Careful driver

It was a Saturday evening. My mother-in-law, obviously my wife’s mother, had been round, being fed by one of her daughters, obviously my wife, this occurring usually on a Sunday, when playing cards after an evening meal is the usual format, but this time to see our youngest son who was visiting to catch up on our wellbeing and seeing what we were up to. It’s nice to think that some of the children like to keep in touch.

Back to this tale. I usually ferry mother-in-law back home after the event so that my wife can wind down. It’s a return journey of about 80 minutes, through countryside and two villages, and it usually at around midnight. The relative is a frighteningly fit 93 years old, both mentally and physically. She has no means of transport so she is brought here and returned by car.

I had dropped her off, making sure that she had got into the house before leaving to return home. I was on the way out of her village when in the distance I noted in my mirror a car travelling in the same direction. Nothing special in that – I just noted it. It was a very black night, and quiet on the roads, except for the car behind.

I’m a type of driver that our children poke fun at – keeping to the speed limit within a few miles an hour, and neither violently accelerating nor similarly slowing down. I like to drive in a manner that I would appreciate if I was a passenger, both smooth and gentle. Some don’t like it like that, but that’s me!

Back to the tale. As I came out of the 30mph speed limit, I eased up to 45 – it was a 50 speed limit area – that leaving facility for the car behind to overtake and still keep within the limit. However, the car didn’t overtake and get ahead, but it increased its speed to match mine. I found this slightly disconcerting, remembering at the same time in films where vehicles are shadowed by following cars until the opportunity is appropriate to overtake, stop, and steal the vehicle or its contents, much to the disadvantage of the vehicle driver. Bearing this in mind I speeded up gently to the speed limit of 50. The car behind followed suit. I was now somewhat alarmed. After 4 mild of travel the blue lights started to flash. I eased to a stop and locked all doors. I opened my window – still slightly cautious.

I kept an eye on both wing mirrors to see what was going to happen. I saw nothing moving, but suddenly the top half a body floated horizontally across my window, and stopped to peer in. ‘Good evening, Sir,’ it said.

‘Good evening,’ I replied. I was happy that his demeanour seemed to confirm he was a policeman. ‘What have I done wrong?’ I asked, trying at the same time to work out if had driven dangerously somewhere on route, or exceeded the speed limit, but I couldn’t come up with anything – but one can never be sure!

‘What’s your name?’ he asked as he turned his head to present his left ear towards me.

I didn’t really believe what I heard, and responded with, ‘What have I done wrong?’

‘Your name, Sir, what is it?’ The left ear was presented again. I decided that I had better play ball with this fellow – otherwise I might be having problems. I replied, ‘Bell.’

His instant response was, ‘John?’

‘Yes’. His nose moved round in my direction. ‘You’ve been checking up on me!’ I responded.

‘We’ve just been through to the DVLA,’ was his reply.

‘I thought something was going on – you looked as though you were tracking me from some way back.’

‘No, we weren’t tracking you, we were just behind you.’

‘Anyway, what’s the problem?’

‘You haven’t done anything, Sir, it’s just that you were driving very carefully, and one of the reasons for driving like that could have been that you had been drinking.’ As he said that, his nose seemed to extend into the cabin area, twitching on the way. But clearly you haven’t been drinking.’ His nose retreated. ‘Thank you for stopping, and have a pleasant journey.’ Then he and his nose floated off towards the rear. I eased off to continue my journey.

That episode made me think! If one drives exactly in accordance with the highway code, with care and consideration to passengers, and one is picked up for driving too carefully, and if one is driving very erratically such that one is again picked up but this time for not driving in accord with the highway code, how does one behave on the roads to avoid such police attention? I wonder!

The other trouble with such a confrontation is that I felt at the time that I should have joked in order to ease the tension, and one of the comments that I had been sorely tempted to proffer was that I was relaxed because I had just got rid of my mother-in –law, but I was glad I didn’t – she’s a ‘great old stick’.

Worry about child rearing principles

There are many people who worry about the way children are being brought up at the present time.

When a child is introduced into this world, at a very vulnerable age, it would genetically expect to be treated in a loving and caring manner such as to provide a good base for his development until he is old enough and proficient enough to fend for himself, though mothers rarely ever consider their offspring mature enough to be able to take off on their own. Dads generally think otherwise, considering that their children will be well able to look after themselves as soon as they decide to make the break, though their daughters may be considered by many to be more at risk. The thinking behind this may be the consideration that girls might be taken ‘advantage’ of, with the possible inability to resist such unusual (to them) attention.

The problem with trying to define what is meant by a loving and caring approach is that it so much depends upon the personal him or her self, this being dependant upon his or her upbringing, and experience up until that moment of time. Their thinking would have been affected by the treatment they have experienced with other persons, as well as hearing or reading what alleged experts on the subject have to say. These other contacts would themselves also have been influenced by their own upbringing and experiences up to that date, or their thoughts may have been developed just from unproven theory. The whole subject can be very complicated!

