Understanding or misunderstanding things.

Among the various stories I have come across over the last year or so about EU citizens worried about settled status, I came across one that rather surprised me. Daniel Muijs is Belgian, originally from Antwerp. He applied for settled status, gave them, among other things, his national insurance number, which should enable the powers that be to see that he has paid taxes for the last 22 years. But they want further proof of his residence, such as P60 forms and council tax bills. What does Mr Muijs do? He is head of research for Ofsted.

There you go!

Someone sent me a copy of this tweet sent put by Armando Iannucci:

 “I rather admire the way the EU is defending Ireland’s interests. They really do look after their member states. We should join.”

Enough said!

Here’s another EU related tweet, this time from Jacob Rees-Mogg:-

“If a long extension leaves us stuck in the EU we should be as difficult as possible. We could veto any increase in the budget, obstruct the putative EU army and block Mr Macron’s integrationist schemes.”

And there I was hearing all the stories about how we had no power in Europe at all!

And now here’s an example of how the law of unforeseen consequences strikes again. If the UK leaves the EU with no deal then Northern Ireland could have a milk problem. Farmers there sell milk to the Republic of Ireland where it is made into cheese and butter. But in a no deal situation this would have to stop because the EU will not accept creamery tanks containing “mixed” EU and third-country milk. And the UK has not yet passed the necessary statutory stuff to turn it into an “authorised third country”.

Yet another example of stuff that should have been thought out before article 50 time.

It seems the because of the rise in popularity of vegetarianism more eggs have been sold recently. But at the same time more eggs than ever are being thrown away. A lot of the reason for this is sell-by dates. People are so convinced by the validity of the dates that they throw the eggs away. Scientists tell us that we don’t need to do this so hastily.

However, some of the reason is that people are unaware of how to test eggs for freshness. “If eggs sink to the bottom of a bowl of cold water and lie flat on their sides, they are very fresh. If they are less fresh but still good to eat, they will stand on one end at the bottom. If they float to the surface, they are no longer fresh enough to eat. This is because as the egg gets older, the size of the air sac inside increases, making it float.”

I basically knew that. What I did not know was eggs could be frozen! I should have know that because, after all, human eggs can be frozen!

For some time my daughter was obsessed with sell-by dates. She would throw away apples and potatoes that were perfectly usable. She has grown more sensible now.