Home, Rants&Rambles

Stress testing

All my babies are home. One of them is back from university and staring an internship to try and get some job experience, the other is in the middle of her A levels.

The first exam went okay, not great not disastrous: the second slightly worse as she ran out of time maybe leaving as many as 30% of the questions. She’s sick before and during her second exam (Chemistry). We head to the doctors to get a sick note that basically says nothing but records the fact she’s vomited her way through an exam and symptoms have now cleared.

The day before the third exam day (two in one, a resit of Mechanics and Further Pure Maths) the meltdown arrived.

“I feel like killing myself”

Please let me skip the further maths exam”

“After that last exam I thought seriously about throwing myself under a bus”

“I can just resit them all next year”

“It’s like when I was having really dark thoughts, and feeling really sad. When I thought about ending it all by drinking bleach”

“I’m going to fail so why bother. I might as well just not sit that exam and resit next Summer”

It was essentially a pained and painful litany of “I’m going to get a U. I’m fucked & let’s talk about the last time I got depressed and tried to kill myself (news to me). And yet bizarrely she was also saying it’s not about the exams per se, just the fact that she’s badly prepared for them. As if that wasn’t true of every person sitting an exam.

So all very intense and dark.

And I found myself having two quite different conversations: Yes, there is the possibility of re-sitting exams if necessary. There is also the possibility of going through university clearing to find a course that takes lower grades than the ones she’s currently listed on UCAS (minimum AAA).

But fundamentally being poorly prepared for an exam is her responsibility (possibly her outrageously expensive school’s responsibility also who have predicted A*A*AA). And if sitting exams makes her this miserable, maybe she needs to think twice about going to university which will be full of exams, especially for a degree like engineering. So maybe she should think about a different route, say an apprenticeship, which will take a lot longer, probably be less stressful, but could take her to an engineering qualification (HND or better) with a decent company.

& maybe she needs to get over herself a little bit because there are plenty of kids out there who don’t get three A levels at high grades. One of her friends from primary school is only sitting two A levels, will take some time for travel but then basically try to find a job and make her own way in the world. None of this makes her worth less, none of it makes her stupid or uninteresting. She just isn’t academic and suited to exams.

And then I called a therapist.

Because it’s scary when your child is this unhappy. Her father tells me that all teenagers have dark thoughts, and that the openess about mental health issues in our social group has given kids a language to use that is almost more scary than bottling it all up.

I’m not convinced.

So she goes off to her exam and I decide to collect her from school – suddenly it feels unsafe to have her coming home alone.

And she tells me that she’s glad she went and sat the exams, that the mechanics re-sit went well. Whilst the Further Pure Maths Exam was a disaster (she reckons she may have got around 40%) it was better than zero so worthwhile working through it. And I suppose the truth is that it’s never as bad as you expect, and even if it is bad, it eventually ends and we get to move forwards.

Trite but true.

And my baby worked consistently for her next exam, Physics, which again she ran out of time to complete.

And we talked to the therapist who doesn’t have space for my girl but maybe could recommend. She’s happy to offer her dad and I an appointment (not sure what that achieves) but she seems to feel that if we have the situation contained then we’re good but then maybe we need some help. how do we know if we have the situation contained? She said she’d thought of drinking bleach – how can that ever be contained FFS.

And we talked to her school who will sit down with us all once all the exams are out of the way. They’ll talk us through the process for clearing and be sure to have someone available when we come for our results. They’ll talk to us about re-sits which they don’t do at the school but can recommend colleges where either you just sit the exams in the Summer, or one which involves actual tuition.

And we looked up available apprenticeships, and it turns out there’s one not a million miles away with a reputable company but it requires an application to be filed mid-month. Maybe we should make the application and see ho the cards fall.

Really it all depends on what she thinks has gone wrong and whether it’s something that a re-sit would address.

Meanwhile the therapist has asked whether we think our doctor needs to be informed.

 

 

Rants&Rambles

Life Changes

Menopause is shit.

There is no other way of describing the experience of peri-menopause (menopause is the end point technically, the day 2 years after your last period)

Put three women together of a certain age, especially friends who know each other well, and the conversation quickly turned to symptoms. & they’re surprisingly varied with very little proven to mitigate those symptoms.

At menopause the hormonal balance in a woman’s body changes.

A quick web search highlights the variety of responses:

Perimenopause can last anywhere from one to 10 years. During this time, the ovaries function erratically and hormonal fluctuations may bring about a range of changes, including hot flashes, night sweats, sleep disturbances, and heavy menstrual bleeding. Other signs of perimenopause can include memory changes, urinary changes, vaginal changes, and shifts in sexual desire and satisfaction.

Some women breeze through the transition. For many others, the hormonal changes create a range of mild discomforts. And for about 20 percent of women, the hormones fluctuate wildly and unpredictably, and spiking and falling estrogen and declining progesterone cause one or more years of nausea, migraines, weight gain, sore breasts, severe night sweats, and/or sleep trouble. For this group, perimenopause can be enormously disruptive both physically and emotionally.

So one of my friends looks to be breezing through the entire process. She reports less frequent periods (now almost non existent) and the occasional hot sweat at night that involves pushing off the quilt and going back to sleep. A bit of digging reveals that she actually struggles to get back to sleep (she’s the stoic friend) but still it seems a relatively straightforward process.

