Storm Red

At the moment I’ve got a bad case of the fidgets. Our guests are suiting themselves. Mrs S is busy clothes washing, and all the chores I can think of to do are done. Tonights curry is on the stove ready for heating up, and the dessert, a layered sugar-free (As much as anything can be) lemon and blueberry cheesecake with pecan topping, is chilling down in the fridge.

The news people are all frantically running around telling us about this really scary storm due to roll in and devastate the land. Yet as I’m looking out of my office window it’s all blue skies. The ground is a bit soggy, and I’m going to have to use my post hole digger to try and put some soakaways in a few places as there’s far too much surface water around the place.

Our resident population of birds, a veritable flock of Chaffinches, various type of Tit, Sparrows and Siskins are all busy fighting over our six (! Don’t ask) garden feeders. The Robins, Thrushes and Blackbirds are all picking over recently turned earth in the back yard. They know something is coming and are stocking up accordingly.

We humans on the other hand, are being threatened with power outages, blocked roads, catastrophe, divers alarums and airborne underwear, yet at present it’s all rather sunny and peaceful, with nary a shower on the weather radar. The calm before the storm, so to speak.

Now this isn’t to say the wind and rain won’t hit, but that will happen in the early hours of the morning, leaving us to face the damage in the morning. We were planning on a hack down to Galway city, but that plan is being put on hold for the moment while the weather gods decide when to visit their wrath upon us.

In the UK and Europe, the crazy Islamists are spoiling it for everyone else by sticking cutlery into all and sundry. For my part I hope all the crazy sunzabitches get caught outdoors in particularly gusty conditions, swept up into the air and unceremoniously dumped into the North Sea. Or their Mosques get blown into oblivion. By the way, this isn’t a ‘phobia’. A phobia is an irrational fear. My dislike is purely rational in that I dislike cultures who think it’s okay to rape and murder others who don’t share their warped weltanshauung.

On the positive front, I like most of what that Trump fellow is doing over in the USA. The idea of putting the bloated bureaucrats on a severe diet is particularly appealing. Likewise withdrawing from the massive wealth transfer scam that is the Paris climate accords resonates particularly well with me. One also has to admire the guys tenacity in the face of near constant lawfare since his first presidential run in 2016 and the near constant drumbeat of what can only be described as ‘trumped up’ charges by highly partisan prosecutors.

However, Mrs S, who does not do quite such a deep dive into current events as I occasionally do, still subscribes to the notion that January 6th 2020 was an ‘insurrection’ and not a mini riot ginned up by agitators (A couple of whom have been linked to the FBI – go figure) that got out of hand in a few places. She still has a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and will not even listen to his voice, preferring third hand accounts from the political lamestream. Which do nothing but make her angry.

Funny how it’s mostly the womenfolk who feel this way. Like that stupid Episcopalian who chose to turn a church service into an emotional rant about ‘trans kids’ and suchlike. Frankly all her expressed fears (On behalf of people she’s never met) about them being ‘frightened’ was an exercise in rank hyperbole. Team Trump want free and open debate on these matters. And perhaps that’s what all these silly wokeists are afraid of, free and rational debate, because that means they can’t force the rest of humanity to believe what is palpably arrant nonsense.

To close, there is an old saying that if America (Specifically the USA) catches a cold, the rest of the world gets the flu. Like with the storm currently bearing down on our location, whatever comes from the west brings change, and not just a turn in the weather. Change from all the politically correct ‘hate speech’ crap European politicians we peasants are threatened with. The change promises the de-escalation of certain wars. Normalisation of supply chains caused by Democrat led US foreign policy destabilisation. An overturning of the WEF’s power and influence.

And that’s a storm red I’m not unhappy to see coming.

Visitors

No time to blog. We have visitors and mrs S has me running around like a blue arsed fly doing all sorts for our guests. Three days to go before the sewage farm hits the wind turbine. I may get time to decant and taste test my first batch of mead. I may not. All these things are at the mercy of whatever gods are paying attention.

Until then, little it seems has changed. The UK Labour party is up shit creek and paddling the wrong way. The Tories aren’t any better and Elon Musk seems to be having a high old time trolling them all.

All Labour can do is try to pass laws to tell everyone that no one can say anything about any ‘protected group’ no matter how evil they are. I didn’t think I could hate any group of politicians quite this much, but you know what chums? They made it possible.

Talk to you later.

Die, DEI

As the really cold snap draws to a close, I can’t help but be struck by a fit of the giggles by the ways DEI is falling apart, with the diversity hires being shown up as incompetent boobs promoted way beyond their level of competence. Case in point the California wildfires.

The assistant chief fire officer, a person politically parachuted into a privileged role, was MIA at the time, attending the inauguration of the new Ghanaian President. Excuse me? Why was such a person being sent on such an obvious political beano? Oh, I get it, the appointment was purely political, a sinecure, so of course she was being sent out to wave the multi-culti flag. A person promoted because they were simply capable of doing said job would have demurred, perhaps not even having been considered for such a trip.

That’s all without the political posturing that led to the Californians actively dismantling their water infrastructure. Seems like a rather large own goal to me.

