{"id":5627,"date":"2014-01-05T07:05:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T07:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=5627"},"modified":"2014-01-08T12:37:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T12:37:24","slug":"5-january-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2014\/01\/05\/5-january-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"5 January 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Happy<\/a>Happy New Year to you all. I hope your New Year\u2019s celebrations were everything you hoped they might be and the New Year brings you peace, health and happiness. We marked the beginning of the New Year in the manner to which we have become accustomed over previous years \u2013 sound asleep. Why spoil the habits of a lifetime?<\/p>\n

I would like to say that the New Year dawned with a gloriously sunny morning with clear skies and moderate temperatures. Unfortunately, that would be untrue. The New Year dawned with more rain and it continued to sheet down all day \u2013 more floods all over the country, I\u2019m afraid. And, it’s still going on<\/a>. The Environment Agency has issued a record number of severe weather warnings for this weekend and folks are being advised not to go out to watch the storm waves from coastal paths and sea fronts \u2013 a number of people have already lost their lives having been swept out to sea by the huge waves.<\/p>\n

Still, in spite of the weather, we had a grand time on New Year\u2019s Day \u2013 Nick and Lucy came over with Annabelle and Penelope prepared what can only be described as a wondrous feast. After dithering between two varieties of stuffed pork loin, she went with a pork loin stuffed with chorizo, thyme and caramelised apple topped with a balsamic reduction with chipotle en adobe and red currant jelly. (Unfortunately, we only had black currant jelly but it was still mighty tasty). My goodness it was good. If you have the odd pork loin which you feel needs a good stuffing give it a try \u2013 you can get the recipe\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"AnnabelleWhilst Pen was in the kitchen cooking with Nick and Lucy, I had the unenviable task of playing with Annabelle and the farmyard. We got all the buildings out and spent a little time discussing where each needed to be placed. Then, each of the animals had to be put somewhere and in spite of how much we tried, the donkey simply would not fit in the chicken hut so it had to stand outside. The lion, of course, caused all the other animals to shriek and scream and scamper away as did the dinosaurs. Several of the animals ended up on the roofs of the various buildings while others somehow found their way up to the hay loft in the main barn. Fortunately, neither the lion nor the dinosaurs could climb.<\/p>\n

After all that excitement had died down we did have a few issues with some of the animals wanting to go into the cow shed. The cow shed has three stalls and Annabelle had placed there the donkey, one of the cows and a sheep. I would then trot along with one of the other animals and ask if there was room for me. \u201cNo room for you, pony\u201d or \u201cNo room for you, pig\u201d or \u201cNo room for you, sheep\u201d I was told and we had to trot back to the barn to fetch another animal. Amazingly, even the lion and dinosaurs were told there was no room! What are the chances of that? It certainly kept me amused and, more importantly, kept me out of the kitchen and out of their way.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s rants \u2013 the unreliable use of statistics by the government (again) and more banging on about the epidemic of \u201cbenefit tourists\u201d coming to the UK (again).<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve commented on numerous occasions about our politicians\u2019 unreliable use of statistics. Here the Guardian<\/a> collects five of the best from the past year including a reference to one of our favourites, Iain Duncan Smith and his response when his use of statistics was questioned \u2013 it\u2019s not a lie as long as he believes it to be true. You couldn\u2019t make it up!<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the government is still banging on about the flood of \u201cbenefit tourists\u201d<\/a> who flock to the UK to take advantage of our \u201cgenerous\u201d benefit system and especially the \u201cfree\u201d use of the NHS. As of 1 January immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria are able to travel freely throughout the European Union and it\u2019s these Eastern Europeans in particular that the government is keen to protect us from. Over the past few weeks they\u2019ve announced a whole raft of policy proposals most of which are either already in place or illegal under European law.<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019ve announced that visitors and migrants are going to be charged for using NHS accident and emergency services.<\/p>\n

Overseas visitors and migrants are to be charged for using NHS accident and emergency services in England under measures announced by the government to deter so-called health tourism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it\u2019s merely another aspect of the desperate efforts to appeal to the loony right of the Tory party \u2013 those without entitlement are already charged for use of most aspects of the NHS; this refers specifically to Accident and Emergency. The British Medical Association reckons that it will cost more to administer than it will recover in costs. What does that matter when you\u2019re trying to buy votes?<\/p>\n

\"NHS<\/p>\n

Amusingly, an article in the Guardian<\/a> the other day described how a number of tabloid journalists and politicians had gone to Luton Airport to greet the incoming flight from Romania on 1 January no doubt expecting the plane to be chock full of the benefit tourists the tabloid media and government have been banging on about.<\/p>\n

. . . politicians and journalists at Luton airport were desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of unemployed Romanians only to be greeted by two new entrants, both of whom already had jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You couldn\u2019t make it up!<\/p>\n

Finally, on a lighter note, I\u2019ve often commented on the idiot Gove\u2019s numerous crazy educational initiatives. Almost ever since he became Minister for Education it\u2019s been as though he wakes up each morning and comes up with a new daft idea. Now, you too can be Michael Gove and come up with your own stupid proposals. Think of a three digit number and construct your policy from the grid below, courtesy of the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.<\/p>\n

The White Queen, Alice Through the Looking Glass<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Love to you all,<\/p>\n

Greg<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year to you all. I hope your New Year\u2019s celebrations were everything you hoped they might be and the New Year brings you peace, health and happiness. We marked the beginning of the New Year in the manner to which we have become accustomed over previous years \u2013 sound asleep. Why spoil the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “5 January 2014”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w76b-1sL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}