Another has a different story to tell. She is currently engaged in a whole series of tests to make sure that her symptoms are “normal” menopausal responses as opposed to something much more serious,  but both her and her doctor are convinced menopause is the answer. A quick run through of her symptoms include:

  • night sweats making it difficult to impossible for her to sleep
  • night panics or terrors, causing her to wake and again disrupting sleep
  • permanent skin discolouration around her face needing quite heavy make-up
  • shooting pains up and down her left leg sometimes accompanied by numbness to the touch

Since she’s holding down a full-time heavy duty job, plus raising a 12 year old child, the timing is poor and she’s considering HRT to delay menopause for upto 10 years.

And then there’s me with my occasional night sweats (thankfully not enough to disrupt sleep seriously) and menopausal flooding, which is the devil’s own work. Plus stiff joints and a slight numbness just below my pelvic bone on the left (apparently these are menopausal symptoms, whereas previously I’d just classified them as age).

When oestrogen is lower, the uterine lining gets thinner, causing the flow to be lighter or to last fewer days. And when oestrogen is high in relation to progesterone (sometimes connected with irregular ovulation), bleeding can be heavier and periods may last longer.

In reality this translates as an erratic blood flow that can occasionally and unpredictable generate enough pressure to push out a tampon. Flooding is an apt description of what happens. So no matter how heavy a tampon and thick a sanitary pad, I can be forced to run to the toilet at a second’s notice which obviously makes everyday life a bit limited. There is no way I could “safely” sit through a theatre performance during my period. I cannot be more than a minute away from a functioning and available loo.

And it is the sheer bloodiness that annoys even more than the cramps and pain that often accompany them. Dealing with the consequences in the loo at a bridge club, I suddenly realised I needed to take extraordinary care with my incredibly bloody hand (to the elbow) to avoid marking my white top. Even so I ended up walking back in with some marks on my (thankfully dark) skirt.

And apart from HRT there seems little available that has been proven to alleviate symptoms.

On line advice highlights the frankly useless:

Perimenopause can sometimes be managed through self-help approaches such as meditation, yoga, relaxation, regular exercise, healthful food, enough sleep, and support from family and friends.

Now call me a feminist, but if men were subject to intense random pain, plus blood shooting out of their arse uncontrollably on a monthly basis, I don’t think they’d be left with “self help approaches”.

About 25% of women have heavy bleeding (sometimes called hypermenorrhea, menorrhagia, or flooding) during perimenopause.

Some women’s menstrual flow during perimenopause, like mine,  is so heavy that even supersized tampons or pads cannot contain it. If you are repeatedly bleeding heavily, you may become anaemic from blood loss. During a heavy flow you may feel faint when sitting or standing. This means your blood volume is decreased; try drinking salty liquids such as tomato or V8 juice or soup. Taking an over-the-counter NSAID such as ibuprofen every four to six hours during heavy flow will decrease the period blood loss by 25 to 45 percent.

But in the spirit of co-operation, this is where my friends have ended up:

Best friend with no symptoms – woo hoo, we’re all jealous as hell but still talking. Thankfully she has other problems or would be unbearable.

Best friend with symptoms – taking flax supplements to help with the night sweats and anxiety attacks in the night. Seriously considering HRT. I’ve passed on a recommendation from another friend for evening primrose oil.

Me: Currently taking iron tablets to limit any anaemia from the flooding and have just started taking the supplement agnus castus which is supposed to help raise progesterone levels very slightly, but takes a couple of cycles to be useful.  I’ve started to make myself drink much more liquids, and will be ordering more tomato juice. And given the increased pain levels, I’ve been taking ibuprofen more regularly during periods.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Second Thoughts

I was going to title this post “Confessions of a NL Housewife” and decided that the resultant commentary was the last thing I needed to deal with whilst debating the relative merits of upgrading my site security and doing beggar all. Maybe substituting dithering for confessions would be more accurate anyway.

I love cooking, but never follow a recipe book. It’s not quite a confession. It could actually be a bit of a humble brag, except I always start out thinking I’ll follow the recipe and obviously love recipes and recipe books. I have tons of the things on my shelves and my own dedicated recipe box on the NYTimes site (really recommend the latter for anyone who hates losing recipes on-line).

In fact I’m always really disappointed to realise I can’t follow the recipe, inevitably because something is missing. Even if I have bought the ingredients carefully and comprehensively on-line, by the time I get around to it either a key spice has lost itself at the back of the cupboard or the kids (or man) have eaten the new fruit or vegetable “just to see what it was like”

And in part the problem is timeliness. I start out ordering the ingredients early in the week but the food is delivered on a Friday, which means cooking on a weekend or alternatively, eating out or cooking something simple because life is too busy, so it’s almost always a week or three after the ingredients are bought and delivered that I finally get around to cooking.

Which also means sometimes things are just past their best so an alternative is called for.

I’m a pretty rubbish gardener as well, despite loving the whole idea of a garden and certainly the sitting out in the shade. So I’ll order my bulbs, my tulips and alliums, and then when they arrive six months later have totally forgotten what to do with them. There is a plan, but who knows what it once was.

