IPSA: DON'T HIDE MPS' EXPENSES

Wow, it's been a long time since I updated anything here....as usual life getting in the way of my blogging plans.... here's a quick one in response to a campaign 38 Degrees are running at the moment....this really is unbelievable...there is "talk" (serious talk) of hiding the names of MP's that are under investigation regarding their expenses....so although MP's salaries are paid for by the tax payer, they don't want to be held accountable for "extra" expense claims that they are making and also want to keep the fact they're under investigation in the first place a secret, which will obviously have a massive impact on their future political career *sigh, this is going to be a duck house moat scandal all over again!! 

And if you would like to add your voice to the masses, please click here for the hyperlink...

MPs work for us, the public. Their expenses are paid for with taxpayers’ money, so they’re accountable to us. We have a right to know if an MP is being investigated as this is something that will, quite rightly, have an impact on their future career as an MP.

Being an MP does not mean that one is above the law, however there is a common pattern of MP's behaving exactly as if they are beyond accountability and rarely facing the consequences of their avaricious actions.

If this law is brought in, restricting information that is essential for the tax payers to be aware of in order to make a fully informed voting decision, it is reinforcing the message that it's one rule for the general tax payer and an entirely different rule for MP's that are meant to be working on behalf of the tax payer. This glaring unjust system illustrates exactly why there is such distrust between the "general public" and "government", we are being pitched as opposing teams when in reality, it should be "one team, one dream".

If IPSA's main duty is to serve the interests of the public, then please follow your own guidelines and don't be drawn into a situation where greater distrust is manifested by showing preferential treatment to a certain (let's face it) wealthy, already self serving demographic.

The old adage states "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office", please do not  be a part of an already shamefully corrupt system and do the right thing - demonstrate your own honesty and encourage MP's to remain transparent and accountable above all.

Thanking you in advance

Irish Central - you should be ashamed of yourselves

I read such a badly written article today. Published by a website called Irish Central, which in itself is misleading, as it's not actually an Irish run website, rather it seems to be written by people that have some sort of connection to an Irish heritage, but apparently no actual understanding of Irish culture or customs. I responded to this incredibly badly written article posted on the site a couple of years ago, creatively titled "Top Ten Things I didn't like about Irishmen in Ireland", and you can read that little treat here.

After reviewing and moderating my first comment, Irish Central kindly published my first response, but decided not to publish my follow up comment. So much for "Freedom of Speech... you're free to speak as long as you agree with the general consensus, but if you have a view outside of that little box, not a hope....very very frustrating! Thankfully, I have another forum to air my opinion - so here it is...the unedited comment that Irish Central declined to publish:

@irishcentral you should be ashamed of publishing such an ignorant, badly written article. We have enough people making derogatory statements about Ireland and taking the piss out of being Irish, without the slightest insight into Irish culture, traditions or politics without giving this ignoramus a forum to air her ill informed views. 

How about an article about how there has been a huge increase in sustainable development in Ireland since the recession, or how tourism is booming, or off the beaten track places to visit in Ireland or perhaps an article on Irish history...not about "the troubles" necessarily, but about the kindness and humanity Irish people throughout the years have shown to other countries and cultures. For all the problems Ireland has had, time and time again with the economy and the mass exodus of young people to other countries in desperate times, Ireland is still the 2nd most charitable country in the world.

http://www.panor­amio.com/photo/69500­548 

You chose to publish this badly written bit of fluff instead. 

I may not have (many) readers at this stage, but that doesn't make my opinion any less valid than the cailin who wrote this ignorant piece of dross

Limbo

I feel like we’re in limbo at the moment. We talk constantly about our plans to buy land and becoming more self sustainable – believe me, there may not be a lot happening with the blog, but we are full steam ahead with planning – but, until we get enough finances together, we can’t actually start gathering materials and mapping out a specific plan for our land. Oh, and we still have to buy the site, so that’s a pretty major part of the plan that’s still in “discussion” stage. We are so eager to get started, it can feel pretty frustrating sometimes not being able to just go and do. We are trying our best to prepare for our future (real) lives though and over the past few years, I've had a list of skills (that I add to on a weekly basis) that I am trying to get to grips with so when we do buy our land, it will (hopefully!) be a more organic transition from consumers to off gridders.

