GRUMPY OLD MAN

Leaving it all behind for . . .

My hotel in Costa, Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece.

Blog postings will recommence on September 17.

This is a very strong anti-Nazi poster

I am not sure in which country it appeared.

Any ideas?

'BIG BROTHER HOUSE' WITH 112 CCTV CAMERAS INSIDE

Furious tenants say security cameras have turned their flats into a huge Big Brother house.

It comes after a housing trust installed 112 CCTV cameras in their eight three-storey blocks and pointing towards residents' front doors.

People living there say the move is an invasion of their privacy and fear they will be spied on 24 hours a day.

Tenant Phillip Mays, 44, was one of the first to be affected after a camera was installed outside his flat.

He said: 'They'll be able to sit watching who comes and goes into each of our flats 24 hours a day.

'If we were in prison we could expect security like that, but not in our own home.

'It's like Big Brother on TV, watching us all day. It's a breach of our civil rights and privacy.'

Residents living in the flats in Torquay, Devon, first heard about the CCTV in July when the Riviera Housing Trust wrote to them.

The housing associated explained the cameras would be installed to monitor and manage anti-social behaviour and crime on the estate.

Most welcomed it, but now work has begun they have learned the extent of the cameras - up to 112 at a cost of more than £375,000. And they have also being told they will have to pay an extra £2 a week in rent to pay for it.

Mother Donna Brook, 32, was recently burgled and sees the need for cameras - but on the outside of the flats, rather than the inside.

She said: 'They [the cameras] can see every person coming and going through everyone's front door. 'It is an invasion of our privacy.'

The outside of the eight, three-storey blocks. The cameras have been put in place inside the building in stairwells and pointing at resident's front doors

(Mail Online)

Footnote: Britain has one and a half times as many surveillance cameras as communist China, despite having a fraction of its population, shocking figures revealed yesterday.

There are 4.2million closed circuit TV cameras here, one per every 14 people.

But in police state China, which has a population of 1.3billion, there are just 2.75million cameras, the equivalent of one for every 472,000 of its citizens.

I have gone back to British posters of World War I with this dramatic and patriotic appeal to join the forces.

At first I wondered what she was doing!

And why is the man not in the Army?

Here is another Bovril advertisement, with a pun on the word "Pa".
I am not sure of the date.

ROSIE THE RIVETTER

I am sure you can Rosie. You have bigger muscles than me.

Another example of a WW2 poster, this time from America.

The depiction of the children is interesting. They do look rather apprehensive, don't they?

MORE FROM WARTIME.

In the First World War (1914-1918) women had, for the first time, volunteered for jobs as servicewomen, drivers, farm-workers, shipyard-workers, and munitions workers.

The women who worked in factories that produced the shells, bombs, mines, grenades and ammunition needed by the British Army endured difficult and often dangerous conditions, but they were determined to make a real contribution to the war effort.

In the Second World War (1939-1945) women were needed once again, but this time, as well as munitions, they were also producing aircraft.

How many of you remember this WW2 poster? I certainly do.

Perhaps, to prevent the spread of Swine Flu, it is time to being it back.

The message is, of course, based on Nelson's famous signal at the Battle of Trafalgar: "England expects that every man will do his duty."

"On 19 October 1805, British frigates reported that the French fleet was on the move and heading for Gibraltar.Nelson set sail immediately and by the 20th he lay in wait for them midway between Cape Trafalgar and Cape Spartel.

The French had had difficulty leaving Cadiz due to poor winds and didn't arrive until the early hours of the 21st of October.

When he saw the British fleet waiting for him, Villeneuve signalled for a change of course.

Seeing this, Nelson gave the orders for immediate attack, worried that the French might escape. The signal ended with Nelson's famous rousing words, "England expects that every man will do his duty."

These weren't however, Nelson's actual words. The original words were "England confides (i.e. has confidence) that every man will do his duty", but 'confides' was not in the code book and therefore would have to have been spelled out, which would take time. 'Expects', however, was in the code book and so the message was changed."

Many of you will know that for years I have campaigned against the misuse or lack of the apostrophe in printed signs and I have posted to my blogs photos of examples in my home town of Walton-on-Thames.

Here is part of an article from yesterday's 'Mail Online'.

'PUNCTUATION HERO' BRANDED A VANDAL FOR PAINTING APOSTROPHES ON STREET SIGNS

After enduring sloppy punctuation on the street sign outside his home for more than a year, Stefan Gatward could stand it no longer.

