THANK GOD ITS FRIDAY

The Lyndon house Hotel

There is nothing better at the end of the week than a good pint of real ale, in a good hostelry, with good company.  Early Friday evenings in the Lyndon House Hotel in Walsall is always the best pint of the week, its a chance to wind down and relax a bit with the weekend to look forward to.

So what has been going on over this last week?  As we are in August and Parliament is still in recess we are still in what has become known as the "silly season", and what could have been sillier than the daft comments made by the Lib Dim leader, Nick Clegg

 regarding the provision of our energy needs.  

I had the misfortune of briefly coming into contact with Calamity Clegg in the days when he was an MEP.  It was at a meeting in Nottingham when the scrapping of our pound sterling for the vagaries of the EU's euro was a hot topic.  The local Nottingham newspaper organised a debate on the dubious merits of joining the single currency and Clegg was there to do his best against Britain retaining its sovereign currency and control of our own economy.  At the end of the debate I took this photograph of him for my rogues gallery and he, somewhat contemptuously, spoke to anther person as if I did not exist and said: "It's amazing how these people oppose you and then want to take your photograph" - he is an arrogant individual.  The person who was debating to keep our pound was Edward Spalton, he commented to me that evening that Cameron was a "dangerous young man".

In Cleggy's dream world there is no need for us to seriously consider building nuclear or clean burning coal fired power stations with some urgency, everything is just fine and dandy in his little world and we will not run out of energy.  This however, is not the opinion of many far wiser heads than little Nick who thinks solar panels are the answer.  As Captain Mainwaring would say: "Stupid boy".

Also this last week there has been a call to substantially increase parking charges in town centres, the idea being it will encourage people to use public transport and leave their cars at home.  So what will happen if these ill thought out plans are imposed on a hard pressed and grossly over taxed motoring public?  They will drive even further to out of town shopping complexes where parking is not only a great deal easier, but free too.  The end result will be our town and cities will become ghost towns with shops and stores closed and boarded up.  

If you go back thirty to forty years cars had easy access to city centres, there were no shortages of on street parking and car parks.  These days town centres are closed off to cars which are confined to the outer edges.  Parking spaces are restricted and what there is are usually not cheap, and there are few on-street parking bays.  It is as if the Government want our cities and major towns to close down.

This last week has not been without its share of politicised madness, thank God its Friday and a pint of foaming ale awaits.