York blogs - featuring posts from a local people - brought to you by The Press newspaper in York

My wife Sylvia and I are 78years old. We have 3 children, 6 grandchildren, 7 great grand children, the last born January 14th 2007, Ella Grace. Sylvia is in remission from a terminal lung cancer
diagnosis but we are, thankfully, both well and able to get about.

We enjoy family, meeting friends, people, gardening, short breaks away, getting out around our beautiful county to the coast, the dales, markets and favourite places like York, Castle Howard and
Harrogate. Events like the Yorkshire Show, smaller ones and Opera in the Park at Temple Newsome too attract us.

I thoroughly enjoyed and am retired from a working lifetime in sales, selling greengrocery first; then biscuits, soup, corsetry, lingerie, swimwear, franking and mailroom equipment to retail,
wholesale and mailing organisations. My work took me all over the UK and we have lived in 12 different homes, since being married, in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Reading. After returning to York in
1980 until retirement, I worked as an Accounts Executive for RR Donnelley, (formerly Ben Johnsons), looking after customers' print jobs at the factory.

Since then, I researched our family history, made a story of it. Printed copies are in the libraries at Northallerton, Museum Street, York and Tang Hall. I finished it just year and created PDF files
of it on CDs for family and friends. I am interested in current affairs and enjoy making my views known, hense my involvement here.

There comes a time...

It is time for me to stop blogging and thank Richard Gowland, Jon Butler and the editorial staff for publishing my opinions in the Press, in blogs and letters over the last few years.

The Big Money Society have no loyalties.

We are in a fight for national survival only surpassed by the threatened Nazi invasion 70 years ago.

Big Society Eric Pickles.

I had high hopes for the Lib Dems in the elections until they first lowered their sites from STV to AV then dropped it altogether before going into this coalition.

Angry students.

Students today are young citizens learning about how they are going to fit into society, how they can be involved through their vote or in other ways and what they can expect from the political system.

Teachers and Cops have humour.

These are actual comments made on students' report cards by teachers in the New York City public school system. All teachers were reprimanded (but, boy, are these funny!)

.. bit by bit for years, interest free?

Graduates will repay their fees with ever cheaper money over many years as inflation devalues it, and their pay increases to meet the ever rising costs of living.

Best since Magna Carta.

It will probably have more influence on morality than any other. And, it's here to stay and grow.

... we are in "The Big Society".

"We were in the same boat together". No we weren't! That is so obvious, and getting more so, it's written out of the scripts now.

... our national decline.

The redundancy of Ark Royal and her crew is a very sad, tangible sign of our national decline. What we lack more than anything else is UNITY. We are NOT 'in it together'.

SPEED GETS YOU NOWHERE ON SNOW, SLUSH AND ICE.

More speed on the drive wheels does not grip snow, slush and ice. THE WHEELS RACE ROUND CREATING HOLES, OR THEY WILL TAKE YOU INTO A SKID.