And sometimes this ends up with a surprise success. Having bought white/purple pansies last Autumn that failed entirely to appear all Winter-Spring but suddenly showed their faces in time for the Summer and have totally made work a white-purple-pink colour scheme, so well that I might just try to stick with it for the next forever.

But it also means that plants sometimes turn up and although I’m almost certain that I’ve planted them, I have no idea what they are. I am almost certain that the triffid like creatures popping up at the end of the pink rose bed are actually huge foxtail lilies that I planted a year or so ago. They never really turned up for the party after planting. Maybe the garden was too wet (or more likely too dry) that year and maybe the squirrels moved them about a bit (beggars).

But when I can bring myself to stick to a plan, which usually means the plan isn’t too long term, then I still am stuck waiting. because gardens almost always take a couple of years or ten, to settle into their skin. Whilst some of my plants like the perennial wallflowers singularly fail to die off in their allotted time (2 years or so) others such as the rose and underplanted salvia will take three to four years before showing signs of maturity.

Patience is a gardening asset that I may never own.

Yet I still love the garden and pottering around in it doing the nicer bits (no one likes cutting hedges except very inadequate men – and yes I do know it’s a gross stereotype but it’s held true for me). So when my 83 year old friend suggests I should open the thing for charity on one of those afternoon sessions, I’m tempted.

Then she poor water on my enthusiasm by pointing out that everyone who visits is incredibly critical. Your edges must be trim and there must be a total lack of weeds: my garden never saw a trim edge or the back of campion and dandelions so perhaps it’s a non-starter. Alternatively I could just title it “Dry as a bone, lazy garden” and be up front about my limitations.

Since the conversation was somewhat downed by a comment along the lines of “But I probably won’t live to see it” from my very sprightly 83 year old friend, we lost a bit of momentum there: I’m not ready for my best mates to die of old age. No one said this intergenerational thing would be easy, but surely their part of the deal is to live forever?

Maybe it could become a project. We both love a good project and as a minimum it would involve sitting in the garden quite a lot with her giving excellent advice on how to get rid of weeds and sharpen my border edges. If she’s really unlucky, I might even serve her some lunch with one of my new recipes.

Food

Noodle Salads

I have not been a great fan of noodles cold in salads but feel like giving it a go. A quick search has highlighted a few recipes, so I’m going to work my way through them to decide which ones are keepers and which are not.

The main difference between all of them is the dressing flavours, so the four salads below basically have a combinations of noodles/vegetables/nuts or seeds with dressing:

  • tamarind & maple syrup sweet/sour dressing
  • lime and soy dressing
  • lime, ginger, tahini dressing
  • lime, soy, vinegar dressing

I imagine that the far-east source of most noodle dishes accounts for the dominance of lime as a sour flavour.

The European equivalent of noodles, Italian pasta, appears in salads in smaller shapes usually and with traditional European dressing flavours of vinegar or lemon and a good olive oil and I’m left wondering why that combination of dressing flavours feels so wrong for noodles or spaghetti.

But they do: I’m certainly not ready to go there yet.

And part of me is wondering whether I could just use the dressing from an earlier hot noodle dish (with fried aubergines) which is based around mirin vinegar and soy. Maybe with a collection of fresh or quickly stir fried baby vegetables such as sweetcorn, sugar snaps and either peas or baby broad beans.

A fragrant main: Yotam Ottlenghi’s crunchy noodle salad with mushroom and peanut laab.

 

Crunchy noodle salad with mushroom and hazelnut laab (pictured above)

This is a vegan take on laab, an aromatic mincemeat salad from Laos, with added rice noodles to create a fresh dish that is rich and complex enough to make a meal by itself. If, unlike me, you don’t have an allergy to the beggars, you can substitute peanuts for the hazelnuts

Prep 15 min
Cook 35 min
Serves 4

25g basmati rice
200g vermicelli rice noodles
120ml groundnut oil
600g chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped (by hand or in a food processor)
120g raw hazelnuts, lightly roasted and finely chopped
1 tsp red chilli flakes
75ml soy sauce (or fish sauce, for a non-vegan dish)
75ml lime juice (ie, from 4-5 limes)
300g french beans, trimmed and cut in half widthways
½ large cucumber, quartered lengthways, deseeded and cut into 2mm-thick slices on an angle
2 red chillies, deseeded and cut into 5mm-thin strips
¼ red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
5g mint leaves
5g Thai basil leaves
10g coriander leaves
60ml tamarind concentrate (good-quality ready-made or make your own from pulp)
60ml maple syrup
Salt

Toast the rice in a dry small frying pan on a medium heat for 10 minutes, tossing frequently, until golden. Take off the heat and, once cool, grind in a mortar to a fine powder.

Put the noodles in a heatproof bowl, top with a litre of boiling water, cover with clingfilm and leave to soften for 10 minutes. Drain, run under cold water, then drain again.

Heat two tablespoons of the oil in a large saute pan on a medium-high flame. Add the mushrooms (they will pretty much fill up the pan) and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the liquid the mushrooms produce has cooked away and the mushrooms are beginning to colour. Add the nuts and chilli flakes, cook for two minutes, then, off the heat, stir through the ground rice and two tablespoons each of soy sauce and lime juice. Leave to cool.

