The photos below of NHS headlines were taken in one of my favourite newspaper and magazine shops, the one in Victoria Street on the left as you go towards Victoria Station, having turned left out of Strutton Ground.  Moments after leaving that shop, I started off back in the other direction along Victoria Street, towards Parliament Square, and took these the two snaps below.

There is not much point any more in taking pictures of just The Wheel.  We all know what that looks like.  But I still like to snap away at it, when I am able to combine it with other things, such as particularly sastisfying foreground clutter, or a statue:

I especially like the one on the left, partly because the scene will never be repeated.  I do like temporary clutter.  And I particularly like how it says “ALARMED”, bottom right.  I only saw that when I got home.

The statue on the right is the one featured in this posting here, from 2008, which I had of course totally forgotten about but have just been reminded about by google.

That’s right.  I went a-googling for “statue outside westminster abbey”, and clicked on entry number four, “images for statue outside westmister abbey”.  And guess what the Gold Medal Image was, the very first image, top left, number one on the list.  That’s right, only me.

Not long ago, Alex Singleton dropped by.  And one of the many intriguing things he told me was that Google really, really likes blogs like BrianMicklethwaitDotCom.  This is because blogs like BrianMicklethwaitDotCom have been going for quite a long time, are quite frequently updated with new stuff, and are real blogs rather than fakes.  Also, crucially, BrianMicklethwaitDotCom has now no truck with - and never ever has had any truck with - bullshit tricks for boosting traffic as peddled by bullshit tricksters on the www.  Google can tell this.  Google has its own box of clever tricks to spot anyone trying to do this, and guess who is cleverer, the bullshit tricksters or Google?  And Google has worked out that I never do any of that crap.  So, Google likes me, and when people look for a picture and I have such a picture, my picture gets to be at or very near the top of the list.

Alex also told me that some quite Big Cheese car maker and car seller had made the mistake of availing itself of the services of one of these traffic booster nitwits.  Jaguar, I think it was.  And Google proceeded to expunge Jaguar from its listings.  So, when you went looking for a luxury car, you got no Jaguars at all.  And if you went looking for jaguars, all you got was big black kitties.

At the time, I thought Alex himself might have been bullshitting, but it seems he may have been exactly right.

No, not Jaguar, so not exactly right, and I have only left that in for the kitty connection.  Sorry Jaguar.  If you want all that removed, just say the word and it will be done.  I have just dined with Antoine Clarke, and he told me it was: BMW.

Yesterday was an excellent day for me, photographically.  Usually, after an enjoyable and productive photo-walk, I show you people only a tiny sliver of what I took, and quite often not even that.  But today, Friday, I want to do a bit more than that, with a series of postings of various sorts of things I snapped.

Meanwhile, Friday being Friday, some sensational cat news, which I spotted in one of London’s free newspapers towards the end of the day:

Monopoly fans have voted to give the iron the boot and welcome in the cat as the new token for the much-loved board game.

I guess time was when the Iron was a huge deal in life, far more than mere pets.  Not any more.

I recommend googling “monopoly cat”.

That’s the headline, but really, all that the cats are doing is killing off a few endangered bird species.

I guess people get so used to saying that something is both destroying the planet and meanwhile killing a few endangered species, that if all that it’s really doing is killing a few endangered species, it must also be destroying the planet.

As promised, more Croydon Shop Stuff, feline because it’s Friday:

Top left, superior Egyptian cats, and: a meerkat.  They’re cats too, right?  Well, kats, anyway.

Top right, you can see a hippo, next to all the exotic, big, wild cats.  Hippos are extraordinarily rare in such situations, given how appealing you would think they might be.  Stuff Shops are full of animals, such as monkeys, bears, cows, dogs, cats (of course), horses, and dinosaurs.  But, hardly ever hippos, in fact pretty much never.  I know this because Perry de Havilland collects hippos, and I am constantly on the lookout for them, to repay him a bit for all the free dinners I cadge off of him (and her).

The one in that picture is by something called Naturecraft, and it’s the only hippo they do.  It costs £25 quid, and I’d be willing to go that far, but I reckon Perry already has one of these exact hippos.  They aren’t hard to find on the www, so if he wants one, he already has one.

According to this site, Naturecraft was bought up and rejigged, and doesn’t do these animals any more.  Maybe the problem was that people photoed them in shops, but didn’t buy them.

A cat gets into a box.  Eventually.  Video.  Here.

And no, I don’t know what language that is.

Last Wednesday, for reasons that had nothing to do with any attempt to take the photos that follow, I found myself at Piccadilly Circus.  This is always a fun spot to photo photographers, but on this particular night they were out in force, because also present were Halloween revellers, typically themselves armed with cameras.  Here are some of the better snaps I snapped, of all the Halloween fun and games:

I hope (although I promise nothing) to be doing a Samizdata posting, Real Soon Now, along the lines of: Is Halloween Replacing Bonfire Night in Britain?  I shall be keeping an ear open next Monday (November 5th) to hear if there is any abatement on the explosion front.

