UK: Visiting Haytor – Dartmoor National Park! (17.4.2025

We were committed to traversing directly up before we fully appreciated the difference. Nevertheless, hundreds climb Haytor every week – with wild Dartmoor ponies wandering around the car-park area. These animals may – or may not – come over for a stroke, but visitors must be careful not to be bitten, head-butted, or kicked, etc. This does not happen very often – but wild animals should be respected. Another issues are yapping dogs (which must be kept on leads). As matters transpired, there was one or two calm and sedate ponies that wanted to be stroked and petted, etc. The general experience is important for children – particularly those from city areas – to re-connect with nature and experience the feeling that the immensity of nature – wide-open spaces – can generate! I last visited probably about 20-years ago with Gee – but our two children not yet born.

Post Office in Desert - Inner Mongolia!

Inner Mongolia: China’s Most Remote Tengger Desert Post Office [沙漠邮局]! (14.4.2025)

“There are some things that a person must experience in the process of growing up, and as people we may have to suffer individual losses, suffer a little here and there, and take a detour – perhaps to better places. When in a state of crying and breaking down, if students could receive a handwritten postcard from the depths of the desert, it would be an expression of warmth and companionship that we can give.”

Bashplemi Tablet - Georgia

UK: Georgia’s Undeciphered “Bashplemi Tablet”! (10.4.2025)

The next idea is that it might be a votive offering created as an act of worship – then thrown into a lake – to placate some type of pre-Christian deity. Of course, Georgia is not a Celtic area – with the (non-Celtic) Pagan Vikings not arriving until in the region until around the 8th-9th century CE (around four centuries after the arrival of Christianity). The problem with this idea is that if the people of Georgia were advanced enough to read, write and technologically produce such a stone tablet (using at least two-types of drill) – why go through all this effort just to throw the finished product into a local body of water? Perhaps the tablet was dropped into the lake by mistake. Either way, the tablet contains 60 discernible characters – 21 of which are unique – whilst 39 are repeated.

Reaction & Religion Go Hand in Hand!

UK: The Kind Idiocy of Mary Augusta Ward [1851-1920]! (24.3.2025)

It is incredible that someone such as Bishop Smith thinks that Mary Ward – the co-founder of the “National Women’s Anti-Suffrage League” – is a person worthy of remembering when she dedicated her life to preventing society from developing – a process which required the lifting of the religious ignorance that had dominated the West for over a thousand years. Furthermore, the White, middle-class and thoroughly “male” interpretation of Christianity Bishop Smith and Ward seem to be peddling has virtually nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ – and has more in common with the ramblings of St Paul – a fantasist who never met Jesus. The situation is probably more confusing than even this – as many of the letters ascribed to Paul – particularly the misogynistic editions – are thought to be forgeries.

George Foreman V Ron Lyle - January 24th - 1976

RIP George Foreman [1949-2025] – Fighter & Humanitarian! (22.3.2025)

On the other hand, George Foreman is such a genuinely good person that I simply cannot begrudge him his own successes – or condemn him for them. Good luck to him – and anyone else who can make money. I cannot do this – but I can recognise a truly spiritual human-being when I encounter such a person – and Mr George Foreman is just such a man. I am reluctant to speak of him in the past-tense – because I still feel his warm character that emerged from his emails around 20-years ago! He once said to me that he hates violence – but certain realities dictated that violence was needed in various stages of his life. I believe his come-back was motivated by the need to raise funds for his Church. He took the punches so that ordinary people could enter his Church, find peace, and live in love with one another. What a great man he was!

Beautiful Manikarnika Dutta - a Credit to the UK!

UK: Indian Found Living in India – Controversially Declared “Indian” – By Labour Government! (16.3.2025)

“I was shocked when I got an email saying I have to leave,” Dutta told the Observer. “I have been employed at different universities in the UK and I’ve lived here for 12 years. A large part of my adult life has been lived in the UK since I came to the University of Oxford to do my master’s. I never thought something like this would happen to me.”

Dutta first came to the UK in September 2012 on a student visa and later obtained a spouse visa as a dependant of her husband, who obtained a visa on a “global talent” route. According to her lawyer, Naga Kandiah, at MTC Solicitors: “These research trips were not optional but essential to fulfilling her academic and institutional obligations. Had she not undertaken these trips, she would not have been able to complete her thesis, meet the academic requirements of her institutions or maintain her visa status.”

1 11 12 13 14 15 17