The Grumpy Old Blog

A very good friend paid me a compliment the other day. Well, I felt it was a compliment. Something along the lines of " You know a lot about some mighty strange things. What on earth is this Bitcoin and Blockchain thing? " I have to be honest, despite reading up on it over the past couple of years, I haven't a clue what either Bitcoin or Blockchain is all about. You might as well accuse me of being an arboriculturist who thinks a hedge-fund is something blackbirds save up all their hard-earned twigs to nest in. All a mystery of gargantuan proportions.  To me, bitcoin an d blockchain is something to enable the vaguely technical, otherwise bored and money-greedy who don't themselves like having to work for a living to take as many normal Joe Soaps for an untraceable ride as they can, to pay for their yachts, fancy cars, Rolex watches and designer clothes. Oh, and for the awful teeth that don't suit their face that they pay a fortune for in Turkey. Now, according to ...

In fairness, it was what the Irish call a "soft day". An extremely soft day. A "Merde Il Pleut" day. I was in Rochdale to visit a friend whom I'd not seen for a while, and cast extreme value over and above the effort it would take on a very wet Mancunian day to visit him. First impressions, I was surprised. The bus station (I'm a public transport user) was clean and unusually, didn't have that "Eau de Urine" smell we have now come to expect and enjoy from bus stations. Add in despite it being a Saturday, there were staff on duty. Any very helpful staff they were too, able to give me a quick direction that didn't involve a reverse finger version of the "V" sign made famous by neighbouring town Oldham's one-time  MP Sir Winston Churchill. One exits the bus station and is greeted by a quite futuristic and European-style tram stop, again, clean and well maintained. And a little on the impressive side, if I may say. And that's ...

A little bit of retail therapy was required this morning to keep the fridge and cupboard shelves happy and content. So utterly depressing! In the supermarket, two full rows of unimpressive Christmas tat out already, pushing the Halloween tat to the further end of the shop. Why they think I need Christmas crackers, selection boxes with chocolate responsibly sourced from farmers in Ghana who are paid so much from the 2021 $7.24bn turnover of Cadbury owner Mondelez that they have to have their 12-year-old children splitting cocoa beans with dangerous 3-foot machetes because they can't afford either schooling or school books, is beyond me. Or a very plasticated door holly wreath that looks like it is made in China (it is made in China - according to a David Dickinson-lookalike on Tik-Tok with no visible neck and built like an outside sh*t house, Mary, or was it Joseph, was Chinese and followed the three wise men, Wing, Wang and Wong to Bethlehem all the way from China). And d...

These are my adventures wasting the time of an email scammer over the course of almost a year. I have left the diction and spellings by the scammer in their original format as received. Enjoy! Prime Minister Boris Johnson <borisjohnsonparliament03@gmail.com> reply-to:    pministerbjohnson@gmail.com to: bcc:    XXXX @gmail.com date:    19 Nov 2021, 22:22 subject:    Greetings From Minister Boris Johnson: mailed-by:    gmail.com Signed by:    gmail.com security:    Standard encryption (TLS) Westminster, London SW1A 0AA, United Kingdom. Greetings to you, I have information to discuss with you, please confirm if this e-mail address is still valid so that I can send to you the full details of the information. Reply as soon as possible. With your Full Name, Address and Direct telephone Contact For more information. Yours sincerely, Boris Johnson Prime Minister United kingdom of Gre...