Sir
You will be aware from previous correspondence, sadly largely unpublished, of my opposition to the EU food labelling standards.
However, there is one area in which food labelling standards are sadly lacking. Each week when I visit my butcher or supermarket I find meats labelled as cured; but of what and when?
I think that we should be told.
Yours faithfully
R. Suppards (Mrs)
Tonight dinner was enhanced by the first potatoes from what used to be our rockery. We dug it out a couple or three years ago and made a raised be into with we’ve planted various greens and potatoes. Tonight’s are the result of a potato that I just planted because it was sprouting in the veg drawer. A nice change from some of the shop bought (we were very disappoited with the Jersey Royals this year – almost tasteless).
Earlier in the year we had a great crop of strawberries that lasted us throigh about 3 weeks of enhancing puddings. Not so many coming through now though.
The tomato hanging basket (Tumbler) is cropping like mad and making salads nicer as are lettuce from the garden. The plum and full size tomatoes are flowering, but no crops yet.
We tried Pak Choi this year for the first time and managed to use 4 or 5 in stir fries before they went to flower.
Fennel, garlic, round carrotts and beans all coming along.
We’ll never match Tom & Barbara, but it is a bit of fun and relaxation, the food miles are minimal and it all tastes good, so we’ll be doing it all again next year.
Filed under about me, In our garden
The local Sparrow and Starling youngsters are going through 5 or 6 fat balls a day at the moment. The Starlings are just starting to show signs of transition from juvenile feathers to the adult plumage and are feeding themselves, but the Sparrow young still, mostly, need to be fed.
Despite reports of a decline in Sparrows in recent years we have a good crop and can often have as many as 20 flitting around with their complex air traffic control stacking them for a turn on the feeder.
Fortunately we’ve had no sightings of the larger birds of prey that turned up towards the end of last year, but the Pigeons, Gulls and Crows still have spats amongst themselves, uniting against the Magpies and the Heron.
Samantha Squirrel was last seen in August and so we think that she has gone to that drey in the sky. She would have been at least 6 and had been through some hard times. A strange thing though; it was four summers ago that she moved herself and her two babies into our loft and we had to evict them in fear that they would chew up wiring with the attendant risks to them and us. Twice in the last few months an adult squirrel has come down our path, run unerringly up the cherry tree to the corner of the house where Samantha made an entry, looked around and then run back down the tree and left, ignoring the adjacent bird feeder. Could this have been one (or both) of Samantha’s offspring, following some memory of a previous home? Maybe I’m just being wishful, but why would a squirrel just turn up, check that location and leave?
This is the fourth year that we have not had a fox take up temporary residence under our deck. Having been a regular maternity ward for several years we had enjoyed the spectacle of the youngsters play fighting in the afternoon sun, even if we did not like some of their, shall we say, personal habits.
Filed under wildlife encounters
I’m in the process of having to take strong action against one publishing house and am actively chasing another for payment for articles that I have written for them and, in the former case, for several photos to accompany the article. Both articles have been published against agreed terms, so what is the problem with coughing up what is owed?
One problem is that it is taking me longer to chase them than it did to write the darn things in the first place, but I am going to keep going even if I end up taking them down the small claims route.
It is a shame as it takes away both the pleasure of having something published and any feeling of support for that publication, but such is life. There are a lot of shysters out there.
Filed under business life, random rants, serious stuff, writing
So there I am, networking away after giving an evening presentation, when realisation of the time creeps up on me. I need to get moving. I’ve missed out on the sponsor’s excellent looking buffet, but plan to grab a sandwich at Paddington – it’s a long time since 12 and my hurried lunch.
Farewells said I head out into Kingsway and cross the street heading for Holborn Station and the Central Line. As I funnel into the stream of others squeezing into the entrance I take the free Evening Standard and shuffle through the turnstiles and down the escalator.
A westbound train is just pulling so I dive on, lean up against the partition and open my paper. The news is bad: Mutant e.coli sweeping Europe and the US. Deadly bugs passed on via salad items seem to be the cause and we have 7 victims over here in the UK now. Nasty stuff, and I feel for the folks in Hamburg, the epicentre of the outbreak the paper tells me, as it is somewhere I have visited many times on business and have always been warmly welcomed.
