Chronic Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
many of the casualties from the coronavirus will be from preventable chronic stress
the torment of chronic stress can kill you
It’s very difficult for me to write this. I’m confused, fatigued, and fearful. Who would know that 475 days of enforced isolation could do this to an otherwise healthy person?
For more than a year I’ve been prevented from seeing my friends, going anywhere, or enjoying myself in a normal human manner. For more than a year I’ve angry, anxious, and distressed, and for most of the time I wouldn’t admit that to myself or to another person.
Although I knew I wasn’t ‘right’ nor ‘healthy’, I didn’t know just how bad it was until I booked a (perfectly permissible), short break in the Mediterranean sunshine of Gibraltar. Just booking the trip filled me with apprehension, but then it got worse. I had a severe panic attack; insomnia, nausea, confusion, sweating, headaches, and memory loss.
All of those and more physical symptoms can be attributed to chronic low-level stress and anxiety. What I had done in merely booking a short trip to get me out of this place was to allow my mind to write a cheque my body wouldn’t cash.
I need help to recover, and I know that with some support I can get over this whole coronavirus insanity.
Of course, if I tell our National Health Service any of this I will be instructed to go into strict self-isolation for 10 days.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
it’s Catch-22
you are damned in you do
and damned if you don’t
Inalienable Rights
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
~
To any right-thinking man it is self-evident that governments are created to protect our unalienable rights ~ freedoms endowed upon us by our creator, and which supersede any man-made laws. These natural rights include; the right to think for oneself, the right to life, the right to self-defence, and these rights remain throughout one’s lifetime.
From the beginnings of common law these were rights which could not be surrendered to the sovereign or government, and were independent of any and all laws. In fact any contract or law that tries to alienate such rights would be inherently invalid. There is no act of submission by which man can give up the state of a free agent and enslave himself, for by doing so he would lose his humanity. He would cease to be a man.
This was the entire point of American Independence, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the abolition of slavery, and in the case of we English the regicide of Charles I in 1649. Go further back and read the second and most important book of the Torah and the Old Testament, and you will see that the Exodus is also about these same inalienable rights.
And yet, the governments of the supposedly free western world have been using the peoples’ dumb acquiescence to take away these God given rights, on the grounds that it’s for our own good.
Let us leave aside the really big events, things which drove a coach and horses through all of our freedoms, things such as; the Prohibition of Alcohol, Income Tax, the Draft during the Vietnam War, and England joining the European Union. Instead let us consider the petty restrictions that officialdom has imposed upon us because of the non-existent threats of the COVID-19 virus;
- house arrest for months
- a prohibition on meeting other people
- compulsory wearing of useless face masks
- compulsory frequent testing for the coronavirus
- compulsory vaccination by threats and intimidation
- the closure of bars, pubs, restaurants, theaters, and churches
- a total prohibition on travel, which is only now being slowly lifted
Actually it’s worse than all that, there has also been a vast propaganda campaign to convince us that the coronavirus is a threat to civilisation as great as the Black Death, and an insidious creeping censorship of the news media.
Once given these controls over the general public, governments and their lackeys will not easily surrender them. Not any government, not ever.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
the County of Oxfordshire is about to ban smoking outdoors
you couldn’t make it up
Coronavirus Vaccine
better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t
It seems that truckloads of Pfizer / BioNTech’s Covid vaccine are on their way from Belgium to the UK, where use of this brand-new miracle cure has just been approved by our medical regulator. Already our Prime Minister and Health Secretary are claiming that the end to the pandemic is in sight, and that the vaccine would ‘allow us to reclaim our lives and get the economy moving again…..’
I’m not holding my breath. The initial delivery of this particular vaccine will comprise of 800,000 doses, and given that two doses are required 3 weeks apart this tranche will treat a maximum of 400,000 people. Allow for logistical problems, wastage, people not turning up for the second dose after the rather nasty side effects from the first injection, and I predict that maybe a quarter of a million people might be properly immunised.