Nice for me that one of them was a cat, what with it now being Friday and all.

Kitten blogging from Delingpole:

Among the report’s findings are that large scale industrial wind farms can:

...

Rescue drowning kittens from sacks in canals and lead them to secure, happy homes where they are well cared for in handcrafted wicker baskets with lovely, snuggly faux-sheepskin blankets for them to purr on and little saucers of organic Jersey cream designed by Cath Kidston.

Whoever she is.  This, apparently.

The enviro-argument has reached an odd stage.  Day after day, enviro-non-loonies like the increasingly contemptuous Delingpole pound away at enviro-looniness.  Yet because the Cameron Government is a coalition, founded on a deal to do (among other daft things) enviro-looniness, the government just ignores all the complaints, merely cutting the sillier enviro-schemes by small amounts, but leaving the basic looniness to continue.  Yet the public must be noticing.  They are paying the mad energy bills.  They, some of them, must be reading about all the corruption (YeoGummer, etc.).  The entire Conservative Party is disgusted and in the mood to vote UKIP en masses.  The top end of the Labour Party says nothing, because they believe in enviro-looniness also, yet their massed members must be disgusted by YeoGummer.

So, nobody is happy.  The enviro-loonies aren’t getting as much public money as they had hoped for.  Many of the rest of us still think they’re getting far too much.

It’s one of those situations where, as Instapundit would say, it if can’t last for ever, it won’t.

But maybe it will.

More enviro-blogging from Natalie, here.

Whenever, of a Friday, I go looking for cat news, there is always plenty. 

Pride of place today goes to the news that the New York shooter loved his two cats.  But, it is now argued, by some different scientists to the scientists who argued the opposite, that he can’t have caught brain cancer from his cats, because that doesn’t happen.  Good to know.  But, you might be driven by your cats to commit suicide.  How about murder?

On the other hand, Cats that pester for food could be suffering from psychological condition.  Yes.  They’re cats.

News of a cat that is making itself useful: Cat opens new excavator plant in Texas.  That must have been something to see.  What did the cat say?  Did it just chuck a champagne bottle against the side of the excavator plant?  Is there video of this?

TWO men appeared at Hereford Magistrates Court this morning charged with robbing a man in the city while dressed as cats.

Next up, the encouraging news that M12 Cat 6A connector system delivers signal integrity up to 10Gbps.

And, in Israel, new born and very rare (apparently) sand kittens, like this one:

Finally, two feline related bits of compugraphics which, according to Instapundit, went viral last week, in connection with Pussy Riot and Maths (which Americans can’t spell).

I actually don’t think the one on the right is very good.  The cat connection is imposed, not explained.

Also snapped last Sunday in Borough High Street, with Feline Friday in mind.  I promise nothing, mind, but I do like to mention cats on a Friday here, from time to time:

Appropriately, given the footloose and fancy free reputation of the feline, this is a company that specialises in rental accommodation.

I wonder when they decided on that name.  And were they thinking, I wonder, that they would, because of it, get lots of free publicity on the internet?

Is there a Mr Black, or a Mr Katz, involved in the enterprise, or was the name just picked because they liked it?  (LATER: Yes to both!  See comments.)

More about them here.

Ici.

Today being Friday, and hence a potential Feline Friday, I couldn’t possibly ignore this:

And not just a cat.  A photographically flattenable cat, with propellers attached.

6000 explains, here.

So how about another Feline Friday:

Photoed by me this afternoon, next to Westminster Abbey.

Couple splits over 550 house cats.

I just bought a new camera, the Panasonic Lumix FZ150, and it is great.  Here are some snaps I took with it, on Monday, of a few of my fellow digital photographers:

The light was fading quite fast while I was taking these, and trust me, these are much better snaps than I could have taken with my previous donkey-driven camera.

Further to my effort to keep this blog ticking over, on account that one day it might come in handy, here is a piece of kitten blogging, on account of it being Friday which is my day for kitten blogging.

I seem to recall, a long time ago, Smith and Jones, or Hale and Pace, somebody, doing a sketch where one of them threatened to microwave a kitten.  I forget why.  I don’t recall them actually doing this, but the mere thought of such an atrocity caused several sacks of outrage correspondence from the nothing-better-to-do-than-bitch-about-the-telly tendency.

It was going to happen eventually.  Now, somebody has gone the whole hog and actually done this:

Callous Gina Robins put the helpless ten-week-old pet in the 770-watt oven and turned it on.

Owner Sarah Knutton heard a loud noise “like a crisp packet being popped” followed by an “horrendous screech” as it died in agony.

Revenge because Sarah stole Gina’s boyfriend.  Or something.

Horrible.

Cheer yourself up with the bear who waved back.