A change of train at Oxford Circus and I get a seat this time. I read more about the outbreak and its implications. All very unpleasant.
Paddington comes up and I make my way through the tunnel and up onto the concourse. I have 10 minutes before the train is due out, so head for the food concessions to find, you guessed it, row upon row of tired looking concoctions (well it is just after 9pm) all embellished with limp salad.
Even if the chance of any of it being likely to be carrying a nasty bug is infinitesimal, ThatConsultantBloke goes home to bed hungry, unable to face any of it, the power of the media having put him off thoroughly.
It will be nothing to do with my lack of religious belief, nor my anti AV status, but rather a spontaneous combustion of barbeque lighting fluid in the atmosphere.
Despite being 75 to 100 feet from the nearest meat cremation ceremony, the stench of accelerant is so bad that I’ve given up on gardening and come indoors feeling somewhat ill. Goodness knows what their food will taste like with all those fumes around.
So, if you live locally and see the flash, or you hear of our fireball on the news later, you’ll know why.
Filed under fun stuff, random rants
At Wilton Water, Wilton, nr Marlborough in support of Help for Heroes amongst other causes. Check their website here for details.
Filed under fun stuff, serious stuff
Having written here recently about FGW dropping the RingGo service from their car parks I was delighted this week to find RingGo available in Eastleigh in a council car park and at Portsmouth in an NCP. Excellent news on days when I had no change.
Nice to know that some folks are not as short sighted as First Great Western when it comes to making life easy for people.
Filed under random rants
So far in this debate I’ve not really seen much from the Yes lobby that tells me why theirs is a good idea; it has all been about the FPTP system being wrong and that AV is great, but why?
As any of you that have read my previous posts on this topic will know I am against it, but again, to be fair, why?
Well, in what will, hopefully, be my final blog on the subject, here’s why:
What is the point of your vote? It is to elect the person that you would like to have represent you. Now this has become slightly corrupted in that you probably really vote for the party that they represent rather that the person. There is a distinction, but let’s leave it at that for now.
You get the one choice, and why would you want a second choice? Now the AV lobby will have you believe that you might have a second, third, or more choice, but is it really true that someone will say “I’m voting for party A, but party D would be my second choice, and Party F my third choice”? I really doubt that.
What is far more likely is that they will say “I want party A to win and party B to lose”. Let’s face it, someone who votes Tory is going to want the Labour party to lose and vice versa, so what can they do?
Under AV they can either vote as they do now choosing their one favoured candidate, leaving the other candidates boxes on their form unticked,
or they can vote for more than one candidate and put the one they don’t want to win as far down the list as they can
or they could vote for their favourite, plus some of the others, but not the one that they don’t want.
If they take the first option then there is no difference from now. If they take either of the other options they are voting tactically.
Now we need to be honest here and acknowledge that, apart from some specific areas of the UK, there are two main parties; Conservative and Labour, then there are the LibDems, and then the rest. Can anyone really say that this is not the case? You only have to look at the numbers to see it, or just glance at history. Apart from the current coalition, or the war years, when did we have anyone other than the top two in power?
So if you are voting tactically and you want either Conservative or Labour to win and the other to lose, then you need to make your second choice one that is going to attract enough votes to push the unwanted candidate down, and the only realistic second choice for most is therefore LibDem.
In one of my other blogs on this subject someone has commented about how many LibDem voters complained last year that they had not voted LibDem to get a Tory government, but isn’t that what AV is about. I, too, remember that now and understand her point.
Persuade me I’m wrong if you can, but as I see it if someone is elected on a raft of second, and possibly third, choice votes, how is this better than what we have now? Unless you are one of those who have successfully voted tactically that is.
Filed under serious stuff
I am all for a fair fight, good open debate and accepting the results at the end, whatever they may be. My own campaign against the yes2av lobby is, I hope, a good example of putting an alternative argument forward so that people can make up their own minds, albeit that I do hope that my arguments do influence people towards my way of thinking.
And so I am appalled the read via another blog quoting from The Spectator that the Electoral Reform Society, who would have much to gain financially from a Yes2av vote being successful, are sponsoring that campaign. Read the blog and reference to the article here and make up your own mind.
It is old news maybe, having been published in late Feb this year, but was news to me until this morning.
Filed under random rants, serious stuff
The Voice of the Bloke at the Back 