{"id":2656,"date":"2012-02-19T07:30:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T07:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2012-02-19T07:09:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T07:09:20","slug":"19-february-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2012\/02\/19\/19-february-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"19 February 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man<\/a>Well, it\u2019s been a pretty miserable week in the Stragnell household. I started developing a cold on Tuesday (Valentine\u2019s Day, I know!) which has progressed steadily downhill all week approaching full-blooded \u201cMan Flu<\/a>\u201d by the end of the week. And, as we know, if I\u2019m miserable I am quite capable of making everyone within a ten mile radius miserable as well! So, I\u2019ve had a miserable week, Penelope has had a miserable week, the dog has had a miserable week and the postman and rubbish collectors were exceedingly fortunate I was otherwise occupied when they visited.<\/p>\n

And, to make matters worse, the weather\u2019s not been too bad \u2013 very moderate temperatures, the snow has gone and the mud has largely dried out (although Molly still needs a vigorous hosing off when we return from our walks).<\/p>\n

Then, this morning, much to our dismay, the forecaster’s prediction of a \u00a0return to Arctic conditions was realised when we awakened to more freezing temperatures and a smattering of snow. That’s enough, thank you!<\/p>\n

I ran across an article in the Guardian<\/a> this week which just doesn\u2019t seem to make any sense. Perhaps that’s because it is to do with another government proposal to reduce the deficit. See if you can help explain it to me.<\/p>\n

As you will remember, the coalition government here is frantically trying to reduce the deficit by cutting everything they can and the armed forces budget is no exception. Servicemen and women are being laid off and someone came up with a great idea to raise a bit of cash by selling off a 178 acre site at Ashchurch in Gloucestershire. The only problem is what to do with the 6000 tanks, carriers and cars which are stored there. The obvious solution? Send them to M\u00f6nchengladbach in western Germany where they can be stored until we need them.<\/p>\n

No problem so far but this is the point at which I begin to have trouble working through the logic of the scheme. We are in the midst of bringing soldiers back from British bases in Germany as part of the budget cuts yet we\u2019re proposing to send a whole shedload of equipment there which will need looking after. Then there is the slight problem of how to get them there without spending a fortune which will be a bit of a feat. Then, when they get there they will need to be stored in a secure environment as the technology is top secret stuff. Not to mention what happens when we actually need them? Fortunately, civil unrest is pretty unusual in the UK (never mind the riots last summer) and I suppose the UK doesn\u2019t really need a couple of thousand tanks to point at its own citizens so perhaps that\u2019s not a problem after all.<\/p>\n

I know the analogy doesn\u2019t quite work but it seems somewhat similar to my deciding to sell my garage to a property developer for a handy sum and then finding a lock-up garage in M\u00f6nchengladbach in which to keep my car from now on. Clearly I will have to rent the garage in Germany and hire a nice couple to keep an eye on it for me and perhaps carry out the occasional service but surely that will be less than what I\u2019ll get for selling my garage. The profit I\u2019d make would just about cover the cost of a couple of journeys to M\u00f6nchengladbach whenever I need to take the car out for a spin. The more I think about it, the more sense this makes. Has anyone got any contacts in Germany who might be willing to store my car for me?<\/p>\n

No wonder the deficit continues to grow.<\/p>\n

Breaking News \u2013 you read it here first (unless you didn\u2019t). You will remember the small misunderstanding surrounding some journalists on the News of the World hacking into mobile phones<\/a> that eventually resulted in Rupert Murdoch taking the decision to close the newspaper. There was widespread speculation that the demise of the News (which was a Sunday only newspaper) would be short-lived and that Murdoch would begin to publish his daily newspaper, the Sun, on Sunday in its place.<\/p>\n

On Friday he flew into London to address the latest round of bad news \u2013 a number of journalists on the Sun have now been arrested by police investigating corruption. It is alleged that they regularly paid serving police officers for information. As part of his morale-boosting message he announced that the Sun would replace the News of the World by launching a Sunday publication<\/a> \u201cvery soon.\u201d Quelle surprise<\/em>!<\/p>\n

\"Lucy,Finally, a sequence of great photos of Nick, Lucy and Annabelle at Lucy\u2019s brother\u2019s wedding last December. Lucy\u2019s new sister-in-law Cassandra posted them on Facebook the other day and I have to say they caused much hilarity in our household. As Lucy commented, “Annabelle being a little over-excited again.” We\u2019re hoping to get an 8\u201d by 10\u201d glossy of the second one down.<\/p>\n

Much love to you all,<\/p>\n

Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it\u2019s been a pretty miserable week in the Stragnell household. I started developing a cold on Tuesday (Valentine\u2019s Day, I know!) which has progressed steadily downhill all week approaching full-blooded \u201cMan Flu\u201d by the end of the week. And, as we know, if I\u2019m miserable I am quite capable of making everyone within a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “19 February 2012”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w76b-GQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}