The latest Lonely Planet guide to Great Britain has nice things to say about Essex.  After mentioning all the stereotypes of chavs and rundown seaside resorts, it then describes  “a rural idyll of medieval villages and rolling countryside”.   This is exactly what we encountered a few days ago when we visited Saffron Walden.  As the name suggests, its wealth came from the Crocus Sativus, cultivated locally for about 400 years until the end of the 18th century.  Saffron Walden has the biggest parish church in Essex which reminded me of some of the “wool” churches in Suffolk when I saw it from a distance.  It has a peal of twelve bells,  one of the largest rings in Essex. ( Of course, all this “biggest/largest” does sound a bit stereotypical Essex.)  Bellringers of the past have quite a few records to their credit, which reminded me of the Dorothy L. Sayers’ book “The Nine Tailors”.

There are quite a lot of very old buildings,  Grade 1 and Grade 2 listed, kept in good repair.  It is a pleasure to follow the Town Trail round the narrow streets.  The castle is now in ruins – I suspect it’s been decaying since Henry II rendered it indefensible in 1158.

The Lonely Planet Guide also states that Britain is now very expensive.  I’m sure that depends on the locality.  We had two excellent Ploughman’s Lunches and drinks for £15.  I’m never quite sure just how up-to-date the Lonely Planet’s research is. I’ve found before that what they print is no longer the case.   I think that the credit crunch has made cafés and restaurants more aware of the need to offer real value for money. But Saffron Walden itself is worth a visit;  a pleasant little town rich in history.  Yet I’m sure many tourists do not know of its existence and just head for Cambridge.

http://www.picturesofengland.com/England/Essex/Saffron_Walden

From New Zealand.

Greenpeace loses charity status case

Greenpeace New Zealand’s political activities mean it cannot register as a charity, the High Court has decided.

Greenpeace appealed against a 2010 ruling by the Charities Commission which found its promotion of “disarmament and peace” was political rather than educational and while it did not directly advocate illegal acts, Greenpeace members had acted illegally.

Now, I wonder if our own courts will man-up and agree that vandalism and criminal damage are not charitable activities?

Not holding my breath…

I am a bit busy at the moment, so this will be my last post about Mrs FEEG’s and my trip to Singapore to Australia. This time I will rant on about food and drink, of which we sampled much!
Continue reading “A trip to Oz: Food and Drink.”

Continue reading “RIP John Walker”

For sheer, bone-headed idiocy, I give you Caroline Spelman, the ‘Environment’ Secretary.

Climate change ‘could disrupt wi-fi and hit power supply’

Let’s see, wifi works in Moscow in the depths of winter. (Intense cold, arid.) Wifi works in Hong Kong at the height of summer. (Intense heat, humid.) Works everywhere else, too, as far as I am aware…

Let’s waste another 200 billion that we don’t have.

Story here. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8502620/Climate-change-could-disrupt-wi-fi-and-hit-power-supply.html

Dogs – grew up with them, can’t think of a home without one! Sadly, Ruffie, aged 13 and a bit, left our pack on Friday morning.

Bless her, half blind, riddled with arthritis of the spine and laid low with latter stages of Cushing’s disease, she still trotted around the block for her last walk and trusted me as I took her to the vets for the final time. Her heart was so large she could have carried on for another month or two, but when she started saying no to sausages, we knew enough was enough.
Apologies for the slightly sad blog, but I wanted to share a picture or two so that I could always log on and see her wherever in the world I am.

She was the perfect family dog, never needed a lead, was never happier than with a stick or at your feet of an evening and was totally loyal and loving. She taught my own two-legged offspring so much and I am forever grateful for her sharing her life with my pack. I shed a years worth of tears on Friday. Our other pack member, Robbie, (the ginger one in the pictures) has slept in her bed the last two nights.

The tears are only just stopping. Continue reading “A dedication: Ruffie”

Although it is about the education system in the USA, it is equally applicable to the current situation in the UK – well, in England, at least.

Extract.

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—”for free”—from its neighborhood public supermarket.

No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.

Of course, the quality of public supermarkets would play a major role in families’ choices about where to live. Real-estate agents and chambers of commerce in prosperous neighborhoods would brag about the high quality of public supermarkets to which families in their cities and towns are assigned.

Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

Read the full article here.