This is the kind of thing I expected!

Once inside what seemed like someone’s crowded front room, we ordered from the delicious sounding menu. Ray had a shepherds pie and I had a Ploughmans lunch (being a veggie). We waited a long time and when it came, the pie was superheated as only a microwave can do and hubby burnt his mouth on it. It also came without gravy – has anyone ever in the history of the world, had a shepherds pie without gravy?

My ploughmans lunch was actually a salad with one slice of brown bread, no pickled onions and a very unappetising selection of salad vegetables as well. It cost £6.95, but being British and inside someone’s house, we didn’t complain. Now I wish we had done because the same thing happened today.

We took a drive out on a lovely sunny bank holiday and ended up in the Cheshire village of Audlem where we decided to stop for lunch. Hubby is just a little tight with money and wanted to get a bag of chips, but I said no, we we’re on a day out and let’s go to a tea room. We found a charming looking one opposite a crowded pub playing live music, and walked through and out into the shaded courtyard garden behind. After a few minutes our order was taken, 2 pots of tea for one, a ham and tomato panini and an open Cheshire or cheddar cheese sandwich served with salad and crisp (I asked for Cheshire cheese.) As we were in the county it seemed rude not to.

We waited 35 minutes for it to be served!

I had just got up to ask where it was when I saw it on the servery waiting to be delivered so I sat down dutifully and waited for it to be brought to our table.

Oh how I wish I had taken a photo of my open sandwich. It consisted of one fairly thick slice of brown bread. The sort taken from the end of the loaf where one edge is wider than the other as you slice. It lay there, the butter barely reaching past the middle of the slice and was covered (just) with a small mound of grated cheese. Accompanying it was a pile of lettuce leaves, some of which were going brown around the edges, a few tomato slices and around 14 crisps. And this was going to cost me the grand total of £4.20!

Now I know I will always pay more for something when I’m served it in a hotel, restaurant, or yes, a tea room, than if I made it myself.  But does anyone think that sounds good value? I even asked the waitress if that really was £4.20s-worth, but she was very young and I didn’t really want to pick on her. She asked if I wanted any sauces and I said yes, salad cream please. She returned and said there was no salad cream. My mouth opened and the British stiff upper lip left for a second or two, when I said that in that case I didn’t want it thanks. £4.20 for one slice of brown bread, a sad salad and no salad cream was a step to far even for me.

She took it away and I waited for Ray to finish his. He was put off when he found what he thought was a pube inside his panini, but I’m pretty sure it was a long eyebrow hair. A couple of minutes later another lady came out with my sandwich again, saying she was sorry, she’d been next door and hadn’t seen the sandwich before it went out, and she’d now added a small pot of chutney and a pile more cheese onto the same slice of bread. Oh and a couple of cherry tomatoes also appeared.

Like a cowering dog, I thanked her very much and proceeded to eat it all up as I was by this time very hungry. I was cross with myself for not standing my ground, but am getting my own back by writing about it here! We worked out that we could have driven home from Audlem and made our own open sandwich and panini in the time it took us to be served, and it would have cost us about £1.20. Instead we paid £12.60 for the experience.

On our next day out I’m praying there’ll be a nice chip shop open!

Crop Circle in Switzerland

Do you believe crop circles were made by visitors from other planets? Maybe you think they are made by people who like a joke and don’t mind some hard work to achieve a good hoax that attracts many people to see it. A lot of people take the circles very seriously and there is a large conference on the subject opening today.

Even many people who don’t believe crop circles are made by aliens are interested in them and get a thrill from seeing pictures of them or, better still, visiting them and seeing them first hand. I admit I’m a non-believer but I was delighted when I saw my first crop circle as we were driving on a small country road near Devizes in Wiltshire, UK.

Wiltshire is famous for its crop circles and each year often has more than anywhere else. They are particularly common near the county’s ancient monuments like Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and Avebury.

Crop Circle at Milk Hill, Wiltshire, UK

The conference takes place in Devizes, Wiltshire, and it’s official name is the Summer Crop Circles Lectures and, as well as talks by experts from around the world, there is a crop circle tour by coach (bus) and this evening (Saturday July 31st), there will be a vigil held throughout the night in the countryside.

Although people continue to discuss the authenticity of the circles, many people have admitted making them. The most famous are probably Doug Bower and Dave Chorley who, it is said, made the original circles near Winchester. Since then, other people have admitted making them and there have even been demonstrations on television of how they do it. There have also been competitions for the best circle. In particular, in 1992 a contest was held in Berkshire which was won by Westland Helicopters who made their circle using helicopters rope, a ladder and various other items. Some artists regard crop circles as a legitimate form of artistic expression.

