mikronboy

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Posts by mikronboy

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  10

  UK Civil Service Damns UK Government

  by cofty in

  1. social
  2. current

  following the daily covid19 briefing, in which boris johnson defended his advisor dominic cummings for travelling to his family estate after showing symptoms of the virus, the civil service official twitter feed posted the following.. .

  the tweet was quickly deleted.

  i can't overstate how unthinkable it is that the service should publicly criticise the government of the day.. boris' defense of cummings is a huge error in judgement and will destroy its credibility.

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  mikronboy

  Hmm..maybe. The question remains as to why the media hung on to this story for over 6 weeks? Were they timing its release so as to inflict maximum damage on the government? As for the tweet, one can only wonder to what extent the establishment, ie the remainer Civil servants, that's nearly all of them, have been stoking the flames?
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  31

  Why Do You Think People Become Jehovah’s Witnesses?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  besides growing up in the religion, why do you think people turn to jehovah’s witnesses?

  .

  what made you become a witness?

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  mikronboy

  I posted this before under another persona. Basically I changed my computer and lost my password, so I've started again as mikronboy. I know, I know, it sounds like a racehorse! OK, here we go, so sorry if you've seen it before - so how did I finish up as a JW?

  I was the number 2 son, born in 1946. I’d had an elder brother who died just a few days after his birth in 1944. I mention this because this sad occurrence led to a series of events that were to have a major effect on my own upbringing.

  My parents were simply Mum & Dad.(We say Mum, not Mom!)

  Dad was 25 when I arrived, Mum was 24.

  Dad had been in the RAF during the war. He’d joined up in 1940 and assigned to Bomber Command. He became a bomb-aimer and altogether flew on 43 bombing sorties over Germany.

  When I arrived Dad was still in the RAF, so my earliest years were spent in mainly female company, my mother and both sets of grandmothers eager to take part in my development.

  We had lots of relatives living within walking distance. Grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, most all of our extended family were within a mile or two. So there were frequent family get-togethers, particularly at Christmas.

  Life was good. I was at school at age 5 where our seating position in our class was dictated by how clever we were deemed to be. I sat at the “top table” and quickly learned how to read. In 1953, when I was 6, all the children at school were presented with gifts to celebrate the crowning of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

  My home life was good too. Both my parents were ardent football (soccer) supporters, so, every other week of the football season, I would be farmed out to one relative or another so that they could watch the game while I played happily with my cousins.

  My parents partied a good deal. Dad’s RAF pals were always visiting us so there was loud music late into the night while Dad would perform his favourite party trick of drinking all the water out of the flower vases.

  Eventually Dad was demobbed from the RAF, but not before they had re-trained him in the difficult and demanding job of an air-traffic controller.

  Meanwhile, Dad would make model aeroplanes, ships, windmills, cranes and trains – would you believe it, supposedly all for me! I never got to touch them much either.

  Yep, I was a happy child, although my mother had a heavy right hand which she wasn’t averse to using on me whenever I transgressed.

  Then one memorable day, my Mum and Dad sat me down and told me that my dad’s new occupation meant that we would soon be moving house. We were going to leave the North of England and move “down south”.

  London!

  So we moved south to London.

  Actually it was a London suburb. Close to London Heathrow Airport, my Dad needed only to hop on the 116 bus, change to the 90B in Hounslow and he was there in less than 30 minutes.

  The inevitable change of school brought me many problems, not least being my own broad Lancashire accent. Also, the school was a good 12 months ahead of the one that I had left, so I was quickly demoted from bright star to bottom-of-the-class dunce.

  Mum was also very stressed. She missed Lancashire, the family too, and also found the southerners of England damned unfriendly.

  I was later to learn that the death of my elder brother in 1944 had a lot to do with her unhappiness.

  When my brother had died years previously, my Dad had been granted 48 hours compassionate leave by the RAF.

  That first night, in 1944, when the Lancaster flew on another bombing run over Germany without my Dad on board, the plane had been shot down.

  The crew were listed as Missing, presumed killed.

  My Dad had been distraught and also full of guilt.

  My grandmother – his mother – had been dabbling in Spiritism and suggested that Dad saw a spirit medium with a view to getting in contact with his dead crew.

  Eventually Dad complied, he agreed to see a spirit medium.

  The spirit medium went into a trance and said that she was now in contact with the skipper of the shot-down Lancaster. She stunned my Dad when she said that his name was McKay. She described in detail how McKay had witnessed the death of himself and his crew.

  The whole thing shook Dad up considerably.

  So now here we are, 9 years on in 1954. I’m almost 9 years old, Mum is highly stressed most of the time and Dad is working hard at London Heathrow.

  Then, in late 1954, my Dad received a letter that had come from overseas.

  The letter was from a chap called McKay and had been written just a few weeks previously.

  Skipper Mc Kay hadn’t died in the crash of the Lancaster. He’d parachuted to safety and spent the rest of the war as a POW. He just wasn't dead - he was very much alive!

  So now my Dad was really shaken up. He needed some answers.

  But where to start looking?

  So my Dad has been kept off a doomed Lancaster bomber by the death of my elder brother and has also spoken to the “dead” skipper whom he now finds to be very much alive. Spooky!

  That winter was a real chiller. Our water froze solid, cars were unstartable, the airport was closed temporarily.

  My Mum took solace in the Playhouse cinema in Feltham and in the never ending consumption of mint imperials along with a deep addiction to cigarettes.

  One night, whilst she was at said cinema, there was a knock on the front door. I was sent to answer it. My dad was in the attic attempting to unfreeze the water pipes by means of a lighted gas-poker attached to the garden hose which was in turn attached to the kitchen stove.

