Coming to our Census

Those of you who live in the UK will have completed and hopefully
posted off your Census forms by now (or perhaps have completed it online).
I think I'm correct in saying that in the US and Canada, that the last
census was done in 2010 ~ censuses are done a year before all of ours.

I thought while filling in the Census form, that the officials missed
an opportunity to find out a bit more about each household eg how many
pets (dogs/cats/hamsters) we own, how many TV sets, and how many have
a Broadband internet connection. What we're hearing from the Govt. is
that they can access such info by other means, and that also they're
proposing not to have any more Censuses as from now, so as to reduce
Govt. expenditure. I think this is a short-sighted policy.

I do a bit of family history research from time to time, and one brilliant
thing about UK Censuses from 1841 onwards, is the valuable information
they contain about who is related to whom in a household. If no more
censuses are done in the future, then this information will not be available
for future generations ... we'll go back to the Middle Ages as far as
genealogy is concerned ... where only the aristocracy were catalogued in
the records (in Burke's Peerage). There will of course be some info in
electoral rolls and Land Registry records, and on the Register of Births,
Deaths and Marriages, (and in Probate records also), but there won't be any
record of the relationships within any one household, for every decade.

I've done some research into my Nourse/Norse/Nurse family history in Ireland,
going back to around 1815 ... I've worked out that I'm one-eighth Irish
... my mum's mum was Anglo-Irish and was born in Liverpool in the 1880s.
With a name like Norse, I've probably got some Viking blood in me, by the
way. Anyway, the point of mentioning all this, is that I've collected the
names and whereabouts of a few Nourse family names - people alive in Ireland
in the early 1800s, but it's very difficult to find out how they're related
to each other as there are no census records.

Let's come to our census on this!

Top o' the morning to you!

More pics

OMG, it's nearly the end of the month ... I'm getting bloggy withdrawal
symptoms :) ... in fact I'm wondering what I've been doing all this
month. Well, 7-10 days was taken up with our family holiday in
Tenerife (the weather was rather wet & windy to start with, but improved
during the week), and a few more days sorting out all my photos and
dealing with all the mail and other stuff, post holiday. I've spent
another week or so setting up new web-hosting for my local U3A website,
(with Easily), and then re-building the website. Mrs C and I have been
catching up on all our favourite TV dramas, and watched the thrilling
last two episodes of "The Killing" last weekend ... when it ended, I
was left feeling emotionally drained as were most of the characters in
the drama. We've just started to watch the DVD series of "In Treatment",
which describes a counsellor dealing with his clients on a weekly basis,
and dealing with a lot of problems of his own ... an excellent production.

I'll finish with posting a few photos, that I've taken in the past few
weeks ....

A touch of Spring:


Victorian monuments in one of Nottingham's cemeteries:


Little A:


Her brother J:


M and D on a beach in Tenerife:


The same beach in Tenerife:


More pics on my Flickr site.

Economics for dummies like me

While reading through Andrea's latest posts, I found a link to
a good article written by Murr Brewster on her view of the
economic situation in the US ... should wealth be more fairly
distributed in society by means of taxation, for example, and
should there be free health care for everyone?

One of the main news stories today in the UK has been the huge
bonuses being awarded to nine top bankers in the RBS (a £28m pot
of shares being awarded to them). I think the Government should
put a stop to bonuses being awarded on this scale ... I think
surplus funds like this should be paid back to customers (to
to give them better returns on their investments or reduced bank
charges), and also should be spent on helping our UK charities.

More photos for you

Hi folks,

I’ll continue for a while with just posting a few photos from time to
time, to show you what’s going on in my life. I’m going along to a
photography group, and am learning how to get more out of my camera
(changing exposure compensation, etc.) so hopefully you’ll see better
quality photos here in the coming months.

Here’s a small selection of my recent photos (there are lots more on
my Flickr site … I’ve put a link to this in the side-bar on the right
hand side). Please click on any of the photos below to see a larger
version.

Fruit (photo taken on our dining room window ledge)



Flowers (photo taken in our kitchen)



Our grandchildren JJ and A, who came to stay with us for a couple of days