The Prime Minister’s Address to the Labour Party Conference included a section on the UK Government’s Energy Policy. The Times condensed what Mr Blair had to say to the Party Faithful into 180 words. Here they are.

‘Ten years ago energy wasn’t on the agenda. Ten years ago I parked the issue of nuclear power. Today I believe without it we are going to face an energy crisis and we can’t let that happen. Global warming is the greatest long-term threat to our planet’s environment. Scarce energy resources mean rising prices and will threaten our country’s economy. In 15 years we will go from 86 percent self-sufficient in oil and gas to 80 percent imported. We need therefore the most radical overhaul of energy policy since the war.’

‘We will increase the amount of energy from renewable sources fivefold; ensure every major business in the country has responsibility for greenhouse gas reduction; treble investment in clean technology including clean coal and make sure every new home is at least 40 percent more energy efficient. We will meet our Kyoto targets by double the amount and we will take the necessary measures step by step to meet one of the most ambitious targets on the environment ever set anywhere in the world…a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050.’

This was such complete and utter nonsense that I rewrote this section of the Prime Minster’s Address to the Labour Party Conference. The Cliff’s Edge Signalling Company condensed my version into 180 words. Here they are.

‘Ten years ago it was blindingly obvious that energy self-sufficiency was the right energy policy goal. Ten years ago it was blindingly obvious that nuclear power was a dead-end technology. Nothing has changed. Global warming and the greenhouse effect are fantasy not fact. To imagine Governments can stabilize the Earth’s atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. Human beings cannot control the climate and must stop meddling with it. There is no energy shortage. The sun takes 45 minutes to provide all the energy we use in one year.’

‘We will outlaw the use and development of climate weapons immediately. We will withdraw from the Kyoto Treaty immediately. We will decommission all nuclear power stations immediately. We will stop wasting electricity on space heating. We will adopt zero tolerance and polluter pays policies for emission of all substances into the landscape and the atmosphere. We will establish a Lord Lieutenant’s Department with Cabinet status to direct the dismantling of the country’s national piped energy grids. Prince Charles will head the department, negotiate county disconnection dates, issue the money and provide the people.’

Tony Blair always commands respect at the annual Labour Party Conference because he wins elections. But there was a point during his speech at last week’s conference when respect turned into love. It was when Blair went off-script to tell an anecdote about his two oldest sons going out canvassing. It went like this.

‘On one doorstep they met a bloke who unleashed a stream of abuse about their Dad. When Euan got a word in edgeways he told the bloke who they were. Immediately he said: ‘I’m really sorry, son. Come in and have a cup of tea. I didn’t mean all that.’ Delegates laughed and Blair shook his head: ‘That’s what the British people are like. They are good people.’

As far back as 1996 it was reported that Blair had sought help from the comedian Rory Bremner to enliven his conference speech. But Blair has Les Dawson to thank for the joke at this year’s conference that sent the delegates into convulsions…and defused the row over Cherie Blair.

The previous day’s headlines had been about the way Cherie had accused Gordon Brown of lying when he said what a great privilege it was to work with Tony Blair. She denied the remark but the damage was done. Tony Blair insisted that humour was the best way to deal with the issue.

Before Blair left for the conference hall someone recalled Dawson’s joke: ‘My wife has run off with the bloke next door. I’m going to miss him!’ Alistair Campbell quickly said: ‘That’s it. There is no danger of Cherie running off with the bloke next door.’ The whole team fell about laughing and Blair immediately bought the idea. It was a risk but it worked to perfection…and left Blair’s team wishing they had tried humour the day before.

When Ronald Reagan first arrived on the political scene in America and campaigned for Governor of California he was mocked by the East Coast Intelligentsia. A decade later when he ran for the US Presidency liberal elites the world over joined in the mockery. An actor! What does he know!

But they were behind the times. Two decades later Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are often talked of in Hollywood terms…Oscar-winning performance, fake sincerity, command of his brief…in recognition that acting ability is an integral part of the modern politician’s bag of tricks.

But something else that came to prominence with Ronald Reagan was his mastery of comic timing. If you are over 40 you can probably still remember Reagan’s ‘There you go again!’ to President Jimmy Carter in the Televised Presidential Debates. Afterwards it was widely claimed that these four little words won Reagan the presidency. And his ‘Aw shucks, sorry guys, I forgot to duck’ to his bodyguards after he was shot…and very nearly assassinated…is the stuff of legends. Blair too is a master of the art of the self-effacing remark and the telling…and witty…anecdote.

But this is no longer an Anglo-Saxon preserve. Rowan Atkinson made a big impression on the newly elected Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. As a teenager in a lower middle-class area of Stockholm he fell under the spell of the rubber-faced Englishman and his co-jesters on Not the Nine O’Clock News….so much so that Reinfeldt was inspired to take to the stage and was named best comedian of the year at his school. Where will it all end?

From William of Normandy in 1066 to Dwight Eisenhower in 1944, England’s fortunes have been hostage to the weather. The ferocious winter of 1941-42 was an ordeal for the long-suffering English Speaking Peoples of these war-torn European Offshore Islands cowering in their air-raid shelters. But for Nazi Germany it was a catastrophe. Its impact on their invasion of Russia was as devastating as the storms that scattered the Spanish Armada.

At the end of 1941 temperatures on the continent dropped to minus forty…the same number in Centigrade and Fahrenheit…machinery froze and hundreds of thousands of troops froze to death. Hitler’s Blitzkrieg was stopped dead in its tracks. The Nazi Military Machine never recovered and was destroyed at Stalingrad. We were very lucky.

Two years ago Swiss climatologists figured that Hitler should have consulted his Argentinean Agents instead of his Astrology Charts. Then he would have seen it coming. A strong El Niño set off the disturbances in the stratosphere. This surged like a wave across the globe and created the extreme conditions in Europe. Wonderful stuff hindsight.

But with stories like this doing the rounds it is no wonder that the Global Supremacy Boys show such a keen interest in Climate Meddling. It will all end in tears. But put out enough propaganda and the idiots will put down the ensuing disasters to Global Warming…and dig deep into the Public Purse to solve the problem by redoubling the Kyoto Carbon Emission Targets. Useful Idiots was Lenin’s phrase for people who could be fooled all of the time.

