Gay Cake Debacle

A bakery in Northern Ireland has been found guilty of discrimination by refusing to make a cake with a pro gay marriage slogan.

I do think things are getting out of hand with this anti-discrimination law.

What if you were a baker with a predominantly Catholic clientele who was asked to bake a cake celebrating the Battle of the Boyne. Could you argue that making such a cake could affect your business - possibly leading to your business going bust as a consequence?

What if you are a gay baker asked to make a cake with the slogan; "No to Gay Marriage"?

Of if you were say Jewish and asked to make a cake emblazoned with the Nazi flag? Wouldn't you be justified in refusing?

It's not as if the buyer didn't have the choice to go somewhere else. Makes you wonder if the bakery in question was specifically targeted just to make a point.

There's also the matter of the use of images of Bert and Ernie - copyright infringement?

What cake would you refuse to bake? A Creationist cake would feature high on the list for me.

Top Gear

I hear the Saudis are advertising for some new executioners. I wonder if Len McClusky will try his hand? He does seem to be doing an admirable job with the Labour Party.

Had an amusing exchange yesterday on eBay with someone who is selling a Mercedes SLK 320 V6 (been looking for one to replace Hay's 230, but eventually gave up after Hay said she'd attend to the slight rust on it). 

He has it on at £4,900, which is over £1k more than market value for a perfect example, which his is not - it has some rust on the wheel arches, which is a common problem with the SLK - they were made when Mercedes lost its reputation for over-engineering their cars (my 300SL is 22 years old and has no rust whatsoever).

I contacted him with some friendly advice on the price, to which he candidly replied that he'd put it on at such a high price in an attempt to show his wife it wasn't worth selling - and so he could keep it. A man after my own heart.

Barnfield Towers II

Well, I finished oiling the west and east facades yesterday - one more two storey window to do and the tower can come down - the only problem is I like it (and I don't have anywhere to store it - Colin has no immediate need for it either).

May leave it up in the middle of the garden as an art installation....

Barnfield Towers

Overheard in the restaurant:

We are discussing sensation.

Chairman: "Is your experience of say red the same as mine? I'd say yes, as we as a species have the same thoughts about contrasting and complimenting colours.  .....except ginger people. I mean, where did their obsession with purple come from?"

Hay: "How about synesthesia?"

Chairman: "I have no problem with same sex marriage."

Overheard later while talking about maca powder (allegedly provides relief from menopausal sweats):

Hay: "I've been doing some research on this maca powder stuff, seems there are different strengths - there's white, red and black."

Chairman: "I guess the Moroccan Black is the best psychoactive stuff that all the ladies do in the clubs. What's the street price for Afghan Red?"

Overheard this morning:

Hay: "What do you want to do today, Badger?"

Chairman: "Some jobbies."

Hay: "Not in the house please."



When building the house we purchased a £1,000 modular, snap-on scaffold tower for Colin, our builder, to use. On finishing we lent it permanently to Colin, and very grateful he was too. What with doing all this oak window renovation, I needed to get up to the upper floor windows and I certainly wasn't going to perform sanding and oiling from a ladder.

Having just completed his latest project, Colin brought the tower round on Thursday evening and I commenced to erect it on Friday evening. It was so simple and I could do it myself. Managed to do one small window and the entire west face on Saturday. Best £1,000 I've ever spent. Every man needs a modular, snap-on scaffold tower, so go out and buy one today! Lidl need to do a 'special' on them.

This photo shows it with just 2 sections - there are 3, so I could easily get right to the top of the house.

Manual Trousers in Iceland

Apparently when you get to Iceland (the country, not the shop with frozen crap that very poor people eat) you can get a phrase book. As with other phrase books, it contains useful phrases. Unlike other phrase books I am led to believe it also contains useless phrases. These include:

1. Where is the train station?
2. The weather is nice day today, and
3. Is there anything cheaper?

Believe it or not, Iceland has no railways.

Decided to give all my manual shorts and trousers to the charity shop yesterday. A  bit like manual cars, I think manual trousers are an anachronistic nuisance. God wouldn't have made zips if he thought men's trousers should have button flies in perpetuity. It's automatic trousers and shorts for me from now on.

The News at a Glance

ITV staff staging a 24 hour strike - will anyone notice?

Claudia Winkleman talks about her daughter's burns - popular on the BBC website, but hardly news since it happened last October.

Some people I've never heard of are vying to become leaders of Labour.

Farage does what Farage and UKIP do best.

Some people in the north of England want to join Scotland - sounds like a recipe for seriously considering a federal UK, but even a federation has one party in overall charge. I wonder when Scotland will further fragment into independent clans fiefdoms?

Exercise makes you live longer - you don't say!. I wonder how much research money went into that previously unknown fact?

Can anyone recommend a decent website for real news?

Greeks Bearing Manufactured Service Gifts

Finally got round to reupholstering the two dining carvers last night in a contrasting material (I say carvers, but they're really just end chairs) - the carvers are done in the material on the right - a lighter and less pronounced tartan.

Halloumi cheese is apparently undergoing a boom in sales in the UK. The reason totally eludes me - I think the stuff is redolent of that Silly Putty stuff and has no relationship to real cheese whatsoever. Cheese that squeaks when you chew it? Nonsensical. Got some for Hay from Lidl, and some halva - oily sawdust with a hint of pistachio - filthy foreign muck! Think I'll go UKIP...

Next economics issue  engendered by No.1 Son's Economics AS Level - the decline of manufacturing.

It's said that the UK's decline in manufacturing has been offset by the exponential growth in service industries. I believe that to be true, but there's one fatal flaw with a migration to a service based economy - service based industry is generally difficult to export and is primarily targeted at a domestic market (there are exceptions, like finance). That won't do the balance of payments much good. Not only that, but whereas economies of scale are relatively simple within manufacturing, it's almost impossible in service industry without a drop in the quality of the product (imagine a teacher improving productivity by doubling the class size). 

