(1436) After-afternoon folks.
26. Curious
25. Who is directing Plod to do this?
Who is bussing in troublemakers?
24. India
23. Don’t be an Yvonne
22. A twofer
21. Please do me a favour
… and if you don’t already drop in on Roob:
… then add her to your rounds. She had these two, among others:
Luv it.
(1234) Afternoon all. Just a few more before the film. Incidentally, any idea what “Tide’s out” is about in the sidebar? Anyone recall the circumstances? (1253)
20. Courage of their convictions
19. Moo corner
18. Good thing we don’t get much sun here
17. Just an idea …
… at the Portsmouth protest today, wear your Groucho specs and moustache … everyone has one I’m sure.
16. Too true
I added:
“Not unlike Reform supporters, still in the power of Moneybags Nige and Taqiyya Zia, thinking they care for Britain.”
Know nothing about this series/short … about to find out …
(1003)(1052)
15. By whom? By which demographic?
14. Who doxxed the holdout juror?
13. The state of Ceuta just now
12. Gratitude
11. Lord Toby’s site
“Every time I am invited to China my heart lifts. Within 24 hours of arriving, I have usually hit rock-bottom. By the time my visit is over, I am only too glad to be boarding the plane for Hong Kong and on to the UK. If you want a ‘full fat’ experience of China, try visiting as a keynote speaker at a conference. On arrival at the airport there will, inevitably, be a male driver bearing a card with ‘MacNab’ written on it. He will, almost invariably, be accompanied by a female Master’s student.
On my recent arrival in Beijing this was exactly the pattern. A young lady approached me with an enormous bunch of flowers and thrust these at me, simultaneously relieving me of my wheeled case with small rucksack attached to the handle. I hate to let my belongings out of my sight for a moment. The rucksack contained my wallet, phone and passport.”
Our garden has not produced as much as usual this year. Partly that is due to not enough time to plant what we wanted. The other problem was the weather. Although the heatwave did not strike us as badly as many places in the UK, we still had enough of a problem that it affected things. Except for the lawn. The grass stayed green and grew, and grew. Lots of mowing ensued!
Sadly, the blackcurrants ended up like hard, shrivelled pellets and not even the birds wanted them. So no blackcurrant jam this year. Thankfully I think we still have one jar left from last year. But the blackberries and raspberries have been fruiting as normal and that’s great.
We didn’t plant as many beans as usual this year (bad planning!) but to be honest it’s just as well. The poor runner beans did not grow very big and shrivelled before they reached maturity or any size worth trying to eat.
However, the early fruiting plum went absolutely crazy! Fruit was so plentiful it looked like grapes. We let the birds take the high fruit (not that we could really have stopped them!!) because there was plenty lower down for us. The photo of the plums on the tree is before it ripened, but it gives you an idea of how many we had. I ended up with 8 jars of plum jam, and my beloved had plenty to make a batch of wine.
When the Victoria plums ripened, we had another very large crop. Nice and sweet. We gave a lot of those away, And ate some. And Beloved made more wine.
We bought a couple of aubergine plants with flowers on. The idea was that they’d enjoy being in the heat and might actually produce something. Within a couple of weeks the flowers dropped off. We haven’t seen any since. We’ve never been successful with aubergines and I always thought it was because they needed more heat. Do you think we should have watered them more? Whatever, I don’t think we’ll bother again.
Today I collected a lot more tomatoes. They’ve continually cropped and we’ve been enjoying them like sweets for ages. There are not enough to fill some jars for later in the year, but never mind. We’re enjoying them now.
One benefit of the hot summer is that we actually got more sweet peppers than we normally do and that’s quite exciting. They’re quite small, but look very good. I only picked them today so haven’t tried eating them yet.
The apples will soon be ripe and we have many of those, as usual. And as usual we will fill some bags up and give them away. Sometimes we give some to the local cafes and suddenly there’s a nice lot of apple pies on offer. Then we can pay to eat our own apples 😊.