Talking of other wildfires, I’m thoroughly enjoying Mr Musks pot shots at the control freaks of UK Labour and the UK and EU political and journalistic establishment in general. These people have been dismissing and ignoring the plight of places that were not part of the ruling bubble since I was a teenager. I knew it, my parents, having weathered the social, political and economic storms of from the 1930’s onwards, knew it. We tried voting of course, but nothing beneficial came from the mainstream parties, just the same managed decline.

However, now we’re seeing the big corporates, once staunch advocates, are seeing the writing on the wall and are backing away from Net Zero and DEI, simply because ‘woke’ policies are hurting their bottom line. They’re finally getting the memo. They’re emptied the piggy bank and are going for their exit strategies, forgetting that whether they like it or not, their prosperity depends upon everyone else’s.

As for me, I’ve been putting up extra bird feeders, planting a new Dogwood hedge, and will shortly be taste testing my first batch of mead prior to decanting ready for first distillation. There is honey, my bees seem to have survived the recent rather brutal frosts. We’re hanging in there.

See you when my hangover has subsided.

Epic

The incoming president of the Untied States is talking about the woke morass on it’s northern border, and trolling them on an epic scale. He knows that the Liberal and NDP ‘elites’ fancy themselves as upright moral arbiters, even though they push all kind of weird public policy perversion on the Canadian public. From thinking that solar and wind power are workable generation systems, or that said ‘renewables’ will do anything to solve a ‘climate crisis’ which has next to nothing to do with humanity. So he’s taking the piss. On a massive scale.

You know what is really hilarious? These ‘liberals’ are taking him seriously.

Hell, it’s been a cold few days, the heating’s been on the fritz and the local road has been more icy than I have to be comfortable with, so I have to get my chuckles from somewhere.

With the Parliamentary Pervert Apologist Party (Labour) saying ‘no public enquiry’ to the grooming (Rape) gang scandals that Labour Councillors in a number of British cities and the Blair / Brown administration covered up for decades, one is forced to observe that of course they don’t want an enquiry. Because the inescapable conclusion is that the whole UK Labour party is complicit in the scandal. Guilty as hell.

Can’t wait to watch the bastards tying themselves in knots brown nosing the Yanks over the next few years. Couldn’t happen to nicer people. It’s going to be truly epic.

Holy shi…!

Just as a matter of curiosity I chased a couple of old links and was somewhat startled to see that I have been blogging for a shade over twenty feckin years. Twenty years of my ups and downs? As someone said when the Popes privy caught fire, Holy shit! or Holy smoke! and other like expostulations.

The bad news is that despite a few hiccups, I have no intention of stopping.

Could be talking to myself. There might be no-one out there today but a wilderness of AI ‘bots and spammers, but who cares? As it says in my tagline, I know that I’m often shouting into my own bucket, hearing nothing but the occasional faint echo from like minded souls, but that’s not what this blogging lark is about. It’s a safety valve, a release of inner tension, without which many bad things might have come to pass.

There is a body of opinion that says one should not voice opposition to the mainstream, but had we simply followed the various narratives the bought and paid for, (Generally) top down controlled media feed us, we might be a whole lot worse off. Although that may not seem to be the case. However, it ain’t over until it’s over.

And it ain’t over, not by the longest chalk.

A happier new year?

It’s been snowing. Not much by Canadian standards, and we’re due a bit of a freeze over the next week or so. Hey, it’s Winter. We get these conditions every so often. Although given the panic buying that was witnessed over the weekend you’d be forgiven for thinking Armageddon was on it’s way.

By way of an observation, I’m moved to observe that the weather ‘services’ seem to delight in panicmongering over a bit of not unseasonable Wintry weather. It is January for heavens sake. Thje weather comes in cooler and warmer spells of ten to fourteen days, and despite all the silly claims that it’s been the ‘hottest year evah’ this is nowhere near as cold as the mid 1960’s, early 70’s, late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Nor even as warm as those golden days of 1976. Certainly in the British Isles.

Which makes me wonder why does everyone seem to enjoy running around like decapitated domestic fowl for goodness sake? It’s a bit too cold! We’re alll dooomed! It’s a little warm! We’re alll doooomed! Really. Some people really need to build a bloody big bridge and get over themselves.

Having said that, sometimes when you look out at the world from your own little bit of it, it is often hard to maintain a sense of optimism. It’s like the spoken first line “More bad news folks, more bad news” from the intro from Chris Rea’s 1980’s song “Road to hell” See below.

Of course Chris’s magnum opus was written about the Thatcher years, ironically a time of economic expansion and one I recall as a financially (And personally) much happier time, when it was far easier to make a living for even people like me. A time when it was much easier to pull yourself out of the economic doldrums and make a better life. Years when officialdom wasn’t trying to tell you what to do or say or how to think every ten minutes. Didn’t mean you didn’t have to work hard, and of course times often got tough, but that was the game you played if you wanted to step up.

That said, over the years I’ve developed an almost prescient sense of where things are going, and on occasion made money. At others I’ve made serious errors of judgement, hanging on to a situation long past its sell by date or letting myself be backed into a corner by my own good intentions. However, I’ve tried to learn by my mistakes.

