Off to a place near Exeter by the name of Goffinland for a meeting with kindred spirits on the topic of not paying council tax. It was quite an eye opener; I did not realize that our council tax goes directly to the government and only 30%  of this goes back to our local council.

Appealing against what is in effect a double transaction takes time, energy and knowledge, attention to detail and complete confidence in your position. I will write about this later but meanwhile I had several interesting conversations as you can hardly fail to do with people on your wavelength.

By the way,  the journey down took 1h 45 minutes. We left at 6.15 am to allow time for breakfast on the way. We ended up at Toby’s which is a chain devoted to carveries but also offers accommodation. We arrived at quarter past eight in the morning, a Sunday morning, and there were about 25 people chomping away at the all you can eat breakfast.

Surprisingly there was Yorkshire pudding on offer which I did not expect and also we had no offer of cereals but we did have a large variety of traditional breakfast food with unlimited filter coffee and tea.

I reckon the percentage of men to women was about 50/50 with possibly slightly more men and they were all cleared up, opened, and you could literally talk to anyone and feel comfortable about doing it which is my sort of environment.

I had a chat with a younger man who had been doing courier work but now at a chance to operate cranes and we discussed  the psychological problems of making changes whether by choice or by circumstance. I found myself inspired to give an advice session during which I said that all experiences good or bad are given to us for a reason and we often don’t know the reason until after the event.

I said if we are treated in a certain way by people please don’t take it personally because they are trying to work out their situations and you happen to be the nearest available object, and I said again, don’t take it personally because it was not meant personally.

I said the ego is hurt in some cases by a change but the soul is not and it will take the chance to move onwards and upwards. I said that in my own life sometimes you are the last person to see that a situation is not suitable when all your friends can see it but you have to see it yourself. I think it is professional to include your own experience if it is relevant.

He said that he had two weeks before starting the new job and he would probably go for walks and things like that and I said what a good idea that was and that nature abhors a vacuum so he will find the time goes quickly enough and he need not worry about what is going to happen. I said that we receive the experiences in order to learn lessons, experiences that cannot be learned by for example reading a book.

I ended by recommending that he writer diary and gave my own diary details as an example. I said it was a good way of letting his friends and Associates know what he is doing and although the events describe might seem very ordinary to him such as going for a walk on Dartmoor and getting refreshment but it might just be the example that someone else needs. You never know where your message ends up

I met someone else who said that he met me five years ago when I was campaigning against 5G and he said that I had made a lot of difference to the lives of many people. I said that I don’t normally get thanked for something maybe once a year so this was the once in a year occasion.

I met someone else with a lovely smile who turned out to be a singer and I said her smile entered the room before she did. She thanked me for this comment and said that as a child she was known as ‘smiley’

I told one or two people I have difficulty in adjusting from the famine to feast situation where I could count the fingers of the people on the wavelengths where I live on the fingers of one hand but here, I could spend at least a couple of hours with each of 120 people and have a meaningful conversation.

I also said that my concentration span was somewhat limited as I could spend up to two hours listening to lectures but after that time I needed a pause in order to digest what have been said. I said a full day of lectures was a bit like having eight main courses one after the other, it was too much to digest

I invited two people to attend my birthday party in June. One of them was a speaker who had a wealth of knowledge and I said to her the point of the meeting was to discuss how to get a message across to people. The other one was a member of the audience who I felt a particular rapport with especially with regards to faith and I thought he would go very well with the other people at the event.

My birthday parties are hybrid events and consist partly of a buffet lunch, partly general discussion but also partly a plenary session where 16 of us get together and compare views on various subjects and the view this time is on ‘ how to get through to people’. The human mind / brain loves to work as greyhounds love to run and if the mind is fed with the right material it will come up with what the individual person needs to hear in order to make progress.

The more diverse abuse the better because the brain can well handle it as it is the ultimate relational database and can perform 200 billion calculations per second so that’s not bad eh

I cannot tolerate time wasting events without any purpose.  There is a limit of 16 guests per event otherwise it is a football crowd, no good to man nor beast.

During the plenary recessions attended by about 120 people there were no less than three dogs attending with their owners. One of them was a shepherd dog who barked loudly whenever people applauded.

I don’t get on extremely well with dogs so found this a bit disturbing all the more because the owners did not think it necessary to withdraw their animal from the room so others could concentrate. I spoke to the co-organiser who said he found the whole thing rather amusing so I thought I’d better just loosen up a bit and accept that it is part of the protocol of such meetings to be tolerant of noise

In general I realised because I was told that the United Kingdom was being sold off to the highest bidder which includes long established companies, water, electricity, gas, nuclear, transport, and farming land. I believe stammer signed an agreement with BlackRock who has 100 billion investment in land  and once to increase its portfolio at our expense.

As a leaflet asked, why is the government paying farmers not too farm. All very dystopian and troublesome but there was a feeling in the meeting that something could be done but only by using the methods but are used against us on the perpetrators. I described the situation to the organizers a David versus Goliath situation.