The mountain of rubble that was once the West London Magistrates’ Court does not seem to diminish.
The yellow diggers are behaving like a child that doesn’t like its food, moving it around the plate. Now, let’s look at some numbers: the hotel will have 23 storeys (250 feet), cleaning the peregrines’ (use of apostrophe anticipates Tom and Azina bonding) eyrie cost £600 and if you’d like to be a neighbour of mine in Barons Court, stump up £3.25 million.
Imperial College NHS Health Trust stumped up £600 to tidy up chez P Falcon. You may be astonished money was spent on peregrines that could have been targeted on patients. When Charing Cross Hospital was opened by the Queen in 1973 nobody said “oh shit”. Now pigeon shit is an expensive problem and having peregrine falcons keeps the windows clean and saves hiring a falconer.
Next the 3.25 million pound question. Well, if you love Wind in the Willows you can live underground with Mole and Badger. A substantial part of the accommodation is beneath the garden in the foreground. Incidentally, for the avoidance of doubt, the gabled property, top right, is not included.
“As it is the fate of men to die, so is it the fate of governments to grow unpopular. None can escape it. Men attribute their successes to their own merits, their failures to those who rule over them. As most men are unhappy, the combined volume of their misery is a vast burden, continually increasing in weight, which, being transferred to the shoulders of the government, eventually brings it to the ground. No government, nor system of government, has endured for long. However stern the tyranny, it is the governed who always conquer in the end.” (David, Duff Cooper, 1943)
Duff Cooper digresses delightfully and insightfully in his biography of King David. His words are as true as they were 3,000 years ago (it is hazarded that he lived between 1060 and 970 BC) as they were in 1943 and are today. The Soviet Union in 1989 and Belarus today prove his point.
Am I being taken care of by Government UK? A small increase in State Pension, of course it’s not State, it’s my tax being dribbled back, and I am booked in for a COVID-19 vaccination next week ( I am 66, clickety click). Governments often get things wrong but this government’s prescience procuring vaccines is a bright star in a dim pandemic firmament.