The 62-year-old former soldier decided to launch a one-man crusade against 'dumbed down' Britain, and picked up a paintbrush to insert a missing apostrophe.

This turned the incorrect St Johns Close into the correct St John's Close.

But he was immediately accused of being a vandal by one neighbour, and his amendments have been scratched off by others who apparently prefer the wrong version.

The 62-year-old's defence of the apostrophe comes after Birmingham council announced it would scrap the punctuation from council signs for the sake of 'simplicity'

He said today: 'As we are off St John's Road and opposite St John's Church, both with the apostrophe, St John's Close should have one too.'

But when Mr Gatward decided to correct the crime against the language by painting in the missing punctuation mark, he was jeered by a neighbour.

Mr Gatward, who served for four years in the Gordon Highlanders in the 1960s, is not just a campaigner for the apostrophe.

He will not join the '10 items or less' queue at the supermarket, in protest that the sign should read '10 items or fewer'.

Most people get happier as they grow older, studies on people aged up to their mid-90s suggest.

Despite worries about ill health, income, changes in social status and bereavements, later life tends to be a golden age, according to psychologists. They found older adults generally make the best of the time they have left and have learned to avoid situations that make them feel sad or stressed. The young should do the same, they told the American Psychological Association.

The UK is an ageing nation - in less than 25 years, one in four people in the UK will be over 65 and the number of over-85s will have doubled. And it is expected there will be 30,000 people aged over 100 by the year 2030.

According to University of California psychologist Dr Susan Turk Charles, this should make the UK a happier society.

By reviewing the available studies on emotions and ageing she found that mental wellbeing generally improved with age, except for people with dementia-related ill health.

Work carried out by Dr Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University, suggested why this might be the case. Dr Carstensen asked volunteers ranging in age from 18 to mid-90s to take part in various experiments and keep diaries of their emotional state.

She found the older people were far less likely than the younger to experience persistent negative moods and were more resilient to hearing personal criticism. They were also much better at controlling and balancing their emotions - a skill that appeared to improve the older they became.

Dr Charles explained: "Based on work by Carstensen and her colleagues, we know that older people are increasingly aware that the time they have left in life is growing shorter. "They want to make the best of it so they avoid engaging in situations that will make them unhappy.

"They have also had more time to learn and understand the intentions of others which helps them to avoid these stressful situations."

Dr Carstensen said the young would do well to start preparing for their old age now. This includes adopting a healthy daily routine and ensuring some social investment is spent outside of the workplace and family home.

Andrew Harrop, head of public policy at Age Concern and Help the Aged, said the findings were encouraging. "For many people, older age and later life is often looked upon with dread and worry.

"Far too many younger people assume that getting older is a process that will inevitably mean sickness, frailty and lack of mobility and greater dependence. However, this is far from the truth in very many cases.

"Many older people lead active, healthy lives enriched by experience and learning. "This positive advantage can be brought to bear across so many aspects of daily life which - in turn - hugely benefits our ageing society.

"It's vital that there is growing acceptance that just because someone is getting older, it doesn't mean they no longer have a significant contribution to make. "This study is one of many which shows that later life can be a enormously positive experience."

TIPS FOR A HAPPY OLD AGE:

Envisage ways to thoroughly enjoy the years ahead and imagine living to a healthy and happy 100

Design your life and daily routines to reinforce this goal

Don't put all your "social" eggs in one basket - invest time outside of your family and career too

(BBC News)

Donkey rides along the shore. Jam sandwiches gritty with sand. Now, that's a truly Great British Summer.

These postcard-perfect photographs, captured by pioneering photography firm Francis Frith between 1890 and 1924, show how our great-grandparents made the most of their time in the sun.

The photos were originally taken in black and white, but some have since been tinted by the library in which they were stored.

Donkeys, as ever, look gloomily resigned to a long day on Rhyl Sands in 1891. Behind stands the grand Victorian Pier, built in 1867 for £23,000

Ladies in flimsy skirts and - goodness, Mabel! - bare legs stroll along Siidmouth's York Terrace in 1927, while in the foreground a fashionable lady wears a long flapper dress. Behind them are the area's steep cliffs, famous for their rich haul of fossils

Standing room only: Less genteel were the Londoners enjoying a day out at Ramsgate in 1907. Then, as now, middle-class types staked out deckchair space and defended it against the Cockney kids swarming around - but not against the incoming tide

Sunhat? But I've got this summery deerstalker: A formally dressed child in Llandudno, called the 'sea-going Tunbridge Wells' because it had genteel terraces and none of Brighton's raffishness, in a picture dated 1890

