View From The Window

Busy weekend last weekend so no View, not because I have mellowed or given up on life. It is the usual miserable wintry morning with a day of kow-towing coming up as it is the wife's birthday, I took her out for a nice lunch yesterday and a surprise visit from the boys. All did not go to plan as usual for me these days, it would seem I couldn't plan the proverbial in a brewery without the Gods throwing a spanner in the works, Graham could not bring his family as Gabrielle contracted hand, foot and mouth which is contagious and therefore had to stay at home with mum. It was snow blizzards last week if you remember. Neither myself nor my friends ever had HFM (how modern is that, you read it here first) and neither did my sons when they were growing up, where did it come from?

I see sport is on the back foot again, Lord 'Clean up' Coe has been let off the hook as although his remit was to clean up the Olympics he now seemingly was not expected to know about the extent of the corruption, better check that job description. And poor David Beckham miffed that he is not Sir David while people less deserving, in his opinion, are at work on their coats of arms, you played football mate, case closed. Not that I am enamoured of the whole honours deal once you didn't have to spend a few hours hacking away at the enemy on the battlefield.

Corruption, what corruption?

 "Tories Kill 30,000", now that got my attention, a cull on Remoaners I thought, bodies hanging from lamp posts with placards perhaps and pin striped wallahs pointing sticks, I looked out just in case. No, nothing of the kind of course, it was a figure pulled from the great big book of dubious statistics, like the tens of thousands who were going to keel over from swine flu or SARS but in the end didn't. Have you ever listened to something like "one person dies every 30 seconds from ....." if that was the case you would think you would be stepping over a corpse or several during your normal Saturday shop where you probably rub shoulders with hundreds or even thousands of people, or is this all happening somewhere else, are whole towns and cities becoming wastelands that we don't know about, unless you are a bean counter. And the 30,000, yes its rubbish.

The BBC killed the news for me last week, again, by having a special on the NHS every night, I tried ITV only to find they were concentrating on mental health, which now seems to be back at No.1 after an absence of a few years. Is it not strange that the UK is the only country which continually has health at the top of the agenda and not in a good way, yet we are told our system is the envy of the civilised and uncivilised world. It now takes me four weeks to get an appointment at the doctors and that is if I am happy not to want my own GP.

 Sir Martin Rees, Baron Ludlow, an Emeritus Professor no less is warning us that if a large asteroid hits the planet we will be wiped out, Bruce Willis beat him to it in Armegeddon.

So it comes from a movie?

I had no idea Vegans could be bloody minded did you, I thought they were wholesome through and through and could look down on the rest of us from their lofty heights, but it would seem they are just like the rest of us underneath. Well maybe not, who would have thought certain coffee's and modern technology 'exploited' humans, the owners of a cafe in Huddersfield have decided to destroy their business by being obnoxious to their customers and refusing them wi-fi along with certain drinks, I see they don't mind the technology to make the other drinks or their electric till however, or their lights or the heating. I think it is more to do with saving cash than their concern for the rest of us.

Humans not welcome.

Where do you stand on Pewdiepie which rhymes with Tweety Pie, I had never heard of this guy who seemingly makes around £12,000,000 a year and whom Disney has now dropped like a hot potato, god knows what Disney thought they got out of the guy. He is a Swedish vlogger who has made a living, like many on social media, by being a prat and a complete mystery to anyone over twelve, I looked him up and managed an excruciating one and a half minutes of one of his rants before switching off. Why would a company like Disney see any good in this clown or think he will enhance their brand, I think it does the opposite, they dropped him by the way as there is a hint of racism behind his blonde Aryan looks, which was all right for Disney until the real world got a hint of it, now he is persona non grata.

I watched a programme on prisons the other night which shocked me to be honest, well it didn't because I am an old fashioned kind of guy and would like to see prisons returned to the 1950's, but it was dreadful. The prisoners basically ran the prison as there are not enough guards to guard them properly, the French company which runs the prison trundled out the usual official line about sticking to the rules and they would look in to anything which the programme pointed out was wrong while all the time denying that cutting back on maintenance and staff in order that their profit margin stays the same is communist lies. I cannot understand why, if there is one way in and one way out you cannot stop people bringing in phones and drugs, several kilos of drugs in one instance. Search the visitors completely and if they are caught they don't get to come back, you don't have 'human rights' as a criminal you gave them up to live outside the law. Get some flak on the wall to shoot down drones, and how difficult is it to stop people throwing stuff over the walls? Drop the rehabilitation nonsense, the pool tables, the televisions and the call me sir stuff, it is a punishment and you should not want to come back once out. Oh, and ditch the private owners as well or make them do what it says on the tin.

You made the mess, you live in it.