On top of that there are already arguments about who should be treated first, with some saying it should be care home residents and staff, while others insist the first to get the vaccine should be front-line health workers. That should be fun, the National Health Service has a staff of 1.4 million. The population of the UK is said to be 67,886,011 people ~ really? In which case put me down to be inoculated sometime after the first 67 million.
An effective and safe vaccine usually takes more than 10 years to develop, this Pfizer vaccine is hitting the English streets after only 10 months. This new vaccine is said to be 95% effective. Really? The most effective vaccine in medical history to date is the Tuberculosis vaccine which is proven to be 89% effective, while at the other end of the scale the vaccine against the Rotavirus is only 35% efficacious. The vaccine we are all supposed to have for measles is 69% effective. So, I don’t believe the coronavirus vaccine will be anything like 95% effective.
Anyway, why bother at all? Some 1.64 million people in the UK are said to have been infected by the coronavirus, or about 11% of the population. Really? There are so many false positives as to make the number of stated infections laughable. Of those infected 59,051 have died, or 0.08% of the population, and even those numbers are so massaged as to be meaningless.
The dry run for the mass vaccination programme is being called Exercise Panacea ~ how appropriate.
Many doctors, nurses, and other health professionals state privately that they will not be submitting to this vaccination. Neither will I, not ever.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
this vaccine will prove to be a Frankenstein’s monster
No Time to Write
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
I need a new plan. The one I’ve been using this past week doesn’t work.
On the other hand, I’ve been driven by events, rather than choosing my own path.
Having your home broken into kind of does that to you. In some ways it’s not the invasion, nor the fact that my stuff was taken, it’s all the fucking damned paperwork and admin that follows a burglary that has really been depressing me. And, I’ll give you one very important piece of advice, never throw away any bill, or receipt, or piece of correspondence. Keep every fucking piece of paper in organised files for at least 6 years. If you don’t then you’ll spend forever sorting out the paperwork when some unforeseen event or disaster happens.
I just have, and mine was only a little robbery, not some huge fucking disaster.
Hopefully, things will be better for me in the next few days.
Keep safe.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Useless British Politicians
Self-Serving Useless Politicians are Destroying England’s Future
You can always tell when politicians are lying, because their lips will be moving.
There’s a thing called BREXIT, which is a kind of acronym for the exit of Great Britain from the European Union. It’s been going on since the referendum on 23 June 2016, when 51.9% of the British people voted to get out of Europe all together.
Since then our utterly useless, supine Prime Minister, Mrs. Theresa May, has lied, procrastinated, and vacillated, doing bugger all about getting this country out of the European Union. The Prime Minister has been defeated in one vote after another in parliament ~ firstly her original (very bad) exit deal with the European Union was rejected, then her (slightly) amended deal was rejected, and now the idea of leaving the European Union without an exit deal has also been rejected.
WTF do these members of parliament want?
However, the default legal position is that Great Britain will leave the European Union on March 29th, whether there is an exit deal in place or not. To change that default leaving date will require a change in the law, and that’s not as easy as some stupid politicians think.
However, I have no doubt that our self-serving, dishonest, fucking useless parliament will find some way of delaying the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union ~ indefinitely.
The real deal is that NOBODY KNOWS WTF is going to happen over the next couple of weeks. Add to that nobody knows WTF is going to happen in the weeks, months, and years following our supposed exit date on March 29th.
Except that the English public will be voting a hell of a lot of these fucking useless politicians out of office come the next general election.
Some say that Brexit is a confusing mess which ever way you voted. And that Brexit is just like unfriending Europe on Facebook. All I know is that if the self-serving politicians don’t get on with it there will be Hell to pay.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Some people are psychologically incapable of telling the whole truth about anything.
Mr. Plod the Policeman
There are two people in your life you should never lie to
Lying to ‘Plod’ is almost never a good idea.
It seems had occasion to use the word ‘Plod’ a couple of days ago, and in my version of the English language ‘Plod’ means the Police. And then I started to think just how many other words we English have for a policeman, or the police in general. Turns out there’s quite a lot.
