UK, quietly issued guidance on how to search women’s homes for abortion drugs as well as seize their phones to inspect menstrual cycle tracker apps. That sounds like a gross invasion of privacy to me! 

We are not as free as we think we are in this country. There are vague and outdated laws (outdated laws again, note!) which mean the police in Britain have far too much power to arrest people for offensive internet speech. According to the Economist, “British police arrest more than 30 people a day for online posts, double the rate in 2017.”

I’d better be careful what I write about! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Another ‘Day’, another celebration. Works of art. The continuing madness,

 Among other things, yesterday was Beer Day Britain. Who knew? Certainly not I. Here’s something about that particular bit of nonsense:

“Beer Day Britain is an annual celebration on June 15th for all beer lovers and it celebrates all beer including traditional ales, mainstream lagers, and limited edition craft beer and everything in between no matter where it is brewed or who owns the brewing company. 

June 15th is significant because that is also the date Magna Carta was sealed in 1215. The great charter mentions ale in Article 35.

‘Let there be throughout our kingdom a single measure for wine and a single measure for aleand a single measure for corn, namely 'the London quarter'.

Ale was so important in England in 1215 that it was cited in one of the most significant legal documents in history. Today beer and pubs are still central to British life and seven out of 10 drinks sold in a pub are beer.

There you go. Of course, in centuries past people drank ale because the water was not always very safe to drink. Just in case you think that Beer Day is an ancient tradition, it seems we have only been celebrating Beer Day Britain annually on June 15th since 2015. The main focus of the day is the National Cheers To Beer that takes place at 7 pm when people also sing the Cheers To Beer anthem co-written by Peyton.

 

I didn’t hear any singing from the pub next door at 7pm yesterday. Maybe nobody reminded them. 

I came across this interesting photo, looking for all the world like the kind of thing you might find in a Barbara Hepworth exhibition. Apparently the large stone is a “hag stone”. Of course, I had to look it up:

“What Are Hag Stones?

A Hag Stone, often referred to as an Adder Stone, is a unique type of rock characterized by a naturally formed hole piercing straight through it. These stones have been shrouded in mystique for centuries, with many cultures attributing magical qualities to them. It’s said that possessing a Hag Stone could grant one the power to cure venomous snake bites or to peer through the veil of enchantment, revealing the true form of witches or fairies when gazed upon through the stone’s aperture.”

This one seems to have inspired the finder of the stone to make a work of art:

“Hard to not balance this very specific hagstone once it found me, as I’ve only seen one other like it in the world, 8 years ago on a karst mountain in rural China. I balanced that one then and felt a need to balance this one now, despite being nearly too heavy to place atop any complexity..  thus intuitively ended up keeping this one simple, both as a physical and design constraint, especially considering the round rocks below are soft sandstone, as well as building with collaborative intent, while here in Lancashire UK. 

The curved side rock followed me from downstream for no apparent reason at the time, but became a perfect inclusion to amplify negative space. The round rock on top of it functions to counterbalance / lean it closer to the core, amplifying visual mass and dialogue of the parts.”

Unfortunately I don’t have a name for the artist, just this: # gravity glue. 

On more serious matters, in the wider world the madness continues and now Israeli women and children are also being killed. Here’s a Michael Rosen comment on that, or rather on how that is being reported:

“The big moral question being sorted out in the newsrooms: Is a dead Israeli worth the same as a dead Palestinian or a dead Iranian? Mostly the answer is no, an Israeli is worth much more than a Palestinian or an Iranian. 

This kind of non-equivalence is not known in maths where 1 = 1 = 1. But this isn't maths. This is the news.”

Meanwhile people are still starving in Gaza, but a lot of media attention has been drawn away from what is still going on there. 

And Zarah Sultana MP has been reminding us about the state of things: 

“The Iraq playbook is back & the media won’t question it.

Iran has no nuclear weapons. israel - on trial for genocide - does. Iran signed the NPT& allows IAEA inspections. Israel hasn’t - and its leaders face ICC arrest warrants.

Beware of politicians beating the drums of war”

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Remembering Grenfell. Calling for votes. No Kings demonstrations. Oh, and some cheerful nonsense.

 It’s eight years yesterday since the Grenfell Tower fire. The tower is about to be demolished at last but while it’s been standing it has been a strongly visible reminder of what happened, a reminder that people in other similar blocks are still waiting for cladding to be removed and replaced. 

