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Stoning firemen just for fun. A pastime created by bored young people, during the troubles in Northern Ireland, seems to have spread throughout the UK. It was really very simple, all you needed was some bottle crates, some old whisky and gin bottles, to steal some petrol and tear up a few rags, make about four dozen Molotov cocktails, and you were in business. Go down the backs of some houses over a hundred years old, and dig up the square sets paving the back lane, steal some money and take it to an illegal dealer in dodgy fireworks, and then just decide what you were going to set alight. It might have been a pile of rubbish, or two or three cars or maybe even a bus, depending on your whim, but one thing you were sure of was that the police and the fire service would turn up. Then the fun started, you pelted them, you bombed them and you shot them with fireworks, and because of the way things are today there wasn’t a thing anybody could do about it, it wasn’t worthwhile.

I have a solution, you won’t like it, and nobody will take it up. It’s a mixture of David Attenborough’s friends saving the animals, kidnapping, and government accounting. We’ve all seen people firing anaesthetising darts into harmless little animals, and carting them a few thousand miles, then letting them go in a totally new environment among a few of their own species, whose language they probably don’t understand. It occurred to me that if we fired a few darts into some of these youngsters so they zonked on the spot, the cops could lift them, that’s kidnapping, and then take them and lose them in station cells, scattered here and there, like the government has done with our various records. If they can do it in one case, why not another? After a couple weeks they just open the door and let them wander home. In the meantime they will have discovered that they might have been a bit bored when they were at home, but it was nothing like the boredom of solitary confinement.

Stoning firemen 2. Wisdom comes in strange bundles. For a long time I have known the government accounting is more about face-saving than veracity. At the present moment there is a chasm between the figures of the incidents of the fire service and police being attacked, collected by the unions, and those put out by the government. The unions have an axe to grind as does the government, but what the latter should understand is that when your probity is at a low level in the eyes of the electorate, they are more likely to believe the unions, especially on past experience, than they are of government records. It will be human rights of the young people which will be the concern, while forgetting that the human rights of a mother and two of three children in a house that  is burning, and is not receiving assistance from the fire service, because a fireman is in hospital and the fire engine is up on a ramp. Perhaps instead we should zonk the parents and send them on an excursion round the cells in the police stations.

Government statistics on immigrants. Over the weekend the papers were full of statistics about the actual number of foreigners living in this country. What is evident from remarks made on chat sites on the Internet, is that nobody believes them, and when they quote that it’s 2 million, people feel that is closer to three or even more. I have been over this ground before but I think that it is worthwhile just to underline the facts. Firstly there seems to be no control over where and how these people are employed, which means that local authorities cannot plan how to accommodate them, presupposing they are needed anyway. When this country had a population of 50 million, we seemed to be moving along very well without the need of outside help. Now the population is 60 million, but doubts have been cast on the fertility of the indigenous population, so where have the other 10 million come from? 3 million people on the basis of three to a house, demands a million new dwellings, but housing shortage is causing first-time buyers to get into a level of debt that they may never get out of, so the number of houses required is rising yearly, and our environment is being steadily stretched. The environment is not elastic, and neither is the infrastructure. The infrastructure is made up of engineering works which take time to modify or install, yet nobody seems to be planning ahead. We in Northern Ireland have a case in point of house building having to be curtailed in certain areas, because the infrastructure was inadequate. It seems we can yap on about these problems, but the government is so keen to tinkering with things like education and health, daily, it hasn’t time to take the overall picture.

Yesterday I was in the company of two, very bright women in their late 80s, who in all the 60 odd years that I have known them have only talked babies, weddings, gardening and suchlike, and yet yesterday they lambasted the politicians, saying that they believed nothing they were told any more. They thought the government couldn’t govern, they abhorred the deceit, the financial mismanagement, personal and national, the money grabbing, and above all they were worried for the struggling majority with unmanageable personal finances and the paucity of enjoyable life for the children. We have heard it all many times, but that is the problem, we all seem to know what is wrong but can’t correct it.