Well, that’s a pretty poor show this year. Lots of plums and apples, but not much else. Although I’m pleased about the peppers.
…..
The other day I made dinner in a pumpkin. First I made chilli con carne. Then I filled the hollowed-out pumpkin and cooked it for an hour or so. It was yummy.
(0710) Lightening up and brightening up out there. (0710)
10. Moosh revisited
9. Sarah on Danielle Smith
8. Genuine Liverpool Echo headline
… what sort of world are we in right now?
7. They’re now after the lone black holdout juror
Just thinking about Justice Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson … fine people all.
6. This is Toodles’ satire
… and it’s gone right over my head … the ladies might instantly understand but I’m nonplussed … all I can think is she’d look good in anything, even a sack.
(0615) This is scheduled, chaps and chapesses … very dark outside here. Morning nonetheless! (0615)
5. The murdering patients bill
4. Steve at 1488
3. Some 911 afterthoughts
This one is across soc-med today…
Whether it was an unfortunate second, laughing about something else or not … it was still insensitive. Hopefully, it does for both…
Capitalising on the event was clever clever, was it not?
The obvious question is … did Epstein own it before or after the event?
2. DAD at 1488
a) France. Father who said he would have BEHEADED his son’s primary school teacher ‘if she was a man’ for calling him ‘a little bully’ is jailed after case shocked France.
b) Europe pays almost 10 times the US price for wholesale gas. The exact gap moves from day to day. Market prices in recent weeks have put it at anywhere between eight and 10 times, depending on the trading session.
c) Dutch households with a heat pump see energy bills rise the most. A large majority of households would pay €400 to €600 more a year by 2031 than they do now.
d) How Poland’s industrial boom Is redrawing Europe’s Manufacturing Map. Poland’s economy accelerated in Q2 as investment surged and industrial output strengthened, reinforcing signs of a shift in Europe’s industrial centre of gravity. GDP grew 3.9 per cent year on year, corporate investment jumped 13.7 per cent in real terms, and manufacturers are committing more future capacity to Polish plants, underscoring Eastern Europe’s growing importance.
e) There is a Legal Flaw In The Home Secretary’s masked protest crackdown. (JH: Expanded vid)
1. The Portsmouth protest, Saturday
There’s an issue or two with this. This is the “state approved, marshalled, corralled version, enabling face recognition filing”, where pokice control all aspects. Any thinking of going need to bear this in mind.
Just for HQ readers … just to reiterate … my compositional tools have been censored for some time at both Orphans and Jstack, by both platform providers. Therefore the only way to post at those places is to post it elsewhere first, copy, then post over there.
There was a criticism around 2013, by those taking their bat and ball and leaving Orphans, that JH saw Orphans as an extension of his own blog. There were certainly times when the post was the same but mainly it wasn’t.
However, under the current circumstances, there’s little choice but to do this, esp. today in a sort of community notice form.
(1529) Afternoon all. Steve has a Hearts of Oak on Saxony-Anhalt but it’s at Bannon’s place.
23. Our last word for now on 911
22. Robin Hood’s Bay
21. Canada copying UK govt
… or is it t’other way around?
20. Venetian Grand Council confirms …
19. Moo corner
18. Skynet anyone? HAL 9000?
17. Have you seen the new monstrosity on the Fourth Plinth?
Some guy has fixed it:
Someone else forgot to put in the toxic male:
Ah, finally:
And of course, don’t forget:
16. Murder patients in care bill defeated
DAD has this at 1488
MPs have narrowly voted AGAINST the Assisted Dying Bill.
The bill was defeated with 270 MPs voting for and 286 voting against.
This bill can now go no further. An MP could bring back another bill on assisted dying next year instead, which could be identical to the bill in question today.
An earlier and almost identical bill that passed through the Commons successfully last year was stalled in the House of Lords earlier this year.
Today’s bill was intended to continue that cause, but now it is down to MPs to see if anyone wants to champion the cause again in the future as this bill reaches the end of its life.