Big J

How so? The Israelis have (since Israel's formation) been incrementally and systematically taking the Palestinians land and rights away from them. There are half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank alone, in direct contravention of international law. As many have put it, it is an apartheid. In situations with such appalling human rights violations (spanning three generations now), it can hardly come as a surprise that extremism festers. Never to condone heinous acts on either side, it must be understood that the Palestinians have precious little power in this situation. Gaza is an open prison and it's residents treated without any respect whatsoever.

And that is fundamentally the root of the situation in the middle east. The Israelis cannot be surprised that Hamas acted without humanity (and I absolutely condemn Hamas' actions) when the Israelis have been systematically stripping the Palestinians of that very humanity for 75 years.

I will check what I can and can't photograph and post what I can. The site is 51 acres, about 200,000 cubic metres per annum finished timber. The mad thing is that they only take pine and spruce, 3 to 4.9m long and 12-18cm diameter, top end. There is so much supply here that they can be that specific. My line deals with destickering and resawing. I've been averaging 550-580 cubic metres a week through my machine. I spend my days keeping quite busy and listening to an awful lot of podcasts and Radio 4. Almost everything largely automated, but timber being timber, stuff goes wrong and timber gets jammed, twisted, breaks etc and human intervention is required.

It's a sawmill, but I guess at that scale, not dissimilar to a factory. The small machine forwarding didn't work out. Combination of factors really - landowners unwilling to pay much or anything extra for a small machine, massive boulders everywhere, payment on volume underbark, not over and excessively complicated due to there being so many product niches. I did a site on a large forwarder that I kid you not had 20 different product types. It's too chaotic for my somewhat rigid mind and whilst I barely found any mud anywhere (hurrah!), it proved to be complicated and stressful. The sawmill work is fantastic. For a start, it's 27.5km away, which I nearly always cycle. I have a variety of routes (road and gravel) which keep me entertained. It's well paid, there is loads of work and I'm told that I am (by a massive margin) the most productive operator of the resaw line that they've ever had. And the machine has been installed for 17 years. It properly appeals to my ADHD/Autistic tendencies as I've got about 10 different things to keep an eye on at any one time, 4 different control stations and I still find the time to sit on my ass and watch the computer monitors for half the time. I love the continual efficiency savings that can be made, tweaking the machine here and there to get an extra 1%, 2% and so on. None of the chaos of working in the forest, but I still cycle through the forest every day. Best of both worlds really. I'm also doing some work doing gravel cycle holiday guiding. I'm leading a couple of Swedish tours next summer. Get paid to ride my bike, stay in nice hotels and eat lots of good food. And we're also doing holiday lets, which proved to be popular this year and will (I expect) be more popular next year too.

I don't think that you can compare a house in Ilfracombe to within 30km of a country's capital. Infact, in terms of infrastructure and opportunities, there is more to go on here than in North Devon. There is a fair bit. Don't get me wrong, if you don't have the right skills, work won't be so straight forward, but if you're in either primary or secondary industry and you're good at it, you'll do well. Within 45 minutes of us, we have a major IKEA factory, Nordan windows and the global manufacturing hub of Volvo articulated haulers (employing 800 people). I have returned to an earlier line of work, and now lead the resaw line at a large exporting sawmill, which processes around 1000t of roundwood a day and exports 40% of that to the UK. Like any rural area, there are issues of course. There has been a massive influx of European migrants in recent years though, so the demographic has gotten younger and more diverse. Loads of Germans, Dutch, Danes, *insert just about any European nationality here*. Within 30km of Stockholms centre isn't a fair comparison. And why does it need to be the capital? We live 1hr from Växjö, a city the size of Exeter, 35 minutes from Vetlanda (a smaller city) and 25 minutes from Hultsfred, a large town. We have all we need. You can fly to the UK from Växjö. Driving here in winter is a doddle. You have a few days with dodgy snow (the wet, slushy stuff that everyone hates) but for the most part it's like driving at other times of year. Almost everyone has studded winter tyres and you just drive at 80% of your summer speed. I envy those people who have true freedom about where they can live due to remote working. That's a wonderful opportunity to have, and potentially quite exciting. Haha! If only. Slut means end and priser is prices. So Slutpris is the final price.

That's absolutely grim. For reference, this is in our neck of the woods (well, about 30km away) and it's £46k Sjöslättsvägen 12, Berga Högsby kommun WWW.HEMNET.SE Välkommen till en fin villa i Berga. Från farstukvisten når man en välkomnande hall samt en modern öppen planlösning mellan kök och matsal. Luft/luftvärmepump finns i vardagsrum för...

Arcus clouds apparently. Sent the photo to a meteorologist friend. Was there a thunderstorm in the vicinity?

That's stunning!

A week of two halves here. Frosty and calm Monday and Tuesday. Warm and windy Wednesday and Thursday and then back to frosty this morning. Makes for entertaining and beautiful cycling to and from work. This photo is from this morning

😄 The issue with religious doctrine is that it can be used as an excuse/cover for other motivations. Best to give despots as few reasons as possible to oppress/kill each other.