“There is the fear that once that tower comes down, they’ll be forgotten,” said Nina Mendy, whose aunt, Mary Mendy, and cousin, Khadija Saye, died in their flat on the 20th floor. “It’s the uncertainty of what next year a memorial will look like. It’s like we’ve been told what’s going to happen, rather than been consulted – it’s almost like being a child.”

Survivor David Benjamin, who was in his girlfriend’s flat on the fourth floor at the time of the fire, said that eight years on from the tragedy, he hoped that “people would remember that it wasn’t just a building – it was our home”.

There is going to be a memorial but the fear is that there will be too long a gap between demolition of the tower and the establishment of a permanent memorial might be too long. Survivor Antonio Roncolato, who lived on the 10th floor, said, “I feel that the time has come for the tower to be taken down. But for me it’s important there is a plan in place – that the tower is not dismantled and then the ground remains sealed off for a year. For me, it’s very important that events like this take place and that we keep breathing down the necks of our politicians to make sure that the recommendations from the public inquiry are implemented.”

It’s amazing how slowly some things move. 

As tension in Iran and Israel mounts, and our chancellor has apparently told Sky News that UK military could “potentially” be used to defend Israel, Zarah Sultana MP once again appeals for more sensible action: 

“If the UK government wants to defend Israel militarily, put it to a vote in Parliament.

Let the country see which MPs support a genocidal state.”

We need more MPs like Zarah Sultana.

Here’s an ancient quotation from John Lennon:

“Working class people around the world have no innate desire to go to war with each other. They have to be conned into it by sociopaths who will profit from it.”

And here’s one from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut: 

"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."

In the USA, as well as having the US Army 250th Anniversary Parade, which coincided with Mr Trump’s 79th birthday yesterday, there were huge demonstrations nationwide known as the No Kings protests, also No Kings Day and No Dictators Day. The protests were aimed at opposing the policies and actions of Mr Trump’s administration and follow days of demonstrations against ICE raids in Los Angeles and other cities. 

The No Kings theme was created by the 50501 movement.  50501 is short for "50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”; it is a grassroots political organization founded to protest the policies and actions he second Donald Trump administration. The group organized several nationwide demonstrations starting on February 5, 2025, with anti-Trump rallies. Critics and activists compared Trump to an absolute monarch: hence the name No Kings. Its message: "We reject authoritarianism. We reject fear. We reject tyrants.”

Here’s a photo of the demonstrations in Philadelphia.

And an ironic dog protest: 

On a lighter note, here’s a bit of Spike Milligan:

Smiling is infectious

You catch it like the flu

 When someone smiled at me today

I started smiling too

I walked around the corner

And someone saw me grin

When he smiled I realised

I had passed it on to him

I thought about the smile

And then realised its worth

A single smile like mine

Could travel round the world

So if you feel a smile begin

Don’t leave it undetected

Start an epidemic

And get the world infected.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Whit Walks then and now. Keeping up traditions in a crazy world. The possibility of drought.

After my comments yesterday on how few children seemed to be involved in the Whit Walks in our village, I found some old photos of Whit Walks from years ago, with lots of children dressed in traditional white.

There are also a couple of photos showing how traditionally it rained on their parade. 

Maybe there are fewer children involved nowadays because we have an aging population in most pf the villages. Also perhaps it’s also because families with young children are priced out of houses around here. 

We walked into the village in the afternoon yesterday and saw bands that walked in

played their obligatory piece for judging

and then left the village via the bridge that featured long ago in the film “Brassed Off”.

Out and about collecting small children from school earlier this week, I noticed that it seems to be well-dressing time again, at least in nearby Greenfield. The Delph well-dressers have done nothing so far. In neither case is there any sign of a well, just the dressing. 

But in a world that seems to be going crazy, we are keeping up traditions. 

After a quite hot and sunny day yesterday, today is rather muggy and very dull. It even tried to rain on me as ai ran round the village. And although we have had bits of sunshine, it did rain quite heavily in the late morning. However, according to this article, despite the rain we have had over the last week or so, Yorkshire has bow joined the Northwest of England as a declared drought area. The reservoirs are lower than they should be for the time of year. 

And, according to some reports, it’s not going to get much better. In fact we may be due for a hot summer. We shall see. All the rain has done is encourage the crop of buttercups in our back garden … which now needs cutting once again. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!