Alternative realities.,

The CEO of British Gas has had a pay-rise. His annual salary has increased from 4 million to 8 million. That’s quite a substantial increase. He must work very hard at making gas expensive to deserve such a pay-rise, that’s all I can say! Personally I find it hard to imagine earning so much money. What does he do with it? Of course, he has lost all the fun of anticipation as he does not need to save up for anything. You could almost feel sorry for him … but not really! 

I remember when I was still working as a teacher, probably a bit harder than the CEO of British Gas, although without his responsibilities I have to admit, stories used to go around the college about how the principal wanted his salary to reach £100,000 per annum before he retired. Such is the joy of having your pension linked to your final salary! Mine was nowhere near that amount but my teacher’s pension is nonetheless quite adequate to my needs.   Perhaps I am more easily satisfied. I never found out if he reached that exalted sum as ai moved on to another place of work.

According to Jeremy Hunt, £100,000 is not a huge salary. Apparently he made the comment in response to a call from a constituent who had complained that the government’s free childcare scheme was not available to families with a parent earning more than £100,000. But not all his constituents agree. “I can’t imagine how anyone could say £100,000 is not a huge amount,” said Merve Topaloğlu, a 34-year-old former Turkish reporter, who runs the Journalist, a cafe on Godalming’s High Street right in the heart of Hunt’s Surrey constituency. “The annual profit from my whole cafe isn’t close to £100,000.”

“Politicians like to tell us that they are in it with us,” Topaloğlu says. “But if he can say that, it shows he doesn’t know what life is like for many of us living on a lot, lot less than £100,000.”

Merve Topaloğlu is probably correct on that last point. I often doubt if any member of the current government is really aware of how most people live. 

Mind you, that’s not the only area of modern life that seems a little out of touch. I came across this headline yesterday evening: 

“UK weather: rain disrupts Easter weekend events amid flood warnings”.

I was quite intrigued as we had had a lovely day, a bit chilly but bright and sunny. Grandson Number Two even insisted on having a picnic on the grass. He demanded a rug to sit on but was satisfied with an old oilskin tablecloth, which prevented him from getting a wet bottom on our damp grass. He also selected garden toys to play with and was a little disappointed that the neighbours had not put their rabbits out to nibble the first dandelions of the year! He is only four years old and I suppose his understanding of the weather is limited. Grey clouds = rain. Black clouds = snow. Blue sky - warm and sunny. Sunny it was and rather less cold than it has been but hardly summer yet - despite our changing the clocks to British summertime!

Anyway, the misleading headline did what headlines often do: talk about England while largely ignoring the North West, as if we don’t quite exist. Here’s a sample of the report: 

“Flooding caused by heavy rain has disrupted many Easter weekend events in the UK.

The Met Office said more rain was forecast over the bank holiday weekend, with travel disruption likely as a band of heavy rain moves across England and Wales on Monday.

The Environment Agency issued 17 warnings for expected flooding across parts of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire on Saturday morning.

It also issued 132 flood alerts across southern England, which means flooding is possible in those areas, after several days of heavy rainfall across the UK.”

Today is not bad either but not so spectacular as yesterday. After the picnic his seven year old sister and I managed to persuade him to go for a walk round the village. On the whole a good day.

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!

Easter sunshine. Leaving home - or not! Sitting on the fence.

Having listened to various weather forecasts, I was fully expecting really nasty weather this Easter weekend. However, yesterday we managed a walk in the sunshine and today has been bright and fine so far. A bit on the chilly side but at least there is some blue sky. Amazing! 

The writer Andrew O’Hagan has been writing about young people leaving home … or not leaving home, which he says is more the case with the current generation of young people. Leaving home, he maintains, is no longer the rite of passage that it used to be. Between the British censuses of 2011 and 2021, he tells us, the number of adult children living with their parents in England and Wales rose by almost 15%.

Of course, there’s the matter of affordability. Andrew O’Hagan is younger than me but still young enough to have benefitted from free university education and other such benefits. He confidently expected to be able to be quite easily independent something today’s young might not be able to hope for. Goodness, it’s difficult enough nowadays to consider going away to university. As for me, I went away to university and never permanently went home again! 