Now around this time last year I posted something about being optimistic. For me that has turned out to be true. 2024 was better than 2023, I managed a decent honey harvest, had some very nice breaks and got quite a number of projects finished. 2025 may well prove better as I’m further down the line with a lot of things, and despite some worrying trends, the tactic of hanging in there looks like paying off.

Have yet to taste test my first attempt at mead brewing before setting up a small pot still and processing the result in a barrel for ageing. Then there’s the outbuildings. I’ve got plans for those. Two will be getting re-roofed and converted. New doorways put in. Backup electricity supply. Everywhere all cleaned out and a new large workbench set up in my main workshop. Everything just needs to be made watertight and practical.

All it requires is time, effort and only a little money. Like with my recently fixed septic field. I spent a year tracking down the tank outlet drain, dug a new soakaway (With a little help from my friends and neighbours) and not a problem since.

Before all the aforementioned we’ve got the kids coming to visit and a bought and paid for sojourn in southern France. I’m sure there will be challenges along the way, but nothing we haven’t resources set by for. Then a Summer working on all the projects Mrs S wants me to do for her.

Not that this will stop the morons in Wastemonster continue with their attempts to ruin everyone’s day. Although the UK does look like it is in the early stages of economic collapse. Along with Germany. The ‘protected classes’ will either get out like all the smart money is already doing (Or has already done) or suddenly find all their protections evaporating like morning dew. All those privileges. Gone. Aww. Whaddashame.

There are also a couple more petitions to sign. Some people in the comments sections of various videos and blogs highlighting the dissent say that signing a petition simply tells the government where to find all the dissidents. I say to these voices; who are you my fine fellow? How are things at the 77th Brigade? Having as much fun misinforming the public as you were during COVID? Really? No. Now eff off. If ‘government’ really wants to find me, it won’t be hard. Not that I care.

Nor have I any plans to visit the UK’s septic isle while the current administrative setup is in power. My path(s) leads elsewhere.

If the UK government does (Or intends to) use these names (Including mine) for inimical purposes. Might I respectfully point out that every regime that doubles down in such a fashion eventually falls and falls heavily. This is not my opinion, it is the oft-repeated lesson of history. From every petty chieftain who overstepped the mark backinnadawnatime through the 20th century (see the chief Italian and German examples) and various early 21st century examples. Precedents which the current powers that be would be wise to examine most studiously before carefully winding their necks in.

Frankly I’m looking forward to the fallout from Trump’s inauguration in the USA and the continuing failure of racist DEI policies which have seen several of the major investment banks step back from, along with taking their money out of the ‘net zero’ nuttiness. They’ve seen the writing on the wall, and it won’t be long before all those voices calling for us all to freeze and starve unless we give up prosperity will find themselves cast into the well deserved financial wilderness making YouTube videos about how doomed they think we are which no one will ever watch. Not that they’ll get far, their electric cars will run out of charge long before that.

Me, while the cold weather is here, I’m just chilling. Taking advantage of this short wintry sojourn to rest up and prepare for the next tranche of frenetic activity.

Update: Trudeau gone? Tell me it’s really true. Oh be still my beating heart, what joy. Unfortunately the bastard is staying on until a new Canadian PM is selected and Freeland will remain in post as deputy PM. But this begs the question; could Stasi and his crew be next?

Happy New Year all.

Cold cuts

It’s been a low key festering season so far here at Chez Sticker, which suits us just fine. No fuss, no drama, the odd glass of wine and whiskey, or a gin and tonic to wash the days meal down. That and I haven’t had to cook for three days, there’s been so much in leftovers. There’s still ham, some leftover chicken and plenty of cheese. Indeed, apart from eggs, milk and cream, there will be nothing needed for the larder until February. Coffee beans perhaps? Nothing else.

While digesting todays lunch, I’ve been picking up on various odd news items, just for a giggle. Frankly I can’t make up my mind whether they’re just rage or clickbait. Like the devolution of powers which may result in cash strapped UK councils issuing fines for ‘climbing trees’, as reported / speculated on in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. As an ex enforcement officer I’d like to see how that would get enforced.

As for Starmer’s brother dying, might I respectfully suggest that the Angel of Death got the wrong one. Please feel free to try again and pay closer attention to where you aim. If Lammy, Abbott, Reeves and Cooper were lo feel the thin edge of the old grim reapers scythe I don’t think most would shed any tears, although given recent imagery of Lammy’s increasing girth, I think that event is but a clotted cardiac glitch away. If Mandelson were to peg out too, that might lead to a significant improvement in future US / UK relations. None of them would be any great loss.

Starmer is a clueless git anyway. He’s just sent a letter to a bunch of regulators for ideas to increase UK prosperity. May I respectfully opine that if you have to ask regulators about how to create prosperity, you have truly lost the plot. Regulators create barriers, they restrict, they safeguard. They have no more idea about economic growth than roadkill. I am not the only one to think so.

Over in Europe, Olaf Schulz has dissolved the German Parliament. Would he have done that if he thought his faction was going to beat the new kids on the political block, the Alternativ fur Deutchland? That’s a gamble and no mistake. If the AfD make sufficient electoral inroads, the EU’s remaining cash cow, already in deep financial trouble, may well disappear, leaving Brussels holding it’s own baby. Not a tenable state of affairs.

