Notes from a tired radical

Many of you will have seen this coming for some time. I like making people laugh, and I’m not about to stop doing it. But my country, my home region and, let’s face it, my DNA have been captured by the evil of a near-homoaeopathic percentage of twisted megalomaniacs kept aloft by variously corrupt, depraved, gluttonous, self-indulgent and sociopathic public officials. So some of the laughter is beginning to feel both inappropriate and downright hollow. What follows in this brief pot-pourri helps explain the decision, although nothing can replace my bottom-line belief: Commentary that changes nothing is little more than onanism. From here on, I am bowling for the other side – viz: The Humanity XI.

It’s odd how – just by going about one’s normal business – something surprising happens…and when followed up – guess what? – there’s bad stuff going on.

I’ve been involved this week in signing a large document electronically. It wouldn’t download on my landline service at all, and so “purely to see” as it were, I tried it with my Nordnet satellite back-up. Traditionally, fixed line internet is faster than satellite.

But hey presto – Nordnet downloaded the document in under 10 seconds.

Checking around some reviews, I could see the sat speeds have improved slightly, but are still only at best thought to be “tolerable”. I had been fairly sure for some time that my landline service was slow, but suspected it might be my pc.

Asking around a little further, everyone I know using Orange/SFR landlines and not yet having opted for ultra-fast 5G has seen their speeds slowing down. So I downloaded an app to measure mine. It’s running around 35% slower than normal. Obviously, it’s another example of the New Normal.

The problem France’s big boys have is they want a lot of money to let you switch to 5G: pro packages are up to €380 a month, and upgrading from 4 to 5G domestically will see a 50% monthly increase for most users. That’s €4,560 a year for the privilege of being censored, and casually cut off from my followers.

One little marketing gimmick (aka blackmail) has been the announcement that 3G services will be closed down over the coming months. The other nifty tactic is to slow your speed down until it’s no better than 3G anyway. Gerritt?? You should do – it’s called fraud.

This would make my average 5G subs plus downloading limits around €105 a month to maintain. I’m 74 years old, and my full 100% hospital treatment insurance per month is €88. Seems to me that’s a bit out of wack when it comes to good value WiFi. Or as the French pronounce it, “It smells a little wee-fee”.

You may consider that the local North Wales news is Wild West enough as it is. I apologise if my references to it are turning into something of a mini-series, but reading the output of the last few days about the Men of Harlech, I’ve realised that if you string a few of the headlines together, they get even funnier.

Yesterday for example, we had ‘Rhyl raid on man who cheated male escort out of Morrison’s “Sandy” package’….which somehow conjures up a “Jules” package to go with it, along with the thought that Morrisons is now selling male escort services. (You have to be old enough to remember Round the Horne to fully appreciate that one)

I’m also drawn to ‘Stranded OAP fears speed-cop heartbreak as giant Conwy housing project forces Dog-friendly Snowdonia holiday cottages to get away from it all’. There’s definitely a surreal mobile home speeding pets cover-up going on in that one.

‘They were furious: the Russian soldiers refusing to fight in Ukraine’ says a lead story in the Guardian this morning. Three points to make about this deliberately obfuscated headline:

• Multiple regular soldiers were not furious about being asked to fight in the Ukraine invasion
• Three officers were angry because one (singular) squaddie was getting to the end of his National Service and asked to remain in reserve just outside the Donbass region
• Russian Nat Service soldiers have the right to request such things, and his request was granted. Nice to see a little Rule of Law being applied somewhere at last.

So to sum up, Big G has “found” 1 unidentified Russian soldier (no s suffix involved) with what some might think a reasonable request given he wasn’t a regular soldier. IABATO* applies: an overstated headline with a lie at its core, aka a pathetic piece of half-baked propaganda.

* It’s All Bollocks And That’s Official

And now, Another First at The Slog: Tales of the Expected

• EUNATO is winding up Finland to join its Fringe Club
• Elon Musk has put his Twitter bid on hold
• AEP in the Telegraph thinks the Fringe Club ‘is the perfect place for post-Brexit Britain’
• Virulently anti-Brexit campaigner Dr Swati Dhingra has been promoted to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England

Sovereign independence is in full-on panicked retreat, people: wake up and wise up.

Get Russia, Kill the Brics, clamp down on the privatisation of social media, reverse Brexit, full speed ahead for global EUNATO hegemony.

Everything I’ve fought for on Our Side is now turning in on itself.

I’m no longer on Our Side. Our side is on the wrong side of history.

I’m defecting to the Other Side.

To paraphrase Thatcher, “You stay if you want to, but this man’s for leaving”

An earlier bulletin of some relevance