Cost is one thing but I think another factor comes into play: having a room of your own, which Andrew O’Hagan does mention. Looking back, one of the big factors for me in seeking independence was just that - having a room of my own. Throughout all of my childhood I shared a bedroom with my sisters. It wasn’t MY space at all. We didn’t play there. With three beds lined up, there simply wasn’t room. It was just a place to sleep. It wasn’t until I went away to university that I had a room of my own. 

I’m sure that is still the case for many people but also it much more common for children not just to have a room of their own but to be involved in the decorating of that room. It can be a kind of lair, a place to escape to, a place to do your dreaming and imagining. It’s certainly the case for my grandchildren. 

Looking at it from the parental (and grandparental) point of view, there is a certain advantage to offspring leaving home. It’s wonderful to have children and grandchildren who enjoy visiting and want to spend time with us, but there is also that feeling of peace when you have the house to yourselves again - the same freedom we baby-boomers got from leaving home in the first place.   

Now, there seem to be some delicate balancing acts going on. Politicians are practising the less than noble art of fence-sitting. I hear that Keir Starmer is facing some criticism from his MPs about election fliers emblazoned with Union Jack flags. He wants to appear patriotic - apparently this will attract pro-Brexit people disillusioned with the Tories!!! - but there are fears that it may alienate ethnic minority voters. There’s a bit of stereotyping for you; who says BAME voters are not patriotic! Even flag-wavers! Then there’s the matter of wanting to have more BAME MPs and so on, while at the same time still not restoring the whip to Diane Abbott and, indeed, getting a bit grumpy about the likes of Zarah Sultana with her outspoken socialist, egalitarian views. 

Keir Starmer is not alone in his fence-sitting. Across the pond we have President Biden. On the one hand he urges Netanyahu to stop killing people. On the other hand he agrees that the USA will send huge amounts of weapons to Israel.  Perhaps each bomb and missile should have a health warning, like cigarette packets. 

The mind boggles! 

Here’s an Easter cartoon to close with.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Family life in different places. Environmental crisis in Gaza. Palestinian seed library in USA.

 I collected the smallest grandchild from preschool yesterday as usual, yesterday being Thursday. All the children came out with a collection of stuff they had made over the day, a curious mix of religious and profane: an Easter bunny mask, which some wore on their face but which Grandson Number Two wore on the top of his head, a home-made, thin card basket, nicely painted, containing a rice crispy cake, a small chocolate egg, chocolate coins and strips of yellow tissue paper, which I suggested was supposed to be straw but the small boy assured me was hay, and an Easter Card.

He explained about the contents of the basket: “Mrs Deaken made the cakes but we decorated them with mini-eggs. One mini-egg is for me and the other is for you. The little chocolate egg is for Lydia (his sister) and the cake is for everyone to share when we get to your house.” 

Then he told me about the card. “The flowers are made of paint but it’s dry now’, he assured me, “and the cross is made from lolly sticks.” “Is the card for Mummy?” I asked him. “Oh, no,” he replied, “It’s for Jesus, so he knows me.” Hmm, I wonder what they have been teaching him at preschool. It is a church school, Holy Trinity, after all, but many of the primary schools around here are connected to one or other of the churches in the vicinity. His sister attends St. Mary’s, in nearby greenfield. 

Instead of catching the bus to my house we caught one in the opposite direction so that we could meet his mother and sister in Uppermill for an eye test. He was a little disgruntled at this. Later I discovered it was because he had decided he didn’t want to have his eyes tested. He told me this when we arrived at the optician’s and he refused to go inside! Between us the optician and I persuaded him to join Mummy and big sister, who had just completed her eye test and told me, “I’m perfect!” The small boy cooperated for most of the eye test but was not pleased with the various bits of machinery they wanted to subject him to. 

The next hurdle was getting home from Uppermill. Mummy had the car but the small boy insisted that he wanted to go by bus, part of his usual Thursday Routine being to travel by bus to Grandma’s house. Big sister opted to join us. They really wanted Mummy to come on the bus too but her car was in Uppermill. In the bus shelter they both showed off the Easter songs they had learnt at their respective schools, not too loudly as there were other people waiting.

