The Dark Half - Stephen King, 1989

welcome back, gentle reader.

one bitch back, one bitch gone.

the removal guys came in on thursday, packed stuff in boxes for several hours, then left. on friday they returned, team handed, packed lots more stuff and this time loaded it all into their van, then they left, van included. sometime early saturday afternoon the van arrived at its destination in Englandshire. on sunday, i loaded the brood and the last of their stuff into the car and headed for their new home in Englandshire. 6 years, 3 kids, 0 help. enough was enough i guess, she missed her family. hopefully, back with her real friends and family, she will get some much needed help and support. on monday i got on the train and headed home, alone.
there are still a few things to be done to the house before it goes up for sale, great timing huh ? should get them done in a few weeks then try and get it sold and then ... well there a few things in the pipeline to allow me to transfer down south, so at the very least i will get to see the kids more often. i wonder if the enforced break will allow us two bitches to get our acts together ??

next time you whinge about the cost of petrol ...

When you cry for cheaper oil, do you know what you are really asking for? Gordon Brown has just shown us. He has unwittingly exposed the pipeline that runs from your petrol station to the poisoned people of the Niger Delta. The more you howl for cheap oil, the more they will be Shell-shocked into submission.
To understand, you need to know the story of the Niger Delta, a once lush land of mangrove swamps at the base of Nigeria. In the late 1950s, in the final days of British imperial rule, Shell's local subsidiary discovered it lay on top of vast pools of oil. Britain immediately became its number one user, with the US close behind. In the long decades since, more than $200bn worth of oil and gas has been pumped from beneath the Delta people's feet.
So you would imagine the Niger Delta must now be an oasis of riches, with its 30m people bathing in wealth. But no: they live with nothing and die by the age of 40. While the lifeblood of twenty-first century techno-life is pumped from their land, they live in the Stone Age, with no schools, no hospitals and barely any electricity. They have felt three effects from the petrol. Their land has been poisoned by oil spills; the fish they lived off have been turned into stunted, toxic rarities; and when they ask for compensation, they are shot at.

full article HERE

No doubt Brown will say the British soldiers would also provide human rights training to Nigerian soldiers. But the reason Nigerian soldiers are there is to suppress the local people so their oil can be seized. How do you slather human rights training on top of a mission like that?
An old woman from the Delta tries, in the new American documentary Sweet Crude, to talk directly to you. She says: "I'd like people all over the world to realise there's a segment of humanity suffering as a result of oil production – ordinary men, women, children. They should think about them and not think simply of energy. Think of us as people. That's more important than anything."
But while we are unrepentant junkies, howling for cheap petrol, will we be able to hear her?