Anyone can be a car dealer in Bucks

Anyone can be a car dealer in Bucks nowadays. You don’t need a fancy showroom evidently. All you need to do is to stick a FOR SALE sticker on the car you wish to flog and park it in a strategic place. No premises outlay, no manic advertising in the local press. The real trick is to make it look like a private sale by parking the car in a place where it will get noticed (near a residential area) but will not stick out like a sore thumb.
Take a look around next time you are out and about. It’s like a huge urban garage.

On the spot domestic fines

Dear readers. I need your advice and views. I accidentally broke one of my partner’s favourite figurines last week. The darn thing broke into several pieces when I dropped it on the carpet. My partner rushed into the front room to see me holding the base of her beloved figurine and her eyes were drawn to the rest of it lying on the floor. I tried to explain that it was an accident and that I really did not deliberately drop it, but she was in no mood for explanations. “That cost £45” she said in a scene reminiscent of Fawlty Towers, “And you will pay me all of it now!” I meekly agreed and went upstairs to fish the money out of my piggy-bank savings. I do wonder now if I should have agreed to pay for it. After all, it was an accident. What do you think? – was my partner being reasonable?

Where have all the jobs gone in Buckinghamshire?

Having lived in Buckinghamshire for a couple of years now I am surprised at the lack of big industry in and around the county. I know High-Wycombe and Marlow are a reasonable source of working opportunities but outside of them and say, Milton Keynes there is a not a hotbed of new and vibrant industries coming in. If you look at any local paper you will find plenty of jobs for caring and the council, and a number of sales and administration job, but other than that, nothing much to write home about. I must have been spoiled when I lived near the M4 corridor. That place is teaming with new industry. By comparison, Bucks seems to be just a rural community with a few large industrial estates. I fear for its economic future if this is all there is.

30 year rule

We British are devilishly clever at hiding things. Rather than facing the music immediately, we have devised a system where anything that could be deemed ‘sensitive’ would not be broadcast until thirty years after the event. Plenty of time for the secret ‘fixers’ in the establishment to manipulate the information that will eventually come out. A rather convenient consequence of the rule is the effect the passage of time has on lessening the impact of the event; things don’t seem to matter so much when being looked at thirty years later. I write this as a warning that we are letting the establishment hide behind this rule. It should be scrapped. I want to see our democracy be fair and true to its people. It cannot be while it hides behind its cloak of secrecy.