View From The Window

Well it is grey and dry, for now, possibly in for a mild September but the cold is coming. Washington House is still forlorn with its For Sale sign looking weathered, if it ever does sell some of the locals will be nonplussed as the small drive is now used for off road parking. I have said goodbye to the Batmobile, a car I thought I would have until the end, sadly, economics caught up with her along with commonsense, we don't need two cars, simples. The wife's car is also going when we pick up our new car at the end of the month, it is a nice car, has all sorts of gadgets and can park itself, it also already has a name, 'Ghost' (it is charcoal greyish) but it's not the Batmobile. I may be less able to persuade my grandchildren I am Batman now.

I had a laugh with one of our Chinese guides about their capacity to flood the planet with fakes, she was nonplussed and I had to admit I had watched the odd pirated movie courtesy of her more criminal countrymen. I did however have one tense moment over fakes, we were watching a show in a rather grand theatre and I ordered some wine for the missus and some 'Original Pringles' for me, feeling the need to pander to my salt craving. The bowl of wafers which turned up were not Pringles, now I am not keen on Pringles but they were going to have to do, but not fakes, I called the girl over and despite her not understanding English she immediately understood what I meant. I was prepared for a diplomatic incident but instead she took the bowl away and presented me with my money, crises averted.

Do you believe all the guff about women in the forces being the equal of men, especially at the front line as say, infantry or marines, every time the forces are shown these days front and centre is a woman in uniform, TV dramas fall over themselves to show how tough these ladies are. Well here is where it all falls down, Michelle Keegan, playing the tough, yet always perfectly made up trooper in 'Our Girl' almost pulled out of playing her fearless, action hero character, because there are big spiders in Kenya where they were filming, the defence rests M'lud.

Just to back this up in a round about way, you may remember bimbo Kim Kardashian was robbed in Paris some time back, recently she was invited to a friends house in Mexico but was terrified that the country may be unsafe for her. This 'fear' has been put down to PTSD, yes, the same illness suffered by troops in battle having been to hell and back, you couldn't make it up.

Just when will the Eco-Warriors draw the line, they are not just happy to cover the country in useless windmills and bill us extra for building said junk while ensuring we will not have enough energy in ten years to keep the lights on, now they want to ban wood burners. Coal bad, Nuclear bad, gas bad, burn wood it is a natural sustainable fuel source, well it isn't, ask the third world where all their trees are going, but now wood is bad. Sadiq Khan wants to ban wood burners from areas of London, if wood is out what are we left with? If you are a young person I recommend searching around for the most habitable cave in the area now.

Did you hear the one about the blind Immigration judge who had "no idea of the law or his own powers" it is all very well to condemn the man now but he should never have reached such a position in the first place. Now I am unsure whether the fact that he is a Moslem, coloured, disabled and had already won a case for discrimination played a factor but I can guess. Stable door and horse come to mind.

I see the Conservatives have promised more billions for the NHS. I read this morning that a couple who have let their son dress as a girl for the past eight years now want 'puberty halting' drugs for him courtesy of you and me on the NHS. No doubt these are highly expensive and already up to 800 children are eating them like smarties. Putting aside the fact that you have to have drugs and then have your body altered by the knife to feed your idea of what or who you are why is it down to the NHS to provide all this. Stop this along with the boob jobs, the nose jobs, the gastric bands, the nicotine patches and all the rest and perhaps use it to keep people with real illnesses alive.

Fancy a change, come right in, free gratis.

After my visit to China I get the impression that the vast majority of Chinese are like the majority of us, I doubt they are interested in having a showdown with the Americans in the Pacific or invading Taiwan or causing a planet meltdown by hacking every server in the world. They want a job, a bit of spending money and a holiday, they enjoy meeting people from different countries, they laugh and smile. You do have to wonder if we would be better off without politicians and big government.