Why Dont You Blog?

After my last rant, I realised I had been ranting (on and off line) about this topic a bit too much so I have decided to post some nice, pleasant, pictures with a summer feel to try and cheer myself up. I blame the near constant rain and cold for my SAD out look (yes, I need a holiday)

All these pictures were taken at National Trust properties, if you live in the UK and enjoy going round stunning landscapes, houses and castles at the weekend (or mid week), then you really should consider joining the National Trust and / or English Heritage.

The first photo was taken with a Nokia N73 Cameraphone, the rest with a Kodak Z650 digital camera. All were untouched in photoshop (unusual for me now) but resized to 600px wide by Advanced Batch Converter. I have finally given in and gone for Adobe Lightroom so I may end up playing with that a lot more over the weekend.

Obviously, if people feel willing to donate towards my purchase of a real digital SLR (Nikon D80 appeals to me) then, I am never too proud to accept handouts .

[tags]adobe, holiday, national-trust, photographs, photography, photos, photoshop, phone camera, nokia-n73, nokia, n73, lightroom, kodak-z650, technology, SAD, Sunshine, Happy[/tags]

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Again, sorry this is a long rant - I am in a bad mood. Comments are welcome though.

Once upon a time, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was renowned the world over for the way the population handled hardship and adversity. The “Stiff Upper Lip” was such a powerful stereotype it still endures today.

During the first three quarters of the twentieth century, the British Stiff Upper Lip was heavily put to the test. The century began with a hammering in Africa, followed by the loss of almost an entire generation on the fields of Flanders and the Somme. The interwar years were wrought with economic depression which was only relieved when the deaths of the second world war reduced the population enough for there to be more jobs. Entire cities were destroyed (Coventry) and most major population centres endured nightly bombing raids.

The end of the war only brought limited respite for the British handling of adversity. Crippled by economic debt and the ravages of the war, the Empire collapsed piece by piece. Britain was quickly over taken in the world power stakes by the upstarts (America for example ), and to all intents and purposes became a secondary nation on the world stage. The somewhat anomalous status as permanent member of the UNSC is down to possession of nuclear weapons and nothing else. The break up of empire was accompanied by various military defeats (Suez, Korea), while the victories were sometimes hollow (Borneo, Malaysia). The apparent collapse spurred domestic agitators into more and more violence until by the mid 1960s, Northern Ireland was not dissimilar to Bosnia thirty years later.

Throughout this all the stiff upper lip remained. The ideas about what made “British” society were upheld and, generally, life went on. If you had proposed a national identity card scheme in 1970 you would have been laughed at for the rest of your life.

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