Meanwhile, bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add a teaspoon of salt, followed by the beans, and boil for just two minutes. Drain and run under ice-cold water, to stop them cooking more.

In a large bowl, toss the drained noodles with the beans, cucumber, chilli, onion, three-quarters of the herbs and a quarter-teaspoon of salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk the tamarind, maple syrup, remaining three tablespoons each of lime juice and soy sauce, and 90ml groundnut oil. Pour half of this dressing over the salad and the rest over the laab. Divide the laab between four bowls, spreading it out, then top with the noodles so the laab can still be seen around the edges. Sprinkle with the remaining herbs and serve.

And then there is this recipe by Nigel Slater:
Noodle salad with sprouted beans and peanuts.

Noodle salad with sprouted beans and cashew nuts

Use whatever noodles you have around for this crisp, light salad. I have suggested brown rice noodles but only because that is what I had in the house. & again, allergies permitting substitute peanuts for the cashews. The dressing is at its most refreshing when sharp, sweet and hot, but tweak it to your liking, adding more palm sugar or lime juice as you wish.

Serves 4
sprouted mung beans 100g
carrot 1 medium-sized
brown rice noodles 100g
cucumber 1 medium-sized
coriander a large handful
mint leaves 15
pak choi 2 crisp, juicy heads
roasted, salted nuts 40g

For the dressing
limes juice of 2
light soy sauce 2 tsp
palm sugar 2 tsp
small hot red or green chilli 1
garlic 2 small young cloves

Rinse the mung beans under icy-cold running water and drain. Scrub the carrot, slice thinly lengthways, then into matchstick-size strips. Pour boiling water over the noodles and leave to soak for 10 minutes till swollen and tender. (Check the cooking instructions on the packet depending on the noodles you are using.)

Lightly peel the cucumber, then slice in half from stalk to tip, scrape out the seeds and core with a teaspoon and discard them. Cut the cucumber into pencil-thick slices. Remove the leaves from the coriander, leave any small ones whole, and roughly chop the larger ones. Do the same with the mint leaves. Shred the pak choi.

Toss the mung beans, carrot, cucumber, pak choy and herbs together. Drain the noodles and toss with the vegetables and herbs.

Make the dressing: mix together the juice of the limes, the light soy and sugar. Finely chop the red chilli and add to the dressing. Peel, smash, then finely chop the garlic. Toss the dressing, vegetables, herbs and noodles together. Finally, coarsely chop the nuts and scatter over the salad.

And then there is Thomasina Mier’s recipe:

Soba noodles with crisp rainbow vegetables and a spicy sesame seed dressing

This riotously bright salad is crunchy, light and, with its flavour-packed dressing, intensely savoury, making it the perfect salad to brighten up a day. A ribbon peeler or mandoline will help with the prep enormously.  Instead of nuts, it uses seeds to introduce and element of crunch Serves six.

200g soba or glass noodles
50g frozen soya beans
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 carrots, peeled, then grated or cut into thin ribbons
150g red cabbage, finely shredded
100g mooli or radishes, cut into matchsticks or thin slivers
1 green apple
3 spring onions, finely sliced
1 small bunch coriander, roughly chopped
1 handful mint leaves, roughly torn
1 handful basil leaves (or more coriander), roughly chopped
40g toasted sunflower seeds
25g toasted sesame seeds (a mixture of black and white looks good), to serve

For the dressing
1 thumb-sized chunk fresh ginger, peeled
½ garlic clove
50g tahini
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp sriracha (or your favourite style of chilli sauce)
1 bird’s-eye chilli, stalked removed (optional)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp demerara sugar
(or honey)

3 tbsp sesame oil
25ml water

Cook the noodles in boiling water according to the packet instructions, and add the soya beans for the final minute of cooking, to blanch. Drain and rinse under cold water until cool and no longer clumping together, then put in a large salad bowl and toss with a tablespoon of sesame oil to coat (this will help keep the noodles apart).

Add the carrots, red cabbage and mooli or radishes to the bowl. Peel, core and finely shred the apple directly into the bowl, then add the spring onions and coriander. Add the picked herb leaves and pop the bowl in the fridge while you get on with the dressing (covered, if you’re not eating straight away).

Roughly chop the ginger, put it in a food processor with the garlic and tahini, and blitz until finely chopped. Add the lime, sriracha, chilli (if using), soy sauce and sugar, and blitz again. With the motor running slowly, add the sesame oil bit by bit, followed by the water, and process until the dressing is the consistency of double cream. If the dressing looks as if it has split, put a tablespoon of tahini in a bowl, then slowly whisk in the split dressing – it should quickly come back together. Toss the dressing through the salad and season to taste; it may need more lime juice. Scatter the sesame seeds on top and serve.

And finally a recipe from Meera Sodha which has a more pickled sour dressing:

Vegan Spring vegetable bun cha with tofu and soy-pickled cabbage

This Vietnamese bun cha is all about the dressing, also used to pickle the cabbage. The beancurd can be fried in slices if plated up or cubes if used as a central salad to be served at the table.

The noodle salad: Meera Sodha’s spring vegetable bun cha with tofu and soy-pickled cabbage.

