Just the door bell rang. An inspector wanted to know: “Is there a dog in this house?” Actually they take rising taxes on dogs. Soon, for sure, they will take a big tax on cats too. Our cat was silently hiding behind my legs, when the tax man was making his interview. It’s a good strategy to be shy sometimes; and it’s not easy to protect the last fragment of nature in our Sardine cities …
title=”Sardine City I” – photo by Rupert Procter, click on the picture to enter his galleries on Flickr
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my tip of the day, a Telegraph reportage: cat and grandma in rural Japan, featuring a wonderful coexistence:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9698490/Photo-series-of-the-bond-between-a-grandmother-and-her-odd-eyed-white-cat.html
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compare
https://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/hong-kong-mankinds-future/
there:
title=”Hong Kong” – photo by Manuel ROMARÍS, click on the picture to enter his galleries on Flickr
or,
more of the topic “animals_and_their_people”:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/10/animals_and_their_people.html
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more of the topic “the hell of the big cities”:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/11/austerity_protests.html?camp=obinsite
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Flickr Comments 
A nightmare
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next nightmare:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9699023/Madonnas-bustier-and-Britneys-corset-at-Christies-Pop-Culture-auction.html?frame=2407871
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Wow, that about says it all!
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Is that a real apartment building? A bit scary if it is…
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Yes, it’s real! I plan to take some more photos like it soon.
Rupert
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compare
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Oh my goodness. I’m not sure if I’d want to live in a building that high and packed. I hope to see your pictures when you get them 🙂
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I wonder if the view is unobstructed? I see no shadows…
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Hi I took the photo. Yes the view is unobstructed across Hong Kong harbour. I took this photo from my office window on the other side of the water on a 400mm lens.
Rupert
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thank you, Rupert, for sharing your view from the other side of the water!
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maybe our future is gray like
title=”Hong Kong apartments” by jbenson2, on Flickr
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I wonder what the reasoning behind the tax is?
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the city administrations in Germany are very poor – they give electric energy for free without any taxes to the industry – and so the try to get money back via big tax on dogs, wrong car parking, using water, gas, electricity in private homes … – they close public swim baths and public schools are poor, health care is good only in big cities, no more hospitals in middle sized towns …
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On this side of the pond we only hear about all the “good” green efforts your government is putting into place, not the real life issues that you have told us about in your reply – seems we are all suffering the effects of bad spending, big taxes, etc. this is one of the reasons it is so important to blog- so we can really educate ourselves!
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the decision to cancel nuclear energy brings very high costs: green energy – like off-shore windmills – is much more expensive than nuclear energy. so the German fear is very expensive; solar energy in Germany, in a land of rain? they are considering, if Greece could send us some solar energy: but no one has there money to build up solar parks; at first we have to deliver some billions of dollars, because rich people in Greece have hidden there money in Switzerland. A corrupt Greece without any tax payers comes to a sad end – earlier than Germany …
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Not a real big fan of nuclear energy – and I can understand why no one else is after Chernobyl and Japan… We can only keep trying to find solutions – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
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Yep taxes on pets, and that is an amazing building.
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i wonder where that photo is taken.. and your tip of the day about the grandma and her odd-eyed kitty, wonderful photos.. the kitty sure looks like my kitty too and she’s also odd-eyed..
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How awful to live there – but it could be worse!
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I saw these photos in Cologne pf the museum. 🙂 It may be same.
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thanks for your answer to my question in your blog:
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frizztext on November 24, 2012 at 5:29 pm said:
hi Coco / M.,
the gallery below seems to be in Japan?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9698490/Photo-series-of-the-bond-between-a-grandmother-and-her-odd-eyed-white-cat.html?frame=2407641
are there rural locations enough in Japan to live like this 86 old grandma with her cat? is it possible to have cats or dogs in the home? I’ll write tomorrow about that …
Reply ↓
cocomino
on November 25, 2012 at 9:26 am said:
Thanks for the link. The gallery is interesting. Yes, it’s possible to live with cats in rural area.
You’re not allowed to have cats only in apartments of the city area….
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Hives of humanity!
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I guess there’s no better place to feel a complete lonelyness…
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Fine photo. I had been looking for such photos for a futuristic piece I wrote. Unfortunately the pessimistic vision I had of housing in the 2060’s is already on full display. This is a great resource you’ve created here, this Flickr Archive.
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Where are these places? Amazing! 🙂
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photos? all three shot in Hong Kong by various flickr photographers – click on the pictures to enter their galleries …
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It sounds and looks (the photos) like a futuristic novel!
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Aaww! I love the kitty and grandma photos
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Oh my…! Isn’t it a little too… packed?! I hope the future will be a little more optimistic than this. I’d hate to live like that =/
Also, taxes on animals are horrible, in my opinion. I read almost all of the replies to this post, and I can say that when I visited Berlin this February, I could never EVER think that the situation was so bad. All seemed a little paradise to me, really. D:
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I know people who’ve lived in Hong Kong but have never seen their pictures. I cannot imagine living in a city with buildings like that. Is there room to walk on the sidewalks???
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The grandmother and her odd-eyed cat was such a heart-warming series of photos! Thanks for sharing ~ Kat
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Rome, Mussolini, 1934
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