Well, I am pleased to advise that Santa visited and helped me out with this.

My youngest son, who has been building apps for iphones since he was 13, came to visit for Xmas.
I told him my little story about scraping data and a day later he had built me a scraper that is importing everything I want.

It is a delight to click one button and see it all download in front of me in a matter of minutes.
Thanks to all for their input.
ET