Page 14 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.


One awful event after the other. Writing this "View" I cannot get out of my mind the awful events of the last few months. Events that have involved both horrific acts of terror against ordinary people just going about their everyday lives. When it seemed things could not get any more horrific along comes the tragedy that is a burning high rise block of flats. Grenfell Tower was home for many families and people living on their own... We now know that the building and many others just like it were "Not fit for habitation" by cause of cladding that was not fire proof, coupled with a host of supplementary faults and issues. A public enquiry has been called and it must be hoped that identification of what went wrong is discovered and that steps are taken to make sure a tragedy on this scale cannot happen again. The sight of that burning tower is a sight that will long remain in my mind.


General Election 2017. I was tempted to have a go at the folly and sheer incompetence and arrogance of the utterly useless Theresa May in calling a general election and then not having the leadership, and I suspect the intellect, to see such an event through to completion. No thought I ....enough on the politics of 'Power and Superiority'.... let's have a look at the better and more amusing side of politics in the U.K. My favourite Party Leader has to be the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party ....none other than the wonderfully named "Howling Laud Hope". This chap appeared on The Daily Politics and announced some key points of his party 'Manicfesto' ...a couple of my favourites.... 1. The Monster Raving Loony Party will when elected issue a 99p coin.... this will do away with all the loose change floating around the economy. 2. When elected all the population will be issued with woolly hats. Then in times of crisis the wool can be pulled over their eyes. To be fair and impartial I also looked at the manifesto of "Lord Buckethead".... Lord Buckethead you will remember ran against the 'weak and wobbly' Theresa May in Maidenhead and captured some 200


QF Focus Magazine


plus votes. Lord Buckethead proposes that when elected he will... Make a public statement saying he will spend 100 billion pounds on Trident Nuclear Submarines.... He also says he will make a private statement saying that he will cancel the spending of 100 billion on Trident Nuclear Submarines.... and, as the submarines are a secret nobody will know what's going on ...it's a win, win situation. Lord Buckethead also announced that he would legalise the 'Hunting of Fox Hunters' and for his finale announced that no third runway would be built at Heathrow... when asked why Lord Buckethead said "where we are going, we don't need runways".


Naughty Brits on holiday. A remarkable story is doing the rounds on the theme of "Thieving Brits committing massive fraud on Spanish hotels". Spanish hoteliers claim that the amount of insurance claims made by British holiday makers in respect of food poisoning has gone through the roof (or more likely down the toilet). The Spanish hotel industry says these claims are made in respect of food poisoning by people who are on all inclusive holidays. The claim is that false claims, some as many as three years old, cost approximately 52 million pounds in the holiday year 2016. Tour operators in Mallorca reported a 700% rise in food poisoning insurance claims. It is claimed that if these claims were true then a worldwide health alert would have been issued. It seems that the simple matter that medical evidence is seldom needed to make a claim, is what is fuelling the insurance fraud. To combat the fraud all claimants will now have to see a Doctor before a claim can be pursued. As a last resort it has been mooted that Brits and all inclusive, will not be offered if the trend does not abate.


Is it a Duck? Just read a brilliant newsfeed about cars and car horns... apparently scientists have deduced


that the


sound of a car horn is both stressful and aggressive to


drivers as well as being startling and distracting


to


pedestrians. So what does high science suggest the motor industry should do to calm the jangling nerves of drivers and pedestrians alike? Well the old adage "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then there is a good chance it is a duck"....could about to be revised. Now if it sounds like a duck, it could well be a motor car. Yes the suggestion that car horns should replace the aggressive "honk... honk" with a more socially acceptable and less aggressive "quack... quack" noise has been floated (duck like again) to the motor industry. Will us drivers soon be driving everyone quackers? We will have to wait and see.


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