We should have had a 10 minute wait, at least, for our bus, but another bus, the little shuttle bus that goes via Diggle and detours round just about every possible housing estate en route, arrived running very late so we hopped on board. The small girl proudly paid her own fare, the small boy still travels free, and I have an old biddy bus pass! We had to sit at the back, of course! The bus driver rattled along at speed, making up for lost time and ignoring 20mph speed limits! A veritable roller coaster, to the delight of the small people. 

We talked about holidays. They are about to have a week or more in Texas. Great excitement. The small boy would like us all to holiday together. With the older siblings too. And with the southern branch of the family, of course, as he loves his big cousin. And maybe the Southport people? And what about the Spanish cousins? That’s getting close to 20 of us! We would need a mansion!

Meanwhile, over in Gaza, family groups of 20 or so are living together in small temporary accommodation, desperately trying to find food and hoping against hope that they won’t be bombed out of this shelter. For despite UN resolutions bombing and shelling goes on.

Today I read about a further problem for the war torn region: an environmental crisis on top of everything else. Farms and olive groves have been destroyed, the land is polluted, the very air they breathe is polluted as what cooking can go on is done on open fires, and there are traffic fumes as well. 

Ironically enough it is a Palestinian, Vivien Sansour, who might be helping feed the world through the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, in Hudson, a project that began in 2016 to conserve Palestinian heritage and culture by saving heirloom seed varieties and telling the stories and history from which they emerged.

“The mission of the seed library is to revitalize and conserve a living archive of our heirloom seeds,” said Sansour. “Not just for Palestine, but also for the world. The world is in a hospice state and we need all the different tools and biodiversity we can in order to adapt.”

Sansour’s love for edible plants was born in Beit Jala in the West Bank, where she spent many formative childhood years. She remembers Beit Jala when it was still more a small village than a town, replete with terrace gardens full of stone fruits, olives, artichokes and herbs. “My life was such a beautiful bouquet of diversity all the time in terms of plant life,” she said. But as time went on, that biological diversity began to narrow as the climate crisis upended longstanding growing cycles, Israeli settlements encroached on the land and agribusinesses pushed local growers away from the seed varieties that had been passed down for generations.

Here’s another link to an article about her work, dating back to 2021, before the current madness ensued. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Polluted rivers. Wild animals. The famine in Gaza.

The Oxford and Cambridge boat race is due to take place this Sunday on the River Thames in London. Apparently it is usual for the winning crew to throw the cox into the river. This year they’ve been advised not to do so because the Thames is nastily polluted with raw sewage. Taking a dip in the River Thames is not good for the skin. The same applies to many other rivers around the country. 

Here’s some information, courtesy of BBC news:

“Sewage spills into England's rivers and seas by water companies more than doubled last year.

According to the Environment Agency there were 3.6 million hours of spills compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022.

Water UK, the industry body for sewerage companies, said it was 'unacceptable' but the record levels were due to heavy rain.

Sewage spilling can be legal but environmentalists say it should only happen in exceptional weather.

And the Environment Agency said: "It is important to note that heavy rainfall does not affect water companies' responsibility to manage storm overflows in line with legal requirements."

I want to repeat one sentence:

“Sewage spilling can be legal but environmentalists say it should only happen in exceptional weather.”

The thing is we HAVE had some exceptional weather recently - lots of rain!So they should have been doing something equally “exceptional” to prevent things getting out of hand, it seems to me. 

In any case, I wouldn’t advise wild swimming. Not in any of our rivers at the moment. 

I’ve rabbited on about bears quite often recently (and about the idea of reintroducing other possibly fierce wild creatures into the countryside). Yesterday there was some rather frightening footage on the television news of a large bear running down a street, together with reports of people having been bitten or scratched and others cowering in their cars until the bear had gone. Granted, this was in Slovakia but we should all be aware that wild animals don’t know how to behave in cities. The clue is in the name: WILD animals. It sounds fiercer in other languages: animales salvajes, animaux sauvages! 

Anyway, they’ve hunted and killed a bear close to the town of Liptovsky Mikulas in Slovakia. Unfortunately some people say this is the wrong bear - wrong gender, wrong size, just plain the wrong bear. It must be quite hard to be completely fair when dealing with bears accused of rampaging. I don’t suppose you get much chance to interrogate the suspects.  

