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The Glass Box for Thursday

Comments

1. At 05:10 PM on 08 Nov 2007, JimmyGiro wrote:

   Is it in the public interest for any police force to tell the truth?

   If people cared, then we wouldn't need the police; and if people didn't care, we wouldn't need the truth.

2. At 05:24 PM on 08 Nov 2007, susie howells wrote:

   For heaven's sake don't waste any more time on childish "who said it first" bickering. It is a waste of precious time and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ should concentrate on more weighty matters.

3. At 05:42 PM on 08 Nov 2007, wrote:

   As a counterpoint to Ben Bernanke's 'balanced' view:
   
   or see my namelink.

   xx
   ed

   "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it."
   -- Dave Barry
   

4. At 05:50 PM on 08 Nov 2007, wrote:

   One for cautious Ben:
   
   xx
   ed
   Captain Penny's Law:
   You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

   
   Woooo Woooo!:

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5. At 05:53 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Margaret Hales wrote:

   I just listened to the evening discussions on recycling of supermarket bags etc.
   My husband and I bought strong large shopping bags from Iceland and found them also useful for doing our other grocery shopping.
   We like late night shopping mainly for topping up on our groceries.
   We took the very visible orange iceland bags into the (Asda) supermarket and did our usual shop filling the trolley as normal.
   At the checkout I became aware of being surrounded by serveral assistants and the security man, He normally stood by the door but was now standing at the end of our checkout
   When it came to our turn to check our items through the till my husband took our bags and opened them into the trolly and proceeded to place all the items as they came off till.
   There was no way we had filled our bags with stolen items as we had placed the bags under the trolley while we shopped.
   At first I felt I was mistaken why all the assistants were milling around us and why the security man was making his presense felt.
   We went in again a month later to do the same sort of shop, our top-up again.
   As before,we had our iceland strong bags with us. When we got to the checkout we were again surrounded by several assistants and the security man walked from the door to stand at the end of our checkout again.
   This happened on three occasions.
   I said to my husband that next time to leave the bags in the car and see if we got the same treatment.
   That time at the checkout no extra assistants and no security man - he stood in his usual spot at the door.
   We went in the next time with our bags and again were surrounded by assistants and the security man came and stood at our checkout.
   We have been shopping at Asda for many years and its only since we take our own bags in do we get this treatment.
   We now have to load our own bags in the cold outside since its too embarrassing to me to take the bags into the store and get this horrible treatment.
   Both my husband and myself are retired.I am disabled and like to shop when there are fewer people milling about so that I can shop at leisure. I have felt like a criminal when we have our own bags with us.
   What is the answer to this problem.
   I would like to leave my bags at a point were they can be picked up again at checkout time to be loaded with our goods.A bit like checking in our coats, get a ticket and retrieve our bags or perhaps one of the milling around assistants can retreive them and we can load our trolley indoors at loading tables similar to Ikea has inside their stores.
   At the till the first thing the assistant does is grab a lot of supermarket plastic bags and start to push our items into them. We ask her to stop and we just load them loose into the trolley and take them out into the dark and now its cold its very unpleasant to stand in a cold and draughty carpark filling our own bags with our items.
   I hope someone can come up with an answer.

6. At 06:01 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Rachel G wrote:

   Was that really Prince Charles you got to do a vox pop outside that shop? ;-) It's clearly a place for the well-heeled and time rich. For the rest of us, I recommend your local market - not much packaging in evidence in Bury St Eds yesterday.

7. At 06:10 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Cassassa wrote:

   Oh joy! The 'novelty' of taking one's own bags/containers shopping. Granted, hats off to the shopkeeper and market stallholders but, come on, WE MUST do this, in as many of our activities as possible never mind buying the pine nuts. Financial incentive surely pales alongside that of a planet to live on. Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order!

8. At 06:50 PM on 08 Nov 2007, mac wrote:

   Thanks for the extracts from the US of the Fed Chair's comments.

   You also reported the BoE as leaving rates unchanged.

   In London the markets shot up. But it was only temporary. The fallacy in the BoE positions ensured the markets were down at the close.

