Month: Jan 2021

I was sorry to learn today that Guido Castro, the partner of Dame Maureen Lipman for the past twelve or thirteen years has passed. I have long been an admirer of Maureen’s work, and immediately remembered her speaking about the death of her husband, Jack Rosenthal, some seventeen years ago.

She is a lady whose work my wife and I have followed for more years than we would now care to remember, so, what I have to state now doesn’t come from a light or flippant heart.

Everyone still knows and refers to her as ‘Maureen Lipman’, and those who have benefited from her wisdom and wit also know that the lady is no fool. Who among us has forgotten the iconic ‘Mrs Jones’ – “so, you’ve got all of the colours in all of the sizes”..?

We must therefore assume that allowing the details of Guido’s passing to be publicised was no error on Maureen’s part. Maureen must have wanted the rest of us to know..

Without wishing in any way to add to her or her friends’ present sadness, the report of those circumstances does raise certain questions and provoke some comparisons:

• It is reported that Guido had lately been living in a ‘care home’ .
• Also mentioned was that he had received the vaccine to counter the present medical emergency – identified as Covid-19.
• Apparently, Guido was already suffering with other medical issues.
• It was good that Maureen was able to be ‘with’ him when he passed.
• It is not clear from the public information whether Guido died inside the ‘care’ home, or whether, perhaps, he was in hospital.

In either case, there would appear to have been some divergence here, from the somewhat draconian regime under which we, the plebeians, are expected to behave.

Allow me, without going into too much detail or calling for any special attention in our own family situation, to humbly make some comparisons:

• My lovely lass has suffered for the past seven years with a distressing combination of mental issues which has been thrown under the general heading of ‘vascular dementia’.
• Because, on several occasions, she was putting herself at serious risk of physical injury and putting me through the ‘wringer’ in trying, at pushing 80 years, to keep her from killing herself, greater minds than mine decided that she should be detained under the Mental Health Act 2005.
• She went into ‘dementia care’ at the end of March 2020, at just the same time as yet greater minds decided that the world needed to be cleansed by an unstable bacterium (about which nothing needs to be added here), which has meant that, for the past ten months, I have not even been allowed over the threshold of the building to see what her accommodation is like.
• My lass has also recently been given the ‘vaccine’, against my advice, to which I know that she, as devout homeopathic disciple, would never have acquiesced, were she still of sound mind.
• My lass is also suffering with a number of what, should she pass now, might just be entered on the ‘Death Certificate’ as ‘co-morbidities’.
• It’s clear from the enormous amount of social media comment that none of the plebs are being allowed to even hold the hand of our dear ones as they pass.

Yes, there are many thousands of us under the same restrictions, but, with the greatest respect for our ‘Maureen’s’ national recognition and stellar status, I would like to ask our esteemed present leaders the question:

Is there one rule for brightly shining stars and another rule for us plebs?

Greetings all: I guess you’ve realised by now that I’m a bit concerned about subterranean silos, where our individual personal data is being harvested and stored. I don’t know about you, but I’m really keen to see whether my ‘Digital Doppelgänger’ is using my 16 yr old sepia snapshot – or will it be the one they’ll take when they’ve had me in Room 101..? Here is today’s rant about yet another of BB’s subliminal ideas. It has been popping up in my personal inbox once every week since December 7th 2020, (so it must be very important, mustn’t it?) – My Analytics its called, and it’s been specially designed just for little ME! It’s a special ‘Wellbeing Edition’ it’s even got my Given Name in there, and, best of all, it’s ‘For yours eyes ONLY’ – nah, go on, you’re flattering me! It is a superb new ‘app’ lication which will enable me to analyse – MYSELF! I’m going to be able to discover my habits, and, wait for it, (here it comes again) to work even SMARTer. Talk about unrelenting ‘drive’. Let’s just say, I’ll be sticking to my daily diary – as John Thaw’s Morse would have said “with a PEN and INK!” Sincerely yours, Andrew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsXI38ey-nY&t=162s Recorded seven years ago, but still no sign of any change here in the UK. A copy of the powerful little book ‘Alice and the Money Tree’ by John W Briggs will clarify the problem and the solution. ISBN 978-1-9998485-0-7 Across the pond, the recently subverted POTUS knows that a ‘Gold Standard’ is the bulwark against the oncoming tsunami of digital dosh, which is one of the reasons why the dastardly Democrats’ digital demolition of the democratic choice of 75+million American voters had to be planned. Dominion by deceit.. This deep insult will not ever be forgotten, nor forgiven, either by the Republican majority nor by the cadre of solid, responsible citizens who on THIS occasion, actually DID choose the donkey rather than the elephant. Here in the UK? Oh, we’ll still be dithering over impondérable issues such as fishing quotas, cycle lanes in London and HS2..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsXI38ey-nY&t=162s Recorded three years ago, but still no sign of any change here in the UK. A copy of the powerful little book ‘Alice and the Money Tree’ by John W Briggs will clarify the problem and the solution. ISBN 978-1-9998485-0-7 Across the pond, the recently subverted POTUS knows that a ‘Gold Standard’ is the bulwark against the oncoming tsunami of digital dosh, which is one of the reasons why the dastardly Democrats’ digital demolition of the democratic choice of 75+million American voters had to be planned. Dominion by deceit.. This deep insult will not ever be forgotten, nor forgiven, either by the Republican majority nor by the cadre of solid, responsible citizens who on THIS occasion, actually DID choose the donkey rather than the elephant. Here in the UK? Oh, we’ll still be dithering over impondérable issues such as fishing quotas, cycle lanes in London and HS2..