Page 16 w The Top
A View From
Welcome to my monthly column “A view from the top”. Hopefully you will find my rambling readable maybe even enjoyable. You may agree or you may disagree with my views, I care not. These are my views long held and forged over a life time of work, travel and experience. Now that’s over let’s have a look at what is really winding me up.
Motorway madness and corporate greed. Went shopping the other day to the shopping emporium that is Zenia Boulevard. We went in search of new ceiling fans as our old ones have stopped a twirling due to overuse in this unbearable heat. Our route from the Quesada roundabout as directed my navigator (er indoors) took us off toward San Miguel from where we nipped onto the AP7 motorway for all of a couple of kilometers…off at the Hospital onto the N332 to finish the journey to Zenia boulevard. This route was dictated by the simple fact that to travel down the AP7 at this time of year to shop at Zenia Boulevard would cost a whopping 14 Euros 80 cents return due to their being two toll booths between Quesada and Zenia… each costing 3.70 Euros a piece. This utter greed is why the AP7 is empty and all the surrounding roads are packed with motorists avoiding the outrageous toll charges. Why oh why cannot the motorway controllers see the folly of their ways… a drop in price to say one euro per toll booth would see the motorway doing what it was designed to do…i.e.… carry the traffic through the bottleneck that is the N332 along our local coastline. What happens now due to the cost is that people simply will not pay the tolls and the N332 is a traffic nightmare. Someone needs to bang some heads together and sort this mess out.
Man’s inhumanity to man’s best friend. Near where I have my stately pile there is a car lot …this car lot is open air and is placed at the entrance to a housing urbanisation. Recently occupied, the new owners have decided that despite the locked high fencing around the car lot a guard dog is needed to protect the cars when the human presence is off site. When the people are on site the dog is kept in an outside fenced off area with a kennel and very little shade… when closed the dog is allowed to walk free around the site… although in this searing heat he spends most of his time lying under one car or another searching for shade… When the lot closes on Saturday he is left
QF Focus Magazine
on his own until Monday morning when the car lot opens again. I have spoken to the people on site… in fact I shouted at them that in my opinion the dog was being mistreated… they did not understand …not only the language but more importantly the fact that in this day and age dogs being domesticated animals deserved more of their owners than to be used in aggressive or combat roles. My understanding after some discrete enquiries is that “it has to be proved” that animals are being mistreated before action can be taken…Is what I describe wrong, or am I just being too sensitive to what I am seeing…it just does not look right to me. As if that wasn’t enough I note that the Circus in Torrevieja near Carrefour is back and once again majestic elephants are on show in a closed environment rather than as nature intended roaming free. When will the barbaric practice of enclosing wild animals in cages end… nature reserves and wide open theme parks that are managed for the animals and in their best interests should be the way forward …travelling around in a cage for the benefit of gawping humans is a thing of the past and civilised behaviour should dictate that the practice is outlawed now. Talking about outlawing things..... well don’t even get me started on the shooting of Cecil the lion!
What Oh Pluto.
Fascinated to watch the news about the fly past of the planet Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft. Many years ago I did some fill in work assisting 12 year old children within the science environment at a local Hampshire secondary school. Part of the term study was about the Earth and its solar system. In an effort to educate and enlighten the little darlings I used the letter attachment method to teach the children how to remember the names of the Planets within our solar system…It goes MVEMJSUNP…My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets…Hence we have Mercury…Venus... Earth…Mars…Jupiter…Saturn…Uranus…Neptune…Pluto.
In
this method not only do you get the names but they are also in order …nearest to farthest. Imagine my shock when in 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a non planet rendering all my hard work only 8/9ths accurate. For the following years the once planet discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 at a distance of 4.67 billion miles or 7.5 billion kilometres became a non planet. Until that is New Horizons was launched and after almost 10 years in space flew past Pluto and low and behold it appears she is larger than at first thought, and is of more substance also. The hope is that once again Pluto will be given back its planet status …With a lovely touch NASA allowed a canister containing ashes of the late Clyde Tombaugh on the spacecraft …I wonder what he thought as he flew past his celestial child.
The super soar away Sun. Much tut tut tuting as the Sun newspaper publishes photos of HRH Queen Elizabeth II giving a Nazi salute. That the picture was from early in the 1930s and that the Queen was then only 7 years old was not the point says the current bun… it’s history and the story should be told. Now I agree that the story should not be hidden… but the story is really about the fascist supporting establishment of the time in Britain in the 1930s, it is not about a seven year old girl doing what her father tells her to do. My concern is that in today’s Britain if little Johnny shows his willy in the classroom or if little Julie calls someone a name that may not be seen as PC then a teacher will make a note about the “tendencies” of very young children …a note that will be put on file and can follow the child through life giving potentially all the wrong pointers about the child’s now adult persona. If it was alright for HRH the Queen to give a Nazi salute then it’s alright for little Johnny to show his willy…it’s about things children do, it’s not about forming behaviour patterns for later life.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28