   King, the Governor, felt that Northern Rock could have been saved the 'runs' had he secret powers. (His Select Cmttee stuff)
   As he used to say in B'ham, the government authorities '..will know who is in charge..'

   There he 'learnt' that body of knowledge known as the Impossiblity Theorems when he was a yong professor.
   The theorems purport to show that a group of three decision makers (the Governor, the Chancellor and the Regualtive body) with a moderately wide range of strategy alternatives available to them, must bow to someone among them 'in charge' - a dictator - if their decison making is to be rational.

   His demand for secrecy in a world crying out for transparency seemd contradictory. Earlier this week he shifted his stnace claiming the Chancellor was to blame.

   He must find the analysis difficult. Mervyn was a professor of investment whilst at Birmingham, certainly not a monetary economist in the powerful school of Ford, Driscoll and Dickinson of that time.

   Best do nothing when you do not know? So rates are unchanged here.
   But the problem is a credit crunch and strategies which lift stock prices don't help because the added value they represent is undermined in two ways.
   First it is the banks and the BoE who must convert this value into monetary resource if it is to feed the economy directly.
   And it is the reputation of those banks which is the problem. King says it will be months until banks are clear about their own viabilities. Meanwhile the regime of mutual suspicion and dishonesty between the banks remains. They are still being less than transparent with each other. Yet King demanded more secrecy for his own actions - secrecy which requires that the banks he supports should also be less than frank about their own positions.
   Secondly these sudden upward movements of the stock markets, at one point the FTSE was £12 billion up - further undermine any remaining belief that the numbers the dealers shout can be anything other than the highest prices they think they can get away with. The FTSE is still 10 -15 percent overvalued in 'market' terms. The numbers seem designed simply to provide wealth for our very own oligarchs and their acolytes. Marx said theft takes palce at the point of production, we know now that it also takes place at the point of valuation of investymetn assets.

   But the whole crisis of capitalism is caused by asset owners knowing full well that they are over - valuing their assets. As this truth comes home so the excess value drains away. As did the BoE's effect by the time London closed today.

   As for NY they were unimpressed by the remarks of the Federal Reserve boss. The Dow dipped into +ve but quickly went to 1.5 percent off (6.30 this evening)

   The crisis is as per usual the inherent dishonesty of the capitalist market system.

9. At 07:33 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

   Cassassa @ 5, true, true, but isn't it nice that they are offering us a financial incentive to do something we've been doing for forty years or more with no financial incentiive at all! :-)

10. At 07:36 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Perky wrote:

    So the squealing as the lobster hits the pan is no longer just "the air leaking out". It's actually a cry for help in the wilderness of the kitchen.

    How many people will start to ask if their lobster has been cooked humanely, d'you think?

11. At 07:59 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Gillian wrote:

    Margaret Hales (5) The answer is to shop somewhere else - Tesco's don't care whose bags you use, and give you extra club points for using the bags you bring to the store with you.
    I also use an assortment of re-used carrier bags in Morrison's, and the assistants help me to fill them at the checkout.

12. At 08:16 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Cassassa wrote:

    Mrs Hales - DON'T GIVE UP! PLEASE! You could try putting your bags into an Iceland bag, then whipping them out at the check-out. That'll fool them. Or ask the 'audience' to help with your packing. Or find another shop. Your generation has given mine so many fine examples - string bags and proper shopping bags being just two - so please hang in there. When you next look at those people just think of the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Then ignore them.

13. At 09:44 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Mark Lashmar wrote:

    Is there any truth in the rumour that St. Pancras station is to be renamed Agincourt?

14. At 09:58 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Izzy T'Me wrote:

    Margaret, have you tried complaining to the store general manager? Don't bother at the time, but certainly afterwards, in a calm and measured way. This treatment is apalling and unecessary - my guess is the store manager doesn't know what's going on. If she/he does, as others have said, change shops - and let them know why you have.

15. At 10:11 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Mrs. Hales, that's very, very rude of them, and in fact I find it rather shocking. I don't have that problem at Sainsbury's -- but they don't allow me to take bags into Makro at all, and the only choice is to go to the car with the goods and pack directly from the shopping-trolley.