Prep 20 min
Cook 35 min
Serves 4

For the soy-pickled cabbage
150g red cabbage, finely shredded
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and cut into paper-thin slices
1 bird’s eye chilli, cut into paper-thin slices
100ml soy sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
2 ½ tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp white-wine vinegar

For the tofu
400g extra-firm tofu
Rapeseed oil
Salt and pepper

For the spring veg and noodles
1 onion, peeled and finely sliced
1 red bird’s eye chilli, finely chopped
1.5cm piece ginger, peeled and grated
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
14 spring onions, thinly sliced
150g frozen petit pois, defrosted
150g frozen broad beans, defrosted
½ tsp salt
200g watercress leaves or spinach, chopped
250g rice vermicelli noodles

To garnish
1 handful salted nuts, smashed
1 handful coriander leaves, chopped
1 handful mint leaves

Put the cabbage in a medium-size heatproof bowl. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a small saucepan over a low heat and, when hot, add the garlic and chilli. Stir-fry for a minute, then add the soy sauce, lime juice, sugar, vinegar and eight tablespoons of water. Bring to a boil, take off the heat and pour over the cabbage.

Lightly press the tofu block between your palms to extract as much water as possible, then cut into 12 or so 5mm-thick slices. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a nonstick frying pan on a medium heat, then lay in the tofu slices (in batches, if need be), season the tops with a big pinch of salt and pepper, and leave to fry undisturbed for four to six minutes, until a crust starts to form. Turn the tofu, season again and fry until crisp and golden on the flip side, too (add more oil, if need be). I have been known to deep fry the tofu. Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen towel.

In the same frying pan, heat a few tablespoons of oil on a high heat, then fry the onion hard for five minutes, so the edges brown but it’s still juicy. Add the chilli, ginger, garlic and spring onions (reserve a handful to decorate), and fry for six minutes, until soft. Add the petits pois, beans and salt, stir-fry for two minutes, then add the watercress. Briefly mix to wilt, then turn off the heat.

Boil the kettle, soak the noodles according to the packet instructions, then drain, refresh and drain again.

Divide the noodles, tofu and veg between four bowls. Put a little cabbage in each bowl, then pour its pickling liquid over the top. Garnish with smashed peanuts, herbs and the reserved spring onions, and serve.

Rants&Rambles

Security

Now the world is more aware of what can go wrong when we give our on-line data to strangers on the web, when it’s all basically gone wrong for some people (quite a lot of people) the web searchers and browsers have decided to implement some changes.

As a result, a new widget appears even on a baby diary site like this one, saying that I use cookies and is that okay with you?

Because it’s a tiny site with an inexpensive shared host, then it isn’t eligible for certification, not that I actually hold anyones’ data anyway – don’t ask for it and don’t store it – because basically I’m not selling or buying anything from anyone.

But I don’t especially like getting a warning flash up overtime I decide to update my everyday rants and rambles with a “website not secure” warning.  Maybe just to get rid of it, I’ll upgrade to independent hosting which will cost me more, and get a security certificate, which will cost me considerably more, just to get rid of that annoying warning.

Hmm.

Not buying. Not selling. Really not collecting any data on anyone, anywhere. Yet still I’m seeing that annoying warning.

& in real life, though I’ve checked my Facebook data (minimal because I’m a chronic under-sharer with paranoid tendencies) whenever I log onto a new site or search engine and they ask me whether I’m okay with their data policy, I rarely scroll though it to decide.

I do turn off most things on search engines, but mainly because I find tailored advertising spooky and intrusive. I don’t want an algorithm predicting my interests even though I know somewhere out there will be a box I have forgotten to tick that means an algorithm has caught me somewhere.

Does anyone actually pay attention to the warnings? Does anyone exercise more control just because now you have to tick a box that says yes instead of no. I’m not convinced.

 

Political, Rants&Rambles

Grenville

In the UK no one ever talks about how much they earn: it is considered incredibly rude to ask and incredibly vulgar to share. So a strange proxy has developed, where instead we talk about our houses, where we live and how much our neighbours’ house cost them. It allows everyone to establish relative wealth without talking about earnings.

More than other countries, the idea of wealth and financial well-being in the UK is predicated on owning a house yet the government now seems chronically unable to develop a policy that would allow most adults to buy their own property in the future.

My generation caught the tail-end of the housing price boom so to a certain extent we are now sitting on a huge pile of entirely unearned wealth. We cannot sell our house since we need somewhere to live, so the cash value of our property is likely to remain untapped until we die.

The average age of beneficiaries in the Uk is 61, so my kids will not inherit this wealth (which will be taxed in the UK, albeit only amounts about £1m) until they are long past raising their own families. So my children, unless we dig deep into our pockets to help them buy (and most parents are obviously not wealthy enough to do this out of income and/or savings) will rent property.

Given that rental property is a feature of an entire generations live and expectations, the UK needs to have a decent policy towards rental housing, which includes social housing.

With the burnt out Grenville Tower still standing over central London, and the personal testimonies of loss being heard in the investigation, the LSE Housing and Communities, in partnership with the National Communities Resource Centre at Trafford Hall, have published what they consider to be the ten most important lessons to be learned:

Lesson 1: There should be a single point of control for any multi-storey block so that everyone knows, whether it is staff, residents or emergency services, where to go and who is responsible whenever an emergency arises.

