8th March 2019 Politeness costs nothing but pays compound interest.

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Friday 8th 40-46F, dark grey and breezy. Severe gales forecast for the whole country. Sunshine or overcast depending on one's loyalty to which weather service. The "sunny" service offers higher wind speeds. This is absolutely crackers! The optimistic [commercial] service constantly offers sunshine which never happens.

It used to be so easy to use the DMI "official" weather service. Their charts were absolutely brilliant at sharing complex information at a glance. Then they decided to go with empty, colourless symbols and columns of figures against a white background. Has the DMI leadership come from the ranks of accountants? Now reading the weather requires serious brain power and considerable patience. Lives and services can often depend on the weather. Garbage in. Garbage out?

As an exile from Gravely Blighted I constantly wonder at the rudeness of many Danes towards supermarket staff. The Danes even have their own word for politeness. Høflig. [Pron: houflee means polite] Høflighed means politeness. The Danes have several hierarchical ways of  of saying thank you depending on the level of service or kindness provided. However, there is often a deliberate callousness to the Danes completely ignoring polite greetings at the checkout.

All too often the shopper fails to thank the staff for their service at the checkouts. The shopper snatches their receipt or goods and go off scowling with their heads deliberately bowed to avoid eye contact. Now the Danish news confirms it with story of a girl who gave up working in a supermarket due to the ignorance and rudeness of shoppers towards the staff. As a polite englænder who was "brought up properly" I always make a point of responding to the staff and thanking them for their service. Try taking away all the checkout staff and see how well your day [or week] goes!

A short but pleasant and respectful interchange with those who invisibly staff our vital service sector can make or break one's day. The vast majority of the elderly may never interact with another human being EXCEPT at the supermarket checkout. Politeness costs nothing and is the lubricant for a caring society where all have equal status. [Except for the "entitled," alien predator class represented by the parasitic 1%, of course.]

I see the sociopathic Fuehrer of the evil, Facebook advertising empire has had to pretend to listen to those who pulled their advertising through his private, megaphone service. "Privacy" is the new buzzword. That is until the next headlines about his deliberate cheating, with real people's private lives, just to add another billion to his temporary fortune. An ecosystem which is so leveraged against survival it is only a matter of time. Nature abhors a monopoly as much as it does a vacuum.

My walk was curtailed when I could no longer make any forward progress into the wind. I turned around and was blown back home while leaning backwards onto the wind. The rest of the day followed the same pattern of violent gusts but with lots of sunshine.

Saturday 9th 40-45F, dark grey, breezy and wet. Not quite such strong gales as yesterday on my walk. It dried up but any sunshine was fleeting.
 
The news is that the big car makers are facing a perfect storm. Nobody wants a diesel. Tariffs are hurting and China no longer needs more of the same. People are sick of toxic fumes, unhealthy gases and soot particles, built in obsolescence, unreliability and expensive repairs, noise and traffic jams. It used to be streets full of horse shit, then it was coal dust and black smoke blanketing the "civilised" world.

Now the world has finally turned its back on oil based fuels, advertising bullshit, lies and car commercials. Particularly those filmed at 3 o' clock on a Sunday morning in rural Romania on closed roads. Anything to avoid showing traffic jams and driving sociopaths. Everybody wants a self-driving Tesla. Or they'll scream and scream and scream! Until we are all sick to the back teeth of hearing about Tesla Boy's antics and lack of affordable, EV production.

Sunday 10th 37F, clear and bright start with light winds. It won't last! Well, it did for the moment. An anticlockwise walk along the road, up to the woods and back down by the field edges. Steady sunshine once the early cloud cleared.

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