Site on the West Coast of Ireland that we're very interested in!

I've also acquired a range of books which covers everything to do with homesteading – i.e. bee keeping, preserving meat and fish, making candles, raising barns etc – to books on yurt building, permaculture practices, Lloyd Khan books Tiny Homes and Shelter – on a side note, what a pity (shame, travesty!) the UK and Ireland have different laws from the US on planning permission for tiny homes – in the UK/Ireland, no matter what size the building is, if you intend on using it to live in, you must have planning permission. In the US, you can build up to a certain size (depending on the State) without having to gain planning permission first, very handy! I have general books on preserving food, from fruit and vegetables, to meat and fish and anything else I could possibly get my sticky little fingers on. I have books on tree houses and simple shelters as well as self sufficiency and allotment gardening - which are fantastic for making month to month plans for seedlings and planting out. And a selection of books on traditional methods of cooking and preserving food. These books are my bibles, and I spend a lot of my spare time reading and trying to absorb as much information as possible...

Things I want/need to learn....this list is finite, so these are just the more immediate things I think I need to learn

Building skills

How to make a green roof

Straw bale building

How to can fruit and vegetables

Smoking meat and fish

Making sausages, preserving hams

How to make hard cheese

How to kill and butcher a chicken

How to butcher a sheep/pig/goat

Bee keeping

Things I/we've done over the past few years

Courses/workshops

Sourdough bread making

Mozzarella & Camembert cheese making

Fermented foods – preserving vegetables

Permaculture Design Course

Reiki One – this obviously isn't directly linked to becoming self sufficient, but I loved this course and occasionally practice on M and myself, I find it’s a good way of meditating while realigning and energising chakras

Things I’ve made at home

Strawberry jam

Fig, vanilla bean and ginger preserve

Blackberry & pinot noir jam – from foraged blackberries

Pumpkin (galeuse d’eysines) and orange marmalade – this is probably my favourite so far!

Green tomato chutney

Cherry tomato and ginger chutney

Sourdough bread – still a work in progress maintaining a good starter

Duck confit – very easy, just space consuming, but well worth the effort!

Traditional Irish Christmas pudding

Sloe gin –maturing until December 2014 - we have “sampled” this several times and it is divine, but absolute rocket fuel!

Sloe port – made from the gin soaked sloes, we gave bottles of this to our parents as part of their Christmas present and it went down very well. A small nip is plenty to warm your cockles...and everything else!

Gardening ...on-going but getting better each season! This year, we’re hoping to get a (decent) crop of onions, potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, garlic as our basics, and all sorts of other squashes, pumpkin, sweet peppers and soft fruits to go with them – updates on the raised beds and new additions to the garden shortly!

We spend our weekends doing projects around the house and garden. Most recently, M has almost finished an extension which leads out of the kitchen into the garden; which he’s built from windows and timber we liberated from local skips.  We had a fantastic haul last weekend of old bricks from a skip down the street. It took three trips up and back to get all the bricks, but it was well worth it, and M used the bricks to create a beautiful paved area inside the back extension.

Extension - work in progress - we rescued the blue and yellow stained glass windows (bottom left) from a skip a few months ago, the owners told us we were welcome to help ourselves as they were getting new PVC windows fitted

Between work and travel to and from work, we spend roughly 50 hours out of the house a week; if we could find a way to instead, dedicate that time to building sustainable lives and running our eco/yurt/renewable living center, that would be the dream!

We have the will, now we just need to find a way...