Lesson 2: A full record of work that has been done must be kept, including the costs, the rationale, the specifications and implementation, with a continuous sequence of recorded information from start to finish, handed over on completion to the responsible owner/manager.

Lesson 3: There should be the equivalent of an MOT test for all multi-storey, high-rise and tower blocks as they have complex and linked internal systems, involving the interaction of many different technical features including plumbing, electrical wiring, heating, lift maintenance, roofs, windows, walls, fire doors, fire inhabitors, and means of escape.

Lesson 4: The containment of fire within each individual flat (commonly known as compartmentation) is absolutely crucial. A breach in the party or external walls of flats, often caused by installing television wiring, gas piping, electric wiring, plumbing or other works, creates a conduit for fire.

Lesson 5: In-depth fire inspections should happen every year in every block, using qualified inspectors, checking walls, doors, equipment, cupboards, shelves, etc. to ensure there are no breaches of fire safety or containment.

Lesson 6: Knowing who lives in all the flats within a block, including leasehold properties, private lettings, and subletting with the right to enter, inspect and enforce where there is a potential hazard affecting the block, is essential to exercising control over conditions and safety. Leasehold agreements should specify the obligation to provide access keys in case of leaks, fire, or breaches of containment.

Lesson 7: On-site management and supervision maintains basic conditions and is essential for security. The landlord can then enforce a basic standard, both in the stairwells and within units. The proximity of neighbours makes enforcement of tenancy conditions vital.

Lesson 8: The maintenance of multi-storey blocks is an engineering challenge where precision and quality control are essential. Judith Hackitt’s Interim Review of Building Regulations recommends higher standards, stronger enforcement, and far greater professionalism in designing, delivering, and running complex multi-storey buildings.

Lesson 9: There should be no shortcutting on cost and quality as short term savings can lead of long-term costs, as Grenfell Tower shows.

Lesson 10: Tenants are entitled to have a voice in the safety, maintenance, and general condition of their blocks. They often know more than staff about who lives in blocks and about earlier works as they have often been around longer than housing staff. They know what changes have been made. They are valuable conduits for vital information, and can thus help their landlords and their community.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Borders

It is beyond infuriating to read people suggesting that Ireland is an EU problem, and that the UK need not put up a border at all.

We are more than 18 months along in this process, leaving in March next year, and the UK government has still not established what it wants to happen as a result of brexit. In particular the UK has still not worked out how to reconcile the UK commitments:

  • to leaving the EU,
  • leaving the single market,
  • leaving the customs union; and yet,
  • still maintaining no border within Ireland whilst also not setting up a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

None of this is new. None of this is rocket science and none of this is particularly contentious. It is not possible to square this circle: the only reason that the Labour Party has agreed membership of a customs union as policy.

FactCheck spoke to Aoife O’Donoghue, Professor of Law at the University of Durham to understand the issue.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-what-are-the-options-for-the-irish-border-after-brexit

She explained that the no-border option is off the table: “that’s gone. If the UK had chosen to stay in the customs union and the single market, you could do that. But in deciding not to, that means there has to be some form of border.”

Given the conditions imposed by the UK government, some form of border control between Ireland and the UK is inevitable.

Because let’s be very clear, there is no technological solution currently available that would remove the need for border controls and border inspections in Ireland. The most automated, technological advanced border in the world between Sweden (EU) and Norway (single market but not customs union) the average stop for each lorry is 20 minutes. They deal with significantly less traffic than we see from Ireland.

The UK government itself has already rejected the most up to date comprehensive technological solution (SMART2.0) presented to the Eu as inadequate and unsuitable for Ireland.

And aside from trade tariffs, once we are outside of the EU and not committed to following all of the same rules, regulations and standards, then we will have to see manual stops, inspections and certification of livestock at the border, if only for basic health and safety and disease prevention.

Which also explains why those people bleeding on about the Common Travel Area (CTA) between the UK and Ireland have entirely missed the point. The CTA pre-dates membership of the EU by both the UK and Ireland. It required regulatory alignment between the UK and Ireland to allow free movement between the two islands. It was effectively replaced by membership of the EU, which ensured the same thing and also allowed free movement across the broader membership countries.

When we leave, Ireland will remain in the EU and will change its rules, standards and regulations in line with the EU. The only way to maintain a CTA would be for the UK to also agree to change all of its rules, standards and regulations in line with the EU, despite being outside of the EU, and obviously with no say on how those rules, standards and regulations were decided.

& the harder the brexit, the harder the border between the UK and Ireland will have to be, where the very extreme end of the spectrum is a hard border where the UK leaves with no deal and has to default to World Trade Organisation rules.

If the UK defaults to WTO rules (using copied-and-pasted versions of the EU’s tariffs in the short term), the EU would still have to maintain its side of the border. That would require check goods coming into Ireland from the UK. That’s because the EU’s existence as a free trade area depends on its ability to demonstrate to the WTO that it can control its external borders properly.

In theory, the UK could decide not to impose checks on goods moving the other way (i.e. from the Republic into Northern Ireland). This could make a hard border slightly softer though of course basic checks on livestock etc would be required from a health and safety, disease prevention perspective.

But there’s a catch: under WTO rules, unless you’re in a free trade bloc like the EU or NAFTA, you have to obey the “most favoured nation” rule.