But, perhaps it’s not such a good idea to use these slang words around actual policemen, or police women. Especially don’t say cuntstubble to a WPC.
- the Bill ~ a shortened form of ‘the Old Bill’.
- Bizzies ~ a Scouse word, (from Liverpool), meaning the police are always too busy to spend time investigating ordinary crime affecting ordinary people.
- Bluebottle ~ from Cockney Rhyming slang ‘bottle and glass’ meaning arse.
- Bobby ~ Sir Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police in 1829, and Bobby is a short form of Robert. (Also see Peelers.)
- the Boys in Blue ~ Self-explanatory, the police wear blue uniforms.
- Constable ~ a word from English medieval times when a constable was a King’s officer of the peace in armies and castles. English policemen aren’t officers, they’re constables.
- Copper ~ an old English word meaning ‘someone who captures’ ~ weird, I thought it had to do with a constable’s badge.
- the Cops ~ from ‘Copper’.
- Crusher ~ English Victorian slang, from ‘beetle crushers’ a slang name for the heavy boots Victorian policemen wore.
- Cuntstubble ~ a very derogatory modern term for a female police constable.
- the Filth ~ no idea what the etymology for that is, but it’s a pretty derogatory word.
- the Fuzz ~ again I have no idea what the etymology for that is, but it’s another derogatory word.
- The Heat ~ said to refer to the red lights some police vehicles carried ~ I doubt that very much.
- the Law ~ obvious. But also a shortened form of ‘the Long Arm of the Law’. Like Canadian Mounties the British police always get their man ~ eventually.
- the Met ~ London’s Metropolitan Police ~ the largest police force in England.
- the Narcs ~ an undercover narcotics agent ~ also a police informant.
- the Old Bill ~ who really knows? It’s a strictly London term, and I suspect it’s some very nasty cockney rhyming slang.
- the Pigs ~ just derogatory and originating in 19th century England.
- Peelers ~ From Sir Robert Peel ~ see Bobby above.
- Plod ~ Mr. Plod the Policeman is a character in Enid Blyton’s Noddy books. But if you’ve ever seen an older policeman walking, then you’ll agree that they do plod along.
- Polis ~ Scottish / Glaswegian slang, and if you’ve ever heard a real Glaswegian talk you’ll know why they say Polis for Police.
- Rozzers ~ 19th century English slang of mostly unknown etymology. It may be from Polari slang, (homosexual slang).
- Scotland Yard ~ this was where the police force was first established in London on October 6th 1829. (Great Scotland Yard at the rear of 4 Whitehall Place). The headquarters of the Met. are always called Scotland Yard, (now New Scotland Yard).
- the Sweeny ~ cockney rhyming slang ~ ‘Sweeny Todd’ = ‘Flying Squad’ The Flying Squad is an elite arm of London’s Metropolitan Police, the Met.
- the Thin Blue Line ~ describing all that’s between the ordinary populace and anarchy.
- Woodentop or Woody ~ a uniformed police officer, a derogatory term used by plain-clothes detectives.
As you might expect, many of these terms are more than just a little bit derogatory, and the one’s that aren’t date back to Victorian times. Anything from London is more than likely cockney rhyming slang.
Of interest to my American friends, an Englishman would never, ever call a policeman ‘Sir’. That honorific term is only used for someone an Englishman really respects, for Example a very senior member of our Royal family. Sadly, these days not many Englishmen respect the police any more.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
standing outside of 10 Downing Street, they are a pair of proper policemen, in proper policemen’s helmets
So, Guns Don’t Kill People…
Guns make very small men feel very big.
The whole world must know by now that on St. Valentines day a nineteen years old youth called Nicholas Cruz carried out his very own cowardly massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. After about 7 minutes of shooting, 17 people lay dead, and 14 others were wounded, some of them critically.