Let us assume the main problems are, lack of experienced politicians, the desire to stay in office in spite of extreme duplicity and mismanagement, the refusal to accept blame, and finally an election system which permits the ruling party to have an unassailable majority, which doesn’t allow for reasonable restraint in the face of the need for rethinking and caution. The desire to be loved at all costs is an added deterrent. Theoretically, in a democracy everyone should have equal opportunity and equal say in the way their life is run. In reality after they have voted they no longer have a say, nor seem to want one. Occasionally there are minor representations, but the basic structure remains unaltered unless there is a strong force at the top, with a strong backing, coupled with an intelligent opposition, offering aid and criticism as warranted, rather than the steady rants to bolster its chances at the next election. .No one seems accountable today like they were years ago. Do you know what your MP looks like? Have you ever seen him (her), written to him for help, and if you did was there a satisfactory outcome? If the answers to most of these questions is no, are we getting value for money, because it is costing a hell of a lot to keep the government bandwagon on the road when you take account of the expenses, the support staff and the upkeep of all the departments and buildings?

I have often said working in a city council environment was less frustrating, more productive and easier than as a civil servant doing the same job in roughly the same area. Big business, and the armed services, handling large sums of money, and in some cases, life and death, operate on a pyramidal system. I wonder do we need the 600 plus members of Parliament. We are told that they are required to act on committees. In my experience three or four intelligent people will arrive at a sensible solution in a 10th of the time that a committee of 20 would take, when in the end the committee’s resolution is often the opinion of one man. There has to be input, and output, and this is the function of those at the bottom of the pyramid. Our system was duplicated to some extent, before most of the vital operations were centralised, and the teeth of the councils were drawn..

I know it will never happen, even though it may seem logical to me, that we would incorporate the functions of the councils and parliament in a single system, with the major decisions taken at the top, while the majority of the employees would be at local level, where they will be approachable to the public, and closer to the work in hand, as the councils were,. There will still have to be some separate departments such as the foreign office, and the War office. Tax collection, including council tax could be made much simpler and consequently cheaper to run. I believe that a system of this type would be considerably more wieldy than the current one, where our voices are so far from the executive, they’re never heard.

Since we do not want the sort of debacle the poll tax produced, it would be wise to fund, say, three universities in different geographical and social areas, to undertake to research the problems and devise a model or models, from which the new system might emerge and can be evaluated. I believe the current system has been shown to be past its sell by date, if for no other reason than there seems to be no restraint, no deep thought, and too much razzmatazz.

I still have to be careful not to strain my eyes and over the last few days I have written a piece about government for today, but events have overtaken me and so I write this virtually in shorthand. Please forgive me.

A number of incidents concerning the national accounting are perturbing me. It started some months ago when my dentist said he was going private because  he spent too much time sending financial statements requested either by the NHS or the Inland revenue, that he had already furnished, but recovering them again took time as they were small items. He is honest, hard working and reliable – I trust him. He said it was a ploy, by the Government to make the dental faction of the NHS go private, so that the allocation of money for dentistry could be reallocated to balance the NHS books. I wrote on the 18th January about another piece of sleight of hand. Then there was the row about police pay, lately the problems with differential pay in Birmingham, the lack of funding for the armed forces and NOW, there is a proposal which will, if put through, make GPs also go private. If this happens, the whole structure of the health service will collapse as the dental service is collapsing, and the disadvantaged will suffer yet again.

The funding of Rock will have had an effect, but there are other matters I don’t understand. Who is footing the bill for our contribution in Iraq and Afghanistan? I can’t find out if the UN is in part, or if it is just us? I don’t understand why some countries are contributing troops to Iraq that are not allowed to be at the front, while our boys are being slaughtered day on day. When Haines was Minister for Northern Ireland he used some very questionable tactics to try to blackmail and bully us to toe some very unreasonable lines, and he was not alone in this. Labour wants to appear to be successful in government, but I believe Brown as Chancellor and now PM has joined Blair in making some glaring mistakes and intends more for that very reason. Our infrastructure is miles below what it was in the 70s, our health service, road networks, and transport services are all below par, and fares are excessive, Our educational system is in total chaos through constant tweaking, term on term, not even year on year. Our taxation is more hidden than open and there is confusion what is included in Council taxes.

You know I could double the list, but I would be preaching to the converted.

