Applying for an Irish passport - part ten - Irish passport and ID card recieved

A bit of a late update on this subject but...

In October 2018 I started applying for an Irish passport which concluded in June 2020. (18 months, £450 and a wedge of paperwork). I am now an Irish (and again an EU) citizen with a paper passport and a plastic ID card/passport.

Since doing this some of my siblings have also put themselves on the Irish birth register meaning that they can apply for a passport in future should they choose.

Overall the excerise was worthwhile and has put my back in touch with a part of my own genenology i suppose. My UK passport expired just before my Irish one arrived and so i don't even have a UK one now.

...

At the time of writing things are getting better on the Brexit front but only slowly. We hit rock bottom under Johnson, Truss and Sunak. Sunak improved one small aspect related to Northern Ireland before the Conservatives were finally kicked out by the ballet box.

Although i have never been a Labour voter i feel that our new PM Keir Starmer is at least an honest and competent person who will try to fix some of the things that are broken in this country. Some of these have been broken all my life such as a the ammount of housing that is (not) built every year.

Unfortunately when it comes to undoing the damage of Brexit he seems to feel that he needs to go very slowly indeed. Whilst i under some of the political analysis behind this it is very frustrating. When can't begin to fix the problems that have been created until, we the public, have regular honest updates about the damage that has been done. This in turn will create a feedback loop where opposition parties will need to conceed that Brexit was a bad idea, i.e. the conservatives will need to own this.

Until the EU see that we, collectively, want to be back in then i don't think they would entertain the idea.

Why this is so important is perhaps something i'll go into in another post.

Half marathon #3

On Sunday I completed the Royal Parks Half Marathon for the third time. I've started doing this really as as annual challenge, i'm not built for running at all. 

This year i improved over last year but i still made mistakes. Although i had trained for the distance and was using a proper water vest for the first time i didn't have energy bars; and i paid for it. I also got too far to the front at the race start (next to the 1h55m runner) which is way quicker than i can sustain. At 8 miles i was flagging and by 10 i was walking. Luckily though i was motivated by a stranger to get going again and another gave me an energy gel. All learning points for next year.

I was lucky enough to be sponsored by several people which beat last years target too, all for a worthy cause of the Alzheimers Society.

I'd like to use this experience to motivate my kids to do some 'kids runs' at similar events. There is always such a great spirit at these events, you see the better side of humanity. People are challenging themselves for a good cause, but as well you see lots of volunteers helping out and supporters cheering people on.

Motorists do indeed pay for the roads

Motorists do in fact 'pay for the roads'

This was a response i sent to the excellent journalist Lewis Goodhall who features on LBC radio.

I love your show and the News Agents and agree with a lot of what you say but on a number of occasions you have stated that motorists are 'under a mistaken belief they pay for the roads because road fund isn't that much' effectively.

I think what you are missing here is Duty and VAT on the fuel itself which is far greater.
In 2022-2023 government spent £11B on roads
https://www.statista.com/statistics/298667/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-national-roads/
In 2022-2023 the Fuel Duty part alone was £25.1B
https://www.statista.com/statistics/284323/united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts-fuel-duty/

So yes motorists do pay for the roads through tax and get a poor return.

I speak as a Pedestrian, Cyclist and Motorist. I just found that line of defence to be misleading.

-ENDS-

Beyond the post itself lets look at how much of Fuel is actually tax. Currently my local station is charging about 162p per litre for diesel. Of that 53p is Fuel Duty (tax), about 81.5p is the cost of the fuel from the retailer and so abott 26.5p is VAT (tax). About 50% of your fuel cost is just tax.

If you think about it we already have a 'Pay per mile' road system, its just the only ones paying for the roads are the ones who use liquid or gas fuels.

If you think about it then the government will need to find new ways to pay for the roads as people move over to electric. I doubt that they can charge more for electricity at the station because that would be a regressive tax versus the move affluent people who can charge at home (think drive ways and garages).

Open letter to Rory Stewart on Russians war on Ukraine

I’ve always been a fan of @rorystewartuk finding him intelligent and principled. It’s a great loss that he didn’t become the Tory party leader as our politics would be much better for it.
I was very disappointed though about two comments he made in the latest episode on (164) of his podcast. He said
1) Ukraines counter offensive had failed, and
2) The USA is making a Cold War against Russia.

I would politely suggest you review better sources. Ukraine is facing a well entrenched enemy but they have by no means failed and are making daily progress. They are fighting for their very survival, some support would be nice. Please check Jake Broe, Denys Davidoff, Vlad Vexler, Ryan Macbeth, Gen Ben Hodges and William Spaniel to better inform yourself on what is going on.

We’d all like the genocide to be ended sooner, maybe you could focus on the tens of thousands of children Russia has kidnapped, but they are limited by the tools they have and the advantage the Russians started with.

Slow Wars

I have this concept with that we are currently under attack in so many and so subtle ways that we don't really realise it; I call this Slow Wars. Its a bit like the game Grandmother's footsteps[1] (or 'Red light, Green light now thanks to Squid game) where players are attempting to sneak up on someone without their movement being seen.