    It might be worth either asking to talk to the manager, or getting someone to talk to him on your behalf, so that it could be explained that the offensive assumption that you might be thieves is upsetting you and might lead to your taking your custom elsewhere. A letter to their head office might also be a way to draw their attention to their behaviour and how nasty it is.

    Is there a 'customer complaints' desk or the like? If so, you might ask them to keep your bags, and send someone from the till to fetch them when you get there with your shopping.

    I do hope this gets sorted out so that you don't get made to feel bad about it any more. Best of luck!

16. At 10:32 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Graham F wrote:

    Re Margaret Hales and her bags. Why on earth didn't you just ask the assistants and security man why they were harrassing her?
    Anyway, jsut carry on doing it, but for heaven's sake don't give up on using your own bags. Hopefully we will come round to copying Ireland's ban on plastic bags. My so worked there for two years and was really impresssed with the way the shoppers accepted the idea and used the reusable canvas type bags.

    As far as Gillian's suggestion to go to Tesco's, before you do, think, tesco's already have about 12% of evry pound spent in retail establishments in the UK - that's £1 in every £8. 30% of everything spent on food is spent at Tesco's.
    So, ask yourself, do they need your custom? I think it a bit dangerous for retail generally when one company has such a hold.

17. At 11:44 PM on 08 Nov 2007, Aperitif wrote:

    Right, I have kept this to myself for long enough:

    I always use the supermarket's bags. I don't visit supermarkets very often, but when I do, I take away around five bags with me. Why? I, and several other members of my family, collect such bags and give them to my aunt, who then uses them, doubled, to collect her dog's waste. If we didn't do that she would have to buy specially maufactured dog-waste bags.

    So, I am recycling, I am not an eco-terrorist and I am tired of the dark looks from other shoppers (who, more often than not, have trolleys full of the most environmentally-damaging goods and packaging imaginable, and, I suspect, use these places far more often than I do) when I say yes to supermarket bags.

    Cheers.

18. At 08:43 AM on 09 Nov 2007, The Intermittent Horse wrote:

    Ap (17) - Your aunt has no sense of adventure!. Why not live on the edge, like I do, and use the bags 'undoubled' when out with the dog. This is especially exciting when using Sanseberry bags as the new 'eco-friendly' ones are quite thin and some have holes.

19. At 12:36 PM on 09 Nov 2007, Vyle Hernia wrote:

    Mac @ 8:

    Please could you avoid inserting spaces around hyphens when "Joining" 2 words? What I mean is this.

    Content-free should have no spaces.

    Hitler - a dictator - should have spaces.

    Your erudite articles would be easier for me to follow if you kept this rule.

20. At 03:39 PM on 09 Nov 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Appers @ 17, true for you, and there are certainly uses for carrier bags (unless they are the ones that biodegrade without warning), which is why I have a container full of them in the kitchen to clean catmess off the lawn or line wastepaper-baskets with or even sometimes remember to take with me to the shops. It's a sad fact that however many reusable shopping bags I take with me to do the weekly chore, I always end up with a few of the thin plastic ones, usually with dirty or frozen things in them, and then I clean them out and recycle those. I do slightly wish I didn't have to have them, all the same.

    When I wuz a kid, we used old newspaper to clear the dog's mess into the nearest bin if he went in the wrong place! If I had a dog I might even still do that, since there is no way known for preventing freebie local newspapers and council offerings and party-political polemics in semi-broadsheet disguise from coming in through the letter-box...

    Is there *any* point in trying to re-use eggboxes? If so, what for, if there isn't a local market where eggs are sold?

21. At 07:52 PM on 09 Nov 2007, wrote:

    I was in our wee local supermarket (three generations local-owned) today with my daughter-out-law, and she whipped a bag out of her pocket. It took a surprising amount of stuff and was tiny itself. Called an onya bag (made from recycled parachutes, I'm told.

    I sit here enjoying one of the cans of Liffey it helped us carry.

    Slainte
    ed

    When a person goes on a diet, the first thing he loses is his temper.
    

22. At 12:37 AM on 10 Nov 2007, mittfh wrote:

    Just a quickie to say:

    Congratulations for not stumbling over the initials "IPCC". The number of other presenters I've heard - either on radio or TV - mispronouncing it either IPPC or IPC is staggering...