29 October, Happy Birthday, Dad.

Long delay in writing, sorry. I’m feeling much better since my hospital trip, but still tired. The GP is investigating persistent anaemia. There are a couple of possible reasons, one fixable, one not. To be determined, more blood tests tomorrow.

Then on Tuesday I have my small operation to have the BCC removed from my nose. I hope they don’t have to dig too deep.

Then Wednesday I have an appointment at Lions Eye Institute to look at the cataract in my left eye. It’s got really bad in the past couple of weeks, so that I’m having trouble reading and seeing properly. It needs fixing asap. I can’t drive at night, and the GP made noises about needing a police medical to check my driver’s licence validity. Uh oh. Crumbs, if I lost my licence up here (in South Geraldton*, I mean), it would be terrible. There are no taxis, or almost none. Buses are all very well, but not when you’ve got bags of shopping goods.          *Perth joke.

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There was an item in the papers on Friday – about 190 (I think) billionaires in the world now control $6 trillion of the world’s wealth, which is more than twice the GDP of the UK. This is obscene! They are just piling it all up, and most of it is untaxed by way of tax havens. The photo to illustrate the article was of a gold Ferrari parked in Sloane Street, London. Not just a gold painted Ferrari, no, a gold plated one! How arrogant.

A couple of the billionaires were quoted in the article as saying they felt and obligation to give back, and their idea is to open their private art collections to the public.

What arrogance! How is this going to help? How about giving just one of your $billions to help the Rohingyha crisis, for example. When your fortune is $10billion, you’ll make that small donation up in no time.

The theme of the article was that this is a repeat of the Robber Barons era at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Rockefellers, van der Bilts, Morgans and so-on in the USA built vast fortunes, often by nefarious means. It led to a backlash in new tax laws and breakups of their companies. It’s time it happened again.