When I'm cleaning windows .....

George Formby has a lot to answer for. Why do the British have this obsession with cleaning windows?
Okay, when I was growing up on a council estate in a "north eastern coastal town" almost every house on the estate had a coal fire, with chimneys belching smoke and little bits of smut all day and all of the night. This resulted in washing getting dirty on the line, lungs filling up with grit and dirty windows. I love a roaring coal fire myself and I sincerely believe we should have stuck with it. Nobody seemed to suffer from Asthma in those good old days. And economically we would be better off too, because instead of paying arabs for oil we could still be digging up the coal that Britain is built on. Despite popular belief the mines are far from spent we are literally sitting on a coal mine. Bizarrely it is currently cheaper to buy in foreign coal for our limited modern usage than to dig it up ourselves. As ever I digress.
The absence of smutty bits on the windows means that barring the odd nose print from nosey neighbours and the occasional splat of pigeon poop there is no good reason to wash our windows as regularly as we do. It seems to be a bit of snobbish one upmanship in most cases, with neighbours paying a man once a week to wash their windows for them for no readily apparent benefit. The prime purpose of the windows in my house is to let light in, with a secondary benefit being that I can see who is coming towards my house so I can decide whether to hide behind the sofa or not. Were it not for the former requirement a CCTV camera would suffice. I accept that some folks get a third benefit, that of a stunning view, or at least a view of some sort, but all I really get is a view of my garden, and that of my neighbour, which serves only to remind me that his garden always looks better than mine except when it snows, which is a great leveller, or when it's very dark, although by then I have usually drawn the curtains. In effect, clean windows only serve to remind me it's time to mow the lawn.
But those who have their windows cleaned weekly, or monthly - what benefit do they derive from this? Surely the increased light transmission acquired from the removal of a microscopic amount of perceived dirt thus removed is immeasurable? If a pigeon plops on the glass it is unsightly and I will aim to wash it off quickly, say three or four days after the event, but that doesn't mean I get the ladders and bucket out and spend half a day scraping, washing and polishing. A simply wipe of the afflicted area is all that is required. I do the full bucket wash and ladder thing maybe twice a year, and that is more than enough. It's not easy balancing up there with a shammy, squeegee and a banjo.