Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

My pressure washers are 1. loud 2. not too loud. 1 is petrol powered and needed to do a proper job on the deck and concrete driveway and I usually only do that during the day, during the week and after 9 in the morning and long done by noon. 2 is electric and not nearly as powerful and I use that for washing things down rather than "power" washing.

The petrol one is so powerful that if I had the nozzle too "pointed" it would cut a groove in wood and carve at bricks.

I only need to use the noisy one once a year. And also, never when people are out trying to enjoy their yards or have company.

 

I've just been to the local shop for milk & a tin of peas, the woman owner
is talking in her own language on the phone, she didn't stop talking and just put her hand out for the money. The male owner is completely different, so nice and friendly.

 

Latest poll for Trump shows his approval rating has slipped a bit, but is still on 49%. I find that quite astonishing (the total, not the slipping, obviously). There we are. Things must be perceived very differently over the pond, and I guess any price rises from sanctions and the tanking dollar haven’t filtered through yet.

Meanwhile, Putin says the UK is a war-monger and the 2nd world war was our fault. Hmmm. Pretty much on a par with their current invasion being Ukraine’s fault.

I appreciate we are in an age where history can be rewritten at whim by anyone with a keyboard and an X account, but even so!

 

Americans hate admitting they were wrong or made a mistake.

 

Possibly!

Meanwhile, Musk has told Poland’s PM to “Be quiet, little man”! That would be an unelected billionaire speaking to a democratically elected head of country. Plus, a gov official refusing to pass through a gun licence reinstatement for Trump’s buddy, Mel Gibson, on the grounds he has a conviction for domestic abuse (and, as we know mixing guns with men who are violent towards women often ends badly) has been dismissed from her post, while some judges have been sent pizzas to their home addresses, apparently a Mafia way of saying “We know where your family is”!

Sheesh!

 

@pete We already know that the USA education system leaves much to be desired and far too many people thus grow up ill informed and unable to think objectively. Add to that who owns the mass media and the lack of information in the news, coupled with misinformation just compounds the problem.

Many of them think America was great - it was certainly wealthy and pwoerful but has never been kind to its weak and poor, always grabbing for the priveleged and greedy despite those lines in the poem -

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

They were and are just fodder for the factories and fields with no security in their homes, jobs, society or old age.

I can only imagine what will happen to food prices if they do send home all the Mexicans who do their harvesting for them. It'll be worse than the UK losing its eastern European labour after Brexit.

A signicicant amount of their energy comes from Canada which has just raised the cost of suppying electricity by 25% in retaliation to tariffs. What will Trump and Musk do now? Sell off the national parks and Drill baby drill?

 

I don't think it's much different over here but a lot of the people who voted for him probably don't have any idea of what is actually going on. When he won the election the liberal news outlets lost over 50% of their viewers overnight because people couldn't stomach watching. It is these outlets that hold him to account or highlight any perceived wrongdoing, whereas other outlets, like fox, defend and spin.

 

Perhaps we shouldn't let those without university degrees vote in elections, and just allow the elite run democracies.

 

Of course not @pete but given that a flat earther was made chief of education in Texas you have to concede there is a huge gap in knowledge and information. Surveys show that a significant number of Americans think the earth is only about 60,000 years old and believe in Creationsim making mankind only 10,000 years old. I have to think that makes them both credulous and gullible to people like Trump.

 

Pot hole inspecters are very good at inspectering a pot hole without going to see said pothole then closed the report

 

@Jiffy they'll be those "smart " pot holes..........press a button in the office and the pot holes close up

 

From my experience, it's many of those with university degrees who shouldn't be allowed to vote. Heads in the clouds, no experience of working life.....

 

Some bright spark set fire to a Tesla showroom in Toulouse @shiney - that will hurt new sales but also the insurance company concerned. Handy for the dealer who must have seen the way the wind is blowing with Tesla sales in Europe.

It seems Canadian retail outlets are clearing their shelves of USA goodies and Canadians are urging each other to buy Canadian. That is leading to layoffs in bourbon and other boozey companies in the USA. There's also talk of cancelling the Starlink or whatever it is with Musk and using a Canadian company on the grounds of not wanting foreign control over their communications.

I hope the EU and UK can pick up intelligence gathering where Trump has dropped it and help Ukraine detect incoming missiles.