Happy Thursday! So it’s seems to me that Good Friday is not a day I want to be annoyed by the state of the world, it’s also a Bank Holiday in the UK so technically today is my Friday. So links go out today because that feels better. In case you missed  them;

• this week’s recommendation was for Spiced Gingerbread Tea;
• there was a music post and it was for Tupelo by Jason Isbell;
• the usual Monday miscellany;
• the first of the allotment posts was all about Saturday on the plot; and
• the second allotment post about the vegetables, herbs and flowers that I always sow direct

Now that we have an extension to 31 October, we’ve had a couple of Brexit free days on the news but lots of coverage about Notre Dame. I’m about to express an unpopular opinion because as the news coverage came in, I kept waiting to hear about the casualties but there were none, thank goodness but as everyone keeps talking about loss and tragedy, I keep thinking that buildings can be rebuilt, people can’t. I walk past one of the world’s great cathedrals every morning on the way to work. It’s cornerstone is from the original building burnt down in 1666. They’ll restore the Notre Dame and this fire and the restoration will become part of its history and the history of Paris. That’s how it works but I hope in all the hullabaloo, they remember that it’s not the buildings in a country that represent it, it’s the people.

If you believe in human rights, Madonna, don’t play Tel Aviv. This. Israel keeps saying that it’s a democratic oasis in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs were filmed voting in a blatant effort to frighten them into not voting. If it wants to boast about a higher standard than the other Middle Eastern countries, then it needs to be held to that standard. Speaking of which….Israel is deporting a human rights activist over his BDS support. Tell me again about your democracy…

“Israel portrays itself as the region’s only democracy, but is set to deport a rights defender over his peaceful advocacy,” Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a statement about the Shakir ruling.

“The decision sends the chilling message that those who criticize the involvement of businesses in serious abuses in Israeli settlements risk being barred from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” he continued.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead. An expert explains why.

Theresa May’s successor will be a crucial choice. Are the Tories capable of making it? Cheap digs at Labour aside, this makes a lot of sense. Here’s the thing, the Tories haven’t been fit for this kind of hard truth in over 20 years. This is who they are, who they’ve been since Thatcher. They care only for themselves and not for the country. When I find people talking of John Major and Ken Clarke as the reasonable Tories, I just remember that both of them served in Thatcher’s cabinet. None of them are truly capable of putting the country first, they’d have to care about it and they patently don’t.

Of course the Tories dread Euro elections. They will be marmalised

Flexible working for parents is great. But child-free people need it, too. Of course I agree with this. But some of the comments on this are horrendous. I’m ok with paying tax for services that I won’t use (although the council tax does sting a bit) but there’s a middle ground between ‘we deserve everything because we’re raising children selflessly’ and ‘children are a lifestyle choice you shouldn’t get anything’.

The cheap and shady business of taking selfies with tigers

What a Year in Space Did to Scott Kelly

2019 is shaping up to be a very bad year for measles. I heard this on the World Service this week, worldwide this is a bad year for measles. I wasn’t vaccinated against measles. When I was a kid, you had to be over a year old and I caught measles, it was a pretty mild case, I was lucky, measles kills babies, vaccinate them….

Why I’m boycotting TurboTax this year. Wow, I knew tax in the US was complicated but seriously that’s ridiculous….