Of course, there is always a middle ground. You don’t have to believe that every crop circle is made by supernatural forces or visitors from elsewhere in the universe. You can accept that not every crop circle has a logical explanation, or at least not one that we can understand with our present knowledge.  In the meantime we can enjoy the extravagant and beautiful patterns exhibited by many circles, however they are made.

If you want more information, Secrets in the Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles is recommended by some knowledgeable crop circle enthusiasts.

Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron

While fighting the last General Election in the UK, Conservative leader, David Cameron, put forward the idea of the Big Society. During the election campaign he didn’t go into many details about it, perhaps he hadn’t worked them out at that point.

Now he’s Prime Minister in a coalition goverment with the Liberal Democrats, he has just launched his plan and told us how it’s going to work.

Instead of problems being solved by central government or local councils, volunteers will come together to work towards solutions. Each group will put forward their proposals to the ‘Big Society Bank’, and will receive funding if the ideas are accepted. The BS Bank will get its money from dormant bank accounts, ie those bank accounts that have had no transactions on them for at least 15 years. I wonder what will happen when a savings book or old bank statement is unearthed and the bank account holder or their heirs wants the money from the dormant account.

This is how it works, according to the transcript of his speech on July 19, 2010.

First, social action.

The success of the Big Society will depend on the daily decisions of millions of people – on them giving their time, effort, even money, to causes around them.

So government cannot remain neutral on that – it must foster and support a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action.

Second, public service reform.

We’ve got to get rid of the centralised bureaucracy that wastes money and undermines morale.

And in its place we’ve got give professionals much more freedom, and open up public services to new providers like charities, social enterprises and private companies so we get more innovation, diversity and responsiveness to public need.

And third, community empowerment.

We need to create communities with oomph – neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.

It sounds plausible, doesn’t it?

Or does it?

In the concluding part of the speech he says,

Whether it is in building affordable housing, tackling youth unemployment, inviting charities to deliver public services…

…the people in Britain worked out the answer to the big social problems.

This sounds like central government, the coalition of which David Cameron is Prime Minister, is washing its hands of social problems and public services. It’s up to the rest of us tax payers to work out the solutions and provide them. That’s while we continue to work, to pay our own rent or mortgages, bills, bring up our children, look after elderly relatives and the myriad other things required of us in our daily lives.

While proposing to use other people’s money in dormant bank accounts to finance the Big Society, this government is slashing local authority budgets leading to big cuts in services. It has cut all school rebuilding programmes leaving thousands of children in sub standard school buildings. At the same time it is rushing through its plan to expand academy schools and finding the money for them.

The poor and those on average salaries are going to get poorer and public services we have paid for throughout our working lives are being cut back. Meanwhile, banks are making big profits and bankers are again receiving large bonuses. There is no campaign to crackdown on tax loopholes used by the very rich nor to tax non-doms living in this country. It seems like David Cameron and his Conservative – LibDem Coalition government are doing more damage to Britain’s welfare state than Margaret Thatcher ever dared to do – and that is not a compliment.

Read what Alastair Campbell says about the Big Society.

Polling Station in England

Well, it’s nearly the moment of truth. Tomorrow, Thursday, the polls will open at 7am and we will be able to vote to decide on the future government of the country.

I admit, I’m in the minority and do not want the Tories to get into power. I don’t trust them to look after the interests of ordinary people. I don’t feel that David Cameron is genuinely interested in us. I think he’s ‘Blair Lite’, just not as convincing as Tony Blair at getting people to like and trust him. I certainly don’t think that George Osbourne would make a good Chancellor of the Exchequer. Considering that the Tories have kept Osbourne under wraps for most of the election campaign, it seems they don’t think he’s an electoral asset – I agree with them.

Will Labour win? I don’t think so even though I hope I’m wrong. Gordon Brown has had such a bad press throughout the campaign and for a year or more before it. He’s not Blair – he’s hopeless at chatting to people he doesn’t know, he can’t smile without reason – when he tries, it doesn’t look natural. He’s just not a populist. It should be remembered, though, that his policies for getting the country out of this current recession were successfully adopted in countries around the world. We saw the real, passionate Gordon Brown in his speech at Citizens UK yesterday – see the video below. It’s just a pity that he didn’t do more of this.

Will there be a hung Parliament with no overall majority for any one party? This might be the best result for the country – who knows? Certainly the Liberal Democrats are higher in the opinion polls than they have ever been in a general election campaign. If there is a hung Parliament, the Lib Dems maybe the ones who decide who becomes the next government.