A study from the Supporters of Nuclear Energy, the Society of Motor Manufacturers, the European Chemicals Association or the American Petroleum Institute will normally be broadly supportive of the issuer’s publicly stated positions…otherwise the report will be hidden away in a bottom drawer. Normal people bear this in mind.

The same is true for reports from the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Soil Association, the International Society for Ecology & Culture or The Ecologist. More enlightened people bear this in mind…in much the same way. Leaks and Whistle Blowing complicate matters because some is bottom drawer stuff…and some is disinformation.

Whatever the source, an Act of Discernment is required to discriminate between Fact and Truth on the one hand and Prejudice and Untruth on the other. Whether any particular individual is capable of Right Discernment is another matter…the discernment of a Third Party might be called upon.

Governments once provided such a service by taking the Public View. They were the Competent Receiver of the Common Wealth and the Impartial Discriminator of the Common Sense. But no longer. Nowadays Government are rightly seen as just another Outside Interest Group…with their own Special Pleadings and their own Private Agendas. So who is sound? Where resides Common Sense?

In these days of public relations, media manipulation and advertising, Front Organisations distribute results and a Tied Tenancy carries out the studies. Scientific Research is tuned by the Piper’s Patrons. The Congress of Racial Equality, the Rowntree Foundation, Scientific Alliance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation? Where do they stand? Who do they represent? These are not disinterested bodies. They have their own agendas…some of them open and some of them hidden…and they have paymasters with other agendas. What to do?

Virtualisation is the Next Big Thing in computing…and the Mighty Microsoft will embrace it to survive in the operating system market. But the leader in the technology is Xensource…a spin-out from Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory housed in the William Gates Building…and Xen’s core technology is Open Source. Ouch! To Microsofties, Open Source is still viewed as the spawn of the communist devil. Annihilate! Annihilate!

An accommodation will be reached…deal-making is a Microsoft speciality…and Xensource stock will go through the roof. Put the phone down! It’s no use calling your broker. You’ve missed the boat already. John Doerr the world’s greatest venture capitalist…with a track record in Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Lotus, Intuit, Genentech, Millennium, Netscape, Amazon and Google to name just a few…got there before you. Valuable stuff hindsight.

I had an Out-of-Body Experience while astral-travelling yesterday so today I figured I’d better ground myself and got centred with the help of my angels and spirit guides. Then the phone rang and sensing numerous serious negative vibrations I threw the I-Ching and checked my Numerology Chart.

The results made me want to go primal but my energy was so blocked that I thought it best if I did some bioenergetics and self-parenting, snorted some flower essence and ate an organic oat bran ginseng muffin. But I sensed that my inner child still wasn't feeling fully nurtured.

So to fix this I had a Rice Dream Frozen Pie. The trouble was this made me hyper so I did the Relaxation Response Technique I had just learned at the Self Healing Angst Tree Refoliating Centre while listening to my subliminal tapes.

But that left me feeling depersonalised. So I did some polarity work, foot reflexology, and past-life regression, rebirthed myself and phoned Moon Beam my body worker to make an appointment for a Shiatsu/Reiki/Rolfing/Feldenkreis/Swedish/Japanese deep tissue facial massage.

Unfortunately Moon Beam was so flaked out she never returned my call so I decided to energize my crystals instead and do some positive imagery because all my visualization techniques were fuzzy and the affirmations were really very dispassionate.

So to get empowered I got a psychic reading from Mother Heart Love around the issue of my assertiveness so I could feel my radiance and have some energy for my Psycho Callisthenics and Inversion Swing before my Harmonic Brain Wave Synergy Session.

This focused me for my Actualisation Seminar, Holistic Healing Class and Dream Workshop…which in turn made me clearer for my Gestalt Behavioural Cognitive Transpersonal Reichian-Jungian-Freudian-Ericksonian session at the hot springs…although my aura was too weak for my Trance Channelling Group so I did nothing until noon to recharge my chakras.

Eventually sensing that my intuition was high and my cycle was smoothly spinning I turned on my ion generator to open up for my Neural Linguistic Programming session and recharged my pyramid before my Guided Synchronicity Meditation, got some Craniosacral Therapy to align myself for the Fire Walk I wanted to get in between my Tarot Card Reading and my appointment in the Sensory Deprivation Tank.

By late-afternoon I felt sure that what I truly needed was a meaningful relationship with myself and that I needed to mirror myself. So I went to my Personal Shaman, and then to my Guru. They were no help…on this plane anyway…so I went to the Intensive Whole Life Earth Rebirth Cosmic Expo Symposium Workshop to find someone who knew what was going on.

No one did. So I was about to lock myself in a calcium coated Orgone Box to meditate when I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t seen Vanessa for ages. So while I was still drifting and flailing about after all my sincere personal work I ran myself a bath, spent ten minutes on the phone, ate some chocolate cake, uncorked a couple of bottles of Bordeaux and put Pride & Prejudice on the DVD Player.

Vanessa was still on a high after flying in from Granada that afternoon. She had a hilarious story about Hearse Insurance in New Zealand. Tony Paine laughed so much he fell off the sofa and spent the night worrying whether he could still drive the 350cc motorbike his uncle had hired for him in Goa.

Apparently by registering your car as a non-commercial hearse you can reduce your insurance from NZ$ 180 to NZ$60. Just carry dead animals…eg. frozen chickens…home from the supermarket from time to time and it’ll be perfectly legal. But do it now before the authorities close the loophole by redefining a hearse as a vehicle used to convey coffins so that carrying groceries or dead animals don’t count anymore.

Next year I’ll try doing Ramadan instead…or take a stroll to Caen from Canterbury. And while I’m about it I might as well carry on to Jerusalem or Mecca…or Seville…or Assisi…or Mumbai.

Part of my work as a Blogger involves reading the daily papers. What a relief to be free of this three months hence. On the crime I read about I would make two observations. Firstly the Police Clear-up Rate for crimes of violence that reach the newspapers is extremely high. The police are surprisingly good at finding needles in haystacks.

My other observation is on the increase in the number of stomach-wrenching crimes and the rise in frenzied knife attacks. In the case of the Oxford drop-out who knifed to death the daughter of a Harrow schoolmaster last week…and in several other frenzied knife attacks…drugs is reported to have been a contributing factor…Cannabis in particular.

