Incredible as it may seem, it's snowing here in Birmingham. Woke up this morning, went into kitchen to make a cuppa, thought 'It's a bit cold...' Waited for the rain... SNOW! And it's nearly the beginning of August.

WHAT IS GOING ON? Have we offended Mother Nature/Eywa/Gaia so much that even the farmers and gardeners are being punished?

The radishes are all leaf, the lettuces a soggy mass. The peas and beans are huddled at ground level and won't climb their sticks. Have only…

Well, there goes our carbon emission reduction…

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s Director of External Affairs, has discussed our Grey Pride call for a Minister for Older People, in her blog on the Age UK website.

Our successful…

Hi fellow Priders!

I'm so happy today. Our Big Lottery funded (Awards for All) project has got underway and is going so well, I can scarcely believe it. We started over a year ago, building on social contacts my OH had made (running bingo and skittles), by smartening up the exterior doors of the two tower blocks that make up our Sheltered Housing estate and running our Garden Development project with funding from the POC fund, CIF, and Community Chest. Then I put in a funding bid for…

A couple of days ago, a road in Seaton, Devon collapsed:

In the wake of the tsunami that devastated areas of Japan last year, a similar incident occurred:

The Japanese government has their road repaired and back in action in SEVEN days.

Stuart Hughes of Devon County Council is reported as saying, "The…

"A lie told often enough becomes truth."  This quotation is attributed to both Lenin and Joseph Goebbels and nowhere is this truer today than in the repeated mantra of the Labour Government in respect of the proposed DNA database for all our UK citizens.  The lie in this case is, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”  The truth is that we all potentially have something to hide. 

The discovery of the DNA genome has led to significant medical advances…

Given that I spent 50 years in the professional security industry I feel that I have the adequate knowledge and experience of adding my tuppnyworth to the issue of the security provision at the London Olympics.

There was never any hope whatsoever of any private security company providing 10,500 properly trained security guards for this event - it was simply never going to happen.  Since the introduction of The Private Security Act 2004, all personnel carrying out security activities…

Every little thing we do makes a difference. No matter how small it seems, it could be huge to someone else.

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf's edge and and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached, he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man…

Over recent months, significant media space has been given over to the reporting the increase in binge drinking and the effects that this phenomenon on society in general.  According to a report in The Daily Telegraph [17^th June 2009] the financial cost to the NHS of alcohol related diseases had reached £3 billion.  This figure does not include the additional costs of NHS staff subjected to aggression and violence to those they treat in A&E…

Its a pot of magic.   If you cannot get around much anymore and find that you have to sit in a position for far too long, to make sure you do not get a bed sore or similar, just rub in some vaseline.    Its wonderful stuff, prevents you from chaffing.   People who are plump with maybe a few extra rolls of flesh, once you have had your shower just smear some vaseline in the spots where the flesh meets.    Best of all you can buy a huge pot of vaseline from such shops as poundland for £1.00.  …

I am blessed I have a huge garden almost half an acre, well some people might not call it a garden,...I try to cut the grass, but always leave islands of wild flowers and I notice new wild flowers all the time,.    I have a plethora of bumble bees, dragonflies, butterflies all shapes and colours, last year I saw for the first time ever a young badgder, owls hoot at night and at dusk I watch the tiny bats whizzing across the across with such a speed I just catch sight in the corner of my eye.…

And so the fight continues................

As a child of the '60's I am just coming up to what was, until last year, my official retirement age of 65 but for various reasons, I will continue working for some years yet.  This is partly because I must in order to keep the cash coming in but more importantly, it's because I actually want to.  The big difference is that I am now working in an environment that I want to rather than being employed by a company that regards me as extraneous…

Leading information and comparison website for the over 50s TheRetirementCentre.com has joined a number of other organisations in backing the Grey Pride campaign.

Dominic Fraser-Smith, Managing Director of TheRetirementCentre.com stated the importance of supporting the campaign:

“TheRetirementCentre.com, a retirement specialist, is pleased to be able to give their support to the Anchor Grey Pride campaign in calling for a Minister for Older People.…