Fake 170

I gave up using nail scissors on my nails some years ago, having moved across to clippers which look like wire cutters.

I thought to get the ones snapped above from the fancy pharmacist in Wigmore Street, Bell & Croyden, the place that used to sell doctors' tools and still sells sequined wheel chairs for those with use of money but not legs.

A pharmacy dating from the end of the eighteenth century, once a proud independent, the holder of the late Queen's warrant until 2022, for some time part of the Lloyd's family of pharmacies, now part of the Bestway Group. A group which appears to have started in cement in Pakistan some fifty years ago and which moved into UK retail in 2010, and in which it is now a major player. Owning, inter alia, the Costcutter chain - which includes the fine convenience store in Manor Green Road. Maybe 'own' is too strong a word here; perhaps it is a franchise, with a strong element of local ownership and management.

Presumably the Bell & Croyden move to Bestway was part of the same shakeout which saw the Lloyd's pharmacy in our High Street move to Pearl.

The present complaint is about the nail clippers, expensive and German. Quite good looking in the shop, with a nice sheen and feel to the metal. But metal which turns out to be plate rather than solid. Plate, moreover, which is peeling off the business edge of the blades. And furthermore, while they handle well enough and I can cut both my toe nails and the nails of my right hand with them - this last being a particular challenge - they have not kept their edge terribly well. German manufacturing not always the best!

PS: two more bits of tricky news from today's Guardian. First, we are still deporting people who were born in this country, have lived all their life in this country, but who have committed some crime. A crime which is deemed sufficiently serious that we send the people concerned back to the country from which their parents came. To my tidy mind the rule should be that if you are born here you are British and that we should take responsibility for our own, law abiding or otherwise. Second, you can have a life threatening disease, enter a trial for a new drug to cure or mitigate that disease and then have that trial abruptly terminated for commercial reasons, even when it seems to be going well. I dare say that is what the participants in such trials sign up to, but it does not seem like a good way to run things. Surely the drug companies could produce enough of the new drug so that someone on the trial can continue with it, should they so desire? Without regard to the commercial fate of that new drug. Perhaps the catch is that drugs have a shelf life, and keeping a production line open for a potentially long time might well be an expensive business. One more thing to add to the already considerable costs of developing new drugs.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/fake169.html.

Reference 2: https://johnbellcroyden.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.bestwaygroup.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestway.

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