No idea what such an event will do, but watching the EU’s grand plan go down in flames could prove interesting. Especially the commissions insane plan to ban repairs on cars over a certain age. The idea presumably being to sell more of those pieces of junk (Electric cars) which are allegedly ‘eco friendly’ yet aren’t. This is an insane idea which will put yet more people out of work and further push the European economy into an unrecoverable nosedive.

On a more positive note, over in the USA, I hear that the new fangled Department Of Government Efficiency has taken it’s first big scalp by neutering a massive spending bill. Hopefully the first of many such ‘scalps’. At least I hope so for the American taxpayers benefit and to set an example to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, our current crop of European career politicians is mentally incapable of seeing that prosperity is built from the ground up by ordinary people, doing ordinary things all the time. Adding value, making, shifting, building. All else is a hollow shell.

All cooked out

Well, that’s that. For the most part I’m done and ready for our version of the festering season. While it’s been damp outside I’ve been busy in the kitchen. Low carbohydrate desserts and even vegetables. No starchy stuff though. Potatoes, rice and pasta will not be gracing my table for the foreseeable future.

Christmas dinner menu will be pork belly with crackling, ginger and garlic roast sprouts with an Espagnole sauce. Dessert will be home made low carbohydrate Creme Brulee. The recipe for which will shortly be posted under the Carnivore section of the sidebar. It works. That’s all I have to say. It will be consumed with gusto and the day. Providing Mrs S can keep her light fingers off it in the meantime. There will also be a recipe for low carbohydrate lemon cheesecake.

By way of a confession, all I’ve really done to the basic recipe of creme brulee is replace the sugar with Erythritol and top it with fresh blueberries, a no added sugar fruit sauce and some whipped cream under a no-sugar meringue cap. Although the sauce will be a last minute addition, as left on top for forty eight hours, the blueberry sauce would stain the custard base, thus marring its appearance.

The meringue caps gave me a bit of a headache and I had to scrap one batch because they had gone all brown and wrinkly because the oven was too hot. My bad, I read Fahrenheit as Celsius. Dumb mistake. However, I have rectified matters and the oven is currently in cool down mode. The second batch of meringues is crisping through and I can wait until tomorrow to take them out of the oven when they will be ready to bag and store. Again, the recipe will be posted under low-carb desserts.

There’s not much else happening on the home front, but what about in the wider world? Oh wait. Trump is pulling the US out of the WHO, which I think is a good thing. The Grauniad has been bought out and a few of their more extreme correspondents sidelined. Another UK tax raid by that moron Reeves is likely as she tries to tax the UK into prosperity ever deeper into a recession. Then a stealth ‘carbon tax’ (The slyly named EPR starting 1st Jan 2025) is being inserted into the UK supply chain, which threatens to push the price of groceries up yet further. As if they weren’t high enough already. Has no-one noticed what such a tax has done to Canada’s economy?

What else? Confirmation that SARS COV-2 was created in a laboratory has come to light because a key spike protein matches one created in a lab back in 2017, which is what many (Including my good self) suspected all along. Funded by the people behind Fauci, who might think that a Biden Pardon will save their sorry asses from repercussions. It might. On the other hand it might not, as there are more legal ways to skin a cat than they suspect, because US presidential pardons only have effect within US jurisdiction. The International Criminal Court could of course issue a warrant for Crimes Against Humanity. Hey, sauce for the goose. The US of course could tell them to go swivel, but would the US Department of Justice decide not to get involved? All the White House would have to do is sit on its hands if warrants were issued. Oooh this could prove very interesting indeed.

The mills of Justice grind exceeding slow and imperfectly, but they do grind. That is a comfort in these testing times.

Any old road up, back at the ranch that’s me all cooked out and for a few days at least before the next shit show begins, we can all take a breath and gird our loins for whatever pile of idiocy is going to be thrown our way. Happy New Year and all that.

I screamed

By George I got it! I really got it! Low carbohydrate ice cream is now a permanent menu item for the festering season and beyond. My sojourn in the doghouse is in abeyance and Mrs S is a happy bunny. Huzzah!.

Talk about a hole in one. That was a very nice surprise. It usually takes me a few tries at something to get it bang on, let alone the first time around. Eee, I’m dead chuffed, me.

Right. Once I’ve finished dancing around singing “Earwig-oh, Earwig-oh, Earwig-oh!” I shall calm down and share the recipe. Because this is the time of year for sharing, right?

Okay. Breathe. Remember. Type.

Ingredients: Two egg yolks, 250ml Double cream, 125ml whole milk. Half a teaspoon Vanilla essence, A gnat’s bollock less than a quarter cup of powdered Erythritol. Lots of ice and two teaspoons of salt.

Equipment: A large mixing bowl that will fit in your freezer. A smaller mixing bowl. Space in your freezer for same. A manual whisk and as many spoons as you fancy. A modest size saucepan. A food thermometer. Oh and a stove to heat things on.