As a consequence, importation of manufactured goods will increase as consumption rises, but service based exports will reach a natural peak, meaning an unsustainable deficit.

Any solutions?

I work in a service based job (MD) within the UK for a foreign (Israeli) manufacturer, so I'm improving the balance of payments with my services, but can do little to grow my contribution to the balance of payments without doing two simultaneous jobs, which a) isn't allowed by my employer, and b) would result in my effectiveness (hence quality of service) in each job becoming substandard.

It's the Rrich What Gets the Pleasure....

Cameron is supposed to have appointed his cabinet, but Hay's dad was complaining he'd yet to hear who is running the Colonial Office, the Ministry of Food or indeed the Ministry of Information.

Last night we had some walkers turn up on our doorstep at 8pm asking if they could camp in our field. They're doing a sponsored walk from Cardiff to London in aid of some mental health charities and I was surprised to find from Google Maps we're slap-bang on the route.

Yesterday I was thinking about inequality - the reason being that No.1 Son did his AS Level Economics exam on Monday and had been asking me all manner of silly questions that made me think.

The common mantra of the left is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and I wanted to see if this is true. I started off by thinking back some 100 years, when even middle class people had maids and domestic servants. Few, if any, middle income people retain staff these days - good staff are so hard to come by, don't you find....

In the 1800s, some 10 to 14% of the British population was engaged in domestic service. These days it's a luxury item reserved for only the very wealthy - 0.3% of the population is engaged in domestic service today. Or so I thought.

When you think about it, domestic service has been compartmentalised and outsourced.

• We go out to eat, having other people cook our dinners,
• Some people send their laundry out to be washed or dry cleaned,
• Some people have a gardener come once a week or fortnight,
• Tesco and their ilk will even do your grocery shopping for you,
• Many have a woman who does, doing it once a week,
• Childcare is performed by 3rd parties.

There are so many instances of us having domestic help, but sharing it out and no longer having to house our staff.

That said, the domestic service figure for Germany is 0.7% and for the USA it's 0.6% - double the UK figure - although it's only 0.005% in Sweden. In Brazil, apparently, it's not unusual for a teacher to have one or even two servants.

Domestic servants are not necessarily highly skilled and can be said to be at the low end of the pay scale, yet very few can afford to hire a dedicated body on a minimum wage.

At the other end of the scale, rich people (and I mean very rich) can simultaneously lose half their worth in a single market downturn, leading to a large drop in inequality,

The chart below shows the UK inequality index (using a variety of metrics - Gini and percentiles) since 1961 (BHC means before housing costs and AHC means....well, you guessed it):

As you can see, inequality jumped in the 1980s with Thatcherism, deregulation and the free market, and again under the last years of the Blair government, but curiously it has reduced since the 2010 election on all scales of measurement. The 2009 crash probably had much to do with that and fortunes being wiped out at a stroke.

Now the left may go on about the use of food banks increasing, but food banks are a relatively new innovation, and if you provide a service then people are going to use it, and as more people get to hear of it, even more people will use it. Therefore using food banks as an argument for an increase in inequality is somewhat disingenuous. My own theory is that the increasing use of food banks also has a lot to do with a creaking social security system whereby social security payments are delayed, and not an actual rise in inequality. At least that's what people who frequent food banks or deal with people on the poverty line seem to be saying.

However, having said all the above, the drop in the percentage of people being employed in domestic service had a lot to do with the advent of domestic appliances, which freed up women to enter the workforce.

Leadership Linseed

I do wish the BBC news site would get its act together on facts. There was an article yesterday on David Miliband criticising his brother's leadership, which ended by saying Miliband Senior could not be the next leader as he's not an MP. Well, in that case, how the hell did Farage become (and remain) the leader of UKIP - he neither was nor is an MP? A party leader does not have to be an MP, else how would any party start off?

What would be a bit difficult is PM's Questions - wouldn't be much fun with the leader of the opposition not being there, as only MPs are allowed to sit in the Commons. The usual solution is to ask a backbencher with a decent majority to fall on his sword, accept a peerage and initiate a by election, whereby the new party leader is is shooed-in.

Been doing some window renovation, The stuff the oak windows came painted in has not stood up to even 2 years of weather. God alone knows what it was, but I've been busy sanding it down and wiping the wood with good old boiled linseed oil.

Before

After

Before

After

We used to use linseed oil on the doors to the accommodation on the ships I sailed on. They were made of teak and prey to all weathers, including salt spray. We would rub them down with wads of canvass and sand from a bucket, with the addition of some caustic solution to help remove any staining, then 3 coats of boiled linseed oil (rub down the 1st coat with some fine wire wool to ensure a smooth finish) would seal them for 2 years at the very least - bearing in mind they had to put up with a lot more than 2 English summers and winters.

Another benefit of boiled linseed oil is that it's as cheap as chips compared to other wood finishes and preservatives (around £20 for 5L, which will easily do a whole house) and can be wiped on with a rag.

Sometimes the old solutions are best.

Kingfisher Hot Flushes

Took this on our morning walk around Chipping Sodbury. Look very hard in the middle of the photo and you'll see a kingfisher sitting on a stick over the water.

Hay heard about maca powder, which allegedly combats the hot flushes associated with menopause. The effects seem to be entirely apocryphal, but being the scientist she is, she decided to give it a try and has ordered some from t'internet.

Maca powder is the ground root of some native Andean root vegetable, and the women of that area are supposed not to suffer from menopausal hot flushes. I posited that the reason for this might be the fact they never reached menopause, succumbing instead to maca poisoning in their mid 40s.