The stuff that come through my letter box!

 THIS is written to be shared and in the spirit of helpfulness. Free advice, if you like.

Today we received a letter, second class mail. It was correctly and very nicely addressed, in a good if I judge elderly hand,  to our flat but there was no addressee. Not even an 'Occupier'.

I opened it and there were in it two items which, by chance, I read in the wrong order but I will correct that here.

The first said "Please don't throw away until you have read this very important message!" So here comes the first advice: If the recipient is unnamed and the sender is unknown subjective assessment of relative value can be insulting and is always presumptuous.

Moving on there was a second, more professionally printed note that was half the size of the envelope. It had two sides although which was front was not in anyway indicated.

I shall assume the one with the most assertive messaging was the key front. It informed me that the world was growing darker every day. Really? Ah well, opinions vary.

It then informed that GOD (their caps, nature of deity unstated and unknown) 'offers hope through salvation. It's as easy as...'

There followed three paragraphs helpfully categorised as A, B and C. 

The first demanded that 'I ADMIT (their caps) I am a sinner.' Second piece of advice: Do not tell people that they are sinners when you not only do not know them but have not even named them. It is gratuitously insulting.

It goes on to quote some items from the book of Romans which, of all the books of the testament is the most likely to have been corrupted in translation. And is not necessarily accepted by all in our multicultural world as having much value at all. 

The second demanded that I BELIEVE (their caps) Jesus is Lord. Second piece of advice; This comes in two parts:

Part one is that we live in a multicultural world. Your message will enrage its target if they turn out NOT to believe that Jesus is Lord of anything because they are of a different faith. 

Part two is that being unknown to the recipient, and he/she/it being unknown to the sender this is again presumptuous in the extreme. As an atheist and a humanist I do not accept that Jesus even existed and I do not accept that anyone born 2,000 years ago was Lord of anything but the small world in which he may have existed.  Incidentally I have the greatest respect for people of faith since I of course live by my faith in the scientific process. 

In either case quotes from John (well he would say that wouldn't he) and Romans are of less vale than the sender thinks.

Finally we get to C of the A,B,C - CALL upon His name. Romans get another outing followed by Psalm 145 with its promise of action upon the call. The only advice I offer here is that the phrasing could be a little less stentorian.

But, and it is the biggest but of all, this message has a reverse side and it is here that I got really fired up and decided to write this. And, for the record I avoided reading more than a few lines for fear of rupturing something!

It demands that I accept there is a problem! What? Where? And then tells me again I am a sinner!

You might get away with this face to face, with someone you know and who knows you. But this is an anonymous letter through MY door! How dare you! I bin advertising tosh and this goes the same way!

The price of 15 years misrule....

 I often take my trolley (mobility scooter) for a wander through the Halstead Town Park (as I call it). It is a very fine little urban oasis, classic of the Victorian era but modified and for the most part exceptionally well cared for. 

Until now. And especially in the once delightful wild garden. In these last two or three years the desperate shortage of funds and resources is now all too plain to see. I have little hope that Braintree District Council will come to the rescue even if they do get some new funding from a more caring Labour government. 

Anyway here are a few images to show the problem, and the potential.

What's the matter with letting in a little light....

 

BACK in the movie 2001 there comes a moment when Dave Bowman says in quiet amazement: "Its full of stars". Well the firmament is but it would have been more astonishing to most of us if he had said: "It's full of light".

For it is. The universe is full, absolutely and utterly full, of light. And yet we can see but a tiny fraction of it. Individually. Let me explain a little.

When we each look at the night sky we see a black universe interspersed with bright, white lights. Most of them in fact will be galaxies which are vast distances away from us. A large number will be stars in our own galaxy, specifically those in our spiral arm of the Milky Way. And a few more wandering items of different hue will be the planets we share our solar system with.

But the rest is apparently black as your hat. Apparently without light. And yet I can assure you it is utterly brimming with light.

Your neighbour next door will look at the sky and see exactly what you see – but not by the same beams of light. For those reaching your neighbours eye are different from those reaching your eye. And so it goes across the planet. And ever more as we place observers – static and animated – on distant objects like the moon and one day, Mars and more.