This adds a third element to my Conspiracy Hypothesis for Anna Lindh’s killing: In addition to having an NLP Trigger Implant the assassin was high on Cannabis which explains the frenzied nature of the attack reported by witnesses. The switching of blood samples in Accident & Emergency is the third element. All this is wildly implausible and gets an Implausibility Index of 89 out of 100. The trouble is my Index for the Official Theory is 99.

I mean who’s kidding whom? Be real! Our assassin just happened to be hanging around outside the right department store at the time that Sweden’s Foreign Secretary happens to be visiting and just happened to have a sudden urge to subject her to a frenzied knife attack in the only random killing of this nature ever carried out anywhere in Sweden. The Official Theory is ten times more improbable than the Conspiracy Theory. I wonder how her two sons are doing?

Before leaving Sweden 8-weeks ago I typed up some notes about my suspects in The Case of Anna Lindh. Guns and Gold Conspiracies were in second and third place on my A-List behind the One World Order Conspirators.

Featuring as a group in seventh place were the Corporate Profiteers…Drug Companies, Chemical Companies and Energy Companies. The Legal Drug Industry spent vast sums rubbishing John Le Carré’s Constant Gardener which would suggest some rather nasty skeletons in the corporate cupboards. Why are corporations permitted to remain outside modern Public Sector Freedom of Information legislation? Trade Unions should have the Right to Know.

In 1984 Anna Lindh became the first woman president of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League. Her six years as president from 1984 to 1990 were marked by a strong commitment to International Affairs…on behalf of Nicaragua, Vietnam, South Africa and the Palestinians and against the Arms Trade.

Subsequently Anna Lindh had access to insider knowledge on top-secret weapon development programmes…Climate Weapons, Passover Weapons etc…from her old colleagues, from contacts in Foreign Affairs and Environment in Brussels, from insiders in the Swedish Government…eg. SÄPO…and from elsewhere….eg. Stockholm’s Institute for Peace Research (SIPRI).

On 11th June 2003…three months before Anna Lindh’s murder…the Guardian published an interview with the Swedish UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq Hans Blix. Referring to criticisms from the US Blix remarked: ‘They would say I was too compliant with the Iraqis when in reality they meant I was not compliant enough with what the US wanted.’

Blix went on to refer to ‘bastards’ in the US administration who regarded the UN as an ‘alien power’ who ‘would not care if it sinks into the East river’ and who ‘planted nasty things in the media’…although he claimed that he had not cared very much: ‘…an irritant like a mosquito bite in the evening that is still there in the morning.’

Remembering the final collapse of the inspections process, Blix stated: ‘The lowest point was the end when we realised a peaceful resolution to the crisis was not going to happen. That was very disappointing. The war cost a lot in destruction and lives.’

Accentuating the positive Blix pointed out that: ‘we proved beyond a doubt…and under immense pressure…that independent, impartial, objective monitoring can be achieved. We were in nobody's pocket. Every day I get letters from inspectors who want to work again. We're immensely proud of what we achieved.’

On 3rd July 2003…three weeks after Hans Blix’s interview in the Guardian…Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh announced his appointment as Chairman of a new independent International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Anna Lindh told reporters in Stockholm: ‘We must do everything we can to avert the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. It is very gratifying that Hans Blix is willing to accept the chairmanship. The experience and knowledge he possesses is unique.’ And she went on.

‘The purpose of the Commission is to provide new impetus to the international efforts involved in disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles. The Commission will be formed during the autumn of 2003 under the leadership of Hans Blix and will plan to report their recommendations in 2005.’

Thanks to a Bollywood romantic comedy Mahatma Gandhi’s popularity is hitting fresh heights. While much of the world was watching endless repeats of 9/11 Indians were rushing to cinemas in record numbers to see Carry On Munnabhai.

The film took a billion rupees…£12 million…at the Indian Box Office in the first fortnight and is rated as the most popular Bollywood release of the year in Britain and the US. The plot revolves around a radio quiz about the Life of Gandhi. Leaders of the ruling Congress Party have told senior party members to see the film.

On 1st May 2005 I still believed my newly-beloved to be interested in my work as a writer so I made a compilation of articles published by Rye’s Own between June 2004 and April 2005, added a preface, put a pink ribbon around them and sent it away into cyberspace. Here is Rye in Chaucer’s Times…and below the words prepared for my new love.

The early years of my flawed career were spent flat on my back. When the Red Army marched into Prague I was lying under a Hillman Imp in the British Embassy in Red Square. While Idi Amin and his Mossad cronies were seizing control of Uganda, I was hiding under a bed in my Kampala hotel room

I was flat on my back again a few years later when the Greeks started lobbing shells into my Turkish campsite early one morning before I got up. On that occasion I bundled my Swedish wife, my 18-month old daughter and her Marimekko comfort blanket into my Cambridge-blue VW camper van and bolted for the Bulgarian border. So I have had my brush-offs with Mortality.

On my return to these Offshore Islands, I stayed long enough to help the Pentagon and its Evil Empire build roads in the Empty Quarter of Oman…and Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy to make loads of money for the good New England Quakers of Worcester… before flying into the belly of the beast to eat McDonalds french fries at Boston’s Museum of Science in the company of the grandson of the MIT President and former Kennedy Science Adviser, Jerome Wiesner…and joining Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame acquiring CIA skills in neurolinguistical zapping of honest citizens.

Betwixt and between all this public-spirited endeavour for God and Country I sang in a choir with Stuart Holland…a Junior Treasury Shadow Minister during the Benn Ascendency; opened the batting…that means cricket…with the boss of the GMB union, John Edmonds; and…the final humiliation…stood as a badly defeated Westminster parliamentary candidate on the stage of Oldham Town Hall alongside New Labour’s next Environment Minister, Michael Meacher. He won with more votes than all the rest of us put together. Upon the same stage had Sir Winston Churchill once stood. So much for my brief brush-offs with Celebrity.

In the mid-80s I decided Diversifying was a plausible Life Strategy. So I began writing for a London-based political journal…Feature Articles under the name William Shepherd and Book Reviews in my own name…or was it the other way about? My scribblings went out to the world alongside those of famous men like HRH Prince Charles, Leopold Kohr, Fritz Schumacher, John Seymour, Ivan Illich, Kirkpatrick Sale and Edward Goldsmith…with knights of the realm like Sir Julian Rose and Sir Richard Body riding shotgun. So I claim 15-minute of Alternative Fame as well.

