Good morning on what I hope will turn into a splendid day for each of you. We’ve had a few good days at the end of the week following the havoc wrought by Storm Katie which sped through on Sunday night/Monday morning leaving damage and devastation in its wake. The real rough stuff was concentrated on the south coast so we escaped the real tumult – only one roofing slate came down in the wind.
After the excitement at the beginning of the week, we’ve had some pretty decent days with quite a bit of sunshine and moderately pleasant spring-like temperatures. Penelope took advantage of the fine weather to make tremendous progress on her front path. She has almost finished installing the edging tiles (we’re about half a dozen tiles short – quelle merde!). She planted roses and gladioli last week – this week the box hedging went in, setting off her efforts magnificently. The final touch will be lavender at the front which will go in a bit later.
As the weather was so grand and she was so busy transforming the front of the house, I volunteered to paint the newly plastered lounge ceiling and, even though I say so myself, the quality and craftsmanship is second to everyone’s. Just kidding – it’s come out well and is significantly better now that the plush, heavily embossed wall paper is history.
We have a couple of new, intrepid (or foolish – take your pick) readers this morning or at least that’s what I’ve been told. So, for the Newbies – good luck!
Before I forget, we had a magnificent Easter Sunday with Nick, Lucy & Annabelle last week along with Lucy’s uncle Hamish and his wife Jean. The food was excellent, as always, and the entertainment, as you might imagine, was non-stop. It turns out the Bubble is an excellent Easter egg hunter. Lucy hid a few eggs around the house (as the weather was a bit iffy) and, once the instruction was given for us all to commence the hunt, Bubble scampered upstairs and hoovered all the hidden eggs into her bucket before some of us, i.e., me, had even reached the top of the stairs. Fortunately for me, she is also an excellent sharer and everyone ended up with a decent haul of goodies.
This week’s “news” essentially wrote itself – I ran across several articles which could only have come from the “You Couldn’t Make It Up!” department.
Firstly, as most of you will know, the UK is about to vote (in June) on whether to remain in or leave the European Union. Those who support Leave tend to be on the looney right who are rabidly anti-immigration and who constantly lament the “flood” of European migrants who come to the UK because of all the benefits we provide. Naturally, they take all our jobs, have expensive treatment on the NHS and get given huge houses for free! Of course, it’s all nonsense but I’m not sure the Outers will appreciate the irony: a call centre set up to encourage voters to leave the EU is staffed by migrants.
The Ukip-backed campaign to pull Britain out of the EU has recruited EU migrants to staff its call centre despite telling voters such low-skilled workers “deprive British citizens of jobs”.
No, really. You couldn’t make it up.
Secondly, I ran across an article describing the series of fines totalling £600 million which have been imposed on hospital trusts for failing to meet certain targets. The main reason hospitals are struggling to meet their targets is because the NHS is underfunded. So, for example, last year one hospital trust was fined £52.7m for missing targets at the four hospitals it runs in London. That made up the largest element of the £79.6m deficit it ran up last year.
Nope. You couldn’t make it up.
The third article to get me going this week was about a young American woman who lives in south London with her British boyfriend and who teaches English in a secondary school. Under new rules (designed, again, to keep those smelly foreigners from stealing all our jobs), she is due to be expelled from the UK because she does not earn £35,000 a year.
There are so many things wrong with this policy that it’s difficult to know where best to begin. One of the more dispiriting aspects of the policy is that it essentially judges a person’s worth by how much they earn, not by any measure of how much value they might bring. And why £35,000 – the average wage in the UK is £26,500, apparently so a non-EU immigrant has to be an above-average earner to be able to stay in the UK. Surely that’s mad – we are expelling above-average earners simply because they do not earn some utterly arbitrary sum.
The best part though: the UK is currently facing a desperate shortage of teachers.
Many schools have had to look overseas for teachers to fill their gaps – to the US, Canada, Australia and beyond. Now they face losing them, with tight budgets making it impossible in most cases to stretch to £35,000 salaries – all in the midst of a domestic recruitment crisis the like of which has not been seen for years.
I tell you – you couldn’t make it up!
Love to you all,
Greg
The crazy inconsistencies of British politics are hard to believe, but the U.S. Primaries with Donald Trump as a popular candidate on the Republican side absoluly Boggles The Mind. The Wisconcin primaries are held tomorrow, and I hope to God he slips in popularity!! But, having moved to Wisconsin when Senator McCarthy was popular for finding dangerous communists in our country — I am dubious about the Wisconsin voters. That State has swung from conservative to liberal and back– but if Donald Trump and his crazy statements win a sizable number of votes — it is beyond belief and extremely dangerous for our country. Fortunately there are two on the Democratic side, who have faults, yes, but are far more capable!