pumpkinstrokemarrow

Two of the thrush like birds noted earlier on the lawn yesterday. Maybe they are just thrushes.

A new smoked haddock recipe applied to tea, following a tip from Tooting. Simmer fish in skimmed milk, until the skin comes off. Make up a white sauce, starting with finely chopped onion, adding back the slimmed milk at the appropriate point and ending with a modest amount of cheese. Add flaked fish back at the end of the proceedings. Serve with courgettes halved crosswise (better whole, but this requires a big saucepan. And the courgettes being known colloquially in this part of Epsom as torpedos), and entire boiled potatoes. A sort of thick variant on the soup we had last week - ingredients not that differant.

Followed by earnest debate in TB about the smoking regulations, generally reckoned to have damaged trade in this (largely) smokers' establishment. It has been suggested that Boris J, should he get in, will do something to cut back the draconian regulations which have been implemented in this green and formerly happy land. While there was general agreement that maybe even the Major of London could not do anything for pubs in Surrey, there was very little agreement as to whether he could do anything for pubs in London (which included one or two within a mile or so of TB). I thought that maybe there was room for him to manoeuvre if he could persuade local authorities not to enforce the regulations in respect of certain premises, say those whose managers and staff elected to run a smoker's operation. Where would that leave central government? Would they send the troops in to sort out a local authority which declined to enforce the full rigour of the law? More likely, I imagine, that there is some general purpose power to fine councillors in authorities which do not play the central government game. No council is going to stand up to pressure of that sort for a minority issue of this sort.

Then maybe I thought that there might be provision in the act for exemptions, maybe in the gift of local authorities. Peeking at chapter 1 (smoking) of part 1 of chapter 28 of the Health Act 2006, I find that the appropriate national authority (presumably the Secretary of State for Health, whatever he or she might be called these days), can indeed make exemptions. But the words appear to specifically preclude exemptions being made in respect of pubs or clubs. The up side is that one can easily print this part of the act off without paying. This does not seem to be the case with the regulations which back up the act. While they are readily available on the internet, they are not in printer friendly format although there is an option to pay here to have the thing sent to one. Maybe I am not looking in the right place. In any event, the story seems to be that it is indeed the duty of local authorities to enforce the act but I couldn't find the bit that explained what would happen if they were a bit lax about it.

So one goes back to the hope that over time local authorities will not be too busy in the matter of enforcement and will tolerate a few dens - rather in the sensible way that they used to tolerate a few under age drinking pubs - I assume on the sensible grounds that a bit of moderate under age drinking indoors and under supervision is better than a free for all on the park - which might, after all, be infested with people selling far worse things that a few tinnies - or a few Woodbines for that matter. The pessimistic view is that there are enough busy bodies who will creep around smelling such places out and complaining to local authorities, to make it hard for these last to turn the blind eye.

And it seems that the chap who made a stand in Blackpool has been forced to back down if not out of business. But I suppose there was never much hope that such flagrant defiance of the law was going to be tolerated. Unless, of course, thousands of students had turned up to stage non-violent smoke-ins in his pubs. Maybe have lightening smoke-ins all over the country? How long would they have had to keep it up until the authorities saw a bit of sense? Would they be tough enough to apply punitive damages to the unwilling hosts for such smoke-ins? Would they use anti-terrorist powers to monitor the movement of the cars of smoke-in leaders as they travelled around the motorway network (as I believe them to have done during the miners' strike) under the all seeing eyes of the soon to be universal CCTV network? I guess all this falls apart because smoking is very much a minority sport these days, and a good proportion of those that do wish they didn't. One is not going to get a decent demonstration together. Oddly, anti-hunting seems to be another matter. Not heard much about them recently, but before the hunts were banned they seemed to be able to muster good numbers.

Calmed down by finishing weeding the Autumn Bliss rasberries on the Western edge of the deer exclosure. Pleasantly warm after the rain in the middle of the day. The things are sprouting well, despite all the weeds. Must try to keep it properly weeded this year.

Broad Beans mostly up now and quite a lot missing. Maybe as many as one in four which is worse than I usually do. And the slugs are moving into action on them. Most of the ones I have seen are quite small - but that will no doubt soon change. Regular weeding should help keep them down - if I can get around to it. Digging and planting is one thing, weeding another!