So after the days of preparation for Sunday’s meal, the ‘cooking day’ as arrived. I am taking the advice of my domestic help who prepared this very same recipe in the last week or so and I am cooking everything in the slow cooker the day beforehand. Having looked at the instructions for my slow cooker, it appears that cooking a meal for five might be rather a stretch so I have decided to embark on a little experiment which is to cook for four in the slow cooker and to cook an additional meal for two using the lowest settings in the microwave oven as a sort of slow cooker. This has a sort of bonus as I can put the completely gluten free option in the small oven and then at the end of hours of cooking I can actually compare the two cooked meals and see how the two different types of slow cooking compare. This morning started off with cooking some salmon pieces in tin foil to complement the bought salmon for what I hope is going to be a really tasty starter. Actually, the last time I entertained my cousins I prepared exactly the same starter and it was enjoyed so much, I passed on the recipe. I have got all of the ingredients and recipe written down in a little hard back book to keep for future reference. The day before, I got some really good news in my emails. By way of background, I ought to mention that I pay for some webspace by a small, almost family-run little outfit run by a lady of, I think Slavic origins, and based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I have used this little hosting company for at least twenty years and get an almost individualised service when I need it. The email indicated that the hosting company had already applied what I think is called ‘mitigations’ to ensure that PHP installations (in which AI recently discovered a potential weakness in the underlying code), the upshot of which is that the WordPress installation of this blog has been made completely secure. Moreover, the hosting company also applied other security measures as a sort of ‘belt and braces’ to everything in their hosting site. So I sent off a letter expressing extreme gratitude to the owner of the hosting company and I think that this is one of these cases where ‘small is beautiful’ and building up a relationship with one, smaller company, has really paid dividends. It does appear that the revealed vulnerabilities in the PHP which is the engine of many websites has not actually occurred but with AI in the hands of malevolent actors, this might only be a question of time. I must say that the use of AI is making users such as myself rather lazy – instead of looking things in a manual, armed with the correct model number, an AI generated response can indicate things like cooking times and cooking temperatures in whatever cooking equipment you happen to have. In the morning, although I have woken up a little late, I will probably race down to the shops to pick up a copy of my daily newspaper early in the day as, replete with all kinds of supplements, I find from bitter experience that the weekend editions of newspapers tend to sell out early.
The afternoon turned out to be as gloomy as it was possible to bear. the country is suffering the aftermath of storms sweeping in across the Atlantic. A band of heavy rain has swept in from the west brought by Storm Boelo, with winds strengthening again and gales are expected, particularly in the north and west. Here in Bromsgrove, the temperature is 11° but the weather app on my phone tells me that it feels that 3°, which I can well believe. I am finding this more than a little frustrating because past rainfalls have dislodged some gobbets of moss from the roof tiles and they are sitting on, and potentially disfiguring, the terrace I had especially cleaned a few months ago. Looking at when the rainfall might cease, my weather app tells me that it might moderate by 9.00pm this evening only to resume for at least the first half of next week. Just half an hour of respite from the rain would enable me to give the terrace a good sweeping but as it is, I must keep out a weather eye and seize the moment. Having got all of the lamb stew prepared and slow cooking, the rest of the day is my own so I can devote to some tidying up jobs. But unlike many Saturdays, I allowed myself a good leisurely read of ‘The Times’ and actually found three quite fascinating articles. The first of these was an article on taxation and it was looking ahead to next week’s Budget when it appears that the Chancellor will be giving HMRC powers to raid people’s bank accounts directly to claim unpaid tax. What I found to be genuinely amazing was the calculation by HMRC that there is a gap between what ought to be collected and the amount that ends up in the government coffers to the tune of £60bn which is staggering. HMRC estimates that there are about 4.8 million individuals and companies with debts of below £10k, the average being less than £1,000 but if this can be claimed then the government will be £4bn better off. But legislation will be needed to extend HMRC powers to claim this amount directly through people’s bank accounts without having going through the lengthy and expensive procedures of court cases to recover the lost revenue. The second article that I read was an economic analysis of some of the causes of the recent riots of young people in Paris and other European cities. But the article provocatively argues ‘blame the grandparents’ for having bent the will of governments in their direction fiscally. The article makes the point that in the UK (and other European societies) welfare systems were designed with the expectancy of 2.5 children per family and a life expectancy of 62 and not 1.25 and 79 respectively. The article also argues that spending on the over 65’s has risen 2.5% in the UK (3% in France) and median incomes, adjusted for inflation has risen by half as much again for the over 64s than for those aged 18-64. In other words, it has paid better to be retired than to be employed. The driver of these changes is the political power of the aged (e.g.in reserving the policy of the ‘triple lock’ over pension increases) as well as debt-financed spending in response to COVID and financial crises. The political left want to blame billionaires who they say are utilising tax avoidance and threatening to leave the country whilst the right blames immigrants whom they would like to deport if they could. Now even if this argument is somewhat over-simplified, the stark facts of demographic changes and the political consequences of past spending plans cannot really be denied. The third article was in the ‘Health’ pages and detailed the ways in which orthopaedic surgeons themselves say we could save our knees as we collectively age and much of the population in their 70’s and 80’s are unlikely to escape the affliction of dodgy knees and/or hips.