James Miller

 

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Car Parking For Parents

 

These should be at a reasonable, but safe, distance from the store, so that the kids get some exercise rather than riding around in 4x4s.

Have you noticed how cars with blacked-up windows and car seats are often in Parent/Child spaces, but children are often nowhere to be seen?

Monday, September 17, 2007

Ten from Suffolk

 

The FT started this by ten greatest from. Here's my lot for Suffolk.

Strangely there is no term for a man or woman from Suffolk. Perhaps, it’s
because they are the South Folk.

Here’s ten from Suffolk :-

Benjamin Britten
John Constable
Bernie Ecclestone
Edward Fitzgerald
Elizabeth Frink
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Thomas Gainsborough
Peter Hall
Bob Hoskins
John Mills
Trevor Nunn
Charlotte Rampling
Thomas Wolsey

I know there’s thirteen but who can you leave out? If you must it’ll be
Hoskins, Fitzgerald and Britten.

They are a very slewed bunch though containing the arch-schemers Ecclestone
and Wolsey and a host of the artistic great and good. Three women too and
two of those were probably the best things to ever come out of Haverhill.

Friday, September 14, 2007

What do Retired People do all Day?

 

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. Well for example, the other day I went into town and went into a shop. I was only in there for about 5 minutes, when I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

I went up to him and said, "Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a f***** break?" He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi t*rd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tyres.

So I called him a s---head. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn't care. I came into town by bus. I try to have a little fun each day now that I'm retired. It's important at my age...

Monday, September 10, 2007

Small Developments

 

The CPRE today published a report saying we were losing all our countryside.

I own and live on a 100 hectare stud farm near Newmarket.

One of the solutions to housing, is to infill with small developments. On my land I own two appalling, single brick, 1950s built three bedroom houses, that need an awful lot of energy to run them. They should be demolished on energy grounds alone. They are on a large plot, which could easily accommodate perhaps six to eight dwellings, which properly designed would improve the environment. I would never get planning permission.

Note that the area of England is about 50,000 square miles. This means that to create the 3,000,000 new properties we need, would only need 60 dwellings per square mile.

Many of these could be built as small infill developments where they are needed with hardly any intrusion at all.

But those like the CPRE and the Nimbys don’t want this type of development, as obviously if we had enough houses in the UK, then prices would fall to their historic level against earnings. That would be an absolute tragedy.

Immigration

 

One of the largest groups of immigrants into this country are the French. It’s over 250,000 in the last ten years. There are also a lot of Spanish, Dutch, Italians and Scandinavians.

No-one ever complains about them.

So why do people complain about the other immigrants?

Racism.