View From The WIndow

The view last week was of George Square Glasgow, and very cold and wintry it was too, this morning the sun is blinding but it is not a warm sun, outside is fresh as is the inside until the heating kicks in which won't take too long. Very quiet outside, I think that's the stock car racing finished for the year so no traffic jams this morning, the road is open and back to normal, several houses around me are still up for sale but nothing is moving, not many people house hunt in December.

The last week in the Post Office has been OK but I suspect the next two weeks will be the worst, there won't be a lot of maps drawn but my patience will be tested by the flood of Christmas cards. I see them come in with a pile of envelopes and my heart sinks, I used to put out airmail stickers and a polite notice asking people to put them on before approaching the counter, but this was ignored so I don't bother now. They come up and squeeze all the cards at me, I promptly squeeze them all back and say put them on the scale, they all end up on the scale, one at a time please, a pause while they look at me, where is it going, another look. Australia, USA, Lancaster, South Africa, Glasgow, Canada the list is endless and all require weighing one at a time, aaaaagh! Or I get eighty pushed through with 'second class please' they too get pushed back and eighty stamps handed over, not my job. It is like I am fair game because I am a one man band, no one goes into a main PO and sticks the envelopes through, they ask for the stamps, no one goes into WH Smiths and writes on the envelope before buying it, but they do here, that was another sign ignored.

Glasgow was nice a break, I was a bit confused when we turned up at the station and received nine tickets of varying description for two return journeys, we then watched two trains for Glasgow stop and leave before ours arrived as you are only allowed on the train you booked, even if the other two are empty, and of course they are not always the same train company. On the plus side all the trains I have travelled on this year have been clean, not too late and cheap, I am just glad I am not a commuter in the South.

The last time I was in Glasgow I noticed a large number of Africans wandering about or ensconced in pub toilets offering perfumed water for a tip, this time was different, the bars, restaurants and the larger shops, like the Lake District and London, are almost completely staffed by Eastern Europeans. Oh and did you see the news this week that the biggest number of immigrants this year into the UK are, drum roll, wait for it, Rumanian's! Yes, the same people the politicians told us would not come in droves.

Politics has been a laugh this week, the Lib-Dem leader Tim Farron and his nine MP's seemingly has been handed a mandate to sort out Brexit from the people in Richmond. If you look closer however you will see that Tim's people won the seat by a measly 2,000 votes and that in a by election which he should have won by a landslide. The scale of his victory was brought home as the camera panned out from his victory huddle and it showed about twenty people all alone in a rather large park. You have to give it to politicians for their boundless confidence in themselves in the face of reality.

Richmond LibDems, no really, that is all of them.

Take the gushings of praise for Fidel Castro from some quarters, I don't think one leader of the free world has described the tyrant as a disaster for his country, a murderer and torturer, several, including the clueless Canadian Trudeau and the EU buffoon Junker have fallen over themselves in their plaudits, the former of course back tracking like mad now as he realises how stupid he has been. But will the people ditch him, not on your nelly, that's democracy.

OK one more, the Prime Minister of Malta, yes Malta, that powerhouse of the Mediterranean which contributes so much to EU coffers, has been giving us dire warnings about our intention to leave the EU. They are just the latest of a number of jumped up little countries terrified of having to put away their begging bowls when we leave or put their hands in their own pockets, if that isn't a reason to be grateful of leaving them behind I don't know what is.

Malta anyone?

I see Cinderella is getting a rewrite to be more exciting and empowering for girls, and rewritten by the children themselves, I used to shake my head at the way the Communist regime in Russia rewrote anything they didn't like, now we too are at it at all levels. Brunel gets his cigar photo shopped out, Cinderella becomes a feminist, Spiderman has to be of an ethnic minority, the Penguin is gay, Ben Hur throws his whip out of the chariot not to be cruel to animals, small things admittedly but I want them to leave my world alone, I am an adult I can take it.

And finally, bloody Vegans! There is tallow in the new fivers, yes so what, well if you are one of the insignificant number of people who won't have anything to do with animal products etc. then you are stuck with a pocket full of shrapnel or tenners and twenties, because touching the fiver will, eh, erm, do nothing to you, but it will fuel your demented thinking. The petition to take the tallow out of the fivers has reached a staggering 5,000, the number who wanted to take the Star Wars Jedi religion seriously reached 390,000, I rest my case. I would like to take them all and dump them around 1066AD and see how long they would survive with their extreme ideas, the arrogance of these people wanting everyone and everything to take their views into consideration is astounding. Mind you, how long before the 5,000 get their way, wannae bet a fiver?