Was This a Visit From a Friend?

Hi Everyone

It seems that the topic of free speech has been again in the news this week. We all appreciate that we are able to express our opinions, but with that comes responsibility. Like everyone else, I have my opinions but I try very hard not to include anything in this Rubbish that anyone would find offensive or provocative. Yes, I am critical and wish that I could change the world we live in but unfortunately, on many topics, people’s opinions are becoming polarised and dangerous. This week, Trump has been here for two days for the world’s most expensive massage, not for a dodgy leg or a pain in his neck, if you get my drift, but for his ego. It is one of the things of the things that we still excel in and our royal family, together with a thousand year old castle, over a thousand of our service men and women and goodness knows how many chefs did a wonderful job. While they were enjoying their banquet, we were at home with a coffee and a biscuit watching the jaw dropping The Donald Trump Show on our TV screens, chronicling the love affair and later divorce with Elon Musk among many other things. There were scenes of Musk in the White House at a cabinet meeting with his four year old son and another of him walking through the White House with his son on his shoulders. Like many of us, I would love to know what our Royal family and the staff in the White House really think, but perhaps free speech does not stretch that far. 

This week, the European kite championships took place. Now this really upset me as I could not find all those kites that I made as a young boy. Like everything else, I could see that the kites on show this week were light years ahead of the ones that we made. With six weeks of school summer holidays, we needed something special to while away the time, as thankfully, we had no mobile phones, or even ordinary phones and certainly no Play stations. Now, when it came to making kites, I had more friends than usual as I supplied a key part, the lightweight wooden cross made from orange box wood from the Vegetable, Fruit …………shop held together with cotton. It was then off to the local newspaper shop for the coloured tissue paper and a ball of string. The wood frame was wrapped in tissue paper and glued with a mixture of flour and water, before a string tail with bows of paper attached so that the kite would be stable when flying. We all had at least three or four kites, and my friend and I even got enough deposits back from lemonade bottles to buy an extra ball of string so that our kites could fly twice as far. As good as we thought we were with our kites, one boy living in the next street was known to us all as Kenny Kites, as I think that he had a production line in his backyard. Happy days. 

I surprised myself this week as I nearly agreed with something Trump said during his visit. He suggested that he could solve the issue of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel in boats by deploying the Royal Navy. Together with the Border Force, that is something we already do, but their success is complicated by our current laws and that we have to work with our European partners rather than Mexico. What he also said was that by allowing it to continue at the present level, it "would destroy the country from within".. I think that there is some evidence that is already happening.

Just a Thought:

Many countries guarantee their citizens freedom of speech, but they do not guarantee their personal safety after their speech. 

My friend went to the doctors to ask if he had got anything for the wind. He came out with a kite. 

I don't like to talk immigration too much, as that is crossing a border.

Brian