Method: put ice in large bowl and sprinkle the salt over it. Place big bowl in the freezer. Put cream and milk in the saucepan. Add powdered Erythritol and half teaspoon of Vanilla extract. Turn the heat up to about half way or medium heat and keep stirring, checking the temperature until the liquid steams but does not bubble around 75 Celsius or just under the 170 Fahrenheit marker. Note: 70 Celsius or thereabouts is perfectly satisfactory. Just don’t let the mixture boil or bubble. Keep stirring.

Place egg yolks in bowl and whisk for about half a minute. Add a couple of spoons of the steaming cream mix. Whisk into egg yolks and tip into saucepan. Stir or whisk in thoroughly. Keep stirring or whisking until a little foamy and the mix steams a bit once more. Decant back into small mixing bowl.

Take ice filled bowl from freezer and place small bowl into the bigger one. Whisk the warm cream mix in the smaller bowl for a few minutes as it starts to cool. Place in freezer. Now comes the hard part. Go and do something else for about half an hour to forty five minutes. When you return, take bowls out of freezer and whisk mix thoroughly without taking the smaller bowl out. That ice is there for a reason and the salt in the big bowl helps keep the mix in the smaller bowl colder than ice alone. Once whisked, put mix back in freezer for another half hour. Do this four or five times as the ice cream mix gradually cools and sets. The idea being to break up the ice crystals and get the right consistency. If you don’t keep stirring or whisking every half hour, you will be left with a grainy block of milky ice. Not ice cream.

After the third time you will find that the mix is starting to look like ice cream around the edges. Stir the more frozen mix into the softer centre, and once the mix is the same consistency throughout, put back in freezer compartment. By the fifth time you take your bowls out of the freezer for a whisk over it should be getting fairly difficult to stir. At this point you can stop and decant into receptacle for longer term storage, or serving bowls. Whichever is the most appropriate. Alternatively you could be a complete and utter gannet and hog the lot to yourself in the sure and certain smugness that you are partaking of a low carbohydrate treat that you can eat on a carnivore diet without the slightest suspicion of guilt.

On the topic of guilt, I heard a good one today. The Police break down a mans door, beat him to the ground with batons and tazers, cuff him and throw him, shackled arms and ankles, into the cold comfort of a concrete lined cell. Hauled unceremoniously into the interview room and shackled to the table, a Detective enters while two uniformed coppers give him icy stares from either side of the doorway, batons drawn, ready for trouble.

“You’ve been a very naughty boy.” Says the Detective. “Very naughty.”

“I don’t understand.” Wails the man all battered and bruised.

“Oh I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” Says the Detective, opening a cardboard file. “You’re looking at ten years maximum security without parole and wearing a tag for life.”

“But I still don’t know what I did wrong.” Says the prisoner, spitting out a broken tooth.

“You just had to put it on social media didn’t you?” Says the Detective. “Tsk, tsk. bang to rights.”

“What?” Says the prisoner. “All I did was post that Kier Starmer’s a complete moron.”

“There you go.” Says the Detective, not unkindly. “Breaking the Official Secrets Act.“

A happy carnivore Christmas

Right. Just been to the Quack this morning, who was visibly impressed with my weight loss over the last eleven and a bit months. He took some bloods to monitor my current health as part of my routine once a year checkup from the neckup (and of course, neck down). he was happy to take my money (I’m a private patient) and send me on my merry way with a follow up meeting set for the New Year. For a man who has routinely abused his body over the last (mumbles number hurriedly) years, I was more than a little surprised at how my overall health has improved, and am gratefully taking the win.

So this whole carnivore, low carbohydrate, lifestyle seems to be working nicely for us both. Don’t really miss the sweet stuff, but Mrs S does, and is exhorting me into making Ice cream, which I have never done before. Here in Ireland the low carbohydrate option is to switch from Guinness to Jamesons, and low carb desserts are only for those posh eejits in Dublin.

Now as far as low carbohydrate desserts are concerned, I do a mean Lemon Mousse and have my own tried and tested low carbohydrate cheesecake recipe which uses a little artificial sweetener instead of sugar and a nut crumb (Walnut and Almond) base rather than mashed up wheat digestive. However, I’ve always looked askance at making Ice cream with a jaundiced expression that says “That’s too much like hard bloody work for too little return”. Nonetheless, the gauntlet has been thrown and I am duty bound to pick it up, unsheathe my trusty whisk and make ready to do culinary battle. Such are the perils etc.

Right, so first task is to nick a basic recipe, so off to YouTube I trotted, and Oh. My. GAWD. Alive. There are so many recipes and methods that I was quite overwhelmed with choices. Having watched half a dozen recipes of differing levels of complexity and exotic ingredients, and before my brain melted, I elected to go with the simplest, which involves 1/4 pint of double cream, two egg yolks, zero carbohydrate sweetener to taste and some vanilla essence.

I may also use some unsweetened cocoa powder or lemon juice or a little fruit essence with just a spot of Rose Water. Might even have a crack at salted caramel or Mocha flavour, if I can get the ingredients right.

If I succeed, all will be well and I’ll post the results as one of my sidebar recipes, if not, you will find me housed in the nearest kennel for the duration. And although a Dog is in the plan for when we get back from La Belle France next March, it may prove a chilly January in there all on my lonesome. So wish me luck in this culinary endeavour. I’m going to need it.

