Happy New Year

And so we say goodbye to 2010. For me, that is good riddance. It has, without doubt, been the worst year of my life. As my brother in law said recently, you can only go up from here. I do hope that he is right. When we return to the UK on Tuesday, I have a couple of days work lined up for the end of the week and the client wants me to take on some training as a machine controller. I will need to be mentored and work in the role initially, but in the long run, they want me to take on assessment activities and possibly training as there is a demand. So, a new role, a new challenge and as they are offering £20 per hour for three ten-hour shifts per week, I can live with working over the weekend and taking the rest of the week off. So, here’s hoping that it pans out. They have already said that if it was possible, they would have offered me a salaried position assessing, training and verifying, but they don’t have the means.

Apart from the personal disasters and losing three of our cats, on the larger stage, we said goodbye to, perhaps, the worst government the UK has had in living memory and I include Ted Heath’s period in power from 1970 –  74. That Brown’s departure was topped off with the ignominious “bigotgate” rather put the feather in the cap of his incompetent period in office. Naturally, those of us desperate to see New labour out of office were hopeful against the odds that things would get better. In that the subsequent coalition could not possibly be any worse, I suppose we got our wish. However, what we have got is pretty much the same with all the same attempts at social engineering under a different guise. The so-called cuts in government spending are nothing more than a reduction in the rate of increase, so not really cuts at all. Although going by the hysterical screeching coming from the leftists, you’d think that live chickens were being sacrificed in the garden of number ten and workhouses being opened in every town and village.

Someone –  I think it may have been JuliaM –  made a very pertinent comment about this. It was an observation that while Labour were in power, the opposition took to the Internet, put out our arguments using words, thoughts, wit and intelligence. The ousted leftists now in opposition resort to violence and intimidation. Interesting, no?

So, here we are, on the precipice of a new time counting period. Ready to face once more what the world has to throw our way once the breather afforded by the bank holiday is past. For me, some new challenges and a change of direction it seems, along with giving up a dream that I had hoped would be my new life. For the rest, we will see, eh? After all, in March we have the most intrusive census yet –  according to the then opposition parties who are now the new bosses. Same as the old bosses. Same old, same old…

Happy New Year y’all.