Old Light through New Windows. On Thursday last, I had one of those days when things can still surprise you. I saw an incredibly interesting and well put together programme on BBC 4 which confirmed things I had been told as a boy about Islam. It was the first part of a triptych entitled ‘The Art Of Spain’, by Andrew Graham-Dixon. The second thing was my daughter, a very bright lady, who will be queuing for her bus pass in a few years and is an inveterate surfer of the Net, introduced me to the BBC IPlayer, and my advice, for what it’s worth, is, if you haven’t tried it don’t delay. So often I have missed TV items which I would have liked to see. Now we have the opportunity to see them later, for 7 days, or 30 if you down load them, – hence the ‘5 days left’ quote above, applies to the Graham-Dixon programme.

I merely wish to cherry pick a few aspects of the programme which gave me food for horizontal thinking, and I don’t mean dreaming, but some of the art would make you wish it was still being produced today. The Moors, consisting of Egyptians, Syrians, and tribes from North Africa, invaded and colonised the southern part of Spain, I knew that, but what I didn’t know was that they introduced the way we eat and what we eat today. They brought the tradition of cooking with imported spices and herbs, and eating a meal in courses. Their art which was on show, consisted of their unique architecture, its beautiful, sculptural decoration of the most intricate designs and forms, and the colourful and equally complicated mosaics, on walls and floors. There is a contemplative atmosphere, fostered by the aesthetic of the architectural design, unsurprising as most of the buildings displayed were mosques or have mosques attached, but none the less beautiful and of the style still to be seen in the Middle East and on the Indian Continent.

At one point in my teenage years I wandered through a number of forms of Christianity and at some point I was instructed that the Koran preached the moral virtues of the New Testament, especially ‘love thy neighbour’. I was led to believe that Islam was tolerant of other beliefs. For some time I have considered my memory to be at fault, until I saw, on the programme, a room in a mosque which had been constructed specifically for the benefit of Jews and Christians and was decorated in Yiddish in stone relief. The presenter remarked that about 75% of the non Islamic people converted. A cynic might suggest it was a simple ploy to aid conversion. At least it was better than the stake.

The presenter referred to the ‘Orange Tree Theory’ which in essence is that empires grow wealthy, decadent, and tend to relax and plant oranges, with the result they are overtaken by others wishing to expand and ultimately, they all cease to exist consecutively. It doesn’t take a historian to see the validity of this proposition. In recent times we have had countries trying to expand their influence at great expense in every form. With the world wide turbulence we now have, it seems the theory has broken down, extreme affluence, greed, extreme poverty, and high speed communication, all seems to be heralding and generating chaos in an unprecedented and unassailable size and form. I hope I’m wrong, I hope common sense ultimately prevails.

Recently I had a run in with my Bank. It was over an unreasonable fine and interest charge because I was, understandably, 2 days late in paying my credit card balance, when I had substantial funds in my current account gaining no interest. This made me examine my banking experiences over 61 years with the same account. The bank was taken over some years ago and again recently, and each time I have noticed a reduction in the spontaneity between teller and customer. In the old days a telephone call between an official and me saved us considerable time, mutually, and I felt a bond with the bank, I am sure it is a combination of the sign of the times, computerisation, and orders from the new boss, but my current experience smacks of a level of sharpness one would not have expected when it is realised the bank has held substantial sums of ours for very many years, giving no, or very low rates of interest, while having use of the money with which to deal on the Stock Exchange..

The invoice from the associated credit card section gives a date up to which payment must be paid. On the back it informs one, if read, that payment by cheque requires 3 days to be deducted from the payment date for cheque clearance. It would seem more in the interest of the customer, but clearly not the bank, if the 3 days were deducted from the date of payment, and the fact that a cash settlement allowed a 3 day extension were put on the back. Old idiots like me forget that Saturdays and Sundays are days of rest, if, indeed we even know what day it is, in this rather boring old age. The result is our calculations are 2 days out and we get a fine and interest charges for late payment, in spite of having ten time the value of the payment lying in our current account with no interest. The bank will probably say correlation is too difficult. With salaries ranging from £2000 to at least 100,000 pa, the monthly deposits in the current accounts must act as surety, and flagging for solvency and repeated errors could simplify the system and eradicate the resentment by valued customers. If people can run up vast debts, then renege, surely one overdue payment should not bring the bank to its knees?

