Happy Friday!
Bill and Melinda Gates and the problem of the “good billionaire”
Why I fought for the right to open up family courts to greater scrutiny. I’m mostly going to come down on the side of Social Services, it’s a horrible job done in extremely difficult conditions. Having said that, this case is scary and should be reported, the problem is that the other cases still won’t be, we won’t hear about the neglect and abuse that other children taken into care suffer from their parents. We are all the heroes of our own stories and every parent with a kid in care will tell you that it’s because Social Services are stealing their children. They won’t tell you about the unchanged nappies or the rotting teeth or kid wandering the street at midnight because mummy was busy or any of the other things that happened to provoke a care order. So you’ll see these stories and think that social workers are all about snatching children from their parents and into the hands of nice middle class adopters, instead of understanding that they are human beings in a highly stressed job who make mistakes.
A child in a bedsit has more ‘character’ than a braying public schoolboy, Mr Hinds. Or to quote my nephew “it’s the moneys”
Javid’s decision on Shamima Begum demeans his office. I wrote last week about how conflicted I felt about this. I’m still not advocating for British personnel to be sent in to pick her up and bring her home, actions do have consequences but idealistically, I want the leaders of my country to do better than me. Leaving Shamima Begum stateless might play well to the mob but I’m really uncomfortable about what that means for all of us. So I’m going to leave the quote from A Man for All Seasons here. Because it’s worth thinking about…
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Covington Catholic student’s family hits the Washington Post with $250 million lawsuit. Like hell it’s not political.
Angela Smith has left Labour. Who do I complain to about her ‘funny tinge’ comment? Are there elements of Labour that are anti-semitic? Yes. Has the Labour Party dealt with it well? No. But Baroness Warsi talked about islamophobia in the Conservative Party and it was a story. Angela Smith gets a pass on this one and Nadine Dorries on another fine. It seems we only care about some racism..
You get the heroes you deserve. And Brexit Britain has Gavin Williamson
The new household rules: ditch your toilet brush and wash much, much more.
The Surprising Reason Zebras Have Stripes
About a Dozen Lawmakers Just Made Brexit More Complicated
“I suppose everyone is looking at this thinking, It can’t be as unplanned as it looks,” Anand Menon, the director of the London-based U.K. in a Changing Europe research institute, told me. “But the thing is, maybe it is.”
The Gun Violence That’s a Bigger Threat to Kids Than School Shootings
Who’s the Cutest Little Tyrannosaur? Is It You?
Death-Cap Mushrooms Are Spreading Across North America. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that you don’t eat mushrooms that don’t come from the supermarket.
It’s nearly the end of February and I still haven’t sown one seed! We did have an incredibly productive Saturday of work though. First we bought 500 litres of compost and wheel barrowed them to the plot. We filled up and covered several beds. Actually I say we, I did the two squash boxes at the end of the plot we both did the larger bed that will be the three sisters bed, and then Ma did the other four while I dug up the raspberries.We re-sited some of them to one of the long beds at the bottom of the plot and the rest we left for anyone that wanted them. I think quite a few of them will go to the newly made communal fruit plot which will be used for the preserves stall for the open days! We’ve decided that the 4 long beds are eventually, going to be fruit beds, with the other two being boysenberry (another plot holder has some going spare) and something else maybe a blackberry or some more gooseberries…we’ll see.
Next up on the work list, leveling the ground I just dug up, putting in and filling up beds, weeding and trimming the edges of the plot, painting the shed and putting up guttering and a water butt, tidying the shed before Ma loses her mind at the state of it, sowing some seeds and doing something useful with the pallets.
Miracles in the form of Ma cooking her ‘signature dish’, roly poly (it’s a sausage thing and that’s it’s name, I don’t know why!)
And a really busy Saturday of work, with unexpected Christmas presents, this view and other good things. 
This week is work, a movie, a walk with Sarah and Fred and dinner at Mike and Christelle’s, which means I’ve written Sunday off for reading and sleep, the weather this week is not looking as delightful but we’ll soldier on!
