PRICES AND VALUES

 Another day of cold snow showers after a minus 6 temperature until a few hours ago. Yesterday,  I was astonished to see in Thurso, 10 miles away, it was warmer, more straightforward and busier than where I live. I went out dressed like Shackleton on a trip to the far-flung north pole, only to discover the heating was on in every shop.  I hope we will see warmer weather soon, allowing the body warmer and T-shirt wear to be recommissioned for at least a few months.  

The charity shop is a roaring trade in jazz vinyl albums that I have been buying recently, this week £3 cheaper than they were last week. In Tesco, the prices have increased again. Taxi fares have also increased. I wonder when it will all collapse? Because at some point, people will stop buying goods and services, forcing prices downwards into a spiral of deflation. Pure greed is the main driving force behind this at the consumer end of the retail industry; we are stupidly paying more and more, they will inflate the prices, and so it goes on. 

The news through media outlets continues to be a distraction via non-stories to hide the real nugget they are trying to hide. That nugget is the Government, for thirteen years, then another thirteen years before we have had the worst administration in my lifetime.

They have all failed on immigration, crime and the EU. 

Now the media has jumped on Gary Lineker, another distraction from the real issues.

We don't want the nasty tribal nationalist attitudes of the thirties where we blame and terrorise one section of the community for being different. Lineker is correct about that, so why didn't he just say that?

The State has no business to poke around and lecture people.

SNOW SCENE ON THE A9.

A picture I took of snow falling outside my bungalow a few years ago on the A9. 

 No Snow at the moment, and the temperature has now dropped to minus 5 outside. 

 Lots of hot tea and food were consumed by me today to keep my energy and protein levels up.

FLAT EARTH SPOTTED ON A SNOWY AFTERNOON IN NORTH SCOTLAND?

 The puddle is in the middle of a snowy, infinite plane.

The Snow covered and overflowing Bottle Bank is seen above.

The Roof is covered in snow. 

The Snow covered roads ungritted in a part of North Scotland 9 miles from Thurso. Freezing cold.

 

Vintage railway film - Operation London Bridge - 1975

This was the first attempt to remodel, upgrade and simplify services out of London Bridge Station since the end of the Second World War. The whole station was in ruins due to wartime damage. The canopy and outer shell are untouched. 

Bermondsey Leather Trail

Bermondsey tanners employed thousands of people; my uncle worked in a tannery, and the chemicals got into his skin and had a particular fragrance. He died from skin cancer a few years ago at age ninety.

We lived across the street from a tannery, a very narrow road. The smell and flies were horrendous. I was 10 years old in 1977, eating my beans on toast at home before returning to school again. Occasionally flatback lorries would arrive, and then, I would see stacks of cowhide or whatever hide it was carrying dripping off the back of a truck. By 1981 it had all been swept away, leaving a large piece of overgrown wasteland behind Sarson's Vinegar untouched for at least fifteen years. Now nothing remains of Sarson's or the tannery. 

It's so sad to see what they have done to the area. I was around 10 when I moved to Bermondsey Street. The area around it was a time capsule from after WW2 until 1990.

Bermondsey was at the heart of Wine, Leather and Antiques. Hartley Jam, Crosse and Blackwell, and Guy's Hospital, all within 10 mins walk. Now it has been swept away.

If you visit LIDL by the flyover, in Old Kent Road, beyond that was The Bricklayers Arms, which was flattened for the flyover. Shops and homes were destroyed. It should never have happened. It was vandalism.

Over the past decade, the vandalism at the hands of developers was the destruction of London Bridge Station and the surrounding areas of Tooley Street, Borough Market, Borough High Street and Bermondsey Street and all roads leading off it.

Paris Police 1905 A Short Review.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0f02n96/paris-police-1905 

BBC Four Saturday at 9 PM Paris Police 1905 was a mix of satire and tragedy worth watching, with some very moral extremes, locking away all the prostitutes while the GPs get the men to promise in writing they will abstain from sex cutting, diseases and orphans.

Also, we saw some comedy involving various officers acting out in the woods about how they thought a man had died, in the same fashion as Poirot, one of the characters was obsessed with his car bragging about his driving skills until he crashed into a Horse.

After he had crashed into the Horse, they were holding him back from the wreck of his car, resting across a Horse, one officer shouting, "Put him out of his misery" he thinks they are talking about him. The tragedy was that the vehicle had run over a Horse. I considered it to be satire in the darkest form. 

Those French-subtitled foreign language dramas all move too fast because subtitles distract from the action on screen. It is an excellent drama worth watching.

Follow the link to watch the series on BBC.

ROBIN

Robins aren't rare, but you don't see them as often as other birds. This was taken last month by River Thurso.