Should the Scots have their own Tundra Time Zone?

As summer kicks in in the Antipodes the combination of grimmer oop north weather and the changing of the clocks has Pub Philosopher grumpy. Does it make sense for the UK to align with the rest of Europe in time zone?

Pitch dark by 5 o'clock today.

I've said all I'm going to say about the annual stupidity of putting the clocks back to daylight wasting time. The case for keeping our clocks one hour ahead of the sun in winter is overwhelming. Our lives are different from those of our ancestors. We get up later and go to bed later.

As Sir Alistair Horne said, if the Scots want to have their own Tundra Time, let them go ahead. Just don't drag the rest of us into the dark too.

The Last Ditch: Tom's day of heavenly peace

Tom has an interesting account of his first trip to Beijing and a chance to see some of the city.

I walked around the city for five hours. At several points, I paused to reflect how lucky I am to have such a life; to have the chance to visit the far-off places I dreamed of as a boy. My whole family has lived in one square mile of what is now Wales, probably, since prehistory. It seems to be my destiny to improve our averages when it comes to travel.

The Forbidden City was not quite what I expected. Yes, it's huge and impressive and oozes history. Yet it also feels rather sad. It's as if the Emperor had just walked away and no-one had quite decided what to do with it. Renovation of such a complex must be a huge burden. It covers 7.8 million square feet and comprises 980 buildings. It is a city within a city. A city that feels, in parts, abandoned and neglected. Some structures are quite dilapidated, although crews were working on others. The task of maintenance is eternal. While it's a "World Heritage Site" and rightly so, I can't help feeling it would be better put to use. Such wonderful spaces should be occupied and enjoyed, not just gawped at by the likes of me. The occupants would also pick up on minor repairs that would otherwise become major while waiting for scheduled maintenance.

It was crowded, particularly at entrance and exit where I was pressed closer to a mass of strangers than any Englishman can well endure (yet without ever feeling in danger, or worrying about my wallet). After a while, the masses de-merged into family groups and I could observe the Chinese at leisure. My main impression was of extended families. I saw some old people so thin and drawn that it was hard to believe they were mobile. Yet they were cheerfully led, or pushed around by their families and looked happy in their company. The welfare state in Britain has destroyed so much. Such skeletal specimens would be in a "home", out of sight and out of mind. Here they cheerfully chatted to the family's infants, who seemed completely relaxed (as they should be) in the company of the old and frail.

Basking happily in the bright sunshine in their leisure wear, many Chinese wore English slogans. I never understand why our language has such glamour for strangers. Apart from the usual brand names (paid for or otherwise) there were random English words. One lady had "Praisworthy" (sic) emblazoned on her blouse. I don't know why our scruffy leisure costume has been adopted at all. Traditional Chinese clothes are so much more attractive, but I only saw a few people - usually very old - wearing them. Even most of the very elderly sported trainers and jeans. I noticed the cheap and brightly coloured baseball hats handed out by tour organisers so they can recognise their flock in crowds were lined with the attractive check that Burberry has now pretty much had to abandon, so "common" has it become.

More here

Pauli Finds Out People Just Want To Have Fun

Thanks Pauli

Garbo Dissects the Tory Conference -Wardman Wire

If the Labour party conference was expected to be a disaster but in the end turned out just about alright, you might say the expectation for the Tory conference were very high, but the results have been very similar to their counterparts. This week has been just about alright for the Tories, nothing like the barnstorming affair we might have expected but certainly not a disaster either.
Things kicked off in the traditional manner – a row over Europe. This is a debate that will run and run and will continue to plague the Tories. It is not a so much a matter that the Tories are split or wrong or anything else. It is more that they simply do not have a coherent policy. They want to change Europe but at the same time do not want to be part of it. They want a referendum on Lisbon, but at the same time won’t commit to one. They have a leader who knows that Britain needs Europe but a party who does not want to be dictated to by it. It is a problem that has only been slightly eased by the Irish yes vote, but only very slightly.

Then came the cuts talk. As I wrote yesterday, Osborne should be applauded for taking the bull by the horns. But it has not pleased much of the party faithful. David Cameron’s suggestion that if the deficit has not been scratched by cuts, then taxes will have to rise. Well Osborne’s announcements tackled just 12% of one year’s deficit over a five year period. That sounds like tax rises are on the way then. It has been said before – if the Conservatives are not the party of low taxation, then what are they? It is an honest and tough approach, and the polls suggest they have not been too harmed by it just yet. But it has provided the government with plenty of ammunition and very probably upset grassroots supporters and a few floating voters alike.