The only thing that worked was the 
It’s was a lovely sunny day but we need warmer weather before we can work because I can’t dig up the raspberries if the ground is frozen! So the list is still the list, I now have almost all my seeds for next year (although next month I’m going to buy two more blueberry plants…my soft fruit empire grows!) but still haven’t sown anything and the plot looks pretty much the same as it did last week.
The continuing Brexit mess has concentrated my mind on winter growing, I’m not in any way self-sufficient we’d need a much bigger plot and I’d have to give up my sweet pepper addiction which I might have to do anyway post Brexit. However, I think that food will be more expensive after Brexit because 99% of fruit and veg pickers are from the EU and if we have a repeat of last year’s weather then farmers are going to have lower yields (in 2018, potato yields were down 20-25%, the fourth lowest harvest in 60 years, onions down 40% and carrots 25%). That’s a lot of figures but for me, it makes sense to try and increase what we grow so we can eat more of it and use the food budget in other places and as Ma and I put £20 a month in the allotment account every month (and spent most of it on compost!), it makes sense to really stretch that money as much as we can.
In the summer we are pretty self-sufficient for vegetables, less so for fruit but I can’t plant trees so we do what we can with soft fruit, which this year means summer and autumn raspberries, two gooseberry bushes (which will hopefully produce more fruit this year!) and four blueberry bushes (two of them very little so probably we won’t get much). Hopefully we’ll get more plums this year and lots of rhubarb.
In winter we grow much less. This year we have leeks, chard and kale, we also had a fair bit of winter squash (we have two squash left, one tiny butternut and the massive boston squash.) The black radishes, mustard and pak choi didn’t really get going. Next year we are growing more squash (large butternuts, Georgia candy roaster, uchiki kuri and burgess buttercup) and I want bigger beds for the chard and kale but I also want a later sowing of carrots and beetroot to stretch into the autumn (I’ve been envious of the allotmenters who were digging up carrots and beetroot in Jan) and to grow fennel, celery, more winter salads and turnips and swede. I’d love to grow cabbage, cauliflower, sprouts and parsnips but they take up a lot of space for a lot of the year and on half a plot I’d have to really cut back on growing summer and winter squash and tomatoes and all of the other good things about summer. Maybe if I get another half plot, I’ll have a go at them but at the moment that’s not happening.
So it’s a very modest stab at more winter veg. We have rust on the allotment site, on the leeks it’s not been terrible this year but I am very worried about the two beds of garlic I have, so I want to see how this year goes for that. Even Charles Dowding reckons that he gets better garlic growing undercover and that is something I definitely need another half plot for! You’ll also notice that I’m not growing onions because of space issues but I have bought some walking onions and I want to get some perennial welsh onions which won’t by any means replace my current onion dependence but will give me something else for the winter.
In the summer, we eat a lot of our tomatoes fresh but I will make a stab at canning more of them and we are growing gerkins, just to pickle them, I’ll also have a stab at doing that to our cucamelons this year. Hopefully the roots will have survived winter in the shed and when I take them out they’ll be raring to go!
For flowers, we have the carnations and verbena bonariesis as perennials and I have no doubt that the california poppies, nasturtiums, borage and aramanth will sow themselves (the poppies and borage are still green and on the plot) I will sow some marigolds and some calendula around the place in the hope that they take. Apparently calendula are like poppies for self-seeding so that’ll be fun. Last year’s stock plants are still standing, they didn’t really get going in summer and we didn’t pull them up. Assuming they survive the next couple of months, I’ll leave them in and see what happens.
This week there were consolations, UNO with Nephew 1 who didn’t win one game but was a consistent runner up. He was a really good sport about it though, which I’m glad to see! Nephew 2 was his usual sunny self, and arranged himself into a Hungry Hippos box, variously announcing that he was a hippo, a robot or Tree-fu Tom. Nursery has been so good for him!
I don’t miss much about working at the last place but I miss her and Laura.
There was work, cinema, works drinks, a trip to Ramsgate for a 70th birthday and a quiet Sunday. I’m not sure that I’m ready for work this morning but it’s happening anyway!
This week is pretty quite I’m at work for four and a half days and then off to babysit the boys on Friday..
Nic Dempsey 