Thursday, 31 December 2009

Chocolate Biscuits Anyone ?

Whatever you did over the festive season I hope that, unlike me, you managed to steer a course away from the ever present 'Special Offers' that are around for one pound (£!) bags of chocolate biscuits. I didn't.

Unlike my usual, 'careful shopper', self I snatched up a bag of these from my local (soon to be come Co-Op) Somefields. The outside showed an example of what Might be on the insides.
Chocolate fingers in both milk and white chocolate. Chocolate Sandwich biscuits and all sorts of other delights of a chocolate biscuit nature.

Now I have to admit right here that I knew from past experience that such offers are never quite as good as you might expect them to be however, on this occasion, I allowed the festive spirit get to me just a little too much and succumbed to an actual purchase.
Oh my goodness what a mistake that was!

The contents of that bag were made up of around 90% chocolate finger biscuits, all of them of the milk chocolate variety.
Not a single white chocolate biscuit in the entire package!
There was also around five of the 'half coated' flat biscuits and little else.

Adding insult to injury as it were was the fact that, as so many times before, the biscuits were not only mis-shapes and other such items but everuy one was covered in a whitish coating meaning they were totally unacceptable as an offering to any casual visitors that might have called by during this festive season.

As I said before, I should have known better and avoided being taken in by the attractive packaging. Especially when I knew deep inside that it was simply a way for biscuit manufacturers to get rid of items they would otherwise have to throw into the rubbish as, yet again, I found to my disgust, that is undoubtedly where they rightly belonged!

Sunday, 25 January 2009

More Than ~ A Copy & Paste

The following is my personal response to the writings on a great wee blog I happened to come across during my meanderings around the Internet.

A straight 'Copy & Paste' it gave me some much needed 'air time' and,as I say at the end of my response (rant) , a chance to get off of my chest some stuff that has been irritating me 'something rotten' for quite some time now ....

The blog in question is called, " Peripher Actions"
And this is what I had to say for myself ...

Yes indeed, as the brochure says, Gaskin View is to be the first of … however many…However ‘Gaskin View’ is simply the name of a ‘housing estate’, an estate of new housing, for which the developers, as they do in such instances, have provided a name. As someone, popular on the radio at the time, used to say, “It doesn’t have to mean nuttin’”.

Every new housing development gets its own wee title. I think it helps the lorry drivers and development people find it in amongst the possibly very many other sites which they have to frequent, it saves them mixing up one site in say Glasgow with another in say Birmingham. To us they may be many hundreds of miles apart, to those involved in building them they can be but a paragraph apart on a single sheet of the project manager’s time sheet.

Gaskin view is under development. This fact can be witnessed from the windows of homes in other areas of Drumchapel. Some three, or is it four, detached homes have already been built. How many more will be completed, in the these financially restricted times, is another matter.I too have read the ‘plans’ for Drumchapel you include on this page.I noted with great interest the inclusion of the information that,

“The Local Development Strategy will address these transport issues and consider the feasibility of new distributor roads from Antonine Way to Linkwood Drive and Peel Glen Road to Kinfauns Drive.”

Fascinating facts indeed. Sorry, did I say ‘facts’?

There is no more likelihood of said road being built than there is of any other major road works in the Drumchapel area. In my opinion, back when that ‘plan’ was aired, someone was looking for yet more ‘delaying tactics’ to cover the lack of Any forward movement for the Drumchapel area. Luckily, some might say, for whoever was searching for said delaying tactics, the present financial crisis could’t have come at a more opportune moment.
As always, as anyone who has lived in GCC or GHA homes over the years can testify, delaying tactics are the name of the game in the Drumchapel area … Take for example the proposed rental changes for GHA tenants.

All GHA tenants were recently notified in writing that those in homes awaiting demolition will not see any rise in rents. Those who are not under the threat of demolition will see an increase in rents.What a fair way of doing things you might think.

However, what about those in the demolition ‘no mans land’ of the GHA’s making, where GHA management have (verbally) informed fewer than twenty people (but where no-one has been officially informed .. with partial demolition ”in around five years” being what myself and fewer than fifteen others were *personally* informed off)?

Ah, well, as no official notice of demolition has been served, their rents will be going up!So, while on the one hand Drumchapel’s future is as purported in the document you have highlighted on this page, on the other, in reality, we have the threat of demolition hanging over our heads. We have the influx of tenants from other, some might say, less salubrious high rise demolitions, we have the rumour mill working overtime, due in no small part to the lack of any tangible information,we have the increased turnover of tenancies resulting from this intolerable and most unfair situation and now, to cap it all off, we have a rise in rents which is totally counter to anyone’s best interest as said rise will simply exacerbate the above situation.


Pardon my rant.It’s been niggling away at me for weeks now.
Ever since I first read about that road, as mentioned in the document on this page…,I shall now copy this over to my own Blog.and provide a link to this page of course.Thank You for your enlightening and interesting Drumchapel pages.I’ll away and see what else I can find to fire my thought processes.
Thank You.

Well, dear reader, that was my wee rant for this particular winter Sunday.

Whether or not anyone will read it is another matter.
I was just back on the site and it states 'No Comments' so maybe "Anna" will never read what I had to say.
Who knows.
I'll keep you updated should I ever hear from Anna...
Watch this space ...




Wednesday, 7 January 2009

I Took the Vow ~ Will You ?

Please click the badge and view the video.
If you decide you want to take the vow, simplyu select the 'Vow' link at the top of the page the badge link will have taken you to.