Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

21 April, 2009

Red Fridays - Support Our Troops

After reading a blog post by Behind Blue Eyes today, I wanted to re-post.
Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday. The reason? British men and women who support our troops used to be called the ’silent majority’.

We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for Country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing. We get no liberal media coverage on TV, to reflect our message or our opinions. Many English people, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of Britain supports our troops.

Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every Briton who supports our men and women afar will wear something red.

By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make Great Britain on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football team If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family, It will not be long before Britain is covered in RED and it will let our troops know the once ’silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on.

The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is…’We need your support and your prayers’… Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear something red every Friday.

IF YOU AGREE — THEN SEND THIS ON - IF YOU COULD NOT CARE LESS THEN HIT THE DELETE BUTTON.

IT IS YOUR CHOICE. THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED—- SO WEAR RED! Lest we Forget.

You don't have to. But this country is slowly going south. Its time to stand up, and be counted for what you believe in. Don't be a part of the silent majority. I am not asking you to stand up and shout. Just do something and support our boys.
From an unknown traveller

Last week I was in West London attending a conference.

While I was in the airport, returning home, I heard several people behind me beginning to clap and cheer. I immediately turned around and witnessed one of the greatest acts of patriotism I have ever seen.

Moving through the terminal was a group of soldiers in their uniforms, as they began heading to their gate everyone (well almost everyone) was abruptly to their feet with their hands waving and cheering.

When I saw the soldiers, probably 30-40 of them, being applauded and cheered for, it hit me. I’m not alone. I’m not the only red blooded Briton who still loves this country and supports our troops and their families. Of course I immediately stopped and began clapping for these young unsung heroes who are putting their lives on the line everyday for us so we can go to school, work, and enjoy our home without fear or reprisal.

Just when I thought I could not be more proud of my country or of our service men and women a young girl, not more than 6 or 7 years old, ran up to one of the male soldiers. He knelt down and said ‘hi,’ the little girl then asked him if he would give something to her daddy for her. The young soldier didn’t look any older than maybe 22 years old himself, said he would try and what did she want to give to her daddy. Suddenly the little girl grabbed the neck of this soldier, gave him the biggest hug she could muster and then kissed him on the cheek. The mother of the little girl, who said her daughters name was Courtney, told the young soldier that her husband was a Corporal and had been in Afghanistan for 5 months now.

As the mum was explaining how much her daughter, Courtney, missed her father, the young soldier began to tear up. When this temporarily single mum was done explaining her situation, all of the soldiers huddled together for a brief second. Then one of the other servicemen pulled out a military looking walkie-talkie. They started playing with the device and talking back and forth on it.

After about 10-15 seconds of this, the young soldier walked back over to Courtney, bent down and said this to her, ‘I spoke to your daddy and he told me to give this to you.’ He then hugged this little girl that he had just met and gave her a Kiss on the cheek. He finished by saying ‘Your daddy told me to tell you that he loves you more than anything and he is coming home very soon.’ The mum at this point was crying almost uncontrollably and as the young soldier stood to his feet he saluted Courtney and her mum.

I was standing no more than 6 feet away as this entire event unfolded.

As the soldiers began to leave, heading towards their gate, people resumed their applause. As I stood there applauding and looked around, there were very few dry eyes, including my own. That young soldier in one last act of moment turned around and blew a kiss to Courtney with a tear rolling down his cheek.

We need to remember everyday all of our soldiers and their families and thank God for them and their sacrifices. At the end of the day, it’s good to be an Englishman.

If you a little digging around, you are going to discover the snopes page. I don't care.

Support our troops

24 August, 2008

Beijing 2008 - Team GBR finish in fourth!

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics now entering the closing ceremony, I am over the moon to see Team GB finish fourth overall! CONGRATULATIONS!

Its been an amazing Olympic Games, and I have been glued to the t'interwebs, especially the BBC Live Action page, and the coverage from the BBC. Again, I feel my TV license was money well spent with the coverage that has been provided.

So whats been my highlights? Super Saturday and Sunday, and Tremendous Tuesday.. each day four new gold medals for Team GBR. I was gobsmacked with Usain Bolts three world records.. and Michael Phelps! Is he the worlds greatest athlete? He's up there with the best of them! It wasn't just Phelps.. all the swimmers did well. I guess at London 2012, every swimmer will be wearing the latest and greatest Speedo Suit...

The medal table is impressive this year.. China with 51 gold out of there 100 medal count, USA with 110 overall medals.. Russia pipped us to the post with a superb tally of 72. But Britain definitely put the Great back in Great Britain. Fourth in the number of Golds, fourth in the overall table. WOW!

Just before the games started, I was expecting Australia to do soo well. After all they have a pool of 21 million people to choose from and are a sporting nation. (lets not mention the Rugby though!). The UK Sports Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe made a stupid bet that he would wear Australias Green and Gold jersey at a sporting event if they beat us in the medal table! DUH!! I thought, "ARE YOU STUPID??".. fast forward two weeks later, and maybe I should have made a similar bet..

