Sunday Thoughts

I find it depressing than the super rich have been allowed to get away with murder and things like health and education have to be sacrificed to pay for the mess they have caused with their greed.

No one ever hears government saying the super rich need to be cut, that their offshore tax havens need to be shut down and that they should be made to pay

Instead its health, education, transport which has to be cut, squeezed and bled dry, with each political party trying to prove how macho they are when it comes to these cuts. Then there are the attacks on the most vulnerable of society by politicians hoping for catchy headlines and tabloid approval.

If there is the merest whiff that the super rich might have to ya know contribute to this planet we live in, they get smelling salts and threaten to leave. David Osler put it best

The idea that the rich should hand over a higher proportion of their income than the less well off has been a mainstay of the broadly progressive outlook since Lloyd George’s people’s budget of 1909, and it is high time the principle was restored.

It is not as if the elite live on another planet. It is unacceptable for a small number of plutocrats to pay little or nothing to the public purse, while benefiting disproportionately from the things for which it pays.

Even if they do use private hospitals and independent schools, who do they think foots the bill for the tax credits that subsidise the low pay on offer to many of their employees, the roads their chauffeurs drive them along, or the streetlights outside their offices, and to give just a handful of examples?

Opera Blogging - Spiffy Pink Costume Edition



Caught this clip on an Opera Aria programme on Sky Arts and beside the wonderful singing, the male singer has a rather fetching pink outfit, complete with helmet with a pink plume.

Friday Cat Blogging


Heidi and George snuggle together as the nights get darker and colder

Ballet Blogging

Sunday Music Blogging

Favourite Letter Of The Week

This is a great letter to the Guardian

Simon Jenkins's assertion that the public sector should take a hit because it has been feather-bedded at the expense of the "productive sector" of the economy – when those flagships of the private sector, the banks, have just been handed hundreds of billions of public money – is a breathtaking inversion of reality (Crude, but fair. The public sector must take the pain, 16 September) .

Just how productive would that sector be without public sector education and training to supply its workers; public sector healthcare to keep them fit for duty; state benefits to subsidise poverty wages; publicly funded transport infrastructure to deliver their goods?

Most of what (foreign-owned) manufacturing still operates here does so thanks to massive government subsidy and tax breaks; those rugged free market champions, the farmers, would mothball their tractors without those nice subsidy cheques from the Brussels they affect to despise.

We all know who caused the meltdown, and it wasn't nurses, firefighters or even trade union barons. There is no excuse for not sticking it to the greedy, stupid, cynical bastards responsible, starting with a truly progressive tax system that goes right up to 100% and beyond of any bonus, incentive or backhander not directly and transparently earned by socially useful endeavour.

Root Cartwright

Radlett, Hertfordshire

I couldn't agree more, its a shame that the same people who got us into this mess have been let off with what to me seems a slapped wrist and are now leading the 'recovery'.

Why aren't the bankers, the elites being made to pay for the chaos they have caused?

Depressingly enough this will all happen again, bubbles will form faster and then burst faster.

Friday Cat Blogging






Heidi and George chilling out

Friday Cat Blogging


George giving the scratching post a good scratch




Heidi disappearing into a duve
t

Recipe Blogging

Mango Chicken

1-2 tablespoons groundnut or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon freshly grated root ginger
2 skinless chicken breasts fillets, cut into thin slices
1 tablespoon Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
1 green chili, deseeded and finely chopped
1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 1/2 ripe mangoes peeled and stoned - puree the flresh of 1 mango and slice the 1/2
150ml (5fl oz) pineapple juice
1-2 tablespoons light soy sauce

Instructions

Heat a work or frying pan over a high heat and add the oil. Add the ginger and stir fry for a few seconds, then add the chicken and toss together. As chicken starts to cook add the wine or sherry, stirring all the time. Add the chili and red pepper and stir fry for 1 minute. Add the mango puree and the pineapple juice and season with the soy sauce and freshly ground black pepper. Let it bubble and reduce for a few minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Add the mango slices and cook for a further 30 seconds or so before serving with steamed jasmine rice

Sunflower Blogging

Took a couple of photos of one of our sunflowers which are just coming into bloom in our garden, as you can see its not just an ordinary yellow sunflower but has red as well. The bottom two show a bee.

Friday Music Blogging

Music I am currently listening to.....





The Adverts - Gary Gilmore's Eyes (Top Of The Pops, August 1977)

Friday Cat Blogging


George and Heidi in a rare moment of harmony


Heidi nibbling a box


George looking as ever handsome