Abortions

The Guardian ran articles about abortion on Friday, with the interest arising from our government's need to be nice to the Northern Irish Protestants. People who, it seems, share out of date notions about all kinds of personal matters with the Catholics south of the border - whom they seem to hate so much. All very odd. Even odder that the southerners now seem to be slowly moving on, while the northerners are still stuck in the past.

But it was a red graphic about abortion across Europe which caught my eye, probably based on the blue graphic from WHO included here.

I was a bit shocked to learn that across Europe that there are about a fifth as many abortions as there are live births - assuming that most of them are more a form of birth control than anything else - and with the proportion rising to a half in Russia. But this last high may reflect the use of very early abortion there, scarcely an abortion at all in the nasty sense of the word, with something recognisable as a foetus. Doing mechanically after the event what we do chemically before, or very shortly after. Who is to say which is the better way?

Also striking that the two places with zero abortions, the two Irelands and Poland are both places which were managed for a long time by larger and more powerful neighbours and in which the Catholic faith became as much an assertion of separate nationhood as anything else. And which has persisted, despite their having now achieved separate nationhood. Unlike the faith headquarters, Italy, where abortion rates are not so very different from most other peoples'.

PS: in comparing Ireland to Poland, one should perhaps remember that, until relatively recently, Poland was far more mixed geographically, religiously and nationally than it is now. Much less of an island than Ireland.

Reference 1: https://gateway.euro.who.int/en/visualizations/choropleth-map-charts/hfa_586-abortions-per-1000-live-births/.

Cars and other vehicles

Since we have lived in Epsom, the numbers of cars on our suburban road has much increased. Part of this is commuters who are too mean or too lazy to park in the car park provided near the station. But a good part of it is the residents of houses whose cars have outgrown their premises: reducing the provision of off-road car parking by extending their houses and increasing the need for car parking by moving to from single to multi-occupancy.

Not to mention the caravans which used to be frowned upon and the vans which hardly existed. Except perhaps outside small houses on large plots out on the fens; houses with few or any neighbours. People with vans mostly had yards in which to park them.

I noticed this morning that the disease has spread to our local preparatory school, on the top of West Hill, with two of their three vans being parked in the road outside. A school which still has quite large grounds, despite extensive building out the back.

Vans which as well as being there, irritate by having loud pictures and advertisements printed on their sides, a practise which I do not care for. Also dangerous in that it both distracts and camouflages, this last by breaking up the lines of the vehicle.

Pole position again

Pole position once again. Celebrated with a copy of the Economist, a paper I have taken to buying again on an irregular basis, maybe once a month or so.

Doubters can hover over the snap and the file name, including a date stamp, appears below. Or at least it does in Chrome.

PS: I was amused by the interest the small person on the left was taking in the stand at the right. Soaking it all up for future use.

Group search key: chc.

Row boats

The second of two strings of rowing boats going under Hungerford Bridge.

Group search key: chc.

Cheese hunt

Last week, off to Neal's Yard Dairy again, on this occasion the branch near Neal's Yard., that is to say Seven Dials.

Started off badly with a threatening, overcast sky. And OneNote playing up again after yet another upgrade - with the problem here being that I don't make enough use of it to keep up with it. But the sunny side was that I discovered a helpful search feature.

On this first occasion, passed up the trolley noticed at reference 1. Would have gone for it had it come from the nearby Wilko but it didn't.

Three masons in the next group of seats to mine on the train to Waterloo, complete with black blazers and striped trousers. No doubt on their way to something important at the Great Lodge of Great Queen Street. They might have been railwaymen, thus demonstrating the properly democratic nature of the institution. But not so democratic that there were not another couple of masons sitting apart, but quite possibly on their way to the same something important.

One of the anecdotes overhead concerned a press conference that Harold Wilson had once given, with his pipe, in his shorts, from a deck chair on a beach in the Scilly Isles, where he is now buried. It seems that his wife, the Right Honourable, the Lady Wilson of Rievaulx, now over a hundred years old, still visits.

Off at Vauxhall to pull a Bullingdon from the Kennington Lane Rail Bridge stand. Over Lambeth Bridge, where I was able to admire the new steel barriers, for some reason trimmed with concrete at each end. Bridge Street was closed with lots of activity, possibly security related. Scaffolding going at least part of the way up Big Ben. Whitehall still in pretty poor condition for one of the most important road in the land.