My political career reached its climax in September 2001 when the Radical Consultation I was organising ventured onto a collision course with some of Osama Bin Laden’s special effects at the World Trade Center.

I still await the call from MI6 to serve my gods and their country…though unbeknown to the powers-that-be my nation is now the circle of my friends. The closest I came to The Call was a 1984 invitation to lunch at the British Officers’ Club in Boston at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. There will be a file.

But while awaiting My Prince’s call on my mobile phone I carried on scribbling…as the Magazine Editor for the Rye Harbour Boatowners Association (2000 to 2003) and then as Music Critic and Occasional Columnist for Rye’s Own, the public voice of the Rye Freedom Fighters.

My Rye’s Own compilation included these eight articles: Rye Weather Forecasts (120); Ryesingers on Tour (122); Music in Rye & Winchelsea (125); Dredging Strand Quay (126); Rye Partnership (127); The Winchelsea Pantomime (128); Rye New Library (129) and Smeaton’s Harbour (130). Those are the Rye’s Own issue numbers in brackets.

Since compiling this list Rye’s Own has published five more of my articles: The Flourishing Port of Rye (131); The Politics of Wind Farms (133); Rye Harbour Road (135); Cycling the Rye Harbour Tramway (136) and Local Powers (138). Perhaps adding Connie’s Rye Artwork to Shepherd in Rye’s Own is a recipe for a local best-seller?

In England the 17th century started badly when James I was drafted in from Scotland in 1603. This set the scene for declared and undeclared Civil Wars in England for the next 50-years during the administrations of Charles 1 (1625-1640); Oliver Cromwell & Co. (1640-1660); Charles II (1660-1685) and James II (1685-1689) before William of Orange (1689-1702) was brought in to sort out the mess and pass on some semblance of orderly governance to Queen Anne. History might be repeating itself following the present 20 years of Scottish Government in England.

I have Kent Libraries’ copy of Tawney’s Business & Politics under James I on the bunk beside me for a second reading and his The Acquisitive Society and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism…with Hilaire Belloc’s Biography of James II and Charles Wilson’s Profit & Power about Dutch Wars of the 17th century on my list.

The 17th century is the key to 21st century England so Christopher Hill’s The Century of Revolution 1603-1714 is important. But to understand the 17th century means getting up to speed on the Tudors which means going back to the death of Henry VIIIth in 1553 and the 44-year reign of Elizabeth Ist that followed. This ended in 1603 with the Scottish Settlement and the Catholic James Stuart ascending the English Throne. I found The Queen’s Bastard…a historical novel by Robin Maxwell…provided valuable insights into the history of this period of English History.

But the further I get into the history of the English Speaking Peoples the more I am veering away from Academic History to Historical Novels and the good sense of teaching history by telling stories. 1066 And All That mocked this approach. But just as a Christian Scholar can bring Jesus to life with Monty Python’s film The Life of Brian so a brilliant history teacher can make history real for young (and old) people with 1066 and All That…and the help of the internet. My main complaint about the book is that it is bad history.

The problem with 1066 And All That is not the satirising of History Teaching and the Trivialising of the Idea of History but its fundamental misunderstanding of English History. Producing the Domesday Book for instance was only possible because of the efficiency of England’s fund raising prior to William of Normandy’s invasion…from years of paying Danegeld and bribing Viking raiders with gold to keep them at bay. The real significance of the overthrow of Harold Godwinesson was the subsequent replacement of English Law by Continental Roman Law.

Nowadays historical novels from good publishers are extremely well-researched. They are therefore able to provide an overall picture of the life and times in which they are set. Another interesting feature of the historical novels to be found in libraries and second-hand bookshops is that women authors are overrepresented. This is a Good Thing. Women have insights that are absent from the Great Men and Glorious Wars approach limping on into the English Public Schools teaching of my day as a last hurrah of Imperial History from its decline in the Victorian Age.

Oxfam claims to be the biggest second-hand bookseller in the country…which doesn’t surprise me. It was at their Ashford branch that I found a copy of Harold The King by Helen Hollick with its well-researched chronicling of the Norman Invasion of Anglo-Saxon England in 1066.

For two more pounds I acquired Sphere Book’s Six Wives of Henry VIII. This and Philippa Gregory’s 2001 book The Other Boleyn Girl and last year’s publication The Constant Princess about Katherine of Aragon covers the Reign of Henry VIIIth.

In 1972 Sphere commissioned Julia Hamilton to write Katharine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves and arranged for Margaret Heys, Frances Clark and Jessica Smith to write abridged versions of The May Queen (1967), Mistress Jane Seymour (1967) and Henry Betrayed (1969) respectively to complete the boxed set with the stories of Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Katherine Howard.

Traditionally England’s kings and queens were appointed by the Witan or Council of England…which lives on today as the Privy Council. Hereditary Claims mattered but, in the history of the English Monarchy, kinship by marriage could override Bloodline Seniority when Competence or Loyalty were in question…and loyalty can cut both ways. This English Tradition predominated in the appointments of Aethelred, Cnut, Harthacnut, Harold Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Ist and Harold Godwinesson. Rules of succession need not be fixed in stone.

From time to time the Council of England finds itself playing a crucial role in the selection of kings and queens. It was certainly active in the 17th century when the rise of the gentry led to a shift in the balance of economic and financial power in England. R.H. Tawney seems to suggest this was behind the 50-years of turmoil from 1625 to 1675.

The Stuart Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and their replacement in 1689 by the House of Orange…William strengthened his link to the Royal House through his marriage to Mary…were really the work of the English Council.

Perhaps I should write a Lord of the Rings style saga about England and the English from the 10th Century to the 21st Century…although a good case can be made for starting with Stonehenge & the Druids or King Arthur and the Round Table. Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphogenetic Fields could provide the Ancestral Push and Pull from Posterity and play a similar role to the Gods of Mount Olympus in the Greek Myths or the Asgard in the Nordic Sagas.

Twenty four years ago in the summer of 1982 I drove my hired car up Hollywood’s Mulholland Drive to collect Laura Huxley and take her to meet Dr. Rupert Sheldrake who had been invited to Los Angeles to give a talk about his new book The Presence of the Past. Two weeks ago I was reminded of that evening when the latest research on unexplained human abilities from the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project found its way into the newspapers.

