Sunday, July 19, 2009
Fete
Yesterday to the Ewell village annual summer fete, for which the rain held off. The most memorable attraction was the display by the Southern Counties Golden Retreiver Club Display Team. This involved sixteen people and sixteen dogs engaged in formation walking to music. The trick was that when the dogs were not walking along with their owner they were supposed to sit still, which they achieved most of the time. The sixteen people included four men and twelve women, all of middling age and all in blue tee shirts and grey trousers. Arranged in four sub-teams. Lead person was one of the ladies. Dogs being bribed or perhaps rewarded during the proceedings with something from their handlers' pockets. One lady and dog in reserve.
On the way back we discovered that in this apparently peaceful Surrey village, the church of St Mary the Virgin was very firmly shut on a Saturday afternoon. Presumably not so peaceful as it might look. And to be fair, village is a bit of a misonomer for a suburb of London, albeit just outside the GLC boundary. On the other hand, somewhere near the church we came across a well fruited walnut tree. Took one home for dissection and find that the nut, about the size of the sort of walnut you might buy, had a green outer layer, maybe 3mm thick. Then about 1mm of what looked as if it would become the woody shell (assuming the things ever ripen in our climate. I think of walnuts as being proper to hotter climes). Then a damp and delicately coloured embyro walnut, embedded in a sort of white foam, which discolours fairly quicky when exposed to the air.
On return, perused the Epsom Guardian over tea and Eccles cake, and was pleased to find a peice about Epsom Common. Did the wholesale felling of oak trees count as conservation or vandalism? The writer of the peice looked to have been prompted by a resident who clearly thought it was vandalism. I entirely agree (see January 12 2009), to the point where I even wrote to the Epsom Common Association about it. So I am now prompted to join the Epsom Guardian discussion. Maybe some good will come of it all. Maybe I should play the health and safety card on the cows (see June 24 2009). Against a background when we are told by our railway carriage to mind our step many times in the course of a journey we take every day, in case we subsequently try to sue, if people worry about trees to the extent of chopping down old trees near schools in case something falls off one of them, I should have thought that loose cows on the common were definately out. Although, to be fair, I think some school children were hurt or worse in a school playground near here quite recently when an old tree fell over. Unlikely things do happen from time to time; the trick is to strike the right balance in trying to stop such happenings.
Meanwhile, was amused by a rant about Goldman Sachs' profits at http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/16/on-goldmans-giganto-profits/. It seems that they have done very well out of the bail out of the financial system. Firstly, the rescue of AIG meant that they got paid lots of money by AIG which they might otherwise have lost. Secondly, they have done terribly well providing underwriting services needed by all the other banks needed to raise equity to pay off the money they had to borrow from government at the height of the crash. Thirdly, they have probably borrowed lots of dosh from government on the cheap in order to fund further speculations. All adds up to lots of profit for high income tax avoiders, funded in some large part by decent middle income tax payers. Need a younger brain to think through all this stuff. I suppose that is why they get away with it, if indeed they are getting away with anything,
# posted by Jim @ 3:56 AM 