To finish on a positive note, the slow death of DEI (At least in the USA) continues with a US Federal court ruling that federal judge ruled that Nasdaq SEC ‘diversity’ (So long as you’re not a male of European descent) board rules, which require listed companies to have a specific number of directors from underrepresented communities, were unconstitutional. Well that’s a bit of a blow. Aww, all those victimhood grifts can’t be strongarmed in any more. Forgive me if as an investor I’m not unhappy about this ruling.

Happy festering season everyone.

Io! Saturnalia!

Or happy Solstice or whatever festival you want to celebrate, because they’re all valid. Since time immoral there’s been a festival to celebrate the end and beginning of the solar year, long, long before any of the Abrahamic religions were even a messianic glint so to speak. From the current consumerfest to the more austere lets-all-spend-our-time-being-preached-at and all stations between.

We are ready and stocked up, three bottles of whiskey, two vodka, two Gin, and all the other staples except Port and Sherry. decent examples of which are oddly difficult to find this side of the border. Even the classic dry sherries are rare additions to off licence shelves. There seems to be little room for classic Scottish single malts either. I suppose that’s what sells hereabouts. So maybe a little trip oop norf into Ulster is in order. Or when the kids turn up this January I can intimate that a couple of bottles would not come amiss, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, keep the old man sweet sort of thing.

Such decorations as we choose to hang have been hung on trees and doors. I have one more thing to get for Mrs S’s present box and that’s that. It’s all beginning to feel a bit anticlimactic, but that’s the time of the year isn’t it?

However, there’s a lot of news out there that can give the lie to all the political posturing. Like so many others, I am keenly awaiting the administration turnover in the USA which is already threatening the cosy sinecures of undeserving western bureaucrats. Al this in the face of more threatened increases which are already hurting the average working stiff in Europe. From factory closures because of government policy and tax rises, the money thus raised being thrown overseas rather than filling the ‘twenty two billion black hole’ in UK public finances.

They should really be taking financial lessons from Argentina’s Javier Milei, who has reduced Argentina’s massive deficit to zero in his first year in power, delivering a budget surplus by chopping out all the public sector dead wood and stopping the money printing. Which has slowed the mind numbing Argentinian inflation rate of around 200% in 2022-3 to a mere 2.7%. Elon Musk, new head of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency in the transitional US administration, is known to be taking a keen interest with a twinkle in his eye. Which should make western bureaucrats, in their cosy little taxpayer funded sinecures, take pause and take an early bath before the main shit shower hits.

The next couple of months could be fun. Just not for the left of centre and public sector employees.

Cookie crumbles

Well, ten days to go and in our household the focus tightens on the culinary front. For my part this involves perfecting a few sauces. Trying to get a zero carbohydrate meat sauce like proper gravy is very tricky. Mainly because gravy involves flour or cornstarch as a thickening agent, and the alternative thickener, Xanthium gum, tends to thicken a sauce into something vaguely obscene and amoebic.

Fortunately there are references like the YouTube channel Fallow. Like the video below. Unfortunately they don’t give help in replacing flour or cornstarch, but they’re a good culinary reference nonetheless. Everything I’ve tried that they have demonstrated has worked perfectly. Highly recommended.

I’m sure I’ll find something in their back catalogue that will help with my quest for first class flour-free gravy.

DIY work on the grounds continues with more work to be done over the Winter ready for Spring 2025. Chains and fencing went up today (Saturday). No idea when I’m going to get a break as there’s still lots to do. Although we’re not doing much for the festering season this year, I still have to dig out a few decorations, just enough to show the neighbours that we’re not complete party poopers. Even if this year is going to be festively low key. We have the basics. Everything else is just time and energy.

On other topics; outside these walls and either side of the geopolitical Atlantic, the previous alliances between the USA, UK and Canada are beginning to look very fragile because of a lot of juvenile posturing on the part of the Trudeau and Starmer regimes against Trump. Both bunches of lefties should look to wind their necks in because significant actors like Goldman Sachs have seen the writing on the wall and have pulled out of the big banking virtue signal of the ‘Nut Zero’ Banking alliance which Stasi and Trudope are heavily invested in. So what? You might say dismissively, Goldman Sachs, who are they? Well, they’re only one of the major financial players (If not the most powerful) with tentacles all through the financial and political Anglosphere. If they are reacting to the harbingers of non-doom, like the constant failures of CO2 based climate models and the increasing shift in public opinion away from catastrophism, then the money supply to all those activist NGO’s is about to dry up like spit on a hot stove.

Well, the alarmist NGO’s have had a good run for the last three decades, spreading doom and despondency when there was no real need. It’s about time they got a hefty dose of financial reality and had to go out and do proper jobs.

As for all the ‘woke’ stuff. The writing is on the wall for them too. That magic money tree is going to go roots upward when the corporate money runs out. Several of the big players have already moved away from DEI. The EU is also in trouble, with even the Germans and French threatening to pull out.