And why is because light travels in straight lines. And an object generating light – single star or complex galaxy – will generate myriads of beams of light all radiating from its outer surface. And just one of these is enough for you to 'see' the object generating that beam. And another beam is enough for the person standing next to you to see it too. And so it goes for every 'viewer' in the universe. And so your object star is a vast and single point or generator of uncounted trillions of rays heading out in all directions. Yes, all directions.

That is why the universe is not actually dark at all but infused with a vast array of electro magnetic waves of light beaming out almost endlessly into the abyss. I say almost because of course all things die – stars collapse into dwarves of various form, more form into light-trapping black holes, entire galaxies switch off their light production and became mere clinkers. Entropy will ensure that some of these infinitely long beams of light will have an end – and that 'end' will travel (recede?) across the universe, turning off the vision of its generator in the eye of the beholders.

Now there are implications in this. It seems that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Now make a note here 'observed'.

I suggest very strongly that this is the flaw in our various hypthoses – we only 'observe' 80% of the energy – the rest is the unseen but vast rays of light effectively swilling about unheeded. And if as theory suggest these rays contain 'photons' of light then maybe that is also the 'missing' 20% of matter?

References among many:

Stars produce their own light and energy by a process called nuclear fusion. Fusion happens when lighter elements are forced to become heavier elements. When this happens, a tremendous amount of energy is created causing the star to heat up and shine. Stars come in a variety of sizes and colors. https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/204-What-is-a-star-#:~:text=Stars%20produce%20their%20own%20light,variety%20of%20sizes%20and%20colors.

In fact visible 'light' is a form of radiation, which can be defined as an energy that travels in the form of electromagnetic waves. It can also be described as a flow of particle-like 'wave-packets', called photons, that travel constantly at the speed of light (about 300 000 kilometres per second).

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Energy_light_radiation_temperature#:~:text=In%20fact%20visible%20'light'%20is,300%20000%20kilometres%20per%20second).

Photons do not have mass or do not have a known quantity of mass, meaning they are not matter in that sense. However, photons are particles that are emitted and travel as waves, meaning that as particles they can be considered matter, just matter without mass which makes them a paradox.

https://homework.study.com/explanation/is-a-photon-matter.html#:~:text=Photons%20do%20not%20have%20mass,which%20makes%20them%20a%20paradox.

https://www.universetoday.com/25179/what-is-the-light-from-stars/

(By the way, the image header would not look at all like that without the interposition  of lenses - it is these that produce the 'star burst effect; just as your own eye lens will create dazzle from approaching headlights. )

Mr Bates and following the money....

SO where did all the money go? Not the money the evil Post Office claimed had been stolen from it but the money it now is shown that they stole from the postmasters when they demanded they pay back the fictitious losses.

We are talking tens of thousands of pounds across hundreds of sub postmasters. This week Ed Davey, former Lib-Dem leader and a key protester over this said that only a small fraction had been so far repaid by the Post Office and that was £58million. Even if the average was £30,000 per office we are talking well over £300 million!

Now the money in the branch offices never existed. It was, we now now, an invention of the fatally flawed Fujitsu software called Horizon. But the Post Office, without even checking, demanded and took this money off all their postmasters. So where did it go?

The point is not moot. This money was the product of crime – the false allegation used to extract it from the innocent postmasters. That is obtaining money by deception.

So where is it? Where did it go?

If it was absorbed into profits (which seems the most likely event) then it will have been paid out in dividends. That makes every PO shareholder a receiver of the products of crime.

And where is any kind of justice?

And then comes the fact that the evil PO undertook 93 prosecutions, falsely claiming to the courts that a crime had been committed when it had not. The magistrates and judges thus misled convicted the defendants on the basis of lies. Some of those convictions have been set aside – all of them should be and swiftly now that we have waited so long. 

Which then opens the question of compensation. It is usual for anyone falsely convicted to be compensated from the public purse. Why has that not happened?

And why were they not awarded costs?

And finally the matter of the costs of the sub postmasters' fight so well shown in the ITV drama. They won. It is usual for the winning side to apply to the court for an order for costs. Did they? If not why not?

And thus we end asking the final big question. Why were the costs so huge? £46million out of a £56million settlement. The evil PO lost so why were they not ordered to pay the plaintiff's costs?

I await "Mr Bates and Paula Vennells – Part two of the scandal that just will not go away".