Yes we live in a bureaucratic state where one group of non-productive pen-pushers invent rules and then more pen-pushers are employed to enforce and quantify the results.

 

Where I live we have 3 town councils, a district council above that and a county council above that.  All bleeding the population dry with taxes and various charges for inadequate services.

 

My mother has dementia.  She has had six assessments despite there being nothing that can be done for her condition.  A seventh was recently proposed, which I refused to attend as they distress her.

 

So much money is being wasted on assessments that the only help she can get she has to pay for as there is no money to fund free NHS care.

 

I live in a leasehold flat (ex local authority)  the biggest item on my bill every year is admin.  Yet We have an ongoing (9 year) battle with the council to get the bins emptied regularly.

 

There's always money for the CEOs remuneration package but never enough for carers or road sweepers (this town has two road sweepers the others were victims of cuts).

Well goodness me, I seem to have posted something yet again which has attracted all these views but only a few posts?

It just puzzles me as to why so people look but don't post.

 

I realise that a small number of "controversial" characters used to manipulate the viewing figures...... but they're no longer around now so I think the viewing figures are pretty accurate.

If people view but don't post anything in reply, doesn't it just imply that they aren't interested enough in the post to have an opinion either way? That's how I would interpret it. It doesn't only happen with your posts, why take it so personally?

 

eg the Black Friday Shopping Madness thread has 76 views and no posts. I looked at it but thought it was too stupid to warrant a reply. Lots of people obviously thought the same.

 

  

I'm not "taking it personally". The idea behind my posting threads is to try to encourage a bit of posting, but the puzzle remains, that is, if there's only a handful of people who actually post here, who the heck are the other viewers and why don't they post?

I have no idea, have you thought about asking Stephen Fry?

No, it's be as much of a waste of time as asking you?

Stephen Hawking? Clutching at straws here.

You here it occasionally now but it's old fashioned.
Britches is another one, meaning trousers.


In the middle ages Rageman or Ragman referred to a game in which a player randomly selected a string attached to a roll of verses and read the selected verse. The roll was called a Ragman roll after a fictional king purported to be the author of the verses. By the 16th century, ragman and ragman roll were being used figuratively to mean "a list or catalog." Both terms fell out of written use, but ragman roll persisted in speech, and in the 18th century it resurfaced in writing as rigmarole, with the meaning "a succession of confused, meaningless, or foolish statements." In the mid-19th century rigmarole (also spelled rigamarole, reflecting its common pronunciation) acquired its most recent sense, "a complex and ritualistic procedure."

One of the streets in town  is known locally as Rigmarole Road, probably because it's such a 'complex and ritualistic procedure' to try and drive down it avoiding potholes and parked cars.