Tenby beach in 1890 complete with bathing machines, designed so that ladies could lower themselves into the water very discreetly

Playing with boats in Ventnor in 1913. Sailor suits were all the rage, thanks to Edward VII. But dark clouds were gathering, with war just a year later

Not a child without a hat: What a well-behaved lot amid fishing boats in St Ives, Cornwall in 1890. Soon floods of artists would be drawn to this pretty area

Do you think we need bigger nets? These children shrimping and cockling at Bexhill, East Sussex, might have proudly taken their catch back to Mum, who would have pretended to be delighted

No Edwardian resort was without a Pierrot clown show and here, in 1912, holidaymakers cluster around one troupe at Clacton-on-Sea

(Daily Mail)

The Trabant, the smoke-belching national car of Communist East Germany, is to be reborn as an electric car fit for the environmentally conscious 21st century motorist.

The new model will make its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show next month, almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and mass production stopped.

Its manufaturers hope its green credentials will put an end to the Trabant being the butt of jokes and and an enduring symbol of the imploding nation.

Three million of the old Trabants, whose name means "foot soldier", were manufactured and the noise of their clattery two-stroke engines as they flooded west when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 was greeted withn derision by Germans in the west.

Although they could not compete with the muscle and quality of an Audi, BMW or Mercedes, the "Trabi" eventually wormed its way into the hearts of westerners and some 50,000 are still running across the country and beyond.

The new model, the Trabant nT, is looking to make the bone-shaker into a retro hit for green-conscious drivers.

The German motor parts maker IndiKar has teamed up with a model manufacturer to create a consortium looking to attract investors when the nT - or New Trabant - unveiled in Frankfurt on Sept 17.

They are looking for investment of around £100 million to get the new Trabant rolling off the production lines in Zwickau, the site of the original car's manufacturer.

The old version, for which people had to wait up to ten years after ordering, was a study in basics. The petrol gauge was a dipstick and extra heating came from a rug under the back seat.

The new one comes complete with solar panels on the roof, a petrol tank in case of emergencies and will have a range of a little over 150 miles before recharging.

The German government wants to see around a million electric cars on the road by 2020 and most major carmakers are investing heavily in the technology.

"This will be one car that it will be impossible to joke about," said a consortium spokesman.

(From the Daily Telegraph)

Here are some of those old jokes:

Q. How many workers does it take to build a Trabi?
A. Two, one to fold and one to paste.
===
Q. How do you measure the acceleration of a Trabant?
A. With a diary.
===
Q. Why do some Trabants have heated rear windows?
A. To keep your hands warm when pushing.
===
Q. What's the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and a Trabant?
A. You can shut the door on a Jehovah's Witness.

NOW YOU KNOW!

SEE YOU THERE

Taking different routes, we will both arrive at the station about the same time - provided one of us walks twice as fast as the other.

WORLD'S YOUNGEST SHARP SHOOTER

At just six years of age, Miko Andres from the Philippines is believed to be the world's youngest practical shooter.

Pictured here at the Armscor Shooting Club, Miko loads, aims and fires his semiautomatic weapon at moving targets.

Complete with a gun belt, shades and a tailored shirt, Miko travels across the country participating in national junior competitions.

Competing against children ten years his senior (in the 9-17 age group), Miko is now looking to travel to America to test his talents.

For Miko's father, Cresencio "Mike" Pascua Andres JR, the boy's passion and natural ability for practical shooting has been carefully monitored by his family and shooting community.

"It is within the family and friends that Miko was influenced to love and enjoy the practical shooting sport," says Mike. "Because of his interest, we took turns in teaching, training and coaching him on the basics of the sport."

Practical shooting is one of the fastest growing sports in the Philippines and Miko took up the sport in January this year.

Seven months later, Miko is fully versed in the strict laws of the sport.

Despite the obvious dangers and concerns raised over a boy of six handling such a weapon, Mike is eager to stress that safety is always at the forefront of his mind.

"Safety is of the utmost importance," he says, adding his son was having guidance and help from a range of shooting institutions to try and prevent accidents.

"As a parent, I too am worried about the dangers of the sport. Accidents and injuries might happen in the course of the sport and that is always a concern.

He added: "Here he is, the youngest practical shooter the world has ever known.

"As a growing, normal kid, Miko is also into other children's games. He enjoys the company of his schoolmates.

"Miko is very young but is determined to excel in the practical shooting sport," says Mike.

