My Rant About The Thurrock Council And All Things Government

I don't normally like to post about myself, or currents events, I tend to stick towards my favourite history subjects, but I've run out of them for the moment, anyways I'm thoroughly disgusted with our government here in the UK, I mean they really suck ass, if you ask me, we've been waiting on the Thurrock Council, to sort out just about everything in our house that's been wrong for the past 10 years or more since we moved here, to the Tilbury area, we've got major mould problems which probably doesn't help with all of the health problems that all my family member's have, and that includes me, we have a huge hole in the ceiling in my parents bedroom, and when in rains heavy it comes through the ceiling, we have to put a bowl underneath it, though the first time it happened my dad didn't figure it out until he went to bed, he had to turn over the mattress because it had completely ruined my parents memory foam mattress, which they had to get in the first place because it's the only one my mum find's soft enough to lay on because of her bad back, she had an operation done on it years ago, and she now has metal clip things in her back, he even shoved the bed completely towards the front of the room, and flip the mattress over, and he had work at like 7am the next morning as well, anyway we've also got windows that don't shut, we really need a new boiler in my sister's bedroom, which is where it's located, plus there's a window in my parents bedroom that's buggered, there's a hole in the wall in mine and my older sister's bedroom, so it get's really cold in there, we have a faulty heating fan in the bathroom, which only stays on for like 10 to 20 seconds before it decides to cut out, the council are supposed to be putting in two extractor fans from the outside which they still haven't done, they were supposed to come back and put up a small scaffolding to sort out the hole in the roof, where the rain keeps coming in, and last christmas our entire kitchen cabinet came right off the bleeding wall, and not 10 minutes before it did, my mum was standing out there with our cat Leo, and they could have seriously gotten hurt, as it is, a lot of things got smashed as well, oh and recently the front of our main kitchen draw came off in my mum's hands, so there's that as well, our taps both upstairs and down are both buggered as well, and it's been months since we heard from them, though before we contacted them this year, it had been a whole year since we had heard from them before, which is when we first put in for all these jobs to be fixed, and we put them in with the head guy as well, though I suspect most of the jobs that we need done, aren't being done because of the company that the Thurrock Council, have been using, called: Morrisons, not to be confused with the supermarket that is, apparently this company is really bad, they were mentioned before on one of those tv shows, by the don't get done get Dom guy, about how they were doing half assed jobs and sometimes not even finishing them, anyways enough about this for now, I have to go, I really hope that you enjoyed my rant, and you now have a new perspective on what lying gits the Thurrock Council can be!

Spectator In Hell

A British Soldier's Extraordinary Story

Arthur Dodd was born and raised in the Castle district of Norwich, a small Cheshire town on the River Weaver. His mother's first husband had been killed in the trenches of France during the First World War and had married his father, a regular soldier in the Cheshire Regiment, just after
Armistice Day. Arthur himself arrived on 7th December, 1919.

His father was an austere, distant man. He had served in the Boer war at the turn of the century and
as a sergeant had been captured during the Great War. As a parent, he was distinctly military and
Victorian in his attitude and had little time for Arthur and his younger sister.

At fifteen, Arthur left school and was taken on as an apprentice mechanic at Norwich Transport Company. There he learned to drive and began to understand the mechanics of the internal combustion engine under the watchful, friendly eye of his boss, Harold Isherwood.
For his labours he was paid all of ten shillings (50p) a week, but Arthur had already taken the first steps down the path that would lead him to Auschwitz.

The company owned a Ford People's Popular saloon car, which was used to transport mechanics to
broken-down lorries. Arthur fell in love with it the first time he saw it. It was in this car he had been taught to drive and, having added a year to his age when completing the driving license application form, he passed his test in the early part of 1935. A year later, he repeated the lie and passed his
HGV test.

Those early working days were fun for Arthur. Harold took to the young man and they would often go fishing together in one of the many meres in the Cheshire countryside. Arthur had to serve under
the Articles of Apprenticeship for seven years, but when Harold opened his own transport company
in 1937, he invited Arthur to finish his time with him.

Tempted though he was, ten shillings a week was hardly conducive to living away from home and
Arthur had to decline. His mother, too, was against it, as she was against the transport business in
general. In those days a driver had to find his own consignments and could be away from home for
as long as three weeks at a time.


In Harold's absence, Arthur quickly became bored and began looking for another company to take him on. When he was eighteen he entered the world of scrap, being employed as a driver by Jimmy Caffrey, a well respected, local entrepreneur. Caffrey only had the one vehicle and most of the work
was sub-contracted from the Middlewich Borough Council. Consequently, Arthur was home every night by tea-time and was paid the quite princely sum of £5 a week.

