[blogfocus monday] mixed blessings

1. Iain Dale is back blogging and I see it as a mixed blessing because now there is some sort of peace for both:

Eleanor was a rock in my life. I could tell her things I could tell no one else. She bailed me out on several occasions in my younger years when I was on my financial uppers. She gave me wise advice which was always appreciated. In short, she was the perfect Godmother. When I went too see her on Monday to say good-bye I admit I didn't want to go.

I was warned that she didn't look like the Eleanor we all knew and loved. I admit I was a coward, and just wanted to remember her as she always was - vibrant, laughing, funny, caring. I got to the door and didn't want to go into the room. My sister Tracey went in before me and as I was about to enter the room she gave me a look which said "you will be shocked by what you see". She was stronger than me.

2. The Vanishing American sees internet tools as a mixed blessing:

The Internet is a decidedly mixed blessing. People can (and do) track pseudonymous bloggers' identities down. However it is simply prudence and common sense not to post one's personal information, including full name, around the Internet promiscuously.

For those of us who blog, expressing politically incorrect and 'controversial' thoughts and ideas can expose us to some rather unpleasant consequences. And it may be justly argued that if you take a controversial stand, you must be willing to take the heat for it, and accept any difficulties you invite in swimming against the current.

3. Meeyauw remembers and that's a mixed blessing in itself:

I seldom post personal things but this will be the exception. I may even delete this post in the morning. I had a long nap today and dreamt a beautiful dream. I was in the home of someone unknown who was close to me. Other family was there. And in the door walked Neal, my late husband. He had not been dead after all. He had been lost. I could even feel him and smell him.

He looked exactly as he does in this photo [see site], taken only three years before he died. I took the photo on his Nikon non-digital camera as he taught me how to use it (the lessons never stuck). The dream was so vivid and my grief began anew when I awoke and found it was not true.

4. David Farrer is doing what is commonly referred to as a number on me – a little James Higham mini-series. Though I'm flattered, it's a decidedly mixed blessing:

One of the greatest problems faced by Scotland is the comparatively high pay and pension benefits enjoyed by the 23% who do work in the state sector. Private companies (with higher than average UK transport costs) find it very difficult to offer the same packages as are available in a state sector that often has UK-wide wage agreements.

So the bright youngster chooses government employment and that is detrimental to economic growth. That's why I am perfectly happy to see Scotland's public sector expenditure slashed - quite apart from the fact that many of these jobs shouldn't exist at all.

5. Jack DM, through Cassandra's Politeia, writes of the mixed blessings of EU membership:

Since Romania entered the European Union on 1st January 2007 an estimated five hundred thousand Romanians crossed the Italian borders. That is five hundred thousand of the poorest, the most desperate, and the most determined to do whatever it takes to partake of Western prosperity.

Crime has exploded and shanty areas have sprung up like mushrooms in the Italian suburbs: the price for welcoming into the community a country that obviously isn't prepared to pay the same price.