If you think telepathy is baloney you will be relieved to know that many scientists agree with you. But then many scientists believe in Global Warming. In both cases their belief flies in the face of the evidence and is caused by a preference to have faith in their unexamined prejudices and avoid impartial examination of the scientific evidence.

Trinity College in Cambridge has been funding Dr Sheldrake to investigate Telephone Telepathy. This is no fringe phenomenon. Three out of four people have had experiences in which they think of someone for no apparent reason and then the person calls; or they know who is calling when the phone rings before picking it up. Many people have similar experiences with emails. This is easy to test experimentally. Strange nobody has done so…until now.

Dr Sheldrake asked volunteers to give the names and telephone numbers of four people they knew well. During the test session each subject was videotaped continuously sitting by a landline telephone. One caller was selected at random by the throw of a dice. The person was then asked to call the subject. When the telephone rang the participant guessed who was calling before lifting the receiver.

The elegance of the experimental design is that the outcome of each call is right or wrong. Participants get it right one time in four if telephone telepathy is tosh. In fact the results are one time in two…45% at the University of Cambridge with similar results at the University of Amsterdam. This is Nobel Prize stuff. Tests with callers on the far side of the planet…in Australia and New Zealand…indicates that the effect does not fall off with distance. According to Dr Sheldrake ‘emotional closeness rather than physical proximity seemed to be the most important factor’.

But ignorance and prejudice know no bounds. Mind, Heart and Soul do not exist we are told. Man has a clever Brain. Consciousness is all…and only…in the head we are assured. Out come the dogmas…untested, unproven and unwavering in their certainty.

Yet talk to someone who knows what they are talking about…for which they must be familiar with the scientific research…and you will discover that no one understands very much about the nature of our minds.

Indeed the very existence of consciousness is unexplained. But this will not be the case for much longer. Consciousness Research is one of our most exciting scientific endeavours. There is accumulating evidence that brain activity is only one component in such acts as Consciousness, Creativity, Dreaming and Understanding.

Dr Sheldrake’s theoretical work postulates the existence of Morphogenetic Fields. Our minds may extend far beyond our brains and our bodies stretching out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other.

Fields are more extensive than material objects…magnetic fields around magnets and electromagnetic fields around mobile phones. Likewise mental fields can extend beyond our brains and bodies…with their structure and properties being influenced by attention and intention…and perhaps much else.

In principle there is no reason for such fields to be limited by either Space or Time…even though Gravity seems to be one field that does so in accordance with Isaac Newton’s Inverse Square Law. Tom Lethbridge’s experiments for instance have found evidence of a time-less zone between our time-space world and another time-ful zone. Lethbridge’s training as an archaeologist also enabled him to build a convincing case that ancient civilisations in these offshore islands might have understood the nature of space-time better than we do. More Nobel Prize stuff.

My failure to arrange £3000 over the summer to pack me off to Lund University for six months may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Together with the fortuitous cancellation of the Radical Consultation…I was never very keen on the idea and expected very little of it…has given me the chance to study the History of Monarchy in England. For the past few weeks my cabin table has been littered with books about kings and queens and revolutions.

What seems to have happened is that the Good Old Law was thrown out when Duke William of Normandy usurped the throne of England by Right of Conquest in 1066 and imposed Roman Legal Practice on us. In Roman Law the holder of highest authority makes the laws…and his Royal Subjects obey it or suffer the consequences.

The English Legal Tradition was reinstated in 1215 at Runnymede with the signing of Magna Carta where Conditional Power was placed in the king’s hands by the ad hoc reinstatement of the old Witan or English Council. The Social Contract between Barons and King was a written agreement rather than the oath-making of earlier times.

Since Magna Carta the English Way of doing things has had a chequered history as the English Monarchy found it necessary to navigate the cataracts and rapids of 400 years of continental Religious and Dynastic Wars.

John Seymour wrote thirty books and numerous articles on land and money reform, the good life and the forgotten arts and crafts of self-reliance. John spent the summer of 1994 celebrating his 80th birthday…retreating between parties to his homestead in Ireland to milk cows in the morning and impart skills in self-sufficiency in the afternoon.

Connie Lindqvist was born in Finland in 1950, spending her formative years amidst Lapps, reindeer and fir trees. She was the only female skipper of a gaff-rigged vessel cruising the French and English Channel coasts and the owner of a design studio in Rye that created monumental ceramic panels for the shopkeepers of Knightsbridge.

In 1993 I put on my publisher’s hat and brought together my old political colleague and my new acquaintance for Rye From the Water’s Edge. John took one look at Connie’s illustrations for the book and wrote that ‘as a marine artist Connie was beyond compare, her boats and her sea really feel like boats and sea’…adding for good measure that ‘if ever Connie needed something to do he might try to persuade her to illustrate some sea-poems I have written’.

As a publisher I immediately disowned the project on the grounds that ‘nobody made money from poetry books’…remarks that can be found on Page 67 of the first edition of Seymour’s Seamarks published in 500 examples by Academic Inn Books in Spring 1995.

The book is now out of print after being sold directly to the public at £4.95 each by AIB’s two Sales Agents John Seymour and Connie Lindqvist…and producing £600 profit for the three of us.

In my Few Words I went on that ‘…even Rudyard Kipling would be hard pressed to find a publisher nowadays. Yet here are John’s sea-poems…and illustrated by Connie Lindqvist. How does the old codger do it? Old Head of Kinsale was rejected in a vain attempt to shipwreck the project…yet it survived.'

'My mistake was forking out in November 1993 to send Connie across to Ireland. Over booze and baccy the conspiracy was hatched. Perhaps real poetry will start to make a comeback with this volume of Seymour’s Seamarks? You bought a copy after all!’

Seymour’s Seamarks starts with a warning to the reader that ‘the poet takes no responsibility for any shipwrecks caused by pilots using this volume as a Pilot’s Guide’ and then includes the following dozen poems: Cape Comorin; Roaring Middle; Pelican Point; Danger Point; Tusker; Galloper; Strumble Head; St Govan; Old Head of Kinsale; Spurn; Swin Spitway and Hook.

In the acknowledgements thanks is given to B.D. Thynne, Head of Hydrography in the Charts Department of the Greenwich National Maritime Museum ‘for his courtesy and enthusiasm. The risk to mariners from this little book would have been much greater without his help.’ Nonetheless approach these headlands with care, charts and a good Pilot and don’t drink any alcohol…including Weakbow Cider…before disembarkation.