Anne Frank

A quarter of an hour later, someone knocked on the bookcase door. The knocking continued
and they could hear someone pulling and pushing at the door.
Then they learned what had happened. Johannes Kleiman explained that a carpenter was in
the house to check the fire extinguishers, and that he had not had time to warn them.
It was a great relief to the Frank family when the carpenter left.
Anne enjoyed writing very much and didn't confine herself to her diary. In 1943, she also
started writing a book titled ''Stories and Events from the Secret Annex''. This book included
descriptions of happenings in the Secret Annex and memories from Anne's schooldays, as
well as fairy tales and other imaginary tales, which she called ''Made-Up Stories''.
In the year 1944, Anne was more than 14 and a half years old. The group of eight people had
been hiding in the Secret Annex for a year and a half.
Anne had noticed that her thoughts and feelings were changing, and she wrote about this
in her diary.
She spent much more time thinking about all sorts of things. And also viewed the people with whom she was hiding in a new light. Anne also noticed that she was changing physically. Anne celebrated her fifteenth birthday on June 12, six days after the Normandy
invasion.
The families had been in the Secret Annex for almost two years. Despite the massive invasion, the liberation of Europe still seemed a long way away, to them, and life on the
Prinsengracht went on as casual.
On July 21, 1944, Anne was happy and optimistic. The news about the war seemed hopeful.
Eleven days later, she made one last entry in her diary. On August 4 between ten o'clock
and half past ten in the morning.
The German police stormed the Secret Annex. They had been betrayed.
This is the last entry that Anne made in her diary, Tuesday, August 1, 1944. Anne wrote that she thought it was a shame that the others in the Secret Annex only really knew one side of
her. She was often berated and criticized for that side, and not taken seriously by the adults
because of it.
I have already told you before that I have, as it were, a dual personality.
One half embodies my exuberant cheerfulness, making fun of everything, vivacity, and above
all the way I take everything lightly . . . This side is usually lying in wait and pushes away
the other, which is much better, deeper and purer.
No one knows Anne's better side.
Three days after Anne wrote this the German police entered the Secret Annex.
Who betrayed the hiding place to the Germans remains a mystery to this day.
The family spent four days locked in holding cells. Then on August 8 they were transferred to the Westerbork camp. They stayed there for the whole of the month of August in the so-called ''punishment barracks''. They were considered ''punishable prisoners'' since they had
not given themselves up when the call-up notices were sent but had been captured in hiding.
On September 3, 1944, the eight prisoners joined a thousand others on the last train bound
for the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
They were cooped up in a boxcar for days, crammed together with about seventy other people, and arrived in Auschwitz on the night of September 5.
More than half of the people were killed in the gas chambers the very next day, including
nearly all the children under fifteen. Since Anne had just had her fifteenth birthday, she was
spared. The men and women were separated, most never to see each other again.
The women had to walk to the women's camp in Birkenau. Edith Frank and her two daughters stayed together.
Mrs. Van Pels also went to the women's camp. Otto Frank, Hermann Van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer went to the men's camp.
The conditions in Auschwitz were indescribably wretched. The prisoners were given hardly
anything to eat and no medicines were available.
Hundreds died from starvation and illness every day. The guards beat and clubbed people
to death for no reason at all. Every day new groups of prisoners were sent to the gas chambers. No one could be sure of his or her life. Every day could be the last.
Hermann Van Pels was murdered in the gas chambers a couple of weeks after his arrival in
Auschwitz - Birkenau. Fritz Pfeffer ended up in the Neuengamme concentration camp,
where he died on December 20, 1944.
The Russian Army was approaching from the west. The Germans knew that they had lost
the war. Many of the camps were cleared and dismantled in an effort to erase the evidence
of their crimes. Prisoners were shot and buried in mass graves. Others were transferred to
concentration camps farther from the front.
Anne and her sister Margot were taken to the Bergen-Belsen, concentration camp in October
1944. Anne and Margot died there in March 1945.
The camp was liberated the following month. Anne and Margot had to leave their mother
behind in Auschwitz at the end of October 1944.
Edith Frank survived in Auschwitz for another two months. She died on January 6, 1945.
Otto Frank was the only one of the group from the Secret Annex to survive the war.
He was still in Auschwitz when the Russians liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
He wanted to go back to Amsterdam, but the war had not ended yet in the Netherlands.
Otto started the long journey home to the port of Odessa on the Black Sea.  From Odessa,
he went by boat to Marsailles in France, and continued by train and truck to Amsterdam.
Otto Frank did not arrive in Amsterdam until June 3, when he immediately went to see Miep and Jan Gies.
Their reunion was filled with joy and sadness. Otto Frank said he had heard that his wife,
Edith, was dead, but he still hoped that Anne and Margot were alive.
He had heard that they had been taken to Bergen-Belsen, and that at least Bergen-Belsen
was not a death camp.
Otto moved in with Miep and Jan, and together they searched daily for news about Anne
and Margot.
Almost two months later Otto received word that both his daughters had died.
All that time Miep had kept Anne's diaries, hoping to give them back to Anne herself.
As it was now certain that Anne was dead, Miep got out the diaries and gave them to Otto.
Otto started reading them immediately and was moved and astonished. He had never
realized that Anne had recorded everything that happened in the Secret Annex so well and
so accurately. Otto typed large parts of the diary in German and sent them to his mother
in Switzerland. Later he let other people read parts of the diary.
They urged him to look for a publisher, but no one wanted to publish the diary so soon
after the war.
It was only when an article appeared on Anne's diaries in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool
(The Motto) on April 3, 1946, that a publisher was found.
Anne Frank's diary was published in an edition of 1,500 copies in the summer of 1947.
Otto had now fulfilled Anne's wish to become a writer.
The diary was soon translated into French and then into German. In 1951, an English edition
was published. In the years that followed, the diary was translated into thirty-one other
languages. The diary became world-famous.
Throughout the world, streets and schools have been named after Anne Frank.
Anne Frank became a symbol of the six million Jewish men, women, and children who
were murdered by the Nazis in the Second World War.
Otto Frank spent the rest of his life spreading Anne's ideas and ideals. In 1979, one year before his death, he wrote: ''Anne never spoke about hatred anywhere in her diary. She wrote that despite everything, she believed in the goodness of people. And that when the
war was over, she wanted to work for the world and for people.

