It’s a nippy 16 degrees and mostly sunny here in Marbella today. Not sure why, but I can’t keep myself from watching with interest (and despair) the bizarre and ruinous goings on in the UK. Is it just me, or is the country falling apart at the seams? Brexit was supposed to be a savior, but the small boats keep coming. We used to get builders and plumbers arriving on Ryanair, now it’s criminals in rubber dinghies. Nice job Brexiteers!!

I see Royal Mail is going to be pawned off to a Czech billionaire; the arch-bishop of Canterbury has fallen on his sword over not doing enough to get rid of a perv-priest, and his stand-in is already in hot water for the same thing.

When this column was suggested to me I thought I’d struggle to keep it going… You can only slag off Labour and Keir Starmer so many times before people get bored. But what I see from over here is the decline of a once great nation. The economy is a complete turd, and in a desperate attempt to shore up the ship we’re still selling off anything of any value to whoever will pay the highest price.

Did we not learn a lesson from the water company debacle? And now I see the same bastards who have trousered billions from the UK’s water supply monopoly now want the punters they have fleeced for decades to stump up the cash to fix all the broken pipes they have been ignoring for years. It’s a shit-show, and that’s not a metaphor, and if you don’t believe me try going for a swim in any of the UK’s major rivers. Weil’s Disease or a nasty bout of Giardia anyone!?

Then there’s the not unexpected move to renationalise the railway system. I guess there are a lot of voters who are not old enough to remember how bad British Rail used to be, and I’m not just talking about the three-day old cheese sandwiches they used to sell on the stations and in the buffet cars.

It’s hard to figure out when this state of confusion, disorganisation and incompetence will end, and I realise I have pointed and blamed the chaos on the private and public sector, but what I see is beyond politics and economics. It’s about a country in a state of extreme and perhaps terminal decline. Nothing works as it should; the government has no idea, or indeed the talent, to turn things around, and even the church is rotten from the inside out.

I left the UK primarily because I could not in good conscience continue to live under a socialist Labour government that would not help an already bad situation. And as predicted they have hiked taxes and figured out how to fill out a dodgy loan application to lump an extra 50 billion quid worth of debt on our children and grandchildren. But it’s more than just that; it’s a nation in its death throes. There are scandals everywhere you look, dodgy deals, sexual predator vicars, lying cabinet ministers, and everything is for sale to the highest bidder.

And to top things off the UK’s generals reckon we’d struggle to hold out against a Russian attack for any more than a year, and Chinese secret agents are taking tea a Buckingham Palace. And what does Keir Starmer do in response? It seems a £50 million bung to the new so-called government of Syria will make everyone feel better.

Buena suerte mis amigos y una feliz navidad para todos ustedes!