Goethe once said ‘In boldness is genius’. He might have added but didn’t that it also contains the seeds of failure. On Page 68 the bold acclamation can be read that Seymour’s Seamarks was the first of a series of books of illustrated verse by John Seymour.

These Forthcoming Books were recklessly listed with illustrator and publication dates: Summer 1995 Jolly Boys in the Coats of White with Kate Seymour; Winter 1995 Animals Talk Back with Connie Lindqvist; Summer 1996 My Old Man with Mike Avery and Winter 1996 Dancing Leaves with Sally Seymour.

Ten years on all this has yet to take place though both Jane and Sally Seymour have completed their assignments, Connie was part of the way through the more ambitious publishing plan for Animals Talk Back at the time of her death and Mike Avery is available to complete his assignment after having shown how good he is.

A budget of £10 000 would suffice to take the project out of mothballs and put it back on track. There is a Complete Book of John Seymour’s Illustrated Verse (without the illustrations)…funded by Teddy Goldsmith…available as an Adobe pdf file or as a bound A4 book. This will be sent to potential sponsors on receipt by Academic Inn Books, P.O. Box 36, Rye, Sussex TN31 7WP of £25 or $50 and a letter indicating the nature of their interest.

In Seymour’s Seamarks John Seymour writes that he had never seen the Old Head of Kinsale from the sea but he had by land. ‘It’s a headland sticking out into the Atlantic foam from Ireland’s south-west coast. It was often the first landfall mariners had on the voyage home from the Americas.’

Today the world pledged to look on and do nothing as the Sudanese government resumed their genocide in the Darfur region. ‘Once again Western Nations have sent out a united message to the Sudanese Government that is proving almost impossible for them to ignore,’ said a United Nations spokesperson.

Two weeks ago Madonna held her first ever concert in Russia. The New Model Russia ushered in by Putin & his KGB cronies are risk-averse. They do not do surprises…and have an instinctive dislike for uncharted events. Madonna’s Concert Management was concerned by the threat of rain. This would ruin the stage at the open air stadium where Madonna was playing. A Russian News Source reported Madonna’s Tour Manager remarking that ‘rain would be an unpleasant occurrence. Madonna will dance a lot during the show and the stage must be dry.’

Russian weather experts were called in and instructed to eliminate this possible calamity by using aircraft to spray the sky over the Moscow Stadium with chemicals that would ‘dry out any clouds’. The treatment was developed originally to keep military rallies in Red Square dry during the Soviet Union era…and which the Chinese propose using to keep the 2008 Beijing Olympics dry. The technique relies on cloud seeding.

Silver Iodide powder or other moisture-absorbing substances acts as seeds simulating the natural salt, dust and other tiny particles in the atmosphere that help water droplets to form. Spraying clouds increases rainfall but less intensive spraying can dry out clouds…allegedly. Madonna’s concert was dry…and no doubt instructions have gone out to Climate Scientists to adjust their raw data in future to make allowance for military meddling with the atmosphere.

An advertisement in the Christmas Supplement to the Cinque Ports Letter…billed as William Franklin Occasional Paper Number Thirteen and published in December 1992…reads as follows: ‘In two years of begging, stealing and borrowing from Viz, The Economist, The Financial Times and Fourth World Review we have run up a thumping loss and will be pleased to share this with our contributors if they would like to get in touch.’ Surprisingly nobody did so.

The subject of the Christmas Supplement is the Yoof-Fool Wassail Cup Recipe from William of Salisbury…so he has been around awhile. It is billed it as a Christmas Entertainment for Children of All Ages…in three dramatic enactments: Getting Going; Getting Warmer and Getting Merry. The setting is the kitchen of a small suburban house. Enter a Male Specimen of Yoof stage right. A voice off…think Wizard of Oz…gives instructions.

‘Lay your hands on Ten Bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale…or your local under-the-stairs equivalent. Get Dad to donate a Bottle of Medium Dry Sherry…make sure it’s full. Well done! That was the important part. Next ask Mum to support your energy and initiative…that line always works. Girlfriends, sisters or grandmothers will also do. Appeal to their inherent sense of female superiority by pleading that culinary matters are too complicated for you.’

‘Before they assure you they have to see a man about a dog…they weren’t born yesterday…put them at their ease by mentioning the word Spices. Got that! As in Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice that little girls are made of. Tell them you need their advice. Now they’ll be eating out of your hand. So go for it. ‘Well you see I have this recipe…’ Here we go. Walkman off now please! Hello Man in the Moon! Sidewinder on Dream please!’ [That’s enough Ed]

The United Kingdom’s Defence Secretary…A.N. Other Brown called Des…has confidently predicted a large fall in the number of British troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq by 2007. ‘We see at least half the troops presently stationed in the Middle East being redeployed to local military hospital morgues before being flown home to rejoin their fellow servicemen in local cemeteries’, promised Des Browne before adding, ‘Some will of course be passed through our local field hospitals to avoid all the counting that goes on elsewhere in the region.’

Carbonistas…and Economists…often adopt with some panache a wheeze from the Complete Handbook on Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics that goes by the name of Aggregation. The trick is to take raw data, massage, adjust, and aggregate it, then feed it into a computer model to generate scenarios for the spin boys to headline downstream as Future Reality. Another name might be The Structure of Unscientific Revolutions. Take a look at this picture.

Can the Thames really be choked like this with boats, barges and cruisers battling for every inch of space? Well yes and no because what we have here is an aggregated picture of dozens of photographs taken over a single hour.

Travelling between Tower Bridge and London Bridge the river users include an array of vessels. Tourist & pleasure boats make up more than half the total, work boats another fifth and public safety…police, lifeboat & river authority…around 10% depending quite what you make of HMS Belfast that has been sitting quietly in the Pool of London for years. The rest are commuter boats and private users.