C

Introduction

In the forty-six years since it was first published and the fifty since it was written, the diary
of Anne Frank has taken a kind of mystical quality for the adolescents who first encounter
it and the adults are left with it's aftertaste.
I have not actually read Anne Frank's diary myself because it is very hard to get a hold of,
I would imagine all the time that just looking at pictures of the actual diary, shows that it
holds enormous power, so much that, with it's plaid cover and impotent little lock, I cannor
believe how much of a relic Anne Frank's diary is considered now.
The struggle for identity, the fears, the doubts, above all the everydayness in the diary entries, the worries about outgrown shoes, the romantic yearnings, and the ever-present
conflicts with Mama and Margot reflect, mirror, and elevate the lives of millions who went about the business of studying, romancing, cooking, sewing, and struggling to live in the
world until the Nazis ended their millions of ordinary, individual lives.
We know Anne Frank the victim and Anne Frank the fugitive. This is Anne Frank the free,
the living, the person who was able to write what has become a life lesson for millions of
us in the years since: 'In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart''.
We see the diary with all it's teenage blemishes, not transcribed neatly on the page but packed with pasted pictures, scribbled and haphazard, the work of a girl, not a symbol,
not a metaphor. As we grew and as the legend grew as well, Anne Frank had in some essential way ceased to be an ordinary person.
The pictures that were taken of her, make her whole again: one little Jewish girl, one life growing, thriving, struggling to break the surface of it's soil like a seedling just at the time
that the soil was poisoned. The failed flowering means more with the seeds. Seeing the
baby Anne, the smiling Anne, the free Anne, makes her life all that much more ordinary.
And that much more heroic and heartbreaking.
- Laura Ward.

The Frank Family.

Members of the Frank family have lived in Frankfurt am Main since the 17th century.
Otto Frank is born on 12 May 1889 In the city's Westend, a well - to - do neighbourhood.
After attending high school, he briefly studies art at the University of Heidelberg.
Then, via a friend, he is offered and accepts a job from 1908 to 1909 in the United States,
at Macy's Department Store in New York. After the death of his father, a banker, Otto returns to Germany and works for a metal engineering company in Dusseldorf until 1914.
During World War I, Otto and his two brothers serve in the German army, where Otto attains the rank of lieutenant.
After the war he works in his father's bank, but banks are not doing well at that time. It is
during this period, however, that Otto meets his future wife, Edith Hollander, the daughter
of a manufacturer. Edith is born in 1900 and grows up in Aachen. In 1925, Otto and Edith
marry and settle in Frankfurt.
Their first daughter, Margot Betti, is born on 16 February 1926.
Her younger sister, Anne, whose full name is Annelise Marie Frank, is born in Frankfurt am Main on 12 June 1929.
Otto Frank is an enthusiast amateur photographer. He takes dozens of photographs of Anne
and Margot playing in the street with their friends, visiting their granparents in Aachen, or
going to the countryside.