I can hear the outraged screams of the Neoliberals (And hopefully the Neocons) already fading into the deep distance….. (Evil laughter)

Grafting away

Well, there’s been hungry sheep in the yard after they butted a gap in our western stone wall. The wall itself is one of those relics from the days of the potato famine, not much more than a line of rocks piled on top of each other. It really needs rebuilding with a ton of mortar or replacing with a proper fence. Although Mrs S has indicated that she’d really like a copper beech hedge. Which might well be the cheaper option. I can get enough Beech whips for a hundred or so Euros and this is the time of year to plant them. Then there’s my thirty plus Walnut saplings, although those aren’t big enough to plant this year. The Willows are ready, and I’ve got a few Maples and some more Dogwood to put in next week. Be quite the little forest when I’m done. New gates in the main yard with another two to do. Chain barriers to keep larger livestock in their place. So I’m being kept busy, quietly grafting away. Building and fixing.

The sheep in the yard got fixed with a phone call to my mate John the Sheep who came to move them on to fresh grazing. Ten Dogwoods have been planted to form a hedge at the edge of the parking area behind the house and I’ve still got three two metre fence panels to play with after upgrading the main yard gate. Then there’s a new fence line to put in between the main grounds and meadows. Although I’m waiting for the weather to get a bit warmer over the weekend because working out in sub zero cold can be very draining. However, it keeps me away from the never ending grind of bad news on the UK political front.

Hopefully our new Irish government will be fairly ineffectual, as the usual suspects will have to form a trifecta of a coalition in order to get anything done. And when it comes to political parties, coalitions can be both fragile and volatile. Which hopefully means they’ll be so busy fighting each other, nothing unpleasant will happen to the rest of us. Fingers, toes, eyes and nostrils crossed. I’d cross my ears for luck but that would just be too weird, and there’s far too much of that going around.

On the other side of the Irish sea, the clown car that is the UK Labour Government has had another farmers protest in the heart of Whitehall. 500 tractors at least, probably far more. That was my estimate based on some aerial footage I saw from MSNBC. None of them pulling sprayers full of cattle faeces or with bale grabbers, those things with metre long spikes on the front. I suppose that either the farmers don’t want to escalate just yet, or said machinery was waylaid by the Police and turned back at the M25.

Not to mention the UK economy being in a state of near failure, or so it is claimed. Which begs the question; could the UK soon become a failed state? The dictionary definition being a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control. With the Police having to do a runner in the face of machete wielding mobs yet antagonising the indigenous people, it seems as if matters are rapidly heading that way. Not to mention the UK economy currently being in negative growth.

Last time things got this bad was in the late 70’s, just before the 78/79 Winter of discontent. When the bins weren’t emptied, bodies weren’t buried and there were rumours of small private armies on a couple of the big country estates. Policing was also pretty lax, and that was without the destabilising effect of mass migration. At least the Armed forces were in better nick, unlike now.

There are of course rare (very) bright spots, like the banning of puberty blocking drugs on pre-pubescent children, the application of which is an act of outright child abuse, a cruelty which should land the perpetrators with the task of learning not to pick up the soap in the prison showers for ten years or more.

As should the insane acceleration toward ‘Net Zero’. Even the most cursory analysis of ‘renewables’ and going for no CO2 ’emissions’ show that even if the entire country, out to the very edge of the UK’s territorial waters, were covered in Solar panels and biggest whirly wind turbines, it would not provide enough power to run demand for all the data centres, electrical toy cars and serried infrastructure, never mind keeping the heat and light on in millions of homes. And during the odd cloudy Winter or Summer day with no wind, no appreciable power either. Ending personal travel because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to see once you got there, save the odd storm wrecked solar array or toppled wind turbine.

If the state of those and Ferry port damage is any guide, ‘renewables’ are more vulnerable than any other form of power generation, as well as being inefficient and expensive.

No, these failures aren’t ‘unusual and rare’ they are completely predictable and happen every year. Especially in the northern temperate zones like the UK. Every so often we get a big storm, which has been the story for years, throughout recorded history.

What will, and is happening is that people will have to open up closed off fireplaces in their houses and fit solid fuel stoves to keep warm in Winter, and the country may well go hungry because agricultural output will be a shadow of its former self and even a temporary glitch in the importation supply chains will result in mass shortages. Not to mention deforestation from all the trees that will be cut down to a) make room for all the solar and wind, and b) harvested by the desperate for fuel. No matter the claims that the push down this road will result in lower energy bills. Yeah, right.

It’s not as if anyone has demonstrably proven that the human contributions to CO2 are a major climate driver. The simple fact remains that the Earth’s atmosphere is not really a ‘greenhouse’, because it is subject to constant loss and replenishment. The climate models currently in favour by such as the IPCC are incomplete and do not account for changes in solar output, major volcanic events like we get every so often, or even clouds.

So basing policy on them is the act of outright lunatics. Or should one say ‘mentally challenged individuals’? Oh my. PC language is so clunky and cumbersome. It contains no love, no poetry, no metre, cadence or scansion. PC is a lifeless (And rather unfunny) parody of language.

Me, I ain’t bovvered because we have enough fuel to stay toasty until well into next Summer, and funds to keep the wolf from our door because Mrs S and I saw this state of affairs coming years ago, and made plans accordingly. So we will graft away quietly and wait for all the fuss to kill itself, occasionally popping up and taking the odd amused potshot at the unhinged.

