Decorations

It is that time of the year again. Time to put up the Christmas tree and to decorate it. Are we still allowed to call them Christmas trees and Christmas decorations or is it now a requirement to call them Winter Festival Trees and Winter Festival Decorations? I'm not sure in this country any more what the acceptable terms are. Anyhow, the tree is up and decorated courtesy of my wife and daughter. I am chief admirer of their handywork.

For allergy reasons it needs to be an artificial tree these days. I suspect most of the tree and its decorations were made in China. So much of what we consume is made in China nowadays and the high-end stuff we covet which is not made in China is most probably made in Germany. It seems very little is made in Britain. Would perhaps be interesting to do a survey after Christmas Day of all the presents given in a household to see how many were made in Britain. I'll be on safe ground here for one present if I get a bottle of Scotch whisky as I know for sure that it is made in Scotland!

Having now watched the 2 BBC2 programmes on 'The Party's Over' which helps to explain the almighty mess this country is in along with many other European and western countries it seems to me that we need to get much better at producing stuff that other countries want and consume a bit less stuff we don't really need, and to buy only what we can afford. Ho hum.