A less dangerous wild animal is the hedgehog, despite his prickles, which in any case are really a defence mechanism not a weapon. Every so often we are reminded that we should be careful with piles of leaves and such in the garden as there still could be a hedgehog snoozing in here, not yet having decided that spring has sprung. People like to rescue hedgehogs. We did it ourselves years and years ago: spotting one walking along the edge of a busy main road, we popped him into a handy box in the boot of the car and took him a more rural spot to set him free. Baby hedgehogs  are especially appealing. Here’s a story about someone who rescued a very soggy-looking baby hedgehog, which turned out to be the pompom off someone’s wooly hat! Hmmm! Maybe a trip to the optician is called for! 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/27/baby-hedgehog-hat-bobble-difficult-to-tell-the-difference

More seriously, on the television news I heard assurances that there is no famine in Gaza. Goodness knows where the photos of emaciated children come from. Also, an Iraeli spokesperson on the BBC news said, “Over 70% of Gazans support the 7th October massacre. This supposedly justifies killing them. How many small children support massacres? I wonder! 

But this article describes aid being prevented from getting into Gaza. And in the latest twist of fate, air-dropped aid is sometimes landing on the sea. People are drowning trying to get the aid packages from the water! 

And here’s a bit of Michael Rosen: 

'People are saying that something monstrous is going on,' said the King.

'They're wrong,' said the King's tutor.

'Should we just say what you just said, then?' said the King.

'Yes,' said the tutor, 'just say that they're wrong and that it's not monstrous.'

'Anything else?' said the King,

'Tell them that they are horrible, despicable people for saying that it's monstrous,' said the tutor.

'Got that,' said the King, 'but what if it turns out that people don't believe me?'

'Are these the same people who say that something monstrous is going on?' said the tutor.

'Yes but some other people are saying it too,' said the King.

'Then they are horrible, despicable people too,' said the tutor.

'We're on the right track, then?' said the King.

'Totally,' said the tutor.

'That's good,' said the King.

Finally, in a supreme bit of cruel irony, in the middle of various news article about Palestine up pops an advert for Luxury Persian Rugs. Presumably there is some bit of AI that picks up vocabulary and realises that the articles in question refer to places near Persia and so, up pops the advert.  

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Organising Wednesday. And a bit of David Cameron and Brexit comment.

 The sun was shining when I got up this morning. It was rather cloudy with occasional bursts of sunshine when I walked to Uppermill. The weather forecast said there was 0% chance of rain until midday. So I took my umbrella. 

The plan was to walk to Uppermill, buy biscuits from Jenny Biscuit, if she was there (she was), pick up a few things from the Italian frutivendolo, and then catch the bus to Oldham where I was collecting new glasses. It all worked well. I arrived in Oldham in time to pop into the library, where I bought a present for a friend. Yes, I know libraries are about lending books and maybe audiovisual stuff. And I was surprised when I discovered last year that they now have a mini version of the museum shop, selling cards, jewellery, knicknacks and so on. Maybe it’s ever since they incorporated Gallery Oldham with it’s exhibition spaces. 

Anyway, I also renewed my library books while I was there and selected further reading matter, a couple of books our local branch does not have. And there was still time to pop into Sainsbury’s before going to pick up my glasses. Unfortunately Sainsbury’s did not have the rye and walnut loaf I wanted in stock, but I was able to replenish our stock of Boddington’s beer. 

I collected my glasses and headed for the indoor market, noticing en route that Oldham’s branch of The Body Shop has closed. That’s another boarded-up shop in the centre of the now rather miserable town centre. By now it was starting to rain. By the' time I left the market hall it was raining properly. So I went to the nearby bus station, fully expecting to have a half hour’s wait for the next bus, but the previous one mustvhave been delayed and arrived juat as I did.

So it all worked out fine, despite the rain.  

Here’s a little something I spotted earlier:

“David Cameron says attacks on our democracy are unacceptable.

Unless, of course, it is the Conservatives with Voter ID, banning strikes or jailing protestors.”

That sounds right. 