The Frank Family in Amsterdam, 1933-40.

Following Hitler's rise to power and the anti-Jewish boycott, Otto Frank leaves Frankfurt
for Amsterdam in 1933. He starts a Dutch branch of the Opekta Company there, manufacturing products used in jam-making, such as pectin.

Soon Edith, Margot, and Anne join him.
The Frank family moves into a house on Merwedeplein in the southern part of the city.
The girls attend the Montessori School nearby and make lots of friends - photographs document their many outings.
The family also becomes close friends with other Jewish immigrants who settle in their neighbourhood.
The Opekta Company is doing rather well. However, this relatively carefree life is suddenly
interrupted by the German invasion in May 1940.

The Frank Family Goes Into Hiding.

Formally Otto Frank turns his business into a non-Jewish firm but he remains in charge
behind the scenes. Until the summer holidays of 1942, Anne and Margot attend the Jewish
Lyceum, a school for Jewish children banned from other schools.
The Franks get ready to go into hiding in 1941. Thanks to the help of his staff at the Opekta
Company (Victor Kugler, Jo Kleiman, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl), Otto Frank is able to
prepare a secret place for his own family and that of another employee Hermann van Pels -
in the two upper back floors of the old building his firm occupies.

On 5 July 1942, Margot Frank receives the notorious call to report to a 'labour camp'.
The Franks move into the Secret Annex - concealed behind a movable bookcase - at 263 Prinsengracht the following day.
One week later, they are joined by Mr and Mrs van Pels and their son Peter, and finally,
in November, by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist.
In her diary, given to her by her father on her 13 birthday, 12 June 1942, Anne Frank movingly records the experiences of everyday life in hiding.
After a while, she decides to write her diary entries in the form of letters, addressed to
'Kitty' - a character in a novel she had once enjoyed. Later, after hearing a radio broadcast
saying that letters and diaries about life under German occupation might be published
after the war, Anne decides to edit and revise her diary.
She makes it more like a novel, changing the names of her 'characters'. Kugler and Kleiman
become Kraler and Koophuis, the van Pelses become the van Daans, Pfeffer becomes Mr Dussel, and Bep Voskuijl becomes Elli Vossen.

The Last Months of the Frank Family.

On 4 August 1944, the Secret Annex is raided by SS Sergeant Karl Josef Silberbauer, with
several Dutch Nazis. Everyone is arrested and sent to Westerbork transit camp and then
on the final train that leaves for Auschwitz on 3 September 1944.

The Best Birthday Present.

Anne Frank awoke at six o'clock in the morning on Friday, June 12. She could hardly wait
to get out of bed. That she was up so early was not surprising, since today was her thirteenth
birthday. It was wartime, 1942. Anne was living with her father and mother and her sister,
Margot, who was three years older than Anne, in a housing development in Amsterdam,
the capital city of the Netherlands. The Netherlands had been occupied for two years by the
Germans, who has launched a campaign of discrimination and persecution against the Jews.
It was becoming increasingly difficult for Jews such as the Frank family to lead ordinary lives, but Anne was not thinking about that on her birthday.
At seven o'clock Anne went up to her parents' bedroom. Then the whole family gathered in
the living room to unwrap Anne's presents.
Anne received many gifts that day, including books, a jigsaw puzzle, a brooch, and candy.
But her best present was one given by her parents that morning:
A hardcover diary. bound in red and white checkered cloth. She had never had a diary before
and she was delighted with the gift. Anne had many friends, both boys and girls, but with
them she talked only about everyday things.
But now Anne's diary would be her very best friend, a friend she could trust with everything.
She called her new friend ''Kitty''.
On the first page of her diary Anne wrote:
I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone
before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.
Anne Frank (June 12, 1942).
On the side of the cover she stuck a photograph of herself.
Anne started writing to kitty two days later, on Sunday, June 14. She would continue filling
it for over two years with her thoughts and feelings, and stories about all the things that
happened to her. But on that first day, she could not suspect how her life was suddenly to
change completely.
Nor could she imagine that later millions of people throughout the world would read her
diary.

From Frankfurt to Amsterdam.