"He has been taught a lot of discipline and respect."

(From an article in the Daily Telegraph)

PET CAT 'SWALLOWED WHOLE' BY PYTHON AFTER STRAYING INTO NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN

The owner of a tabby cat devoured by a neighbour's 13ft snake described how he heard his pet's "blood-chilling cries" as it fought for its life.

Martin Wadey said he and his wife, Helen, raced to the nearby garden when they heard the terrified screams but were powerless to save four-year-old Wilbur.

The cat was "crushed, asphyxiated and consumed whole" after straying into the garden in Brislington, Bristol, where the Burmese python was lurking.

The snake's "huge bulge" was eventually scanned and RSPCA officers confirmed that micro-chipped remains were inside.

An RSPCA inspector later issued the snake's owner, Darren Bishop, with a verbal warning about appropriate housing and care requirements.

Now Mr and Mrs Wadey are calling for a change in the law so that pythons are officially classed as dangerous animals, requiring a licence.

Mr Wadey, 44, writing on his website "Justice for Wilbur", describes the cat as "beautiful, strong, soft, with a purr like a dynamo".

He said: "We don't know whether Wilbur stumbled across the snake and it was an opportunistic kill, or if the snake was actively hunting him, but either way, we heard the python's strike from the terrified scream that came from Wilbur and the subsequent blood-chilling cries as he fought for his life."

Mr and Mrs Wadey ran to next door but, after getting no answer, were unable to reach Wilbur.

"Then, in less than a minute, all was silent," said Mr Wadey. "He never stood a chance against a creature over 13 times his weight with such immense power. Wilbur was crushed, asphyxiated and consumed whole.

"Helen and I were both standing on our deck hearing everything, but unable to see what had happened, other than it involved Wilbur and it was something awful. From an upstairs window, I was able to make out movement in the garden in question, but no detail."

Many owners underestimate pet snakes' "wild instincts", Mr Wadey said.

He added: "Because of that Wilbur's little life was brutally snuffed out and after death we have had nothing to say goodbye to, stroke for one last time, mourn over, or bury. Our lovely little Wilbur was slowly being digested by a serpent a short distance from us."

Pythons, which usually feed on birds and small mammals, wrap themselves around their victims. They can be bought as domestic pets for around £100. Last month a two-year-old girl was reportedly crushed to death by an 8ft Burmese python.

Mr and Mrs Wadey, who have three other cats and no children, want to introduce a "Wilbur's amendment" to the Dangerous and Wild Animals Act and are petitioning No. 10 Downing Street.

The RSPCA said that all the evidence suggested that Wilbur had indeed been swallowed by the snake.

A spokeswoman said: "The cat was swallowed on June 25. The RSPCA attended the following day. The snake was scanned and we can confirm that a microchip was found inside.

"The owner was issued with a written warning about appropriate housing and care equipment. We can't know for certain that it was Wilbur, but it is very, very likely.

"Unfortunately, all too often, people who take on an exotic animal as a pet are not fully aware of its needs and requirements.

"Potential owners need to consider diet, appropriate environment and housing, how big it will grow, how long it will live and any relevant health issues."

Mr Bishop has so far been unavailable for comment.

(Mail Online)

See also: http://www.justiceforwilbur.co.uk/Justice_for_Wilbur_/Home.html

. . . BECAUSE THEY ARE FASTER

It's all right, he doesn't read my blogs!

Or do you, Trev?

New television advertisements in Brazil are encouraging people to pee in the shower as a way of conserving water.

The Guardian newspaper has published "rules of etiquette" for such performances:

• Don't start until the water has. The water not only provides a cloaking effect, it also avoids lingering contact between the non-lavatory bowl porcelain and your urine. The idea is that it is whisked away down the plughole almost instantly, thus minimising breaches of basic hygiene and allowing maintenance of the pretence, even unto yourself, that you have not just peed in the shower.

• For similar reasons, it also behoves the micturator to do his/her business right at the beginning of his/her ablutions, thus providing a full rinse cycle.

• Don't do it in a friend's shower. Nothing ruins a friendship quicker than inappropriate urination. Keep it for post-pub antics in shop doorways where it belongs.

• Don't do it in public showers – for the obvious reasons, but also because public showers very often involve wooden slat arrangements and we are talking about an activity that should only be undertaken on very, very non-porous areas indeed.

• Don't get carried away. You may, if you choose, pee in the shower. But don't wash in the toilet, and never, ever poo in the bath.

(From the Daily Telegraph)