Cloud Appreciation Society

Cloud Appreciation Society Manifesto

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry, 
and the most egalitarian of her displays, since 
everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. 
Life would be dull if we had to look up at 
cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the 
atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of 
a person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked. 
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul. 
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save 
on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

These photos were taken on my walk from London Bridge to work this morning, I haven't used any special effects or filters, the natural range of colours today was spectacular! 

I was looking at the sun rise and cloud formations on my train journey into London Bridge, I didn't "catch" the cloud I'd been admiring but got this shot instead. 

Pink haze cloud over Princes Street

Jet Stream London Wall

Rain Clouds gathering over the Gherkin this morning

Perth Tales....A verge collection, a new (old) coffee table and a HUGE spider

April 2011

When we were living in Perth a few years ago, we used to take a trip around our neighbourhood every few months before the verge collection and see if there were any bits being left out that we could use in our little (already oddly) furnished rental. We collected all sorts of handy items, from a pale pink leather recliner chair (well worn but very comfortable) to crockery (which we soaked in bleach and boiling water before using) and we rescued a lovely coffee table that had been left in the sun too long and had gone almost completely white. 

The photo below isn't very clear, but that's M standing by the verge where we found the table, just in front of the biggest spider web I have ever seen. 

The web stretched between the two lemon trees, with multiple layers of web and a trail of dead wasps behind the spider

I spotted the table from across the road and ran straight over to take a look. I'd just bent down and was leaning in to take a closer look at the state of the table top, when M said, very calmly and quietly, "Claire, don't stand up, but there is a huge spider over your head...." My skin was already crawling as I twisted around carefully to see where the beastie was and because I was so close, I couldn't actually see the web at first, just the spider dangling about 2 feet away from my head! I gasped as quietly as possible and pretzeled myself backwards so fast to get out from under the spider, then did a little dance while wringing my hands in the middle of the road...half convinced the spider had somehow gotten onto me.

The Spider, with a convenient dead wasp to show scale

We're pretty sure she's a Golden Orb Spider - which as it turns out, aren't deadly. The effects of a bite are nausea and dizziness and thankfully, they're usually reluctant to bite humans

Close up of some of the spider web, we didn't touch it of course, but it looked really strong and quite tough

So after all the excitement of nearly getting eaten by a spider...ahem...we carefully took a look at the table and realised it was actually a really nice solid piece of furniture, slide it out from under the web and carried it home. Then we returned later that afternoon to photograph the fabulous - just don't let it touch me - spider

Work in progress in our back yard - M had already started to sand the table and the grain was starting to come through  the white sun bleached varnish

Finished sanding, now for the varnish

M spent about three evenings sanding the table (I sanded some of the legs and the sides) and once we'd sanded all the white varnish away and the grain was clearly showing, it was time to re varnish it. That took another two evenings and a few coats of varnish so it would be properly protected. I loved how much the table changed over the space of a week from a white, sun damaged piece of indeterminate wood, to a beautiful, detailed - albeit still indeterminate - coffee table.

Detail on the legs of the table - I loved how a natural ying and yang shape emerged through the grain 

Close up of the table top - this had been almost completely white from all the old varnish and resin baking in the sun

The finished table

If you're not familiar with verge collections; they used to happen every 4 months or so while we were living in Perth. We'd get a notice from the local council advising of the date and people would start to leave their old furniture, white goods, bikes and general oddments on the verge - the grassy patch in front of the house - in the week before the collection and we - as well as other groups of optimistic upcyclers - would wander around and collect any bits and pieces that looked reusable or interesting. Our little town house was already furnished, but sparsely, with an odd mix of tables, chairs and side units and we added our loot to what we realised must have been previous tenants spoils from verge collections past.

There was something similar in Barcelona when I lived there a few years ago and it was always a thrill to find a handy side table or in my flatmate's case, a fabulous dark wood wardrobe with beautiful carved doors that had to be carried, dragged and pulled up five flights of narrow stairs to get to our apartment on the top floor. And was it worth it? Definitely!