Anne Frank was born in the German city of Frankfurt am Main on June 12, 1929.
In 1939 Anne's Interests were different from those she had when she was younger they
were laughing, history, movie stars, Greek mythology, writing, cats, dogs, and boys.
She had a large circle of friends and enjoyed going to parties with them and to the ice-cream
parlor called Oasis in her neighbourhood. Anne attended the Montessori school in 1941,
it was her last year in grade school.
After the summer holidays in 1941, Jewish children learned that they would no longer be
allowed to go to the school of their choice. From then on, schools were segregated between
Jewish and non-Jewish children.
Anne and Margot now went to a Jewish school with only Jewish teachers. But this was only
the beginning. Anne later wrote in her diary: There have been all sorts of Jewish laws.
Jews must wear a yellow star; Jews must hand in their bicycles. Jews are banned from trams
and are forbidden to use any car, even a private one; Jews are only allowed to do their shopping between three and five o'clock, and then only in shops which bear the placard
Jewish shop; Jews may only use Jewish barbers; Jews must be indoors from eight o'clock
in the evening until six o'clock in the morning . . .
But life went on in spite of it all. Jacque used to say to me: 'You're scared to do anything
because it may be forbidden''.

''Dear Kitty''.

Anne was given her diary on her thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942. Two days later, she
began writing in it about her family, her friends, and her school. That June she had a new
friend to write about: Hello Silberberg. He was sixteen and Anne thought he was very handsome. Anne was enjoying life and preferred not to dwell on the war. But such thoughtlessness was dangerous for Jews, as an incident on Monday, June 29, made clear.
Toward the end of that afternoon, Hello came to visit Anne at home and meet her parents.
In October 1, 1942, the Frank family moved into the Annexe, it was on the same floor as
most of the office buildings, there hiding place behind the walls.
Days passed, turned into weeks and then months. During the daytime when the staff of the
office was working, the Franks and Van Pelses could only whisper and had to walk around
very softly in their stocking feet.
No one in the Secret Annexe was allowed to use the faucet or toilet between the office hours
of nine o'clock in the morning and seven o'clock in the evening.
Anne would spend a lot of time studying her schoolbooks, a large pile of which had been
taken along.
Anne, too, found her new life difficult. She had lost everything: Her friends, her school,
her freedom. Sometimes she rebelled, and sometimes sadness would overtake her and she
often cried at night. But during the day she was different: lively and boisterous, and usually
surprisingly cheerful.
She had something to say about everything and everyone, and was always ready with a quick answer.
Anne felt truly alone and misunderstood. Her diary had become her one really good friend.
Most of the time life in the Annex was simply boring. Yet there was also moments of great
excitement and great fear.
One evening at eight o'clock the bell suddenly rang loudly. Everyone was terrified. They thought it might've been the German police, or the Gestapo? They were worried that it
would never end? They would all hold their breaths. But there was no more noise.
Three weeks later, a more frightening experience occurred.
From the landing opposite the bookcase came the sound of hammering. All talk inside the
Annex immediately ceased.

A Bit of Everything and Nothing At All

I thought that for once it might be a good idea to keep an online diary, as opposed to a written one, I mean I do love the sensation of having a pen in my hand and hearing the sound of the gel pen scratch against the page when the pen starts to run out, their's nothing like it, it's like when you read a really old book, and you hear the pages make that crinkle sound, and you can smell the musty odour on the pages, anyway enough about that, I wish things were different and we could win the lottery or at least a few thousands pounds, enough to sort out all our bills, and be able to pay off my credit card bill, and get myself an Alienware laptop, because it's the ultimate gaming laptop, I wouldn't need to get another one, I've had a really bad stomach all day long, well I had one this morning, but it settled down once I'd been to the toilet, but then when I ate my second sandwich, it kicked off even worse, and I couldn't even manage my third because of it, anyway I've finally started watching a few of my films that I've had backlogged since christmas, and even before christmas when I put a load of films into my pink disc case to watch, II've still got quite a few to watch in there as well, and I intend to re-watch the first 3 Underworld films, as soon as I can get a decent download of: Underworld Awakening, I can't wait to see it, apparently Selene wakes up in the future and she can't find Michael anywhere, and apparently the humans know all about the vampires and lycans and their trying to eradicate them all, by mass genocide I suppose you'd call it, anyway I might go up the library tomorrow, or I could potentially wait and ask dad if he could take me to Corringham, because I need to get a couple of bottles of Schwepps lemonade, to tide me over until mum + dad go shopping again, and I also need to go into Tesco's again and get one of those huge boxes of Thornton's the Classic Collection box, for mum + dad's wedding anniversary, which is on the 4th February, I decided upon that box of chocolate's mainly because I couldn't think of anything else, and because when aunt Jane bought them a box for christmas to share between them, and it so happens that it was the same box that I bought for nan + grandad for christmas as well, lol, great minds think alike I guess, anyway I finally watched: Super 8, last night, it was really good, I liked the way they made the alien in it, anyway I better go for now, I left: Johnny Mnemonic, on pause, and I'm right near the end, so bye for now.