Continues here and here

Graccii on Roman Polanski

Something worries me about the Roman Polanski case- and it is not his arrest, it is the reaction to it. As far as I can see, Polanski admitted to comitting a crime thirty years ago, he then fled before he could be punished- now at last justice has caught up with him. You may think that there should be a statute of limitations as in Italy and that is a fair view but it is not a view to be argued about right now because of the emotiveness of this case. There seems to be no doubt that there is no miscarriage of justice involved here: simply put a fugitive from justice has been arrested and placed in a cell prior to extradition to the jurisdiction which originally condemned him. It is for the courts to decide what punishment to administer.

And yet apparantly petitions are being drafted, the French society of film actors is talking about freedom of speech and Whoopi Goldberg about rape rape as opposed to rape. I find this rather strange. There is no freedom of speech issue here: Mr Polanski's crime was to have sex with an unwilling teenage girl- rape is not as far as I can remember freedom of speech and nor is it included in any meaningful definition of this film. Secondly thepetition: again what injustice are they petitioning about- if Mr Polanski were not guilty of the crime or if he were being prosecuted for something that should not be a crime I could understand it, but the petition is being drafted apparantly because he is Mr Polanski. He is a child rapist full stop- you either believe that child rapists should face punishment and therefore that Mr Polanski should or you do not, can we take it that anyone who signs this petition- Mr Scorsese, Mr Allen, Miss Argento and others- beleive that child rape is acceptable? I do not think they do, but their actions are worrying.


More here.

Duck Joke from Tuscan Tony

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."

The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead," replied the vet.

"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room.

He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever.

As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room.

A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."

The vet turned to his computer, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "£ 250?" she cried, "£ 250 just to tell me my duck is dead?"

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been £ 20, but that's the price with the with the Lab Report and the Cat scan."

Ta Da

Thanks Tony

Keith Floyd Tomato Sauce Inspiration for Welshcakes RIP

Welshcakes remembers a culinary influence.

Keith Floyd, author, flamboyant TV chef and bon viveur par excellence, died of a heart attack last night. I loved his style; the man even managed to die stylishly, having enjoyed a last meal of oysters and partridge with champagne. I had a Bristolian's affection for this honorary West Country man who opened his first restaurant in that town of my childhood. And what a "cook's cook" he was, rarely giving precise quantities, instructing you to "whack this in there" or "throw some of that in the pot", encouraging you to have the confidence to make your own judgements, as often as not with a full glass in his free hand as he did so.

A fitting tribute to Floydie on this blog, I feel, would be to write about some of my favourite Floyd recipes and so I shall do just that:

I think the first Floyd TV series I followed was Floyd on France and from the 1987 book of the series I was inspired to cook, for the first time, a chicken roasted with masses of garlic. I have tried many recipes for such a dish since, and many of them - their authors losing their nerve, it seemed to me - told you to count your garlic cloves and use 12, or at the most 20. Any experienced cook will realise that this is ridiculous, as the authors cannot possibly know how pungent the garlic is in your part of the world, or how big the cloves are. There's no such wimping out in Floyd's book, however, and you are instructed to use a kilo of the stuff. And it is to Floyd's recipe that I return again and again.

From Floyd on Italy [1994] I learnt to make tomato sauce and it is this recipe that forms the basis of my own to this day. In the introduction to this volume, Floyd writes:

"What is Italian food? Spaghetti bolognese, lasagne with coleslaw and deep-pan pizzas filled with culinary garbage? No. A thousand times no...... Whereas thinly rolled dough spread with chopped tomato and topped with anchovies and cheese and zapped into a wood-fired oven is heaven - you just don't need prawns and artichoke hearts, mushroom and chicken tikka pieces in a pastry shell and even if you do you can't call it a pizza. "

He goes on to describe what Italian food really is and I have yet to read a better description.

More Floydie memories here.

JMB Goes to Washington

I lived in the Washington DC area off and on for over ten years. I never did snare a White House invitation. JMB was able to have a look around. She tells the story on her blog.

We were very lucky to obtain tickets for a tour of the White House since usually they can not be obtained closer than one month to the date. Our friend arranged it through the office of the Senator for whom he works so we were I think considered visitors from Maine.

We fronted up very early on the morning and were checked off the list and had to show our passports and go through all kinds of security before we were conducted through a long corridor filled with photos of presidents lining the walls. As I said previously I could not take photos so these are all thanks to Wikimedia.

Only a few public rooms of the White House are included on the tour which is to be expected. But let me begin with a few facts about the house. It is the oldest public building in Washington DC and every president except George Washington has conducted business there. Although it has undergone many changes the basic structure, which was begun in 1792, has been kept. It was not occupied until 1800 when John Adams did so after the capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, even though the building's interior was not completed at that time.