Anyway, for a rundown on all the British Olympic Medal Winners pop over to another BBC page. Lets all sit down and congratulate them in a very British way, with a nice cup of tea! After all it did seem that our Olympians were sitting down for most of our medals :)

Good luck to all the Olympians competing in the Beijing 2008 Para-Olympics!  Great Britain will send a team of 212 athletes to the 2008 Beijing Paralympics and compete in 18 of the 20 sports. In Athens four years ago, GB finished second to China in the medals table with 94 medals, including 35 golds. Team GBR can you do better ??

25 March, 2007

blog improvements

NOTICE: UPDATING PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES.. May result in reposting! Sorry...

What is it about bloggers and the constant need to improve the blog; content, layout, style, plugins and all other aspects?

Anyway, these improvements are something I am doing for final improvements as I may close this blog down soon (in its current format anyway)
I feel I am paying for hosting, when its not important. The blog may go over to vox where I can have public and private posts. I find that I am not writing as much as I have done in the past.. I am no longer travelling, but just getting on with life.

I am going to move the rest over to Google. How? Well, as I am using Google Apps for your domain, I have a feeling in a few months then I will be able to host everything I want online with them. Photos / links / blog / homepage.. they already look after pretty much everything else for me (Mail / calandar / reader and of course search) Its only Flickr and de.icio.us that I also use.

26 December, 2006

rss & feedburner

Well, Christmas is over (nearly) so I decided to spend today doing a little research on getting my blog looking better! I am using Wordpress as blog platform, and early on I managed to get my Flickr PhotoRoll and also some more html in the sidebar. That was easy! What I have found difficult is getting javascript working.

Also I have a favour to ask, please view the full post!



One thing that has assisted me is getting the Wordpress plugin Sidebar Widgets working. But sometimes all I want to do is place a little javascript in the page. The one I am trying at the moment, is from Widgetbox and allows me to place my del.icio.us tags there. According to the site its as easy as:

  1. Log into your WordPress admin panel.

  2. Click on the "Presentation" tab and then click on the "Theme Editor" subtab.

  3. Click on a page item, such as Sidebar or Single Post, from the theme file list.

  4. Find a place in the PHP file that you'd like the widget panel to appear.

  5. Paste the code snippet from below into the file and then click the "Update File" button.

  6. Click the "View the Site" link located in the header to see your widget panel in action on your site.


Simple eh?? Except when I get to part 4. Find a place in the PHP file where you want it to appear.. OK no problems. Done that! But it does not work.. So I have looked at the Wordpress help pages and it just gets complicated. I am not a Web Developer, I am like most people who right blogs. I understand HTML, and other technologys but I dont need or want to know that much. If I needed a professional blog/website written, I would hire someone who knew these things!

Also, I wouldn't be doing this if I could simply have one of the pages on my blog (LINKS) to simply be a page of my del.icio.us Tags. According to the tagroll page, it can be done, but again it uses Javascript... Can ANYONE give me some assistance here?

Whilst I am here moaning about my lack of WebDev skills, perhaps someone can show me how I can get my Flickr and/or PicasaWeb images into my (PHOTOS) page?

Oh, and ONE final thing.. Do you view this site using your RSS reader? I view 90% of websites in my Google Reader, and only just noticed that mine was looking a little tacky! So I amended the BuzzBoost to HTML, hopefully it will change it! Could you let me know in the comments?
Anyway everyone, hope you all have a very Happy New Year!

UPDATE -- ONLY WORDPRESS slef Hosted blogs support this..

21 December, 2006

del.icio.us links

del.icio.usI have been using del.icio.us for some time now as my primary bookmarker. I used to save loads of pages within Firefox/IE, and I would have trouble syncing between different browsers, and especially different computers. I tried using GooSync and Foxmarks, but its just... hassle. Del.icio.us makes it simple.

All I do now is use firefox and the firefox del.icio.us Bookmarks addon, and save the page. The best thing about this?? The fact I can add tags, so when I search its easier. I just wish, the 3500 pages I uploaded from Firefox could be automatically added with the best tags. Another thing is that I wish I could add my tagcloud to the Links page on my blog.

Any suggestions?? oh yeah, for my links view jezarnold

26 July, 2006

The blogs working!!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my web host providers, who last night fixed two problems with my siteground hosted web pages..

MX records are now working, and my email for this domain is now being routed to gMails Hosted emails. Also Siteground Tech Support fixed the blog last night, and comments and actual blog posts are all working as they should!!

Thanks again Siteground

10 July, 2006

The blog needs work!

I am a bit behind in the blog at the moment, guys!! I still have not put up my USA overview, and also the entire trip overview!! There are three England Posts missing (Ecuador, Portugal, End of World Cup) .. plus more news on our new house and life in Reading!

Keep in touch.. I am just v.busy here!!

PLUS why if I click comments does it go to my homepage? and not to a comment?? grrrr

Aaaargh! Sorry…

So there I was about two weeks ago happily enjoying the World Cup.. Everything was great!! In fact I was on such a high, I decided to go and completely mess my blog up.

I started afresh.. New host .. New blog provider .. Why oh why???

18 January, 2006

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Thanks to the Digg Effect .. I have decided to open a WordPress blog. I have my Typepad blog, My Livejournal account, and I tried Blogger (but hated it).. But WordPress is getting loads of reviews right now.. and I thought I would see if its worth having!!

Anyone going to Comment?? I doubt it..