Amazon.

 The River Amazon - seems to go round and round.

A lot of people liked my post last week about acting; it was actually a revue I wrote for Amazon which I copied and pasted here – I thought it might be of interest.

A word about Amazon; in Britain it's http://Amazon.co.uk and America http://Amazon.com – the same derided company both sides of the Atlantic. In France, I believe, they were prevented from selling stuff with no postal charges as they were undercutting the book shops.

I have friends who never use Amazon; they never use them because of the loyalty they feel to the book shops and believe Amazon are closing them down.

That's a fair point.

Over the years I have had friends – other friends – who have worked in book shops, including a famous one in Charing Cross Road, who have been on slave wages; working for next to nothing, being supervised by the supervisor from hell and working very long hours. Well why didn't they get a job somewhere else? Yes, why?

Now those same book shops have been given a kick up the arse by Amazon and at the same time Amazon has saved the post office; Ebay also saved the day for the British Post Office and has put them into a decent profit position so now the government wants to sell off the post office counters to large stores or private enterprises now they have Amazon and Ebay on board for the mail side of things. Apparently the post office counters don't make a profit but the parcels side does; good old Amazon, good old Ebay.

I remember when Amazon first started; they were making no money at all but even so they were sponsoring the Charlie Rose Show on PBS; every night Charlie would espouse their virtues – what a great company Amazon is, he would say, and the rest of us who had read about the stocks wondered just how long it would last; just as we are now wondering how Netflix has lasted so long; that's a very strange company but it hasn't been taken over yet by Google like - YouTube.

But there is a good side to Amazon; not only did they help Charlie Rose, they help first time writers to get started and first time film makers with their film festival information company which is a subsidiary of the Internet Movie Date Base (IMDb.com) which is an Amazon Company. That's a place where all actors have to be aware of so things go around in circles don't they.

But those old book shops hardly ever helped writers to get started. I say, hardly ever as there may be a few – not that I know of any – who are helping new writers and novice novelists like me; but I haven't heard of any so that's just to cover myself.

Well that's it for today and here's a picture of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize!

And here's a man - in one photo with John Lennon, no less was was an anti war campaigner:

Such is life - going round in circles.