13 February 2012
I had a relatively pain-free night despite having reduced the cortisone down to one tablet, as recommended by the good doctor. In fact, after tonight I shall stop this additional painkiller altogether. for, as Michael says, he doesn’t want to trespass on other people’s territory.
Getting back to our usual routine with a flurry of people in the early morning. First the carers. Then Peter ‘the garden’, followed by George the post’ and James’ the plumber’ finally Doreen, my secretary came in to sort out my backlog of papers. It sounds a bit like Happy Families. Never a dull moment.
The situation in Greece are still occupying a great deal of media space. Although their Parliament passed the government’s recommended austerity measures, it now seems that they will not be able to draw down on the €132 billion emergency bailout fund,, today, as they believed, but it will be subject to them achieving certain goals, presumably to demonstrate that they really have implemented the austerity measures to which they have agreed. However, the populace are not placated. They seem furious that further austerity measures should be imposed upon them, having had five years of them are so far. There are regular riots and the rioters seem to be smashing the place up as a demonstration of their disfavour. However, is a little hard to understand how that is going to help anything. If public opinion has anything to do with it it seems that the Greek. people would be prepared to leave the Eurozone and row their own boat.
Today, another international credit agency Moody’s following Standards and Poor’s example, downgraded the credit rating for three further European countries , Spain, Portugal and Italy and at the same time, gave a warning that GB is on notice of a possible change to their rating in the future – presumably if our prospects worsen. What this means, in effect is that if a country’s credit rating is lowered they have to pay more to borrow money on the international markets to service their debts, which makes it even more difficult to balance their books and so on. I believe the current rate that the Greeks have to pay for borrowing money which I understand is now is 33%, creates an impossible situation that cannot be sustained. It is hard to see how the Greeks can avoid defaulting on their debt repayment, with what consequences for the rest of us, heaven knows.
Getting close to the end of the eye drops I have to have following my second cataract operation. I have arranged a home visit for an eye test, following which it was my intention then to purchase some new, vari-focal glasses. Unfortunately, neither Spec Savers nor Vision Express, with whom I dealt with for many years, when I make home visits. As the fitting of glasses for vari-focals is more of an exact science. Then, just for ordinary glasses I may have a clear whether the home optical people who are coming here can offer me similarly advantageous rates as those on offer at these online outfits.
I received an e-mail from the Dragon people yesterday asking me to contact them as and when the problems, about which I have complained, occur again. They have suggested that on receipt of such a call they will instantly set up a co-browse session to see if they can identify the cause. Whilst this is a nice helpful suggestion, it may not be a practical one. The problem is that the fault is are intermittent and not all of them would occur at the same time. If the programme froze Microsoft Word or Outlook they might be able to discover why that was. But it wouldn’t give them a clue as to why the programme was not responding to my Commands. I think I will wait until Paul comes at the end of the week and work out some modus operandi with him.
Today’s diversion is one of those many entitled’ Beware, they walk amongst us. Click here to see how thick. some people can be.