Only to be expected

The storm has mostly come and gone. There’s a few things like lids off boxes to pick up. So I shall be sorting a few minor things out while the tail end is still passing through.

No, the news is about that petition, which, apart from running suspiciously slowly, has rapidly risen almost to the three million mark. This Saturday morning the evasive (And grammatically imprecise) word salad pictured below popped into my inbox:

Government responded:
This Government was elected on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election. Our full focus is on fixing the foundations, rebuilding Britain, and restoring public confidence in government.

The Prime Minister can call a general election at a time of their choosing by requesting a dissolution of Parliament from the Sovereign within the five-year life of a Parliament. The Government was elected by the British people on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election.

This Government is fixing the foundations and delivering change with investment and reform to deliver growth, with more jobs, more money in people’s pockets, to rebuild Britain and get the NHS back on its feet. This will be built on the strong foundations of a stable economy, national security and secure borders as we put politics back in the service of working people.

On entering office, a £22 billion black hole was identified in the nation’s finances. We inherited unprecedented challenges, with crumbling public services and crippled public finances, but will deliver a decade of national renewal through our five missions: economic growth, fixing the NHS, safer streets, making Britain a clean energy super-power and opportunity for all. This is what was promised and is what we are delivering.

The Government’s first Budget freed up tens of billions of pounds to invest in Britain’s future while locking in stability, preventing devastating austerity in our public services and protecting working people’s payslips.

Mission-led government rejects the sticking-plaster solutions of the past and unites public and private sectors, national, devolved and local government, business and unions, and the whole of civil society in a shared purpose. The Government will continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on. Cabinet Office

Oh where do we start with this utter load of bolleaux? The obfuscations are so glaring it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s just take it from the top shall we?

“Fixing the foundations”? Meaningless drivel. More like taking a bulldozer with a blind driver to them. Favouring newcomers over the native population and being in the pockets of certain vested interest is ‘fixing’ anything? “Restoring public trust”? So accelerating the punishments for wrongthink and releasing violent offenders to make room for the new tranches of political prisoners who have posted claimed hurty words on social media is ‘restorative’ of anything?

“Delivering growth” and “More jobs”. Well, let’s see how causing employers to downsize whole factories, laying off thousands because they can’t afford the extra NI taxes pans out, shall we? The only ‘growth’ will be in the parasitic public sector requiring far more in taxes and never to be paid off borrowing to fund all these new (non)’jobs’.

“More money in peoples pockets” Seriously? Cutting pensioner benefits and causing their employers to lay them off is giving them more money? As for “Getting the NHS back on it’s feet” Now there’s the definition of a sick joke. Sure there are some NHS front line services that work quite well, but for the most part the stories I hear are of huge waiting lists, an inability to get a GP’s appointment in the first place and needless bureaucracy.

However, I will grant that this lot are “Preventing devastating austerity in our public services” well of course they’re going to do that, but with the emphasis on feeding the monster of a stifling bureaucracy. Because this lot have absolutely no idea how money or wealth is made in real terms. All they understand is tax and borrow. They don’t understand how to run a business, how to produce or how to add value because governments are in reality services set up for the protection of the populace they serve. Because Government is a cost, not a benefit, albeit one that is necessary to fix the roads and generally keep the infrastructure of civil and criminal courts humming along. In short they are servants, not contributors, but these servants fancy themselves a superior breed because they’ve scored a cosy sinecure in a local or national office. ‘Devastating austerity’ to them means they get kicked out and thus stop wasting public money. It also means they have to actually work for a living, like everyone else. Thus ‘devastating’.

As for “Mission-led government” oh boy. This is a term used by ideologues to justify anything. I’m sure if certain early / mid 20th century dictators had known of this term they’d have used it to justify the odd genocide. Whose mission? Definitely theirs, but perhaps not the one they claimed it would be prior to getting elected by a minority vote.

Now given that said petition was due to run for six months until May 2025, methinks someone has run scared and panicked, rushing out said premature response to try and convince the voting public that everyone had just gotten bored and lost interest.

Here’s Mr Shensmith, Youtubes Black Belt Barrister, passing comment below. So no, it’s not just me.

My tinfoil hat is now doing sterling service as cooking the Sunday roast. It’s just not worth wearing any more.

Weather fearcast

Nooooo! We’re alll dooooomed! Some anthropomorphically personified bit or wet and windy weather is passing by!

Oh FFS! It’s wet, windy and bit unpleasant so I’ve done whatever sensible person does and retreated indoors to dry out in front of a nice toasty fire. The wind is gusting a little over fifty miles an hour, so I had to be careful opening and closing the shed doors, but what’s with all the drama? I’ve seen far worse. Tornadoes in Texas and Kansas, whiteouts in Alberta and British Columbia, blizzards, hailstorms and storms that flattened hectares of trees, not to mention occasions when the mercury dipped twenty below Celsius. I’ve driven through almost all.

So forgive me for thinking that all these warnings and divers alarums (As well as startling the odd snorkeler) are complete hyperbole and not a little insulting and patronising. The only way anyone is going to get hurt is by not trusting their gut instinct and staying somewhere warm and cosy.

Besides, it’s the weekend.