Nicholas Cruz was expelled from that Florida High School for ‘disciplinary reasons’ after ‘getting into trouble’. It is now said that this cowardly youth is mentally ill, has a history of killing animals, showed off his kills and firearms on social media, and that his mother called the police to their home 39 times to try and ‘talk some sense into him’.
It is also said that the other students were very afraid of Nicholas Cruz and his propensity for violence when he did attend the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida.
So, how was it that Nicholas Cruz was, ‘perfectly legally’, able to buy an AR-15 assault rifle and magazines at Sunrise Tactical Supply, of 7600 Wiles Rd. Coral Springs? The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say that; ‘No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon’.
Really? And now 17 people are dead and at least 14 injured, some of them critically. Because Nicholas Cruz was allowed to legally buy an AR-15 and magazines.
The Colt AR-15 assault rifle is a military weapon of war, and a variant of the US military’s M16 rifle. Along with the Russian AK-47 (Kalashnikov), the AR-15 is the weapon of choice for terrorists and mass murderers who carry out insane random shootings. Stephen Paddock used a variant of the AR-15 to kill 58 people in Las Vegas on October 1st 2017.
The AR-15 is a lightweight semi-automatic rifle, either 16, 20, 0r 24 inches in length. It fires either the US .223 Remington, or 5.56 x 45 mm NATO cartridge, with a probable rate of fire of 90 rounds a minute, and an effective range of 600 yards. It is said to be a very user-friendly ergonomic weapon.
The gun laws in Florida are very lax. Florida is a ‘shall issue’ state and will routinely allow ‘concealed carry’ licences for handguns. You don’t need a permit to buy or carry a rifle or shotgun in Florida, nor do you have to register your weapons. You can buy as many guns as you like, all at the same time, including assault weapons with large-capacity magazines, and .50 caliber rifles. All you have to be is 18 years of age, (or a minor must have the permission of their parent or legal guardian), and you can equip yourself to start a reasonably sized war in the State of Florida.
Nicholas Cruz wasn’t old enough to buy a beer, but he was more than old enough to buy a deadly weapon and carry out his own St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
And Florida is not alone, the most lenient gun laws in the USA are to be found in; Arizona, Alaska, Wyoming, Vermont, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Utah, and South Carolina.
From England, the gun laws and gun culture in the USA look utterly insane. The US Constitution’s Second Amendment looks like a throwback to 1765, 1776, and 1783. The British Redcoats are not going to march down Pennsylvania Avenue anytime soon. The only time an American President likely to hear the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards play ‘The British Grenadiers’ would be on a State Visit to London.
Keep your Second Amendment and keep your mass shootings.
You are in our thoughts and you have the deepest sympathies of all England
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Money ~ Trust Nobody
Even Banks and Credit Card Companies are Dishonest
There is a truism ~ everybody lies. These days, even the people you should be able to trust to help you look after your money will lie to you. Just three recent examples in the news;
- Thousands of staff at Wells Fargo Bank routinely created false customer accounts based on real customers’ email addresses. All told about 2 million fake accounts were created. These fake accounts were allegedly used by staff to meet their sales targets ~ and some 5,300 Well Fargo staff have been fired. Would that it were all ~ trust me, there is more nasty news to come on this one concerning customer charges and wrong-doings higher up in the bank.
- The great credit card scandal continues. Credit cards are a rip-off for everyone except the banks. Despite official interest rates being at an historic low, the interest charged on credit card balances continues to rise to usury levels. And, in Britain Mastercard is accused of setting punitive charges on retailers, resulting in an estimated overcharging of £14 billion between 1992 and 2008. Guess who ends up paying for all this ~ you do. Mastercard are being taken to court in a class action.
- Four ex-employees of Barclays Bank are facing long jail terms for manipulating LIBOR. You may think LIBOR, (London Inter Bank Offered Rate), has got nothing to do with you. As a matter of fact the interest costs of everything you have ever borrowed is based on Libor. If you can’t trust the financial markets, then who can you trust?
Not one of the companies and people you trust to manage your money are completely honest with you. When it comes to your money, trust nobody.
