Friday, September 10, 2010
Cod rules
Had a cod panic this lunchtime. Went to take the cod out of the oven to find the oven was switched off. What had I done? Had I managed to turn the oven off when I got confused about the buttons for the hot plates? Which confusion I did remember about. Vegetables all cooked and would not improve with standing. As it turned out, the hot blast when I decided to open up suggested that the oven had not been off long. Panic recedes. And as it turned out, cod excellent today. Not sure if that is down to it being eaten on Friday and so a day fresher than last week's Saturday or to my making sure that it got the full hour and a quarter - having thought that last week was a touch underdone.
Only thing that went wrong was that the cabbage was a touch overdone. I find it hard to time these summer cabbages, which go mushy very quickly. Despite looking like a pale green savoy.
Mood at lunch also lightened by the latest stroke in the drug wars. That is to say there is more or less a full page in the Guardian devoted to the criminality of criminalisation of drugs. The untold misery caused thereby. In Mexico not least. By one Simon Jenkins, probably the same Simon Jenkins whom I learnt yesterday is chairman of the National Trust. How much more mainstream, establishment, guardian of the national moral fibre could you get?
It continues to puzzle me why it has taken so long for the powers that be to wake up to this. What is stopping them? Powers that be are not usually terribly prudy when it comes to beer and skittles. Is it all down to those two big constituencies; one lot making lots of money out of supply and the other lot making lots of money out of control? Maybe the Tories will wake up to the fact that they are spending getting on for as much on a drugs policy which does not work as they want to spend on Trident. An excellent candidate for a cut.
One down side to legalisation occurs to me. If we make drugs legal, some people who presently trade in them will go legal. Become plumbers or something and pay taxes like other decent citizens. But some people in the drugs game are in it because they are habitual criminals for whom our current drugs policy represents easy pickings. So the worry is, what will such people turn to if this source of income is denied them? Will burglary become a big deal?
Sadly the Guardian blotted its copy book by running another piece about how the workers are going to starve when the fat cats get the cuts through in October. No recognition that I noticed that government has got to pull in its horns and that most of us are going to feel some pain. More on this when I manage to find out what proportion of the tax take comes from the fat cats.
Nearer home, big festival in the mosque-that-dare-not-say-its-name in Hook Road - the dare-not bit perhaps because the church across the way in Temple Road, whose church hall it used to be, is a bit touchy. Big turn out for the end of Ramadam with lots of people in very flashy and becoming clothes. Men and women, older more than younger. I wonder how many different parts of the world were represented there today?
Which brings one onto the idiot over the pond with the big moustaches. The liberal tradition is that you let idiots sound off because stopping them is the greater evil. Maybe all the papers which gave the chap big coverage - including the Guardian - believe that putting his idiocy up big will do more good than harm. That lots of white folk, who may not have thought about the subject before, will realise that he is an idiot or worse and that a bit more toleration and understanding might be a better idea. Who knows?
# posted by Jim @ 5:52 AM 