The result of pondering on all these complications, on paper, is to consider that the new parents must decide themselves how to bring up their child, hopefully weighing up all the advice they can glean, but perhaps mainly concentrating on the basic principles of what they expect of their offspring at the end of the day, if that is possible.

It is considered that listening to their own parents and grandparents, where available, possibly together with friends who have children whose behaviour and principles are admired, would be a very good starting point. One of the problems with this is that some of the actions that the admired parents adopted in the past, when dealing with their own children, might not be in accord with some of the principles and approaches that the new parents would want to acquire and adopt on their own children, even though the overall results appeal to them. It is almost inevitable that this will be the case to some degree, even though the disputed aspect may well be critical in the hoped for development of the child’s upbringing.

Unless the father is unable to find work, it is generally considered that the mother is the best person to look after the children, possibly because they have what is colloquially called a natural mothering instinct. Is this important? It is being assumed here that the mother wants children because she loves the thought of having them, rather than having them just as a status symbol, or just as an asset to be brought us in the easiest way possible.

Research has shown that the mothers who stay at home to look after their children, full time, produce the healthiest children. Is this important?

It is felt that children should be subjected to an environment where they will want to be interested in reading at an early age. Is this considered important?

It is considered that children need behavioural and moral boundaries so that they know what is acceptable. If they go beyond those boundaries they then need to be aware that there will be a downside to their actions which will not be beneficial to them in some way. Is this important in the development of the child?

Traditionally, there would be a full time mother at home to look after the children, to the child’s overall benefit. Is this important?

It is generally considered that a loving and caring mother puts her children first, herself second. Many parents find such an approach to be unacceptable. Is this important?

There is no known research or experience that confirms all these consideration as being anything but important for the child’s best interest and development.

Sometimes, of course, circumstances can totally foul up the parent’s plans.

Global warming - who's to blame

An extraordinary vast amount of money is being spent because it is put out in the media that we, the inhabitants of this planet, are the cause of global warming, and that we can do something about it if we cut down on our emissions, carbon dioxide being the allegedly main culprit. Since the start of this campaign other gases have been brought forward as being equally important, if not more so. Persons, many seemingly qualified to do so, have joined the bandwagon and have been recorded as undertaking research into their own particular theory and have come up with results that have reinforced their view that their thinking is right and that this should be seriously heeded in the overall campaign to reduce the effect that humanity allegedly has on ‘global warming’.

The Leaders have looked towards the alleged greatest pollution countries and have homed in on China with its vast programme of building coal fired power stations and have said we can’t have that going on, and if they can’t afford to do anything about it, we must help them out with finance so that they can go down a different route which produces fewer obnoxious gases. This financing, of course, comes out of our pockets! In our industrial expansion era, last century, we relied on coal fired power station and nobody stopped us. OK, so the downsides of such power generation were not realised at the time, but do we have the right to impose on other nations a regime of restricting coal fired stations with the additional expense that other forms of power production could generate when they don’t actually want to follow that route, especially as coal would appear to be easily available in that part of the world?

And what are we up to, building vast wind turbines that are unreliable in their power generation because of the vagaries of the wind, it many times not being available when the electricity is required. There is also the problem that the turbines themselves have not produced the power promised even when the wind is evident? We must have a reliable source of electricity power generation in the future! The most reliable source of power could be from the tidal range round the country, this not deviating from year to year.

There is no problem with the concept of finding alternatives to the use of fossil fuels, possibly with public funding, but please publically pursue this aim, rather than colouring it with the concept of partially or even greatly reducing ‘global warming’. There is a growing properly informed belief that man will make no difference to ‘global warming’.

In order to persuade the non believer that humans can influence ‘global warming’ would someone please come out of the woodwork and explain what is wrong with the information that has been derived from cores taken in the Antarctic ice field which show that planet Earth controls itself within a recurring repetitive cycle, without any influence from the inhabitants at the time. The following is a graph showing the results of such investigations, comparing the temperatures and carbon dioxide proportions over a considerable time frame. It will be noted that the temperature recorded now is no higher that it was in previously recorded peaks, even though the carbon dioxide content is considerably higher!

The graph shows changes in Carbon Dioxide content and Temperatures over a considerable time scale, the details being published by a reliable source.

It shows the fluctuations in temperature (blue line) and in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (red line) over the past 400,000 years. The vertical red bar at the end is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the two centuries prior to 2007, this happening without altering the global temperature.

Now will someone please show us where it proves that man has had any influence on 'global warming'? That's the blue line we are talking about. One needs to bear in mind that the information put into this graph has been 'peer reviewed', and is therefore accepted as being accurate by all the relevant specialists.