3 Sept. 2001.
ANOTHER GREATLY REDUCED EDITION for the holiday period. Now everybody's come home, we might have a proper holiday here.
Index of earlier issues - click here.
(Those who like digging about will find that there are hundreds of articles on many subjects to be found on this site.)
There are some much earlier Other News on this site. Click below.
early Othernews - 1992, 93, 94.
Bonnington Cafe and Bonnington Square.
This Saturday - Phil with Bert Jansch/other intellectual/rebellious pop from the late fifties and early sixties.
Bonnington Cafe is a communally owned cafe in Vauxhall, Central London. The atmosphere is somewhat Bohemian, international, friendly, educated, and much wine (bought from the corner shop across the road) gets drunk. Good quality vegetarian. Cheap. The only lighting is usually candles stuck in wine bottles, and the furniture is a collection of odds and sods that people have thrown out. The overall result is relaxed and pleasing. People tend to spend the whole evening over their meal, and engage in discussion with those on other tables, the caterer, the band, passers through......
Bonnington Cafe, Vauxhall Grove, London SW8 UK. Near Vauxhall underground and mainline station, buses 185, 36, 2, 88, 322 and others. Booking is difficult.
'MY BANK MANAGER IS A NITWIT', my friend said when we got onto the subject of financial management - and I knew exactly what he meant.
When he was young (which was, after all, within living memory), if he needed to discuss borrowing money, buying or selling shares, depositing his savings, or whatever, he made an appointment with his bank manager and they discussed and planned a strategy designed to get the best out of the situation for both the bank and the customer of the bank.
That was the standard way of doing things.
He now has the choice between asking a computer for the usual range of dimwitted options or talking to a school-leaver who consults the computer and works out what would be the best strategy to make a good profit for the bank and maybe a good commission for him/herslf. There is no choice beyond those seven or eight choices the computer offers, with no space for modification or discussion (largely, I suppose, because the salesperson would not have a clue what the customer was talking about).
Intelligent discussion and imaginative idea-building with the option of the bank-manager making an executive decision on the spot, which were a common characteristic of bank managers of the type he once had, are no longer a possibility - this function being reserved for the board of directors, who presumably are only interested in helping the existing billionaires to go one step further rather than helping the tuppeny-ha'penny local businessperson to become a billionaire by constructive and imaginative help based upon a lifetime of experience dealing with businesses or being in business.
But then, why should banks be interested in anything to do with either the community or the future? The greatest profit is to be had by being an entirely unproductive parasite buying and selling currencies. There isn't even a tax to pay. All you need is the clients with the big blocks of currency, like banana republic generals who have swindled the electorate and are now (like a certain recent government I remember) ransacking the economy of their nation before retiring to a secret place to hole out til the world forgets who they are so that they can emerge with a new name and identity.
My bank manager is probably a nitwit too, but I've decided that as I may know slightly more about money and economics than him or her, I am better off taking my own financial advice.
(Footnote: When I actually took my own financial advice, I made a loss within three weeks of about 3%, whilst the London stock market made a loss of about 12%. I wonder how it will come out in the end? Are those type of managers nitwits too?)
(held over from last week).
I KNOW A MAN who lives like a millionaire. He has a small country estate, house with about ten bedrooms, swimming pool, tennis court, grand piano, every conceivable domestic convenience, luxurious and expensive furnishings, always the best quality groceries......and an income of less than £20,000 per annum.
I want to tell you how this man does this, because it would be ecologically and economically beneficial if more of us behaved in this way. He is a dealer in junk. That is, when you have things to throw out or sell he is there to take them off your hands. By buying a few items per annum which will sell for 20% more than he paid he will make his £20,000.
But the bit I like best is the fact that all those rich furnishings and the materials used to keep the house in good repair, and the tools to do the work with, the piano, the ample amounts of domestic linen, the thousands of readable books, the pump for the pool, the shed, the furniture, the cooker, the fridge, the choice of two washing machines to wash your clothes in (top-load or front-load?) - these are all things that other people threw out because they had 'no value' in that they would not fetch a bid if you put them up for auction. So he got them for nothing and only had to bring them home, and then throw them out or give them to somebody else when a better replacement came along.
This meant that he did not have to make so very much money because he didn't have to buy all that stuff, and furthermore he is recycling it. That cannot be a bad thing.
Freemasons, by not responding to the article about Freemasons which stayed put on this site for so long in anticiation, have, by not making contact as invited, further magnified the idea that they are probably just a self-interest group who hide behind claims of doing good deeds whilst in fact helping themselves (at great cost to the public).