Here is your identification key:

1. Police launch;
2. Royal National Lifeboat Institute launch;
3. Port of London Authority work boat;
4. Private leisure craft;
5. PLA driftwood vessel;
6. Vita tourist boat;
7. Cargo boat;
8. London Rose tourist boat;
9. Millennium Dawn tourist boat;
10. Witheycombe tourist boat;
11. Thames tourist boat;
12. Burgan cargo vessel;
13. Private speed boat;
14. Private speed boat;
15. Environmental refuse tug;
16. Rigid inflatable boat;
17. City Cruises tourist boat;
18. Thames Clipper commuter boat;
19. Police launch;
20. Sky Clipper commuter boat;
21. Tourist boat;
22. Suerita tourist boat;
23. Rigid inflatable boat;
24. Hydrospace Delta tourist boat;
25. Hydrospace Alpha tourist boat;
26. Tourist boat;
27. Tourist boat;
28. Tug pulling sand;
29. HMS Belfast;
30. Environmental refuse tug;
31. Mercuria tourist boat;
32. Hydrospace Alpha pleasure boat;
33. Pleasure boat;
34. Thames work boat;
35. Rigid inflatable boat;
36. City Cruises boat;
37. Tourist boat;
38. PLA launch;
39. Catamaran Cruises tourist boat;
40. Sapele pleasure boat;
41. City Cruises tourist boat;
42. Pleasure boat;
43. Tourist boat;
44. City Cruises pleasure boat;
45. Tug boat;
46. City Cruises pleasure boat;
47. Hurricane Clipper commuter boat.

Unaccustomed as I am to acknowledging my sources I will make an exception in this case as the photographer Alisdair MacDonald deserves acclaim for coming up with the bright idea of placing his camera on London Bridge between midday and 1 pm and capturing every vessel that passed. Using a computer he then laid each shot on top of the other and merged them to create the single stunning photograph that he sold to the Daily Mail.

If this persuades you to take the train in future; think again. On Thursday 24th August…while we were witnessing the start of the Spanish Civil War in Castillo…an 8-car train carrying 600 people from King’s Cross to Peterborough split in half with the front four carriages coming to a halt 50 yards ahead of the rest of the train. The automatic brakes did their thing and there was nothing wrong with the couplers so human error was to blame. That’s all right then.

The award-winning TV series The Office is set in Slough a few miles west of London and opens with this panorama of the town. Sir John Betjeman wrote a poem that put Slough on the map the way that George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier put Wigan on the map. The poem from the Bard of Suburbia goes like this:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town -
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.
It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

It is no surprise that the Church of England owns large tracts of land in cathedral cities such as Canterbury, Ely, Peterborough and York. But after the Church Commissioners debacle a few years ago the Church has begun investing in industrial estates in Swindon and Waltham Cross and shopping areas like the Cribbs Causeway Centre in Bristol. Its newly-acquired interests also spread to Europe with its stake in the ING Central Europe Property Fund.

Closer to home planning permission has now been granted for the Church to develop land on the Ashford Great Park estate while 15% of the Church’s commercial portfolio is in London’s West End…mainly with a holding in the Pollen estate. Connie’s old employers…Quin and Biddie Cole at Rye Pottery…have been at the sharp edge of these New Model Church Commissioners. One day out of the blue the Church…landlord of their Retail Outlet in Sloane Square…gave notice to Rye Pottery that their rent was trebled. They had little choice but to close up shop.

The Church of England also has parking space in the capital and nets twenty million pounds a year from selling 99-year leases on garage spaces. Nor is property in The North neglected where it holds a 10% interest and associated land in the MetroCentre in Gateshead…the largest shopping and leisure centre in Europe providing Shoppertainment with an indoor theme park, an 11-screen cinema and a bewildering array of shops open from 10am to 9pm six days a week and from 10am to 5pm on Sundays. What would Sir John Betjeman have to say about all this? Is it good form?

Shortly after 9/11 at the age of 42 the star of Basic Instinct Sharon Stone was at home when she suddenly felt she had been shot in the head. The pain was so intense she fell over. She had always feared having a stroke yet when it happened she didn’t take it seriously. She found herself with a splitting headache while none of the things she said made sense. After three days she finally went to hospital. They operated but the haemorrhage was missed. They thought she had a ruptured vessel that had bled itself out. Nine more days went by and her condition didn’t improve so they operated again. This time they found an artery that was pumping blood into the brain.

Sharon Stone was close to death at one point and saw the white light reported by those who have a Near Death Experience. She saw people she knew had died and felt they were as close and as real as any living being and that she only had to step over a very narrow line and to join them. Talking about it five years later Sharon’s conclusion is that it just wasn’t her time. ‘The whole experience got rid of any remaining fears I may have had about life after death. I still have much to do,’ she said, ‘but I don’t fear for the future.’ Sharon had this to say about her experience.

‘My near-death experience affected me profoundly. It made me prioritise and put a new perspective on my career. I love what I do, but more than ever I keep it in its place. I’m a different person now. I walk closer to God and have an overwhelming sense of wellbeing, of joy, and I don’t have the wants and desires I had before. I have more gratitude in my life for what I have than longing for what I don’t…and that’s a peaceful way to be.

Last Friday I had an oblique brush with the National Health Service when Registered Charity 1058944 descended upon my Local Doctor’s Practice on Ferry Road for the afternoon.

Not one to pass up something free at the point of delivery the moment the news arrived in the post I programmed my digital organiser to beep at me a day beforehand so I could schedule myself to be at PCHut…just two minutes walk away from the Surgery…at the appointed hour.

The day before, I reset the alarm for half-an-hour before the event. Then off I went to have my upper arm squeezed. Twenty minutes later I returned to work the proud owner of a little card telling me that on 15/9-2006 my blood pressure was satisfactory at 138/80. The card from the Blood Pressure Association tells me high blood pressure causes stroke and heart disease…the major causes of early death and disability. Pity there was no tea and biscuits.

Five years ago on 1st December 2001...a year before Connie died…I bought a gadget to measure blood pressure…the Mark of Fitness MF-74 Wrist-Type Digital Blood Pressure Monitor to give it its full title. I took readings on Connie and myself and noted them in my journal. I was fine at 139/78…with a pulse of 66.

A week later on 6/12-2001 I was 134/92 at 61 and 138/94 at 63 which was beginning to get a little border line. A week later on 8/1-2002 I was up at 140/88 at 61…on the border between High Normal and Mild Hypertension. So I signed up at Hilden Gym.

Two and a half years later on 19th August 2004…and a couple of stones lighter…I dug out my MF-74, treated it to some new batteries and tested myself again. Yo! 118/67…58 pulse. Not just Normal but Optimal.