Work in progress - Garden Update

It’s been a busy few weeks and we're starting to get the garden ready for spring planting; M made some raised beds a week or so ago from some (found) timbers - i.e. we raided the neighbours skip and rescued some old shelves and bits of wood - which he made into two raised beds, and he also wove a beautiful support frame - for tomatoes and beans - from some bamboo we had left over from last year. 

Before

After

I have quite an ambitious list of vegetables to seed this year, but we’re really excited about getting some staples from this year’s crop. We plan on growing potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, tomatoes as well as courgette, beetroot, lettuce, sweet peppers, strawberries, raspberries, peas and beans. I’ve started mapping out my seedling planting plan, and so far, I've seeded onions – in seed trays on the windowsill in the kitchen –sweet orange peppers, lettuce and I planted garlic cloves - from organic (already sprouted, handy!) garlic from our local greengrocer - and I have a couple of potatoes “chitting” on the windowsill in the kitchen, all looking good so far!

Small glasshouse, which has now been dismantled to add more space, alongside new raised bed - old Cheyenne bush pumpkin patch

Basic garden plan - still working out where everything is going to go!

garlic, lettuce and onions

Dual purpose (up-cycled) shelf - great for hanging saucepans and very handy for stating off sweet orange pepper seeds

Up-cycled/rescued shelves - remade into a raised box for strawberries/herbs

Unfortunately, as the kitty has been making good use of the garden beds over the winter, we will have to dig out the top layer of soil, replace it with topsoil, dig in some well rotted manure and compost and then immediately cover the beds with netting to stop her digging it up again *sigh

It’s been such a mild winter so far (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed it!) but I can’t wait for Spring to get sprung, I’m ready for some seedlings and blossoms now!

Chunky Pumpkin and Orange Marmalade

I decided it was time to make use of my Galeuse d'eysines pumpkin. It had successfully stored in our (cold) hallway for about four months, but I fancied some pumpkin soup and really wanted to try to preserve the rest - or at least some - of the pumpkin and make it last a bit longer.

I found this delicious recipe on Nigella.com and altered it ever so slightly

Ingredients
2 kgs pumpkin
4 oranges (sweet & juicy)
1 lime (juiced)
1.5 kg sugar
2 cm fresh root ginger - shredded
Gelatine

Cut the pumpkin into large chunks (remove the seeds) and simmer in water for about 20 minutes until soft 

As my kitchen scales only goes up to 5kg, I had to wait until I'd managed to halve the pumpkin before I could weigh it... it came in at a fine weight of 7.5kg

Peel the oranges and remove the white parts from the skin – it will take at least half an hour to scrape all (well, most of...) the pith from the skin, much longer than I had anticipated! Chop the peel into small shreds

In a separate pot, mix ½ glass (I used a pint glass) of water with two spoons of sugar and cook the orange peels in it, until they are soft, this will take about 15-20 minutes. Cut the peeled oranges into pieces

When the pumpkin is soft, removed the skin and mix/smush the pumpkin – do not puree! I peeled the pumpkin into a large bowl, then roughly sliced it into chunks with a sharp knife.

Cook the pumpkin chunks, oranges, orange peels and lime juice for 20 minutes

Add the shredded ginger, rest of the sugar and some gelatine (I used one leaf) and let slowly boil for another 20 minutes. Pot into sterilized jam jars.

I initially thought 1.5 kg of sugar was far too much for this recipe, so I just used 1 kg, but after the marmalade had cooled, I realised it hadn't set properly and was quite...tangy. So I emptied all the jars back into the saucepans, reheated the marmalade back to a simmer and added the remaining ½ kg of sugar and another gelatine leaf and that seems to have done the trick! The pumpkin has stayed a bright orange colour and has turned almost translucent through cooking. The marmalade is still quite tangy - especially compared to the shop bought marmalade - which tasted sickly sweet after I’d sampled my homemade batch - and it has a lovely strong orange flavour and aroma and I think the chunks of pumpkin and orange work really well together.