And while I’m thinking of David Cameron, who allowed Brexit to happen, and farmers driving their tractors to Westminster to protest, here’s something else, from Deborah Meaden, business woman and TV personality apparently :

“I have sympathies with farmers but feeling betrayed by a government having to sign deals allowing lower quality imports when this was so obviously going to happen puzzles me. farming needs more respect from both inside and out … but I’m not sure what farmers thought was going to happen outside the protection of the EU. The time for protest was then, before the vote, not now.”

Quite so!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Wishing good could triumph over evil!

I am reliably informed that yesterday was Holi (Dolyatra, Doul Jatra, Basanta-Utsav), the Hindu festival of colours that celebrates the arrival of spring and the end of winter, hope for a good harvest, and fertility. It also celebrates the triumph of good over evil. 

I was alerted to this by Zarah Sultana sending best wishes on Facebook to everyone celebrating Holi. We have all become very multi-faith in our greetings, and rightly so. There was a time when the only religious festivals we knew or cared about were Christmas and Easter. 

I’ve tried to find that Zarah Sultana post again but all to no avail. Maybe it’s been removed because some of the comments were rather mean. 

But just as we need a bit of spring colour to brighten up what has so far been a dull and dismal year, we could all do with a bit of triumph of good over evil at the moment, just about all over the world I think. 

The UN has finally managed to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza - the us abstained from voting instead of vetoing it, as has been their practice so far. Not actually voting FOR it - that might send the wrong message to some people! 

This is apparently the response of the Israeli minister of national security:

"The Israeli minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gabir, in response to the UN security council resolution said:

"The decision of the UN Security Council proves what has been known since time immemorial - this is an anti-Semitic institution, with an anti-Semitic Secretary General, who is encouraging Hamas towards total victory. President Biden’s choice, on the other hand, to avoid vetoing the decision on the part of the USA, proves on the other hand that President Biden does not put the victory of Israel and the free world over terrorism at the top of his priorities, but rather his political considerations. Precisely after this decision, we must increase the intensity of the war and continue striving with all our might, at any cost, to defeat Hamas."

And so the bombing and shelling and starving goes on. Israel won’t let UNRWA distribute aid. Lorries are lined up, waiting to cross the border. In the meantime, rather like putting a small sticking plaster over a knife wound that needs proper medical attention, air drops of aid are taking place, black parachutes dropping pathetically small parcels nro Gaza beach1.

"AFP (Agence France-Press) has spoken to two people in Gaza about the humanitarian aid they are receiving by air-drop.

One of them, Mohamad al-Sabaawi, returning from an attempt to retrieve some air-dropped parcels, told the news agency “People are dying just to get a can of tuna. The situation is tragic, as if we are in a famine. What can we do? They mock us by giving us a small can of tuna.”

The agency said dozens of black parachutes carrying food aid had landed on the ground where almost no building within sight was still standing, and hungry men and boys raced towards the beach where most of the aid seemed to have landed. Al-Sabaawi was carrying an almost empty bag on his shoulder.

Another Palestinian man, returning home in Gaza City with little to keep his family going, said their situation was miserable.

“We are the people of Gaza, waiting for aid drops, willing to die to get a can of beans - which we then share among 18 people,” he said."

And yet I heard an Israeli spokesman on television last night declaring quite categorically that there is no starvation in Gaza! He brushed aside questions about the photos of emaciated children. 

And today I read that Israel has withdrawn its negotiators fro the Qatar”

“Israel recalls negotiators from Qatar, claiming Hamas 'not interested' in talks and lamenting 'damage' caused by UN ceasefire vote

Israel has recalled its negotiating team from Qatar, ending immediate attempts to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas. The move comes in the wake of a UN security council vote demanding a ceasefire, and Hamas rejecting the latest proposals.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that “Israel will not cave to Hamas’s delusional demands.”

It said the Hamas position was “clear proof it is not interested in continuing talks, and a sad testament to the damage caused by the UN Security Council resolution.”

Late on Monday evening Hamas has issued a statement rejecting the latest deal offer, saying Israel was not responding to its core demands of a “comprehensive ceasefire, an withdrawal from the Strip, the return of displaced people and a real prisoner exchange.””

And so, un resolutions or no, I don’t feel optimistic about anything stopping soon. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!