Two months later on 19/10-2004 I recorded 132/82…repeating at 143/85…but with ‘6 pm + coffees’ in the margin. A year ago on 27/8-2005 my MF-74 recorded 125/66 at 3 pm and 125/67 at 8pm while at 8am on 15/9-2005 I was 142/85…pulse 65.

However in all this time I never took a proper look at the reading I had taken from Connie a year before she died. My heart skipped a beat when I found the numbers at the back of an old journal. On 1st December 2001 Connie’s blood pressure was 157/105 and her pulse 78. Much too high…in the Moderate Hypertension range. Connie died of an aneurysm at the age of 52 eleven months later. One more ‘if only…’ to feel guilty about.

A National Health Service free at the point of use is back in vogue. Apparently it is what the great british public wants and hence what every politician intends to give them…although they differ on the small print and the weasel words like complementary, supplementary and anything else…and insist that they are not saying ‘privatisation’.

Real discussion of Sane Medical Provision awaits new linguistic terminology like ‘Personal Care’…as opposed to contradictions in terms like ‘impersonal care’; ‘Local Provision’…complete with such criteria as ‘delivery within half and hour’s walk for easy access by visiting relatives and friends’; and ‘Health Products & Services Providers’…what difference does the legal structure of the deliverer make to the patient at the point of delivery…Tender Loving Care Ratios; Medical Delivery Miles; and 'Cosmetic, Nice-to-have or Vital’ being more pertinent criteria for the patient.

As the Health Care Sector becomes ever more insurance-driven…via the BUPAs and SAGAs…Medical Provision will shift from product-led to market-led…not by the idiocy of a VAT Approach where everybody sells the unsellable to everybody else…a recipe for a Hustlers Paradise…but by discriminating between End-User Markets…Old People Care and Road Accidents being two prime candidates for Independent Business status…with their own P&Ls and Balance Sheets. A good way for Cameron & Co to begin might be by reading Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis.

But I have no complaints about my NHS Dental Treatment. I was suffering for a couple of days after Tuesday’s session with its gum-slicing to get at the second root canal. But I am now in the final straight of my Once Every 30-Years Routine Maintenance with just two sessions to go. And I will make it to the chequered flag with nothing to pay unless vanity demands a tooth-coloured crown instead of the silver or gold option on offer to NHS Patients.

One rather quaint little quirk of my treatment is that it is affected by Ramadan. My dentist finds it difficult to do her job during Ramadan so this is the time of year when she takes her year’s vacation. No free time-spots before Ramadan in 2-weeks time so I must wait until the end of Ramadan in early November for my final two sessions. In 2036 I will start treatment earlier in the year so I am all done and dusted before fasting begins in the Moslem World.

With winter approaching I need to take stock of how I am doing…relative to how I hoped to be doing at the start of the year. Traditionally my mid-year appraisal covers successes, surprises and failures…and from an analysis of the failures emerges a revised strategy for the rest of the year. My score stands at 8 successes, 2 surprises and 4 failures.

Number One on my Success List is my blogging. At the start of the year I had little idea whether it would be possible to deliver 365 daily 1000 word blogs of an acceptable quality. With over 70% completed…261/365…I am now confident that I can complete the task…and that the task was worthwhile.

At No.2 and No.3 on my success list come Heidi and John Papworth. This One Man and His Work is better off for having withdrawn from their suffocating embrace. At No.4 is my financial retrenchment. Mr McCawber would be proud of me. My regular outgoings no longer exceed my income. My financial foundations are secure. My two thousand pound private loan from Mr Burt for the third Magpie Sagas book has been repaid and my five hundred pound Good Yacht Guide balance on my Neame Designs account has been paid off…and the account closed down.

At No.5 is the transfer of ownership of the good ship Vemara into my name which took place this week…as well as the good relations established with Mssrs David & Martin Hutchings. At No.6 is resolving the dispute with Mr Roud and the re-mooring of Vemara on the River Rother. At No.7 is agreeing with Berni Fiddimore to reopen dialogue on the Magpie Sagas Project after a 12 month dispute. At No.8 is re-establishing good relations with Cynthia Battersby which allows progress to recommence on the Connie Lindqvist Project.

There are two items on my Surprise List. No.1 is Climate Change…at the start of the year I had no idea that I would be devoting time to this subject during 2006. No.2 is Summer in Stockholm which was not on my agenda at the start of the year…warmest thanks to my son Nicholas John. But now let me turn to the year’s failures.

There are four items on my Failure List. At No.1 is my failure to secure the forty thousand kronor…£3000…funding I wanted before moving to Lund University for six months to complete my Fil.Kand degree.

At No.2 is my failure to find acceptable storage arrangements for my stuff…and Connie’s stuff and Academic Inn Books...stocks stored at Rye Harbour, Vemara, Wittersham and Winchelsea Road.

At No.3 is the fact that I no longer wish to live on Vemara but have yet to move to an apartment. At No.4 is my failure to start trading in Swedish Kronor and European Industrial Shares. These four failures are related…because they were predicated upon receiving the money promised by JAK.

JAK’s failure to deliver on their February 2006 promise to provide an unsecured loan of SEK 75 000 in April 2006 lies behind my failures not only under No.1 but also 2, 3 and 4. However a promise has now been made to provide the unsecured funds requested once I am resident in Sweden.

Storage under No.2 was to be paid for from the JAK funding. The financial risk of moving to Lund under No.3 was to be met by six months of Forward Living Capability on account or in pre-paid rent. Work on No.4 was deemed to be dependent on stable and efficient working conditions.

My revised strategy is to seek an apartment in Rye immediately to meet my winter needs…October to March…and permit me to consolidate my stuff so that subsequent moves into commercial storage becomes much easier. My apartment rent will be met from Housing Benefit and the savings on storage costs offset by the loss of Housing Benefit for Mooring Fees. Last week I set the Ryesingers network to work on my behalf by letting Lesley Brownbill know that I was giving serious consideration to wintering in Rye…if I could find a suitable apartment.

It then makes sense for me to formally apply for a place at Lund University for the Spring Term 2007…applications are due in by mid-October 2006...once registered I will have access to the University Housing lists. I have also decided to explore the possibility of grants for my Economic History Studies in Lund. At year end after four months of Cultura income I will see how things stand…and tithe a portion of any wealth to my IG-Index Fund for 2007.