Bit of this n that

I've spent a lot of time trying to make some jewellery this week...CheapISH, cheerful, colourful and some sort of christmassy...Eeeks i said the C word...Am really against it until actual december but as am gonna be selling (hopefully) stuff at end of the month then i thought i'd try do some seasonal ISH kind of jewellery...Well colourwise seasonal hence the ISH :o)

On top of the £50 million of cuts our useless council had to make in this years budget (2008/2009) the proposals for next years budget (2009/2010) are to make £30 million of cuts...Social work overall have to make over £8 million of cuts...The are specific for children with disabilities will have to make £50,000 of cuts...Now that may not sound like much but it's a fair chunk and will be on top of the cuts made already...Playschemes and respite services have already been cut and further cuts will result in families getting no provision at all as far as i can see...I was at a meeting yesterday where this was being discussed...The cuts that is, and the bloke chairing the meeting wanted to know what parents thought and what parents wanted...Some of what he would like to see happen i do actually agree with but other stuff i don't...I don't think that some families should be cut to having naff all in the way of respite or support...On the other hand there are families who are still getting the same level of service they got several years back...And in some of those cases the child no longer needs such a high level of input...Like one family i know the mother throws a hissy fit if they dare to threaten to take away any of the respite her son receives...She immediately goes to her doctor and gets put back on anti depressants just so she can keep the very high level of respite she currently gets...And she has admitted she does that to keep the level of care he gets...Wouldn't mind if he wasn't in residential school mon-fri and only home at weekends...Or if she was on her own but she is happily married with a husband in a very good job earning a fair bit...Her son also is a lot more capable than either her or her hubby give him credit for and her son knows exactly how to get what he wants from both of them...Her hubby works for the local NHS and also is on every committee going to do with wherever and whatever their disabled son goes to...Basically he pulls strings and she fakes stuff...That really isn't fair when there are people getting naff all whos children are not in residential care for 5 days of the week...Getting that kind of thing sorted out may not necessarily save any money as such but it could help to get what is available shared out more fairly...Not gonna rant about it all on here so gonna shut up about it.

I do have another mini rant/irk though...Sir Ian Wood one of scotlands richest men has decided out of the blue this week that he wants to give £50 million of his own money to raise gardens in the centre of the city to be on a level with streets surrounding them...Now the raising of union terrace gardens has reared it's ugly head every so often for donkeys years...The public in general do NOT WANT it to happen and you'd think they'd have learnt their lesson...But naahhh the current council have got in on the act like every other council before them...Alex Salmond was also on telly talking about it and what a good thing it would be...Erm okies i wonder how it would go down in Edinburgh if they proposed to raise Princes Street gardens to street level????? Not very well i suspect...The public don't use the gardens much but then again neither does the council...There is currently underway a proposal to build an arts centre for all to use but a local existing arts group in the gardens...That has gained funding for various places including the council and the scottish govt...So why go and contradict that and put it in jeopardy just to satisy the whim of a man who was once the richest in scotland to have a square named after him...What he could do instead is donate his £50 million to the council to help pay for their move to new headquarters and create a civic square once the current headquarters are raised to the ground...That is gonna cost our council £80 million so his £50 million would go a long way in helping...And they could name that civic square after him...The link here is a wee bit of info about the gardens...The arts project i mentioned is spoken about in the link...But latest info on it is that they have £3m funding from the council amongst other funding...Seriously would you want to see beautiful sunken victorian gardens like these turned into a concrete mess!!!... Union Terrace Gardens Aberdeen Park Hey we have another square being built down by the train and bus stations...It keeps stopping and starting as they keep running out of dosh to pay the workers...He could fund it instead and have that shopping centre (surplus to requirements methinks) named after him...No offence meant to the guy as he has bailed out some of the places that were going to shut due to this years council cutbacks in the budget but there are limits.

Right i've taken ages to type this as i have to stop and start...Think i have pulled a muscle in my chest...Well i coughed in the car on tues night and next thing i knew i was gripping the wheel in agony...K and G have been nagging at me since to go to docs or a&e lol...Well a) i couldn't get an appointment on wed or today and b) i had a meeting yesterday and c) well it's only a pulled muscle...Besides i have jewellery to make and hopefully have time to glass paint if i can get loads of jewellery done this weekend and part of next week...Oh i tried printing on the acetate and it was a disaster (said in craig revel horwood style voice)...It will look good if done properly and am gonna make some enquiries