The ultimate resentment is twofold. How can banks calculate that a delay of 2 days can attract such a Draconian response, when the calculations and responses are electronic, and when also, as part of the worldwide credit card industry, collectively they have allowed a buy-now-pay-never culture? This has been the case for far too long, allowing the whole industry to become unstable. It has caused savers, of whom the OAPs are a fair proportion, to be taxed by a weak government, to repay debts amounting round the world, to a level which should never have accrued, and the whole sequence is being viewed by many, including me, not as tantamount to, but actual collusion in pure theft.

We should all write to our banks and complain. We will be footing the bill, as well as them, but we have had no hand in this debacle and should so not be the ones penalised.

Health Warning! Soph didn’t like this when she read it because of the maths, but if one is making assumptions and statements the basis is essential.

This fuss about Electioneering, and Haines in particular I leave to later, but it does raise general questions. I have never voted in GB and voting in N.Ireland is more a case of tactical voting than choosing the guy you prefer. Anyway! To put the questions into perspective I will use some rough and ready assumptions and Maths. If the population of the UK is 60m, then roughly only 80% will be eligible to vote, say 50m. They do say, with apathy only 50% vote, and roughly, because of the system of government selection, 30% vote traditionally, so that only leaves 20% or 10m actually voting because they have a real preference. Let us assume that there are 3 people per dwelling, or 20m households and they each receive 3 fliers from prospective candidates and the fliers cost 20p to print, organise and distribute, then the cost of the fliers is £12m, of which only £2.4m are used effectively. This sort of reasoning applies to so much about electioneering. How many see the bus so lauded, on anything but a newspaper or TV? The same applies to the placard on a lorry, with the razzmatazz of unveiling. So, is all these thousands and millions there is such a fuss about, mainly wasted, or otherwise used?

Theoretically, on average every other person has a computer in the UK Inaccurately that would mean that there is one in every house, but, let us guess that 70% of houses have a computer being used by someone. Most households take newspapers. For the sake of those households with no computer, a token could be printed in the local newspapers, at government expense, to apply, post free, for a request for fliers to be sent to them. The BBC and Google provide localised weather reports daily at no other cost than buying time on broadband. It would seem reasonable at election time, they could provide a sub blog with a title like ‘theelectionwhereyouare.com’ on which all one had to do was type the post code and there would be all your candidates with their self-styled reference, especially if Google and the BBC were allowed to have a small advertising space. Those politically minded people who appear on the doorstep, and to whom some tell them what they want to hear to move them on, will be disgruntled if electioneering goes electronic. Their effectiveness, in the light of the above might be called into question, and a possible subject for a postgraduate degree. My opinion means nothing, but perhaps my questions might have some merit, like, if only, say, 20% of those eligible to vote, which amounts to 40% of those who do vote, are the ones who really have some effect, is all the money spent worth while? It comes from us originally, the unions in their sub, commerce in the cost of purchases and services, and do we still really get the governments we deserve, or has experience deadened our political senses? With the American system cost seems irrelevant, but here it is obviously a stumbling block, and perhaps if other means of getting the message across were employed, minimal government funding would be adequate. Currently I suspect the rural areas are poorly served. I once had to drive a colleague round a large county in winter, as he had to canvas 25 councillors to have a hope of being employed in the post. It was tiring, dirty because of the mud at the farms and, in the end, unrewarding.

With respect to Haines, I have obviously been foolish. I thought logically the PM selected a person from those elected, one he trusted, knew well and liked to work with, and whom he proposed to be his successor if he died in office. I didn’t realise that there was a race which required £100,000 to win, or, as in this case, even lose. You live and learn! Er – why the race?

To save my eye this was written over a period of 10 days. My misconceptions resulted from ignorance and hearsay. In consequence I am writing mainly for the benefit of those aged older than their mid fifties, who might, one day, be similarly unknowing and also candidates for the operation. I give the usual caveat, I have no medical training and this is merely my experience as I found it and may not be typical. The Hospital Staff like most of the NHS, was considerate, helpful, eager to inform, and above all. professional. The whole procedure, which took 2.5 to 3 hours, was efficient, gentle and rather like a mix between a car assembly line, and the Stations of the Cross. There were about eight points at which we were instructed, examined, tested, anaesthetised, rested, and operated on, or given coffee and biscuits. Unlike the old days, we no longer shuffled along bench after hard bench as our turn slowly approached, our identity was established from the off and we were called personally. There were many Dos and Don’ts which were very serious, and almost impossible to obey, as I will explain later. I once taught short courses repeatedly, resulting in being able to dictate notes subconsciously, while having my mind elsewhere, a prescription for dull teaching and error. I realised the nurses had repeated the script umpteen times a day, probably for some time, and yet they managed to make it seem not only fresh but personal to the patient.