  I opened the door to be confronted by a tall, hook-nosed man (in retrospect he looked like Abe Lincoln) who wanted to speak to one of my parents. Oh God I thought, he must have come to complain about me.

  Well, no. I heard Dad say, whoever you are, come inside, it’s far too cold to talk on the doorstep.

  At which point I lost all interest and went back to reading my comic books. The witnesses had entered our home and I was to remain blissfully unaware until...

  ...Until several weeks later when my dad announced that we were going to “a meeting” and that I was going too and I had better practice sitting still for a whole hour! Oh crikey, this was terrible!

  Years later I learned what had happened that icy evening when the witnesses first called. My Dad had said to the witness, Leslie, that if he could answer just 1 question satisfactorily, he would look further into this strange religion.

  So, Dad had told Leslie all about Mckay and the spirit medium and how McKay was dead then suddenly alive and living in Canada.

  And Leslie had the answer...

  Demon impersonation!

  Because demons were wicked they were also imperfect and because they were imperfect they often made mistakes and because this particular demon who was impersonating McKay hadn’t done his homework properly, he had made a fundamental error in not checking up that McKay was definitely dead. Silly demon.

  My Dad bought it 100%.

  We were part of a religion and from here on in, nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  
  
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  2

  So much for the UK's "devolved" assemblies!

  by BoogerMan in

  1. social
  2. current

  on the subject of "dis/united kingdom," i said: "i thought this was a national crisis.

  boris only acts as prime minister of england.

  " https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5193703416135680/dis-united-kingdom.

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  mikronboy

  Let's remember that England is the only UK country that doesn't have a devolved parliament for itself. Instead it gets caught up in the general melee of the UK government, complete with all those Scottish gentlemen who act as MP's in matters that affect England directly.
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  43

  Craziest thing you ever saw in a KH?

  by dubstepped in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i did this in my facebook group for my podcast and it was fun.. so what's the craziest thing you ever saw?.

  for me it was watching a brother have a heart attack during the meeting in the auditorium.

  i was a kid and noticed him shaking and acting strange.

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  mikronboy

  Plus the brother giving his first assembly talk all about the flood. And how the people laughed at Noah until the flood came and drowned the bloody lot of them!
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  43

  Craziest thing you ever saw in a KH?

  by dubstepped in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i did this in my facebook group for my podcast and it was fun.. so what's the craziest thing you ever saw?.

  for me it was watching a brother have a heart attack during the meeting in the auditorium.

  i was a kid and noticed him shaking and acting strange.

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  mikronboy

  Craziest thing I ever heard was in my old KH when Bro W was giving a talk about Solomon. Bro W didn't modulate too well, he was intending to say that we are more privileged than Solomon as we were living in the Last Days. What he actually said was "King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines - what a privilege!"

  Cue hysterical laughter all round.
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  28

  Repercussions for sexual immorality

  by Veryconflicted in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hello, i was hoping to get some clarification about how people are disciplined for immorality as a jw.

  i became involved with a co-worker a few years ago, she was fairly aggressive and she initiated a physical relationship very quickly.

  at the time i did not know she was married and a jw.

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  mikronboy

  Wait until the anger kicks in. Then you'll start to feel better.
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  33

  Waco Mini-Series on Netflix. Powerful and Scary.

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  so we binge-watched the waco mini-series on netflix.. wow, what a powerful and enlightening programme!

  even if you think you know what happened, it gives you extra context to it all.

  it's very well done even if you just want a great drama series, but it's way more than that.. there are of course some dramatization and slight historical inaccuracies for the purpose of story-telling but it was very informative.

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  mikronboy

  Can't source this on Netflix UK at present.
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  6

  There Are Better Songs to Sing

  by cofty in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the 1983 film educating rita, written by willy russell and starring michael caine and julie walters, is one of the finest stories ever told.

  julie's character is the eponymous working class hairdresser and michael caine plays professor frank bryant her open university tutor assigned, against his will, to teach her english literature.

  the dialogue is brilliant and funny but it is the dilemma of an awakening rita caught between two worlds that is deeply moving.

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  mikronboy

  My lovely missus emulated Rita. Her 2 brothers went to posh universities while she was brought up to be a home maker as were most girls of her generation. When she was 37 and our boys all at school, she pushed hard to be accepted on a university degree course and left 3 years later with a BA. She later went to another uni and came away with her MA. That assisted her with obtaining employment as a college lecturer - and now, years later, the pension from that employment makes up for the shortfall in my income, which of course is linked to my own lack of educational qualifications do to me being brought up in the JW religion. Thanks Honey.
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  46

  Dis/UNITED Kingdom?

  by BoogerMan in

  1. social
  2. current

  england, wales, scotland & n.i.

  are independently making or changing the covid 19 lockdown laws/rules to suit themselves... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52600708.

  garden centres are opening in wales on monday, in england on wednesday, but by the looks of things, are far too dangerous to open them anytime soon in scotland or n.i.

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  mikronboy

  I'm here in my umpteenth incarnation. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes because I've simply lost my PW as normally happens whenever I change my computer. Old age I guess.

  I have to say that I've always found Cofty to be one of the most clear headed of posters. In fact, I've occasionally started a thread in the hope that he will add his comments and opinions to that thread.

  That's all.
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  15

  People in England were easiy convinced to believe....

  by BoogerMan in

  1. social
  2. current

  ....that a mass killer was roaming their streets.

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  now theyre struggling to believe the grim reaper is not so grim and it's safe to go outside again.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52669441.

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  mikronboy

  Just use common sense. It's a disease that's mainly transmitted from person to person, so keep your distance. I've become quite adept at growling ferociously at those who don't.