It's a great shame. After all, they make all this effort to tell us that they are honest folks and then when given a chance to prove it they are silent - like some petty criminal who has been told by his brief that his only chance of getting away with his petty crime is to excercise his right to remain silent.
Being the season of holidays and irresponsibility, there is no telling when the next Joe Punter will start. When it does, hopefully it will be something a bit more civilised than KH6th.
Alternet News might appeal to some readers as a regular list of goings-on in the human rights/green areas of life. You can receive it by email. I have put one copy on this site so that you get an idea of what it is about and how to subscribe.
For sample Alternet email click here.
This interesting email magazine comes at fairly regular intervals and is of interest to almost anybody who is interested in human rights and green issues. In November 2000 it was going out to about 10,000 addresses. Try it. It won't cost you anything, and you can reproduce the contents without paying. You can subscribe by writing to them at: sjzine@netscape.net, or visit: Goforth's site
This website is about accounting investigations and fiddles. If you like to look at financial scandals (both hidden and public) this might be worth a look. I have not been there myself, but the books produced by these people, although difficult to follow, cover a lot of mysterious ground.
This website is about the destruction of countryside and agriculture. Worth a visit if you want to find out about how it is thought the British countryside will fair under the ongoing creep of the multinationals.
This website is one to do with monetary reform.The British Association for Monetary Reform. If you are interested in economics it is worth a look. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~bamr1
This is a website about alternative currencies.Might be worth a look to those who have realised that you don't necessarily have to have money as such to be prosperous.
This is a website for something called The Green Guide. I know nothing about it, but am hoping it is something worthy. Please let me know if it is questionable.
This is a site concerned with one of the most unpopular planning decisions ever made in Greater London, the Crystal Palace Complex. It is so stunningly awful that only a handful of people who do not live near it appear to approve, whilst the rest are not entirely uninclined to mention such things as payola, freemasons....you name it! The site belongs to the London Borough of Bromley, but the aggro generated by it and the destruction of amenity caused by it will be almost entirely suffered by residents of adjoining boroughs and not the people of Bromley themselves.
This is a recycling site based in London, and offering materials to anybody. The organisation is a charity seeking to link suppliers of surplus materials with users. Especially good for the more ingenious designers amongst us.
The email of the people who run the above site is cs@london-recycling.demon.co.uk. They are called Creative Supplies. Look them up for more info.
Here's an interesting education site - particularly for those who have young children and are not quite sure what to do to avoid the worst of what`s on offer in the mainstream of education.They are called www.edrev.org.
early Othernews - 1992, 93, 94.
There were a few essays that went out with the early Other News as a freestanding item. You can read these by clicking below.
London Journey - a trip from Docklands through Beckenham and back to Docklands.
(Friday Woodworkers are suffering a temporary break due to some of the episodes not having been fully edited at the time of writing. It may take some timne to fix this problem.
Episode 17.
(These articles were written in 1988, and were my first attempt at writing. Some people when shown these fell about laughing, some smiled faintly - and some yawned. I thought I was going to write a technical book, but it soon became apparent that I was much more interested in the people than the technology - and that is the main reason there are no drawings - although it might be rather good to do a couple of caricatures sometime.)
Index of Friday Woodorker articles (and a means of access).
A READER COMPLAINED that it was not possible to go back more than 6 articles in Gabriele`s area. Regrettably this is because there is no index, and I have not the time to organise one yet. However, for those determined enough to find the early ones, they should be accessible by going to an early Other News and clicking through from it. This will not be fast, but I think will do the job. They started about November 1997 I think.
In an earlier issue I told you about my feelings regarding Tempo retailers and the Lexmark 3200 printer I bought from them.
The Lexmark 3200 printer I got from Tempo must surely be the most uneconomical printer I could possibly have bought. The black cartridge only does about 250 pages of ordinary type - for £28! That makes each sheet cost 11.2 pence plus the cost of the paper and probably another 11.2 pence more if any colour is used! - ABOUT 22.4 PENCE A SHEET! Nearly a pound for every four sheets!
I wouldn`t recommend you to buy it - but also look at my earlier article for an idea of Tempo`s service.
A person to help make up a subject index for the growing numbers of articles on The Other News From England. Email editor@othernews.co.uk (this may now have been provided, but please email if you might like to join in in some way - ed.)
All material on this site is copyright. Contact me if you want to use it. I am quite flexible. Educational non-profit use is free - but ask for permission and print an acknowledgement. If you can`t think what to print, put:
From The Other News From England. http://www.othernews.co.uk
Even better if you print the date of the article.
editor@othernews.co.uk