My misconception was that the cataract was a growth, like a lichen, which had to be stripped, or the eye was peeled like an onion. Instead the lens can have a natural deterioration which requires it to be removed and replaced by a plastic insertion, a very delicate operation. I have always had worries about my eyes being touched and the thought of lying there, conscious, while the lens was being scraped was the last word. I was wrong, the procedure, for me, was painless, and I was told later that, due to my age, the lens had been less supple than most. The don’ts consisted mainly of three items, don’t rub the eye, don’t stoop low, don’t lift heavy weights. I had a serious problem with two of the three, possibly due to my age. I have developed a pattern in my life where certain actions are reflex, and performed before my brain has realised it. One is rubbing an itchy eye, another is picking things up, which involves stooping. After the operation, at home I stooped and the bandage moved. Where I had seen nothing with the new lens I suddenly saw light, blood and the weave of the bandage, I was convinced I had undone all the good work. I slept badly, if hardly at all! The following morning I had an appointment for the removal of the bandages and a check. I did not see as well as some of the younger patients, due to the toughness of the older lens, but the check told me I had done no harm..

Two of the Don’ts were house work, and hoovering. While I could gladly understand hovering being a Nono, ‘housework’ had me floored until I discovered that my eye did not like looking straight down. If you are working on a kitchen bench, the body is close to the bench and the hands are mostly close to the body, working seated at a table changes the angle of sight and the work is further away from the body. This is my experience and interpretation. The younger patients were extolling the change in their sight and when my eye had recovered I realised what, for some time. I had been unaware of missing. In my case the cataract appears to have caused the eye to receive about 20% less light and infuse it with a pale green hue. While a cold blue sky now looks bright, clear and pale blue with my repaired eye, it is darker, and has a yellow green tinge with no blue evident. I controlled my urge to rub my eye by getting an optician to replace the prescription lens of my specs for my repaired eye with plain glass so the route to the itching eye would be barred by the specs. I solved the urge to pick things up I had dropped to the floor with one of those gadgets men in parks use to gather litter. I gathered from somewhere, that the brain adjusts the vision of the eyes to the best advantage and in consequence when I used no prescription lens, I could see better than with the modified specs. However, I bought sun glasses to cut down reflected glare from the computer and sunlight on white walls

One Conception coming out of this experience is that artists who painted into old age will have mixed the adulterated colour of their cataracts, if they had them, with their paints thus cooling and changing the colours. When I have had my other eye done, I will research this and report.

I contemplate gun crime out of interest, to evaluate the extent of the problem, why it is exacerbating, not to criticise the authorities, who have lived with it longer than I, and have greater knowledge and resources. Insecurity could be the prime mover. Today, in politics, the media, education and government, people theorise, forge categories and preach, often without experiencing the subject first hand, like the reference to ‘under achievers’ I have been there as some of you know. Between six and eight I lived as landed gentry with six servants. From eight, on, we were reduced to living on the charity of an extended family, with mildly sufficient periods between. Aged six to eight I lost two years schooling and by fifteen I was shown, by my class moving up without me, that I was stupid. From then on, no matter what success I achieved in any field, including Fellowships of two august Institutions, and as a joint winner of the British Design Award, I have felt it was more luck than judgement. That is insecurity.

Under achievers. To me that phrase has no logical basis. It is not only an insult and arrogant, it. is divisive, The human race is not mass produced, and we have no ability to choose how we are made, the best we can do is improve on what we’ve got. In the 30s most of us accepted our lot without psychobabble, and only some looked for more. I remember people who left school at fourteen and, because they had a talent, became millionaires, when a million was really something,. What right have some to set arbitrary standards and say those who don’t or can’t achieve them are ‘under achievers’, their talents may suit them, and their achievements could well be of a different kind. Today labels more than anything are purposely divisive and can lead to feelings of insecurity to some. It was not until 1943 in Belfast, I discovered no-go and ghetto areas, they were not common before WW2, now they can be a feature of Cities and towns throughout the UK. They breed frustration, within and without, enmity and insecurity, again within and without.