That means if you lower trade tariffs for one trading partner, you have to lower tariffs to all your other partners. Professor O’Donoghue explains:

“If the UK chooses not impose any tariffs on goods coming across the [Irish] border… that would mean that the UK is giving the EU (because Ireland is the EU in this context) complete open access. So its most favoured nation tariff is zero. That means it would have to give a zero tariff access to every single country in the WTO.”

Abolishing import tariffs unilaterally would have a seriously damaging impact on UK manufacturing and agriculture.

So then we are faced with the option of a hard border between N Ireland and the rest of the UK which is likely to be very difficult politically. We currently have a minority government propped up by the support of N Ireland’s DUP. It is inconceivable that they would vote for any kind of “special status” viewing it as a step towards a reunited Ireland. Some MP’s may well think that perhaps we should just sacrifice the six counties of N Ireland entirely, but again, with a minority government they simply don’t have the votes to force the required referendum in N Ireland.

& then there is the sad truth that whilst the DUP may fight tooth and nail to avoid “special status” other devolved governments such as Scotland might well argue that they would like to be part of the N ireland “special status” having voted convincingly to remain within the EU.

And at stake is our trade relationship with Ireland, one of the very few countries that we run a trade surplus with (around £6bn)  in both trade in goods and services.

Round and round we go: where we stop nobody knows.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Control

One of the big claims from the “leave” campaign for brexit i.e. leaving the EU, was that it would lead to control over immigration. Obviously it ignored the obvious truth that most immigration into the UK was from outside of the EU, and the fact that there were any number of ways the UK could have chosen to control EU immigration (like many other EU countries) whilst staying within the EU.

It also was vulnerable to the accusation of racism.

The latter was always answered by the claim that what “people” wanted was to control the type of immigration so that skilled people would always have a place here.

Turns out post-referendum that’s not working very well for us because actually telling immigrants that you don’t want them, generally makes them stay away. We may reach a stage when we don’t allow people who want to come and work here through the border, but it’s much more likely that people will just choose not to come because they don’t think we’re a very welcoming place, or very nice people.

In the aftermath of Brexit, LinkedIn data quickly showed that fewer people from the EU were showing an interest in taking up jobs in the UK.

Their hiring data shows that the UK has gone from being a country that gains talent from the EU to one that loses talent to it.

The change is significant.

  • Over the last year alone, migration to the UK from the EU has fallen 26%, while more people are leaving the UK for the EU than were previously. The UK remains a net importer of talent from non-EU countries, because the number of professionals leaving for these countries is still lower than the number arriving from them. However, it is importing talent at a significantly lower rate.
  • Net migration to the UK from the rest of the world is also dropping. It’s down 20% over the last year, almost as significant a reduction as migration from the EU.
  • The UK is no longer seen as a good place to advance your career and there is no better example of this critical perception shift than Ireland. The UK has been seen as a place for Irish professionals to gain experience for decades. However, data now shows migration from Ireland dropping 37% over the last year, the biggest decline of all EU nations.

Does reduced migration from overseas mean more opportunities for British professionals?  Looking in detail at London, traditionally the UK’s largest net importer of talent from abroad: London has not been immune to the switch in migration flows, and is also now losing talent to other countries rather than gaining it. However, domestic migration into London is unchanged. It is not increasing to fill the gap ie. there is an acute shortage of skilled people developing.

 

It turns out that if you tell people to f*ck off, they don’t like you, don’t want to work for or with you, and you end up all alone.

They think the UK is racist – who could not have seen that coming?

 

Home

Autumn Bulbs List

Around twenty years ago I planted some red tulips near to the house. Every year come rain or shine they come back. I have gone through phases of hating them and have come full circle. This Autumn I shall plant them up with some clashing reds and oranges, maybe even dark dark purple.

If I have any spare I could use them to plant up some pots, though the troughs at the back should probably be white.

Meanwhile in the front of the garden the Angelique bulbs have grown well and put on a lovely show but they could probably do with a few darker bulbs dotted in amongst them, maybe tulip negrita which is not quite as short but not too far off.

The tulips in the iris bed have put on a good show, despite a very strange arrival (not ordered) instead of my china pinks. It looks like some kind of green/pink parrot.

So the collection looks good partly because of the colour combination but also the variation in height. The tall whites really stand out best but are just a little too tasteful for me.Anemones look like they might work as a border up by the roses at the back.

But underneath the hedge the little tulip saxatalis looked great, but next time I’d better start planting from the magnolia down towards the house to even things up.

The small white muscari haven’t really worked nearly as well. I’d consider planting woodruff but once it’s in, it will never be possible to get it out again, and I’m not really ready for a red tulip experience.

Now all I have to do is remember I’ve written it all down here, come the end of the Summer when it’s time to order the bulbs!

Political, Rants&Rambles

Tired

I am so very very tired of brexit. I am most tired of people talking nonsense and pretending they’re talking facts, pretending that they’re providing useful information, when in reality they’re just propagandists for a movement that they cannot possibly believe in anymore. Why are they still so invested that they’re willing to tell outright public lies, with no shame. because after one or two times of having the lie identified and corrected, then it cannot be called a mistake. It is deliberate.

