Monday 28 November: 4th week after the surprised demonetisation in India.
Slowly (surely too slowly for the city workers and employees, and the farmers), things are advancing in India concerning the deliveries of new 500 rupee notes and the use of dematerialised means of payment.
While the leaders of the opposition are trying to fight back, Prime Minister Modi's government aligns the army's, police's and revenue administration's successes against terrorist groups, criminals and frauders who failed to get rid of their old banknotes.
Wednesday 30 November: from scoutism to the Atlantic Ocean scattered islands.
An article to summarise what I get from two Thursday exhibitions at the Royal Philatelic Society London headquarters.
On 27 October Hallvard Slettebø proposed the history and events of the first fifty years of scoutism, from the Mafeking Siege to 1957 Jamboree, including some tragic events during which the scouts played an important postal role.
On 10 November members of the West Africa Study Circle proposed a philatelic and postal history tour of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha, the British Southern Atlantic scattered islands.
Saturday 3 December: The French Academy of Philately in London.
Last Thursday exhibition at the RPSL, on 24 November, the members of the Académie de philatélie proposed many speciality of the French, Maritime and Colonies philately and postal history, with some adventures into other French speaking countries. Greece would seem odd but the engraver of the stamps, the first printer and the philatelist involved are all French (a Collectors Club video to remind the English listening readers).
My native town of Montpellier made an appearance thank to Scottish university professor Iain Stevenson whose links to the city may be connected to a study on the Collège des Écossais, a students' house built on the northern hills (now quite urbanised) by Patrick Geddes in 1924.
Sunday 4 December: too cold to think, let's hibernate.
An article which some newsbits of the week: old pictures of the French stamp printing plant in 1913 on a Sower specialised blog ; letters to Santa in Noumea, New Caledonia ; maybe the end of a piracy affair near Montpellier: the merchant ship Jeanne-Elisabeth trapped under a sand banks with a mass o silver coin for the Kingdom of France just before the Seven Year's War.
A note on how the beautiful Mauritius Post Office printing plate and Bombay cover auctions did: millions, but not as many as hoped... But in France the saga of the special sustainable paper of the 200 years of the Caisse des Dépôts (a French institution who managed some of the State's funding, including loans to build social housing) continued. It seems some merchants are re-inflating a speculative bubble with the variation of phosphorescence between the April first day 3000 minisheets and the November general issued ones...
Finally among the many interesting StampBoards threads opened, answered, continued every day, one reminds that some Arabic wallpapers of the 1960s-1970s can be interesting when used on mail. Especially those Cinderella stamps of insurecting Dhofar that rebelled against the oppressive Sultan of Oman between 1965 and 1975, in the context of the Cold War. The example presented on StampBoards is sent to a stamp dealer in London ; the labels are used alone, but for a standalone Syrian datestamp... one of the regional ally of the rebellion against a government supported by other Arabic countries and the British.
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