Nick Clegg, LibDem Leader

In just nine days, here in Britain we will be going to the polls to vote for a new government.

As General Elections go, this one has been fairly boring apart from the introduction of leaders’ debates. Because we’re a parliamentary democracy and we vote for individual Members of Parliament to represent our district not the Prime Minister, debates between leaders of the main parties has always been resisted.

In the run-up to this election, though, we’ve had two televised leaders’ debates featuring Prime Minister George Brown for Labour, David Cameron for the Conservatives and Nick Clegg for the LibDems. Undoubtedly, the dark horse Nick Clegg won the first debate but the winner of the second was much harder to call. All I can say is that none of the three did badly.

We have the final leaders’ debate this coming Thursday and I would be surprised if the three men are not much more aggressive than in the last two. The opinion polls show there is all to play for and that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats could hold the balance of power if there is a hung Parliament, ie neither Labour nor Conservative have enough Members of Parliament to form a majority government but need an agreement of support with the LibDems and the smaller parties.

Judging by Twitter, other social networks and opinion polls, it seems that a hung Parliament is the preferred option for many people. Of course, the two major parties phophesize doom and gloom if this is the result but they would, wouldn’t they?

Well, in a little over a week we will know the result. Will it be more of George Brown or will we get Conservative David Cameron as Prime Minister? If the Conservatives win, it will be interesting to see if they manage to pull together a consistent set of policies – something they have failed to do so far, in my opinion.

If it is a hung Parliament and LibDem Nick Clegg has to make the choice of which of the two major parties he will support, can he really get LibDems to support a Conservative government? Considering they are on the liberal end of the political spectrum, it seems unlikely.

We certainly live in interesting times.

Picture above: Copyright © Nick Clegg, Creative Commons Licence

They were right because Brown went to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament so an election can be called. This is a largely ceremonial act but still, it is the first public move in the process.

The meeting took place at 10am today and then Gordon Brown went straight back to Downing Street. His Cabinet assembled outside Number Ten and then he came out and formally announced the election will take place on Thursday, May 6th.

Immediately, the BBC cancelled its BBC1 programmes to show a politics special about the election talking to all the usual suspects who said all the usual things. When they couldn’t find anybody else to interview, the BBC political correspondents interviewed each other which seems particularly pointless as they didn’t have anything new to say either.

Oh joy! We have four weeks of campaigning to live through and then we’ve got to choose. It might just come down to the party who annoys us least in that time.

Seriously, though, it is a big decision because of the times we live in. We mustn’t let the media coverage or the political spin from the different parties to put us off voting. People fought and died to give us the right to choose our own government.

Buzz Aldrin on the Ladder to step onto the Moon. Photo credit: NASA

Monday July 20 2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first Moon Landing by Americans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

I can remember seeing the flickery black and white television pictures. It was in the early hours of the morning here in the UK. I had two very young children so I was asleep. My husband woke me up so I could watch the historic event. Because I’d been so deeply asleep, the whole thing felt like a dream at the time and I remember it the way you remember a dream.

At the time, it was such an amazing and exciting event. It really seemed unbelievable that there were two men from earth actually walking on the moon. In a way, I can understand why some people refuse to believe it. They obviously don’t have the imagination to take in such an enormous achievement in the same way as it would have been totally incredible to people 100 years ago that we could communicate instantly with people on the other side of the world.

Neil Armstrong working at an equipment storage area on the lunar module. Photo credit: NASA

Now we have men of different nationalities working together in the space station orbiting earth. The adventure into space will continue. What other almost incredible missions will be achieved? Perhaps we will find life somewhere else in the universe or maybe we will colonize other planets. There are so many possibilities. In fact, the possibilities and opportunities for mankind in space are as endless as the universe itself.

Now you might like to look at the NASA page on Future Missions.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the far right British Nationalist Party (BNP) which won two seats in the European elections last Sunday, intended to hold a press conference outside Parliament in London to talk about the victory.

Protesters heard about it and quickly gathered around him. He and his colleagues fled from them as they chanted “Nazi scum.” They also pelted him with eggs, one of which definitely hit him. He had to take refuge in his car which quickly drove away.

Last weekend Europe was celebrating the D Day invasions of World War II which eventually freed European countries from the curse of Fascism and Hitler. How can people in this country vote for these far right so-called politicians? Could their victory of two seats in the European Parliament ever have happened at a more inappropriate time?