I have to travel back to the UK at some stage but I'm not looking forward to it.

I loved my decades in London during the 70s/80s/ early 90s. It was the best of times. So many inventive people and so much life.

It's odd living in a country where the sky is almost permanently beautifully blue (mind you -winter at the moment in Oz is vicious & as cold as any UK winter)..but I've never forgotten te atmosphere of London in Summer..there is no feeling like that anywhere. I will always recall a real feeling of excitement ..that something terrific was just about to happen..is that odd?

However, London (and much of the UK) has priced people out of the property market. Just as in New York- when it becomes so very expensive it stifles creativity as the young talented can no longer crash on cheap floors of cheap flats.(my few good friends in NY live in rent-controlled flats)

# the late Who manager Kit Lambert credited the 60s/70s boom in British music ( Beatles., Stones, Who and so many) as having come about via the dole and the ability of young people to survive in Notting Hill Gate etc etc even if 6 to a room..and get together a band.

In 1981 I was able hire a disused restaurant in Camden Lock with electricity, a stage etc for £10 a week for bands I managed to rehearse in because the owner was happy for anyone to use it..imagine today ???

This sums up the ghastliness of GB today..a vulgar, nasty little man boasting about how rich he is. It's crass, it's nasty, it's viscious..he mocks those from the same working class who struggle .. (millions of them),,but it's also so bloody normal now ..just as millions of Americans love the crook Donald Trump.

# will anyone ever tell "Lord" (talk about devaluing titles) Alan Sugar that when he arrived in his quite substantial yacht in St Tropez that people in the smarter bars laughed about how ugly and tasteless it was?.

## Should I tell him that I know someone that bought one of his older Rollers that it was a heap of junk and had not been serviced by Rolls Royce but a cheap mechanic & subsequently no accredited Roll's mechanic would touch it?

Sugar makes most of the Russian Oligarchs look like the bastions of class and good taste.

How the other half live.

I did pump in to Dawn French, at a service station last year and she drove a very average car.

What a horrible man Sugar must be. Just had a quick look at his Twitter account, and he's apparently appearing at "CLIMB CON, an all-day event where Piers Morgan, myself and other guests will share our stories, wisdom and advice". Two big-heads for the price of one. Sounds like something to avoid.

I wonder if there may have been a deterioration in behaviour with the advent of those TV programmes like The Weakest Link and Big Brother and the subsequent slew of other "reality" and contest-type programmes, which seem to involve bullying and humiliating people, doing them down and setting them against each other. Or perhaps these programmes are just a reflection of how society has developed.

Green Man wrote:
How the other half live.

I did pump in to Dawn French, at a service station...

Right there on the forecourt?

Randall wrote:
Green Man wrote:
How the other half live.

I did pump in to Dawn French, at a service station...

Right there on the forecourt?

Yes.

Jo wrote:
What a horrible man Sugar must be. Just had a quick look at his Twitter account, and he's apparently appearing at "CLIMB CON, an all-day event where Piers Morgan, myself and other guests will share our stories, wisdom and advice". Two big-heads for the price of one. Sounds like something to avoid.

I wonder if there may have been a deterioration in behaviour with the advent of those TV programmes like The Weakest Link and Big Brother and the subsequent slew of other "reality" and contest-type programmes, which seem to involve bullying and humiliating people, doing them down and setting them against each other. Or perhaps these programmes are just a reflection of how society has developed.

I am still annoyed I bought Amstrad GX4000.

My (rambling) point is that in the past if a notable figure posted something like this the media or numerous other public figures would come down on him like a ton of bricks.

Few people envy very rich or privileged people..otherwise the Royal Family would not be loved or tolerated by the majority..but Sugar's crassness at flaunting his wealth to me is emblematic of how far Britain;s society has verged towards US style "love of wealth"..where money is almost idolized and those in poverty are blamed for their own condition.

One example I always hated in the USA was the fraudulent and ridiculous claim that the country was so inclusive that "anyone can grow up and become President"....what all 300 million of them? Not enough years on the planet.

If every Brit was as rich as "lord" Alan Sugar then he wouldn't actually be rich nor would anyone else.

It's along the lines of "the rich create the wealth" so the poorer should be bloody grateful but in reality..the rich need the poor as customers ..without customers they wouldn't be rich !!

It's a mutual effort.

20/30 years ago those who would have come down on Sugar but ignore him today, would actually be Conservatives yet he's a New Labour man and exemplifies for me, one of greatest tragedies in UK political life )..Tony Blair who dragged Labour so far to the right and well beyond the old Tories so that the current Tories went even further and now we end up with..a pathological liar..a blatant liar whose lies are there in print for all to see..whose former employer and old style Tory Max Hastings says is not fir to be PM.will be PM.

And love or loathe him the only alternative Jeremy Corbyn is painted as a Marxist because his polices (as decided by party members) are just polices that Britain operated under Tory & Labour governments for decades. Not a single radical policy among them.

Coupled with a US President who can now just say " I built that wall between the US & Mexico" and millions believe him?

It will all end in tears.

Hedda, why do you have to travel back here when it sounds like it will be non stop irritation?

You make a lot of points I sympathise with Hedda, but I can't think of any modern society of whatever political colour where one could not evidence examples of vulgar ostentatious and tastleless shows of wealth..I suspect it may even occur in modern Australia?

honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
Hedda, why do you have to travel back here when it sounds like it will be non stop irritation?

well of course I still Love the UK and want to see very good friends who won't come to me and I'm a'moaning a'plenty and of course..there are still multi-millions of wonderful people in the country.

Mind you all the people I want to see now live in the country and not in the city any more.

I spent the best 30 years living just off Portobello Road in a tiny Mews flat and so loved the area and the people. But though I've visited the UK several times I've never made it back to Notting Hill

Today a visiting English pal accompanied me on a visit to an IKEA in Sydney and as we returned we drove down a fairly smart street heading for my favorite fish'n'chip reastaurant. My pal said "these very smart cafes and shops..they look exactly like Westbourne Grove now and ..like Ibiza which is nothing like when we both went there together twice a long time ago...I bet you would hate it.

And I responded that yes, all the smart little boutiques etc basically look like a Westfield Plaza ..but just laid out in a High Street and those bloody Westfields are now everywhere.

And then he said..having country hopped all the way to Oz staying in AirB&Bs that "that bloody IKEA will probably give me nightmares as every frigging flat I stayed in..Rome, Paris, Berlin Lisbon was decorated with IKEA furniture"

# while diplomatically not mentioning that my spare room where he is bedding down in is..furnished by IKEA.

And thus an endless conversation ensued as two old codgers (one very handsome and young looking) bemoaned the sameness of the world and how everywhere looks like a Westfield as he said he got a tad depressed in Marrakesh as there were billboards everywhere for Cartier, Gucci etc etc.

## I had just helped a journalist pal with research about the founder of Westfield, Sir Frank Lowy who has retired (after selling his Westfield shares for $32Billion) to Israel and sold all his Australian homes.

Sir Frank emigrated in the 1950s to Oz..he was jailed by the Brits in Palestine as he belonged to the Haganah who the British government deems a terrorist group..knighted 3 years ago by HM The Queen.

My pal then said "we should go home, your drunk and your'e a bloody nightmare when you drink Vodka".