Shooting and Knifing we are told, are on the increase. The problem has several categories, the availability of unlawful weapons; the pattern, consisting of the time of day of the attack, the locality, the age and sex of the victim, the possible age, and sex of the attacker, the form of the attack., gang linking; the frequency of attacks in a given area and the range from the centre. Even with this analysis, the chances of catching the attacker are remote for a single incident. The most serious impediment to control is the propensity of the mobile phone. If the police are setting up a stop and search system with or without an airways type security metal detector barrier system, some of those going through can warn others that the search is on. I find it odd that people can still buy weapons on the internet. Why? One should need a permit before being allowed to make a purchase and if someone under 17 is found carrying, gun or knife, the parents should be charged as well. We can’t protect the whole population, it should be like my day, when young people went everywhere at all times of day and night with out fear of molestation. Draconian measures are needed.

I thank those who sent kind encouragement. I am not back, but over 2 days, in short burst to save my eye, I had to write this because it was never viable, and the Billion will inevitably be diverted to other projects such as the iniquitous Olympics overspend, when the scheme fails; Money allocated and not spent is reclaimed by the Treasury and reallocated we know not where. I believe this could have been predicted in this case

18.01.08, I Just Can’t Believe This!
According to yesterday’s Jobs Supplement of the Daily Telegraph, a Mike Jackson has been installed as Operations Director of a Quango called Skills for Logistics with a £280m budget. ‘Logistics is probably founded in the military, and defined as ‘the practical detail of handling any large scale enterprise or operation’. With something like the Crimean War, building the QE2 or a Boewing, logistics are essential so people work efficiently with one another, because so many trades are involved concurrently. Jackson is talking about transport and distribution. I can’t see the likes of Tescos needing government help in getting the right people or shifting their stock. As for the the farmers, manufacturers, the hauliers, the middlemen, and the shopkeepers, they have been successful since I was a boy. He also proposes we ensure people have the skills they need and build it into a profession? In fact the problem seems to be that, lorry drivers and those in the supply chain are not skilled enough in the 3Rs to be efficient. The concept is crazy! They want to train people up to the equivalent of 5 GCSEs, instead of teaching them properly when they are at school. Some of my Gt Grandchildren were taught fractured French at an early age, why? In my day when kids left school at 14 and were trained on the job, there wasn’t all this outcry, our English, arithmetic, and writing were probably not of a high standard, certainly not at GCSE level, but adequate for someone working in a factory, in a shop, and as a van helper until old enough to drive, by which time usage had educated them.

If a man can’t read or write no sensible employer would take him on, so it would be up to him, the man, to improve himself, take evening classes, many of us have done it to achieve another standard. Writing can be improved with a postal course. How much arithmetic does the average person in the chain need above adding, subtracting and division. The problem is, in the 60s rote was abandoned as a teaching tool with the loss of that subconscious element which makes totting up a bill, working out conversions and ratios, child’s play. Map reading would help a driver, but that doesn’t need a class, his mates will guide him. What does he need a GCSE in English for? As long as he can make himself understood, fill in forms correctly and read whatever print necessary for his job, anything over that is a bonus and more helpful for his well being rather than his job.

Statements were made that our skills in this sector were among the lowest in the industrialised world. That statement alone invalidates Jackson’s premises. Who carried out such a survey? Were the parameters the same in different countries? Were the statistics checked, or is it just guesswork, justification for a proposal that, according to him less than 2% of the chain has taken up.

In what I have written above exposes a lack of reasoned thought which seems so prevalent in politics today. The UN has no teeth and much of its aid gets into the wrong hands. The EU is now so vast as to be unmanageable, with cliques doing the influencing, unnecessary legislation, borders open, corruption, and a deep hole into which our taxes disappear with little return. If a product is excellent, it doesn’t need the EU to make it viable. Bush, the alleged greatest man in the world, is merely a puppet with too much influence. Blair’s mismanagement coupled with Brown’s insecurity is failing us. How was it possible for the government to be allowed to under estimate the result of its actions concerning Northern Rock, still continue, and can we rely on it not to have equal misjudgement in the future? I believe the £750m Train for Gain and Skills for Logistics government programmes will swallow up another Billion with no noticeable results. The money should be revising the lower school educational systems, so we can recover the standards we had when teachers were allowed to teach, without pointless tables and targets. The end result is target enough.