Shows and carnivals

Today’s title conflicts a little with today’s picture. That’s Brunswick Park in Wednesbury, setting for today’s carnival. Darlaston has a ‘Party in the Park’ in Victoria park and some things going on in King Street. Wolverhampton has their show on all weekend in West park. So there is lots to do today. 

The Guardian had a good interview on it’s website yesterday. It seems that the Prime Minister initiated the idea of the hostile environment working group – its job being to make Britain a hostile environment to unwanted immigrants. I seem to remember him saying that he wanted to encourage international students to come here from India. How do you tell a unwanted immigrant from an international student? Do a Nazi style stop and search? “Papers!”

It seems Cameron and Osborne have a ‘hostile environment’ policy for benefit claimants too. My post yesterday was about benefits. Benefits: What’s the problem got some comments. On Facebook: Brilliant! On Twitter: “You decry the Daily Mail, then fall into the same bear trap it does. Piss poor, frankly. Usually better than that.”  That was a bit harsh, but fair. The title was crap and I didn’t make the article very clear. It gave the impression, unless you read it carefully, that I was blaming claimants. There is a problem. Claims for housing benefit did spiral. The reason was spiralling ‘economic rents’. The same applies to council tax benefit. Both people on low pay and benefits have suffered from spiralling fuel bills and water bills and so rather than divide them into strivers and skivers, we should see both groups as victims of government policies. I shall do a follow up to that post…

It’s Wednesbury Carnival today and so I’ll do my best to go there. I went to my hospital appointment on Thursday, it was OK but the traffic was bad when I came out the Manor. I took photos!  I went around the back to avoid the traffic. The problems started later that night, when I got stomach pains. I suspect that I picked up a bug. I’m not blaming the hospital, I have a dodgy immune system. Yesterday was bad though. I hate nausea and I had to survive on an egg and a piece of fish… I’m a bit better today, not running to the loo anyway…

Thrifty Thursday | Bargain ideas was one of my usual thrifty posts on a Thursday. I did go to Wednesbury last week and had a quick look at the market too. Some of the small local shops in Union street are worth checking out.

It’s carnival time! was Wednesday’s very short post. I thought my local readers might need an advance reminder. I think we need to do more to promote local events. In fact we need more local events and we need them well organised. One problem appears to be access and car parking. That can be avoided if people use the bus and walk, but not everyone can do that.

Black Country Art was Tuesday’s regular feature about art and photography. I described the building in the first picture as a pump house. What do I know? It seems it was actually a gauging station for the narrow boats. They were given a load to see how much depth of water they could handle or how much load they could carry. Something like that anyway. You get the idea… I try to feature the canals, because I think they are important and so are the buildings.

Keeping cool this summer was Monday’s post. I put my Monday psychology post on a zillion ideas.  Sun block is expensive, especially if you are short of money as many people are. You can cover up a little and there are sun blocks that are cheaper. They have some at Aldi. I don’t burn and I never stay out in the sun for long. I shall wear my new hat today!

Only in the Black Country was my Sunday ramble. I’ve noticed even more pubs boarded up this week. Maybe it’s because I was looking for buildings to photograph. Pubs were an important community resource, perhaps they could become the basis of a social enterprise. Remember Cameron’s Big Society idea? What happened to that? Was it a friendly environment for whites only? No claimants, no immigrants and no disabled who deserve a hostile environment imposed on them? I wonder if that champion of liberal values Nick Clegg was at the meeting that formulated what hostile environments were? The Tories put a leaflet through my door yesterday. The pictures of their smiling strivers are about as obnoxious as the pictures the Nazi’s used of Jews looking like animals to get their message across. The Tories can work miracles though. They seemingly turned 6,000 NHS managers into doctors… Well they could have sent the managers to a hostile environment and allowed 6,000 immigrants doctors to come here? I wouldn’t put anything past them. I’m sure they didn’t train an extra 6,000 doctors anyway…

Say hello if you see me at the carnival. I won’t shake hands, you really don’t want my germs…

Have something to say? Please use the comments box. You can also follow me on Twitter and there are more posts to enjoy on a zillion ideas.

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