Buying labels and excuses

9 April

There’s been a biscuit shortage here in the UK. I wasn’t aware of it and I’m not sure others have notice it either. I have noticed there is a shortage of morning coffee biscuits but that has a long term thing. The reason why the others had been disappearing was because Storm Desmond managed to flood the Jacobs factory in Carlisle and it had to be gutted and cleaned before production could start again. However, that was fairly recent and I don’t think the dearth of my favourite is anything to do with it.

But here’s the thing … Jacobs products were in short supply but there were plenty of others that could be bought instead. The danger to Jacobs though was that the other products might perhaps be preferred to their version. Add in the extra cost of the Jacobs name and Storm Desmond might well have been a larger problem to them than they first thought.

These extra costs for brand name goods has been looked at by a recent telly show, where a family of high spenders agreed to a test to see if they could live with goods that might be of a lower price and unknown brand. It had another point to make too, in the participants were shopaholics, buying things they didn’t actually need but because they liked the look of it. It even went as far as to look at their food choices and their use personal hygiene products. The one thing that all the participants had in common was the amount of waste the produced simply by not using what they already had before it was thrown away, food stuffs especially. By continuing on shopping with the pointers in mind, they could save thousands of £s yearly.

And speaking of waste; our new kitchen units are a lot smaller than the old ones and that of course means we have less storage space. When we came to empty the old kitchen units we found we had stuff in them that we had forgotten about and was now well out of date. A lot it went in the bin, a lot of the tinned stuff went to Sam, Kyles’ mum. The smaller units have actually helped us a good bit in that we now don’t buy anywhere like as much stuff as we used to.    

There was a video clip on Facebook yesterday of a young man who punch and knocked out an elderly lady because she dared to get too close to him. Stunned on-lookers couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed. The man then quickly left the supermarket. I made the comment, ‘I hope they caught the prat!’ but of course we will never know I suppose. If it had been a man of his own size and age, I wonder if he would have done the same again, something else we will never know.

Violence; why is it ever needed I wonder? Most of it these days comes from the younger people in our society. It is totally uncalled for and very often unprovoked. What is it about youngsters today; who do they always seem to answer anything with aggression? So many times we hear of people being afraid to go out after dark because of the fear of violence. On the odd occasion we go out, we drive to the spot and then drive home. Most times when we are out after dark it’s because we were late going out shopping anyway.

This weeks’ AP arrived this morning and I’ve already read it. One articles by a man who spends his lunch times taking mono shots of pigeons. Part if article is to show the kit he uses and one item he has there is bread; yes, ordinary white, sliced bread. As he says, take food with you and you become the centre point of their lives at that moment. That may be so but in many places the issue of pigeons is of such a problem that many councils have now banned people from feeding them, Coventry being one of them. Dorktown doesn’t really have an issue with them.

In the editorial, Nigel Atherton says that far too many of us make excuse for not getting and taking photos. In his case it’s his three to four compute on top of all his normal family life and so on. He goes on to say that most times, when he gets’ some free time, he’s far too tired to go out with his camera. In my case it’s pain levels and bad weather that stops me most time. Nigel then points out this one article as one reason to go out with your camera.  

Today’s photo …

A shot of the market, seeing as it’s market day today anyway, and no, it’s not from today.

Today’s funny …
A man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He took his faithful pet dog along for company. One day the dog starts chasing butterflies and before long he discovers that he is lost. So, wandering about he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch.
The dog thinks, "Boyo, I'm in deep trouble now." (He was an Irish setter).... Then he noticed some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.
Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dog exclaims loudly, "Man, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here?" Hearing this the leopard halts his attack in mid stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees. "Whew", says the leopard. "That was close. That dog nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for
protection from the leopard. So, off he goes. But the dog saw him heading
after the leopard with great speed, and figured that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The cat is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine."
Now the dog sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks," What am I going to do now?" But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers pretending he hasn't seen them yet. And just when they get close enough to hear, the dog says, "Where's that monkey. I just can never trust him. I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard, and he's still not back!!"