A few months ago my best mate and world famous hairdresser Geoffrey was awarded the prestige of being Australian Colourist of the year, which if you didn't know is very flash. As part of his award he received 2 tickets to Britain to attend the world biggest hair expo...kinda like AgShow of FarmFest for Hairdressers, and crazily he offered me his plus one. Being pretty much broke since leaving my Lamb business and devoting much of my time to charity work and volunteering in Sydney I was very reluctant to take him up on his offer.

However as the trip was only 10 days and we worked out we would stay with mates mostly he convinced me it would be a pretty cheap trip and we needed to get away as both of us had had a pretty stressful past few years thanks to the ins and outs of being small business owners.

Also I was put in contact with quite a few dog trainers doing some really cutting edge stuff, so it made the trip all the more reasonable in my frugal mind.

So without too much planning we were off, as it was to be my first time in Hong Kong, I couldnt sleep on the first leg dispite take off being at 11pm... I had desperately wanted to be in Hong Kong for the Handover back in 1997, however we were just too busy on the farm for me to have the time off. Well the clouds parted to see a few high rises just as we landed then it was confinement to the airport for 3 or 4 hours till our connecting flight to London. Well being confined to a pracitical city inside a single roof was more like it.... the airport was intensely huge!! But what entertained us the most was the political correctness...the signs everywhere were beyond funny and overly polite...I mean an amreican would hate it...absolutley impossible to sue for stupidity...they had everything covered with a polite warning sign.

We made firends in the waiting lounge with a 50 something lady from North Queensland who was having her first O/S journey. Unfortunately her husband like many folks had zero interest in seeing anything but Australia, so finnally she was treating herself to a Businness Class World Trip. Having a gym buddy in Sydney who has the Qantas PJs top, which Ive tried to theive I asked her if I could get her to give me hers when she arrived in London..and she propmptly whisked out the top and handed it to me then an there. Well didnt i just think my christmases had all come at once.

The flight through to London had me glued to the window, mesmerised by Chinas developement of its mountains and deserts, it is mind boggling what that country has done to its natural environment. Whole cities and irrigation projects covering vast areas of former  sand dunes and salt flats. Thousands upon thousands of wind turbines litter desolate valleys like ghostly giants cascading towards the desert dunes.

The incredible ability of the communal effort of man is replicated across the vastness of Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine, whereby the landscape has been dramatically altered for the production of food for the once powerful USSR. Finally after so many hours several kilometres above the earth we began descending across the serene islands of scandanavia when the clouds that keep western Europe a rich green obscured the view.

At last the familair site of the British Countryside appeared through the grey clouds, the row upon row of brown brick houses all neatly alined along the higgledy-piggledy of streets, with the beautiful old spires of churches and school fields punctuating the mass of housing, which seem to act as islands in the seas of green and freshly turned brown fields of the farmland.

From above Britain was just as it had been since I was last here and seemed to be as it had been since the industrial revolution had culminated in this remaking of the countryside with the mechanisation of farming and the race to build these rows upon rows of brown brick homes for the Jones's and the Smith's. However all was not as it appeared from above, England was a vastly different place to what it had been when I first landed on her muddy landscape 11 years earlier. 

When I first arrived in Britain it was so different to what I had in my mind. It was a land of two societies the Britain outside of the cities was just as I had imagined, a land of Britons, politeness, affordable food, well tended gardens, incredible politeness and affability. In the cities  and Essex it could have been a totally different nation. Earls Court once the domain of antipodeans so much so it was nicknamed 'Kangaroo Court' seemed to be a mini North Africa and the rest of London, Birmingham, Oldham and Manchester seemed to me colonised by Europeans,Africans, Asians and Indians and those Brits that were in those cities lacked the manners and kindness of their countryman. The streets were not places even I as a bulletproof male just out of his teens felt comfortable being in this was due to both the people just hanging around as well as just the decay of the place.

It seemed every pram I saw was being pushed by seemingly unmarried teenagers, with peroxide hair and muffin tops yelling vulgarities and hanging out in malls and shopping areas as if to be showing off the products of their promiscuity. Back then I felt as though I was some what old fashioned in my views and just viewed the place as it was...a foreign country.

This visit for me cemented my view that Urban Britain is in a Sate of Decay, the use of language of the young was almost alien to me, regardless of race it seems the poorer members of society have decided that the poorer your use of English the more 'cool' you are. I was unlucky too to catch up with the offspring of the hordes of muffin topped peroxided hangarounders that I noticed everywhere throughout the malls of the cities and the town centres, there seems to be this huge population of totally disrespectful youth that have only wannabe gangstas, soccer hooligans and page 3 girls to look up to.

Right now having spent a week in Britain and I really do believe that this joint is a lost cause, the level of drunkardness by its working classes is increased from when I lived here all those years ago and could not keep up when I was trying my best. For the average worker it is getting drunk each night at the pub that is the out they have from their daily grind. The culture of hooliganism has spread even further with the streets just full of young people immitating gangstas, with their hoodies, trackies, bad haircuts full of gel,  just hanging out.

Looking at this country that in my own fathers time ruled the world I am fearful where they are headed with this obvious trend that is only intensified during the period I have been visiting. The working classes focusing on getting drunk and getting stuck on the credit cards reliance and not worrying where their children are, and angry at the fact that they are not as 'loaded' as others in societies. When the GFC finally catches up with them, they lose their jobs and they cant pay their credit cards and drink the welfare money they will no doubt end up on the streets as angry people. But it will be too late as their kids will have already been out the night before and smashed the joint in.

My fear is Australia is set to follow this sad state of Britain and in the years to come when the mass of children born to young parents on the back of the 'baby bonus' that have grown up without a reasonable role model.

Well thats my whinge for the week.... Now we are headed out of what I am calling a sesspit to a place I have never been but look forward to seeing as i have never heard a bad word about it... Paris.