Had some trouble parking the Bullingdon. The first three stands I tried were full. At the third a suit from up north was having great trouble getting his credit card to give him a Bullingdon, despite his having done it before and knowing roughly what the drill was - but it did not cross my mind to simply give him mine, thus doing us both a good turn. I could have taken a picture of his credit card or something by way of security, and worse case scenario was, I think, just £250. So I should have done it. As it was I pedalled off down Long Acre to park the thing at Great Queen Street, mentioned above. More striped trousers, possibly the very same ones as I had been sitting behind on my train. Not best pleased to find this morning that I had overrun my half hour by 1 minute 27 seconds and had to pay a £2 supplement. I should and stopped to claim the extra 15 minutes one gets for a full stand.

Back at Great Queen Street, the rain had just about held off. Lots of tourists. The barmaid with the tattooed arms was still working the Crown.

Bought my Poacher and tied some Caerphilly, the first time for years and years. Not really my sort of thing but I dare say BH would have gone for it, having more of a taste for young white cheese than I.

Then off to Terroirs for lunch (see references 3 and 4), where we were served by the same young lady from Bologna who had served us before. Very pleasant she was too, and well pleased with her job, which she said was a fine opportunity to learn all about wine. With all the insouciance of the young, she did not seem to care much about Brexit at all. And a charmingly murmured 'excellent choice' for my chosen Chablis, a Vandangeur Masqué 2015, I think from the people at reference 5. Very good it was too. As was the pasta dish, described as 'Strozzapreti, Datterino Tomatoes, Basil, Olives & Parmesan'. As was the pudding, taken with a spot of calvados, described as 'Chocolate Mousse & Hazelnut Praline' and snapped above. The only snag being that it took a while for me to realise that it was my pudding, mistaking it for coffee. My second encounter with praline, the first being noticed at reference 6.

And so to Hungerford Bridge. Just for form, pulled a second Bullingdon at Concert Hall Approach 1 and pedalled it up the ramp, once again to the pole position.

Home to pick up the trolley that I had passed up earlier in the day, followed by a short visit to TB, the first for years and where white van crowd which I used to know had thinned out a bit. Maybe a dozen or so in, by now early evening. Jameson about half the price of the Calvados, by volume. The visit noticed at reference 7 is not the last, so not years and years ago after all.

PS: wikipedia tells me that Lady Wilson was once employed as a shorthand typist at Lever Brothers in Port Sunlight. I wonder if she knew the nearby Lady Lever Art Gallery? See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/trolley-79.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=scapegoat+sunlight.

Reference 3: http://terroirswinebar.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/wine-and-cheese.html.

Reference 5: http://www.aetodemoor.fr/aliceetolivierdemoor-actus6.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/hay-fever.html.

Reference 7: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/hunt-swede.html.

Group search key: chc.

Knapweed again

The maturing common knapweed flowers at the bottom of the garden are quite pretty now, and not too bashed about by the recent rain.

The telephone has done quite a good job, but has not really captured the detail of the active interior, the bit that does the business.

Some of the stalks, the ones with the lines of black flies, have become regular little ecosystems, with a good variety of insects and spiders making a living out of them.

And while it might be called common knapweed, I have failed to find any anywhere else. I had thought there would be some down Longmead Road, but failed there, so perhaps the next stop is Horton Lane, not visited for a few days now, perhaps not since before the start of this particular hare.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/lots-of-floral.html.

Paying for care

The DT managed to annoy me again this morning, with the loud headline of the 'Your money' section being: 'I reclaimed £226,559 in care fees. You can too'.

It seems that the subject of this particular care was a chap who came over from Ireland many years ago, did pretty well for himself, building up various businesses, including the farm on which he lived. So not a poor man.

When he got old and ill he went into care, paying for it out of his own resources. After he died, his family went to the sort of lawyer who recovered the sum mentioned above from the council on a no-win-no-fee basis, taking around 20% of the swag for his trouble.

It seems that an important part of all this is deciding whether you need care because you are ill or because you are old, with the state footing the bill in the former case, but not in the latter, assuming, that is, that you do have the money yourself. Which, it seems to me, is not a good rule. There should not be an all or nothing choice between being ill and being old, with some kind of a sliding scale being far more appropriate. Rather in the way that insurance companies pay out when your drains collapse, mainly because they are old. They give you a percentage for the accident and you have to pay the balance, as the maintenance needed to keep normal wear and tear at bay.

But what really annoyed me was the tone of the headline. The idea that the state is fair game when it comes to offloading the cost of care of a loved one. A state which has clearly not made provision for the rapidly escalating cost of such care - while we have been happy to applaud the lack of tax arising from this lack of provision.

And when Prime Minister May attempted to put all this on the agenda during the recent election, she got assaulted from all sides, by all parties. Attack dogs ruled. So much for caring Corbyn.