The Mexile

I went to the little Eurochange currency shop in Bournemouth this week. I needed some Thai bahts. Alas, like most of the shops on that stretch of the town centre, it’s shut down. Although it turned out that Eurochange is closed because there was a fire in the flats above the shop. Some, probably most, of the several thousand gallons of water lobbed into the building by the fire brigade made its way to ground level. Unfortunate, but it’s another nail in the coffin of Bournemouth as a retail centre.  I could write a long piece about the decline of Bournemouth, but a chap called Peter Viney has already produced an exceedingly thorough account of the towns travails, so I won’t bother. I’ll just add that’s it got worse since his last update. Fat Face is also now gone. Starbucks in the Triangle too. Starbucks!! When coffee shops up-sticks and off-bugger….well, that is the retail equivalent of a fat lady singing, isn’t it? And Specsavers closed its doors for the last time on Christmas Ev...

Politics 2026 in the United Kingdom. Where are we at? To summarise: we have a far-right populist who is telling his fanbase, the rich and the racist, exactly what they want to hear. He’s not afraid of upsetting people, although his recent success means he is at least trying to pretend that he didn’t spend his youth advocating for Jews to be gassed. We have a far-left populist who’s is doing much the same but whose message is aimed fair and square at the poor, and folk who still think Jews should be gassed. Above Hadrians Wall is a bunch of folk with nationalist dreams, but I’ve no idea what they’re saying anymore, and I’m not sure they do either. The Welshists are all probably very nationalist too, but it’s spoken with that delightful, soothing sing-song Welsh twang from the valleys, so it sounds lovely. But in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t much matter. There is the natural party of government, currently on the opposition benches, and they say whatever the far-right populist say...