In 1814 the British forces captured Washington and burned the White House and the sandstone walls and interior brickwork were all that was left standing. But it was rebuilt by 1817 and over the years many other presidents have made structural changes to make it what it is today, including the addition of a third floor in 1927.

More here

Tom Paine: A Very British Death

Continuing our occasional highlighting of Blogpower bloggers, I came across this on The Last Ditch. Interesting and confronting reading.

I didn't know how to be more than vaguely uneasy about this story when I read it yesterday. Anna Raccoon (post linked above) explains from a position of knowledge and experience. If you are a British reader, there is a very high chance that she is describing how your life will end; put onto a "care pathway" (a euphemism for being deprived of food and water under sedation) by state employees as a form of healthcare rationing.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 has been enlarged and updated to include medical care for similar reasons – to provide legal cover for Doctors and Nurses to take the actions they have always taken; but because we wouldn’t allow an honest debate regarding euthanasia or assisted suicide, it took the only route open to it – that of empowering Doctors to follow the ‘Bland‘ formula, and starve you to death when you were no longer economically sustainable.

It is important to note that food and water administered by a doctor counts as "medical care." As Anna says;

Dying of malnutrition – starvation – or lack of hydration – extreme thirst – is a painful and obscene manner in which to die. It has now become the ‘gold standard’ in end of life care. It has come about because as a nation we refuse to discuss euthanasia or assisted suicide in a reasonable or responsible manner. We become both emotional and obscurist, hiding our true views behind a cloak of carefully crafted language.

The rest is in the linked article.

Only a Dog

It was a grey and blustery October morning, half term, and as a house parent I had decided to make the children go out with the dog for a walk along the beach. At Whitstable steep pebble beaches descend to greet the waves between high wooden breakwaters. On that day we were walking along the waterline with a sucking tide falling rapidly – the sea green and grey and a surf that was rough and bounding.

I saw a plank in the surf, a heavy one like might be used for floors or for roof beams. In a second I simply gave it a kick and it floated momentarily in the tide, before the rip of the outgoing wave took it. In the same moment the dog had grabbed it and was afloat, a corner gripped with grim determination to return it to the shore. It was his game after all. Jump in the sea and bring back things. A great game.

In a moment the plank was beyond the end of the breakwaters, rolling in the deep waves, already out of depth. The little dog holding tight of course. And after that the rip tide took the wood. It was out of my control anyway but not of the tides. I was in the ice cold sea up to my waist then my chest shouting. To no avail. The water took the plank and its passenger – heading out into the sea towards the distant Isle of Sheppey. All at once the waves intervened and the sodden head of the dog was disappearing at a fast pace on his doomed vessel.

All at once a man was by me shouting.

“ I have told the bloody coastguards – bloody idiots – I said there's a dog lost in the waves – they said we cant scramble a lifeboat for a dog, its only a dog” He paused, eyes angry. I remember he had white stubble on his chin, and some kind of hat. The sky was silver and grey behind him. “Only a dog– only a dog?” Her seemed lost for words. Catching in his throat.

I was strangely calm. Already ice cold with exposure. Imagining seeing my working wife !”How was the day – ok -went for a walk drowned the dog, came home....”

In the leaping waves the dog is almost lost – up to a mile out I later learnt.. “Only a dog?” My friend is muttering under his breath. And as I watch there's one final wave and the tiny almost invisible white spot which is all that's left of the dog is gone. And for an aching moment he is gone. Then suddenly – a little white spot reappears moving slowly on the water between the waves. Unbelievably his course is exactly a reverse of that which took him out into a busy shipping channel. Its much too far for him to see and the waves too high. He's following his own scent trail still hanging in the air. Now. Imagine the strength to fight a roaring Thames rip tide and the courage to even try. And then against all odds . He is getting closer – now the children were in hysterics. Crying and shouting – he's been gone thirty minutes easy. Its a long winding course and he keeps vanishing beneath the surf, for seconds at a time. He is close and I wade out out to meet him- waves breaking against me. And as his curve took him into the land he suddenly spotted me and his tail flew like a flag - one final wag.

And I had him suddenly, surprisingly in my arms. Safe.

And My God he puked. Great body wrenching shuddering. He had always known it was OK, he would be safe, just find his safety. Of course he couldn't stand up and I was ice cold, shivering. I would never see him in such a weak and damaged state again until his last few days. We staggered home thankfully only a few short yards and lit the gas fire and placed his little person like an offering. And roasted stewing steak to nourish him and booked one of his few vet visits to be diagnosed with salt poisoning. And of course he did get better. He ate his steak and gazed around with groggy eyes, but the next day rare autumn sun warmed the day and he was up and about as usual – though he eyed the sea with newly learnt respect