I think the one thing that almost everyone here can agree with is that religion is the poison that is fuelling this whole nonsense. Without religion, there would be far fewer reasons for people to needlessly hate and kill each other. It's funny, as you're younger and you grow up you naively and innocently believe that humanity is going in the right direction, but as you get older and more cynical, you realise we're just as stupid, bigoted, irrational and intolerant as ever. As a species, we're probably f**ked.

Yeah, it's a completely f**ked up situation. Fundamentally, almost everyone involved is innocent and powerless, and it's the actions of war-minded men that are causing all the suffering. Whilst Palestinians might still be subject to oppression if Israel wasn't there, I cannot imagine that it would be worse than what they presently experience. And in 1948, whose bright idea was it to create a Jewish Holy Land in the middle of a bloody Islamic region? Surely it would have been about 99% less hassle to have given them an enclave within the US? You could fit Israel 11 times into Wyoming with space to spare.

It's too late to be talking about that. It should never have been created in the first place. It's worth pointing that out, whilst at the same time acknowledging that it does, and will continue to exist. In order to have any chance of peace, Israel needs to respect the right of Palestinians to have their own state, as well as halting all land thefts. Reparations wouldn't go amiss either.

Ah f*ck, it's an awful situation in Israel/Palestine. There is no good outcome that I can see. Firstly, Israel shouldn't be there. It came about due to the rise of Zionism in the early 20th Century and then Western guilt after WW2. And the post colonial dividing up of the Middle East that paid no heed to cultural borders. Whether or not you agree with the existance of Israel, it exists. I am in no way condoning the terrorist behaviour of Hamas, but it's important to understand it within the context of a 75 year occupation, with the systematic subjugation and belittling of the Palestinian people. Israel has defied international law with illegal settlements within the West Bank and continues to treat the Palestinian people as second class citizens. Set against that back drop, it's easy to understand the building of incredible resentment towards Israel, and how easy it would be for a terrorist organisation to radicalise young men and women to fight for them. A two state solution is the only way to go. It will require compromise on both sides, with each reluctantly acknowledging the other's right to exist, but it requires a significant change in policy too. The Israelis need to stop taking land from Palestinians and recognise that they're a nation borne out of conquest, land grabs and transparent inequality. The Palestinians need to recognise that Israel now has a right to exist, and that terrorist activities against civilians are never acceptable. I think it would be naive to look at the situation purely from the point of view as Israel being subject to a terrorist incursion. Israel is a war machine, whose existence within the currrent political status quo is predicated on it's ability to repress it's Arab population. It's grim. Truly.

Did anyone catch the end of Penny Mordaunt's speech at the Tory conference the other day? It was bizarre, to put it mildly. The women at the top of the Tory party frighten me!

France's TGV network is nearly 2700km long. Spain's high speed network is just under 4000km long Germany's ICE network is 1658km long. The UKs high speed network will be 336km long when HS2 to Birmingham is completed. Just look at Spain's network - it's a thing of beauty. A country that's 4 times the size of England and the network still reaches all corners of it.

What a massively embarrassing episode for British transport history. A few of the major problems: 1) the insistence on higher speed (rather than settling for 'just' 300kph) hugely inflated costs. France builds it's HGV network for ten times less than the projected cost of HS2. 2) vast sums of money tunnelising the track through the home counties to appease Tory voters. 3) they didn't even ask the chief executive of HS1 to be involved, despite it being delivered on time and on budget. There are many more but it's humiliating that the UK cannot build just one arterial high speed line. Look at Spain, France and Germany. Industrialised nations with challenging topography and extensive networks build at a tiny fraction of the cost. Which ever government spearheads the next major transport project needs to take a long, hard look at HS2 and why it's gone so badly. On its original timescale, it wouldn't have reached Manchester until the 2040s which in and of itself I find staggering. Are they laying it by hand? What a flustercuck.

It's so easy to do when it's fairly mild outside! Two or three logs too many and you're cooked. We're going to put up a lined curtain across the foot of the stairs (which is at one end of the kitchen. The stove is 15ft away) as too much heat goes upstairs and even when it's well below freezing outside, it can be far too warm in the bedrooms.

Just lit mine. We had 3c yesterday morning at 06:30 and 5c this morning. Yesterday got up to about 17-18c and today is to be 21c, but it felt like the right time to wang it on. Immediate, lovely warmth Looking at the long range forecast, there is a slow slide in temperatures to highs of 13-14c in two weeks time. Even that is a bit on the warm side for this time of year here.

Staying warm too. I can't complain really. It's delaying autumn, and honestly it's been warmer and more pleasant than August.

It's bloody 25c here today. Sweating like a mofo. Going for a lake swim later and looking forward to it. It's been really warm for September here

Spent the afternoon at the beach behind the school with my brother, his family, my kids and one of my daughter's friends. It was very nice indeed. Summer's last hurrah. 27c air, 21c water. Much swimming and diving was done by all.

We had an extraordinary sunset last night, accompanied with parhelion (mock suns). First time I've ever seen them, though they don't come out so well on my shitty phone camera. The parhelia were not only quite bright, but also showing the full spectrum of rainbow colours. Something else to see when you're already enjoying a very fine swim. The photo of the set table is from a tourist group we're hosting, who are staying in a cottage 50m from the public swimming beach.