Complete honesty is much more than not cheating, stealing, and lying ~ although banks, insurance companies, pension providers, credit card companies, financial advisers, et al, do more than enough outright cheating, stealing, and lying. Complete honesty means not lying by omission, being straightforward, being open, telling you what you need to know, avoiding obfuscation… None of the financial companies and people you deal with abide by that definition of honesty.
If they wanted to be really honest, then they wouldn’t have you sign a legal agreement which included pages and pages of small print.
What should you do;
- Check your bank and credit card statements for unexpected items, especially unexpected charges.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
- If it looks to good to be true it is.
- If you don’t understand something, have it clearly explained until you do understand.
- Never pay for financial advice, never pay an up-front or annual fee for a credit card or bank account.
In high finance there is a concept called ‘counter-party risk’ ~ one of the assumptions in that concept is ‘buyer beware’, never assume that the person or company you are dealing with is telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
George Bailey would be horrified.
~
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Powerful People Never Pay Taxes
Breaking News Shock Horror!!!!!
It seems the Rich and Powerful use tax havens to avoid paying their fair share.
Well, there’s a bloody surprise. Who could have guessed it? You could knock me down with a feather.
We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes. ~ Leona Helmsley (from 1989)
I worked in Banking and Financial Engineering all of my ‘official’ career, and I’ve known this ever since I could tell which side of a cheque was the front. Any Banker worth his salt knows that the rich and powerful don’t actually pay taxes. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer knew this, so did the US Secretary of the Treasury, and the Minister of Finance in France, and everyone else with more intelligence than a demented gerbil. Even dimwit David Cameron’s father knew all about international tax avoidance.
These people have to pretend surprise now that the whole Panama Papers thing has hit the news. (For some of these people the brown stuff has really hit the fan ~ because their roles in all of this will now be in the limelight.)
There are a few basic techniques, (conjuring tricks), towards not paying taxes;
- Your companies are ‘officially’ based in and report through a low-taxation regime; Dublin Docks, the Irish-Dutch Sandwich, Lichtenstein, one of the obscure Caribbean nations, & etc, & etc….
- You ‘officially’ reside in a low taxation regime, Switzerland is nice, Monaco even more so.
- You don’t actually make any money. Trust me, it’s ridiculously easy to not make any money.
You don’t own anything except your companies. Everything you buy is on the company, everything you use is on the company, the company owns all of your homes, your private jet, your yacht, your cars…- Your companies ‘officially’ make losses.
- You don’t employ anyone. Your lawyers, accountants, butlers, drivers, maids, pilots, yacht captain, mistresses, hookers, are all employed by the companies you control. Your company even pays the bill when you eat at a fancy restaurant.
- All direct taxes, sales tax, value added tax, are reclaimed through the companies you control.
- Get ‘slightly criminal’ and invest in bearer shares and bearer bonds.
- Choose your banks very carefully, HSBC has a global reach and is really good at this stuff, (as well as money laundering if you require that service).
It would be boring to go on and on, but you get the basic idea.
Various top people in various governments are making a big show of trying to put a stop to all these scams. Don’t hold your breath. The efforts to make global finance more transparent are more up-front show than Las Vegas.
You know what? It’s actually worse than that. If you are rich enough, and powerful enough, various governments will fall over themselves to give you a shed-load of money. Put up a few ugly wind turbines, invest in a lot of solar power, plant some trees, buy the British steel industry… The list of things for which your government will make the rich even richer is long, wide, and detailed. Read some of it and weep.
There is a slightly brighter spot on the horizon. Rich and powerful men just can’t stop getting married to gorgeous, scheming, avaricious women. When the marriage breaks up, then their ex will take them for all she can get ~ and the divorce lawyers will be rubbing their hands with glee. Serves the evil bastards right.
There is one brutal truth you need to remember; The Rich get Richer, and you get ground into the shit. Meanwhile the old-age pensioner has to choose between heating her home and buying enough to eat.
~
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
JackCollier7 
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