Spooky

I’ve used a spooky picture of the churchyard to begin today’s post. I think the original church was built about 700 years ago, replacing a castle and maybe some kind of pagan church. I can spend more time writing my Sunday ramble today, because I don’t have to cook Sunday lunch; it’s already cooked.

I had better try to write something funny now…

Parents at a private day school in south-west London have been told that their children shouldn’t have a best friend. They should make lots of friends. I understand the thinking, but forming a close relationship is quite natural for children. It’s just like having an adopted brother or sister. At a time when adults seem to be interfering a lot with the natural behaviour of children, I think this adult should mind his own business. Much of our behaviour is quite primitive and learning to read and write isn’t really a natural thing to do. We are torn between the skills we need to survive in the 21st century and the primitive behaviour that seems more natural. Let the kids have best friends, play in puddles and even have imaginary friends. We stifle the creativity of children enough as it is.

I read that London Bridge station serves 180,000 passengers a day. The station is being re-developed as part of a 6 billion Thameslink programme.  Doesn’t 180,000 seem a lot? Where do they all go or come from every day? This is the problem of centralising everything in London. That is only one station too. There must be millions going in and out of London every day. The government wants to make the madness worse with a high speed link (HS2) bringing more people in from Birmingham and even up north. Will Londoners understand people from the sticks or will we have to force them to watch Corrie every night and bring back Crossroads, so they can get used to accents and dialects. I wonder what Benny and Miss Diane are doing these days…

Foreign Secretary William Hague says the Conservative Party does not need a “drastic change of course” despite its poor showing in local election results last week. So it’s monetarism as usual? I’ve never fully agreed with Keynesian ideas, but at least he had some ideas. Imagine if the post war governments had tried to solve Britain’s massive debts with Thatcherite-style monetarist policies rather than Keynesian economic ideas. You might consider that China in the 1930’s under pinned it’s currency with silver and so escaped the depression. Since the 1930’s the west had done quite well compared to China, despite numerous wars including World War II. China has been doing well in recent years, because they had cheap labour, that had few choices. It was a work or starve economy. It seems like western economies are trying to adopt the same economic model.

In China people travel thousands of miles to get work and only return home by high speed train to visit family and friends occasionally. Why is the British government pushing through plans for a high speed train linking north and south in the UK? Guess…

Some readers think my politics are quite right wing, some think they are quite left wing; I think they’re somewhere in between and so quite liberal. I mostly favour common-sense, which is why I’m not a politician.

It seems Choco Pies, which are a bit like Wagon Wheels are being smuggled into North Korea. Imagine how they would react to some really good chocolate. I’ve always thought that rogue nations could be tamed by carrots rather than sticks. If we attached little parachutes to boxes of Milk Tray and dropped them over North Korea it would create more panic than a nuclear missile. Except it would be the military dictatorship that would panic, instead of the people. It would seem they have a thriving black economy in North Korea, much like they did in Russia during the cold war. The war between North Korea and America seems much like a cold war with a lot of sabre rattling. The Americans also give the children chewing gum after  they invade. Why not before? Can’t someone invent a missile that flies over a country and  drops a ton of chocolate or chewing gum? I think I’ll stop short of suggesting guns that fire aniseed balls and gob stoppers. Remember them? There’s a blast from the past…

My mind’s started wandering back now to those magic days of barley sugar, aniseed balls, gob stoppers and laxative chocolate…

Please use the comments box to share your thoughts. Any ideas what we could use laxative chocolate for?

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