Are Charlton good enough for promotion?

Our favourite Charlton blogger is no longer blogging. Frankie Valley was an important stop in my day to get a more light-hearted view of how the team was doing. So that just leaves us with a more serious look.

So to answer the question on whether they are good enough I can honestly say, "I don't know". The last three games have been a loss (Scunthorpe), a win (Palace) and a draw (Sheffield Wednesday). The best of the midfielders, Reid, went off to Sunderland last month. I guess a loss against fellow promotion candidates Watford on Saturday would tell us not to hope too much while a win would put us right back in the race.

Do we really want an Eton educated prime minister?

The Conservatives try and explain to us that we should grow up and not discriminate against a politician just because he went to Eton... Yet every time I hear Cameron at Prime Minister's question time the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise. It's that upper class yob way of speaking down to the commoners I hear in his voice. He even makes feel sorry for Gordon Brown, which takes some doing.

Maybe it's just my age or background that makes me feel that way. It will be interesting to see how Boris does in the London Mayor's election and whether he can overcome the same hurdle. With Maggie they bought in voice trainers to rid her of some of the plum. Major and Heath had a more middle class neutral sound but Cameron still has the schoolboy in him.

Charlton Athletic 1-0 Stoke

A good win against a tough league side. Sounds like they did everything about right. It puts Charlton back above local rivals Crystal Palace in the league which is always a good thing. Charlton are 5th. but only 4 points behind the leaders. In fact 10 points covers the first eleven teams which shows how competitive this league is. (For people of my age it's still Division Two, not the Championship, and it's Division One instead of the Premier League.)

Elitism at Work

So Peter Hain resigns and Rose Gibb, who had already resigned, gets a £75,000 pay off. Rose Gibb was the chief of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust where up to 90 patients died due to a bacterial infection caused by poor cleaning. The cleaning problems were down to lack of staff. Rose Gibb was on a salary of £150,000. Alan Johnson made some noises about not paying her, but this was probably just to take our minds off the fact he didn't support his old friends in the postal workers union at the time. I don't want to take the cheap shots at Rose Gibb like Alan Johnson, the Murdoch tabloids can do that far better than either of us.

But... how can a government that made a point of giving the NHS so much more money than the Tories, and won the first Blair election against sleaze in the then Tory government, get into such a mess. It's the arrogance of the buggers that's get me. Peter Hain is not going to admit anything. Alan Johnson is not going to make any significant change to the NHS.

What is the problem with this New Labour. I suspect it's just a dose of elitism. They do trust the common people. They trust people like themselves, people who can be highly paid administrators in the NHS, not sisters, nurses and cleaners. The elite know better. Peter Hain can be as crooked as he wants because he is part of this elite.

Everyone wants to be a cavalier, nobody wants to be a roundhead. They all believe in their divine right to rule. There are no Levellers left. I'm no longer a revolutionary, but sometimes I wonder if the second British revolution is long overdue. We need a dose of common sense and commonwealth.

Or maybe Gordon Brown is like Oliver Cromwell's son Richard, just there to hand over power over to the cavaliers after his father's death. Just had a quick peep on Wikipedia. Richard Cromwell reigned for just 8 months. His enemies called him Tumbledown Dick and Queen Dick. What is it they calling Gordon Brown, Mr. Benn!

Bangsue Junction Railway Yards

Bangsue Junction

Bangsue Junction, it's a couple of syllables short of being a really exotic name. Not quite up there with some of the Indian railway names where you would expect to see William Holden falling in love with a beautiful Eurasian girl, in black & white of course.

I had seen the massive railway yards from the elevated expressway a couple of weeks ago while getting to the Morechit northern bus terminal and figured it would make a future walk. Sometimes for the walk I don't mind the lack of interesting scenery as then I can get some thinking done. Other-times some interesting sights can be the impetus needed to get out walking. Yesterday I shed fifty years and became a boy again and got to play with the railways.

Crashed rail carriage in the sidings

One of the good things about Thailand is that it can be fairly laid back on some of the official rules that are now accepted as gospel back home. I don't want to get too "Life on Mars" like, but things have changed, probably for the better, in the UK. Anyway, even with this laid back attitude I thought that a Sunday morning would be best for an exploration of yards as the security would be a little more lax. I drove over at 7 AM.

The yards are really massive and it makes sense that when the business press here talks about the State Railways of Thailand they talk about its property portfolio. The yards are split into cargo sidings, passenger carriages sidings and a large diesel engine workshop. I also found another area where the very upmarket Eastern & Oriental Express railway coaches were parked. These are part of an expensive tour taking in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Railway workers homes

The railway security guys did catch up with me a couple of times just to see what I was up to. Exchanged pleasantries and all was well. Not the reaction if I did it in the UK I think. I did try and stay off the rails and we don't have electric rails here either. There were Sunday shifts both working in the goods yards and in the diesel shed, but everyone was friendly and it was a fine morning's walk. There is a community of railway workers that look fairly settled in a small hamlet made up of vintage railway carriages. Beautiful gardens and even a satellite dish.

Armoured rail car

Near the southern end of the yards near to where the old steam engine in yesterday's picture was on display was this police armoured rail car. Now this looked like pure Hollywood. It should have been full of Federales while Pancho Villa attacked the train. Did Anthony Quinn ever play Pancho?

Getting home I found that it was an ex-British railcar taken to Malaya during the Emergency. 47 were built in the UK by D. Wickham in 1953. In the 1960s two were lent to Thailand and this must be one of those. Anyone who needs this type of information should try and get hold of an out of print book called "The Railways of Thailand" by an Austrian called R. Ramaer.

One last photo for now. Strange items left on a warehouse loading dock.

Warehouse loading dock

Watford 1-1 Charlton Athletic

A good result seeing that Charlton had played extra time in the midweek cup game against West Bromwich Albion before losing on penalties. Sixth in the table today but still hoping for a top two finish.

Went for a drive to, and a walk in, the Bangsue railway yards this morning. More later, but here's a picture.

An evening walk by Suvarnabhumi Airport

I did two trips to the Suvarnabhumi Airport yesterday and on the first spied a long pathway on a wide canal that skirts the western edge of the airport. I decided that after the second trip I would walk a part of it. The problem was I didn't have a chance to do it until 5:45 PM. If you have never lived in the tropics then you wouldn't realize that dusk and dawn are relatively short periods here. One minute it's light and the next it's dark, and vice-versa.

Looking south along the canal and getting dark

I'm not sure whether this is a canal dug to drain the airport area before its construction or one of the much older canals draining the eastern suburbs into the Samut Prakan Chao Prya River estuary. I could only walk about 20 minutes in daylight to the south before turning back and apart from the new airport there wasn't a lot of interest. There were some boys fishing with large cast nets and I was surprised to see large frogs, about 6 inches nose to tail, being reared in net pens in the klong.

FedEx aircraft at the cargo terminal

The western side of the airport is the cargo area and one of the runways. Planes were taking off over me every few minutes so it's certainly busy. One last photo below. I'm not sure if I will do the whole walk on this canal as I think I have a few more interesting walks still to do.

Looking across to the airport