One example of this is the cyber attacks conducted against the infrastructure of nation states. Whilst some might not consider that to be a conventional war it has many of the same effects, damaging trade, damagring business confidence, stealing secrets, undermining opponents etc. Because people don't see and feel this kind of attack it is less scary even though the consequences of a particular attack might be much worse than another given physical attack. It feels less dangerous and so we might not notice it at all, its a 'slow attack', as in we at not seeing the person move up on us (like in Red light, Green light) until they have already passed the line. If a rival is continously attacking you slowly then you are in a Slow War and the danger is that you (/we) don't collectively realise and respond to this.

Today i read about [2] another line of attack being used in this Slow War where Malignant actors are attempting to subvert the free Internet via corrupting the standards and standards bodies used to run the architecture itself. These countries aim to change the Internet to 'New IP' (Internet Protocol) which would allow much greator censorship control of the Intenet to countries than even they have today. What is clever about this attack is that it plays to the UN ITU's long term asparation to take regulatory control of the Internet over from the IETF, a self governing body that standardises most of the Internet's architecture by consesus.

The concept of Slow Wars however is much bigger than just the technical world. It is easily applied to how Russia continunes to undermine and attack their neighbours in phases. Whilst we outsiders might consider these phases as individual wars it is clear now that these all fit as part of a master plan. Their war on Ukraine is a case in point and shows why the calls from many commentators that 'Ukraine should negotiate' are so wrong. In 2014 Russia invaded and allegally annexed the Crimean penisula of Ukraine by a combination of Blitz Kriek and recruiting traitors in the Ukrainian forces. However this wasn't the end for Russia, just a phase. They came back, as we see on our screens today, in 2022 for the next phase were they attempted to assignate the Ukrainian president whilst overwhelming their military. Today the Russians hold most of the Ukraian cost, some power stations and have declared four further illegal annexations. If Ukraniane 'just negotiates a peace' (aka Give up all annexed areas) would that be the end of it or would their simply be further phases once Russia have rebuilt their forces and they've sold some energy ? (Yes there are countries buying energy today from them and they will be even more once the war ends, if Russia are not stopped of course. Those future energy buyers will of course claim they are trying to show Russia they are more sucessful with business than violence but they would be as naive now as the Germans were to become so dependant on Russian energy until now).

Don't take this to think that i am some kind of war monger. I want peace as much as the next person, but we do need to learn from history and we need to stand up to bullies. We need to protect our values and understand when we are being take for a ride. Yes we must continue to support Ukraine but we should also rack up the pressure on passive states like India/China or the Middle East / OPEC. If either of these blocks removed their passive support of the Russian war then this would end much faster.

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statues_(game)

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/29/itu_plenipotentiary_open_internet_fight/?utm_source=weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=article

Travelling to the EU with a pet post Brexit (RIP pet passports)

 I've just come back from a 3 week holiday in Spain where i drive through France both outwards and on the return. This is the first time i took a pet with me and since i have never had a 'pet passport' (PP) before i had to go through the new route of a 'Animal Health Certificate' (AHC), another negative consequence of Brexit of course. Where once you would of got a PP and used that to show all relevant checks and vaccinations had been given for any trip; you now need to get a AHC created by your vet for every single trip. i.e. If i wanted to go to Europe again next week i would need a brand new AHC at ~£135 every time.

Anyway in travelling through France and especially during Covid i made sure we had everything we needed, trickey enough when some of the travel rules where changing near daily. For the UK vet this was the first time she had filled out such a form.

In calling Eurotunnel though a couple of days before return to change a minor item on the booking the emmployee briefly mentioned to make sure we had a tapeworm certificate for the return. After a bit of research it turned out this was something i needed to do whilst on holiday. We found a vet an hour away and managed to get a certificate and treatment from them before the Siesta time. The Spanush vet had also not had to deal with an AHC before and wanted to update our non-existant PP, she issued a certificate in the form of a Spanish AHC.

However on getting to EuroTunnel they rejected this on the basis that it wasn't written on the AHC form and that the Spanish AHC couldn't be accetped. They diverted me to a nearby vet who simply wrote in the confirmation details from the Spanish form onto the UK form and prompted charged me €50 for the privaledge. Its not their fault.

None of this would have been necessary if not for the lies told before, during and after Brexit. This is a minor example of the damage being done to the UK but its a personal example and a warning for anyone taking a pet abroad.

Part nine - Passport application sent

The landslide win of the Tory's in the election knocked the sails out of many people, i was just one. I couldn't bring myself to watch the victory speeches and just tried to tune out. The government now is openly hiring all manner of spin doctors and recently effectively sacked the Chancellor because he wouldn't accept to just be a puppet of the central spin machine.
I was prompted this week by family to see what the status of my application and that spurred me into completing the last part. Whilst i always wanted to gain FBR status as a contingency against Brexit taking away my visa free travel, and partly as a small signal that i am against this whole craziness, right now we are in 'transition' and so the new passport was strictly needed. In any case Covid-19 has caused many events to be cancelled including over seas travel in the case of my company, never the less i continued to complete this.
Today i posted the complete application package for a passport and a plastic ID card (€115) not including postage. I'd expect to get the passport itself in a couple of weeks, we'll see.

We live in a very dangerous time for democracy with the Government very carefully controlling the publics perception of everything and only delivering constant feed lines that the public can repeat ad naseum. This is only made worse by foreign powers also using social media and fake news to manipulate the voter. Hopefully this will be resolved one day but i have no idea how.