I am tired of the MEP who keeps retweeting that we can’t possibly belong to a customs union with the EU to solve the Irish border problem because Turkey has a customs union and also still has a hard border with the EU.

And he writes this knowing that the UK is nothing like Turkey, would not have the same type of arrangement with the EU and that one customs union could be very different to another. He writes this without providing any alternative answer to the border in Ireland.

You have no idea how wearing it is reading people who say that a hard border would be Ireland or the EU’s “fault” and Ireland’s responsibility,  totally ignoring the fact that we have chosen to leave and create the problem in the first place. It also totally ignores the realty that WTO rules would require a hard border between the UK and EU if we leave the EU, the single market and the customs union without a comprehensive free trade agreement. Under WTO we are simply not allowed to offer other countries preferential treatment i.e. a soft border.

I have gone beyond weariness when it comes to people suggesting we should just bomb out onto WTO like all the other countries.

Other countries, Mauritania excepted, do not trade on WTO rules. Not even N Korea trades on just WTO rules. Countries like China, the US, India etc all have decades of treaties built up so that they can trade on better than WTO terms. There is an excellent EU database that lists nearly 1,000 treaties with third parties that we are walking away from as part of brexit (http://ec.europa.eu/world/agreements/searchByType.do?id=1)

And some of these will be about trade and some will be on other topics like security, health and safety, aviation, shipping etc.

None of them are trivial. And the UK has made no progress to resolving any of these issues. Our joint application (with the EU) to the WTO to split our trade schedule has been rejected by key countries such as NZ and Australia. Third party countries are refusing to simply grandfather our treaties via the EU e.g. the US suggesting it want better access to our airspace now we’re leaving the EU and vulnerable to a bit of shoving around.

I am tired of the MP who writes that we can have a perfect trade arrangement just like Switzerland, without being a member of the single market or the customs union, who is just choosing to ignore the fact that Switzerland is a part of EU schengen, that it has freedom of movement without control of immigration numbers above and beyond that within the EU.  And then this person goes beyond ignoring uncomfortable truths and just lies when they describe it as trouble free, ignoring the vast amount of customs declarations and inspections required to avoid VAT fraud.

Can I tell you how tired I am about those people who claim that outside of the EU we will enter some tariff free existence and food prices will fall because the EU insists on high tariffs. And clearly no one has actually looked at a breakdown of what tariffs are paid in reality, the kind of data to be found on the ITC site https://www.trademap.org/Country_SelProductCountry.aspx?nvpm=1|826||||0702|||4|1|1|1|1|1|2|1|1

Obviously most of our imported food comes from our nearest (EU) neighbours so is entirely tariff free, or from one of the many countries with a trade agreement with the EU (Kenya etc) so pays no tariffs, And even when tariffs may be a technical possibility (importing tomatoes from Morocco) there are quotas that mean in practical terms tariffs are rarely applicable. Plus there are Entry Price Requirements that allow individual countries such as the UK within the EU to set their own criteria for tariffs.

Because let’s be clear: removing all tariffs on agriculture would seriously fuck with our farming sector.

And can I just point out to the newspaper that the MP suggesting that our trading future is golden, just like that of Australia and NZ, is not a bright young star with novel ideas but a shocking fuckwit who seems not to recognise that NZ and Australia have an exceptionally comprehensive free trade agreement in place, that includes freedom of  movement for people. In other words they have something approaching the system that we’ve just voted to leave. Could she also please acknowledge that Canada and the US have a hard border, something we’re committed to avoiding in Ireland, despite belonging to a free trade agreement called  NAFTA.

But most of all I am tired of people who pretend that this is what they voted for and what they want. You did not vote for the UK to become poorer.

You did not vote for us to become a free trading nation, wheeling and dealing our way around the planet at the cost of a hard border in Ireland and screwing up the Good Friday Agreement. And to those few sad bastards who did vote for that fairy tale: take a look at how our government’s negotiations have played out and tell me that you still think it was a good idea.

You voted to limit immigration, mostly living in places where very few immigrants live and fundamentally out of fear that, one day, they might decide your neighbourhood was somewhere they wanted to live and that you might have to cope with someone who was “different”.

And the reality is that most immigrants have always come from outside of the EU, but you told yourself that you weren’t being racist, that you didn’t mean immigrants like the ones you know, the ones that you’re friends with. Still friends now? Seriously? That’s not friendship. You told yourself that no one you knew would be affected and if they were, you just wouldn’t tell them. You wouldn’t tell the doctor or the nurse or the health visitor, not because of shame but… Well, okay maybe out of embarrassment.

You voted to turn back the clock, without regard to the impact that might have on the younger generation because, let’s be honest the 1960s and 1970s were actually pretty shit to live through.

And even though 10,000 people die each week in the UK, around 9,000 pensioners 80% of whom voted leave ie. 700,000 leave voters dead since the referendum and even though 500,000 predominately remain voting teenagers have arrived on the electoral roll since the referendum, you still bleed on about the “will of the people”

As if electoral fraud in the form of criminal funding of the on-line campaign hadn’t happened. As if 32m people could not have been persuaded by entirely legitimate arguments or racism to vote in either direction, yet if only 800,000 were persuaded by criminality then the entire referendum would have gone the other way, because the vote was narrow and probably a cheat.

I am so tired of this shit show.