On jam, more correctly lemon curd and marmalade

We have been making jams and other preserves for years but someone asked me about my lemon curd, it is a beautifully simple thing to make and we found the recipe in a book called "The Kenya Settlers Cookery Book and Household Guide"

Quick and easy lemon curd
4 lemons
3 eggs
1lb sugar
2oz butter or marge

Grate the zest of all 4 lemons and squeeze the juice into a double boiler along with the sugar and butter, whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture and cook for 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until the lemon curd is skeining, the curd should then be put in ready warmed jars* and sealed, allow to cool and store in the fridge.

* I usually put the clean jars in the oven gas mark 6 for 5 minutes to make sure they are sterile nb don't do this to the lids

A Pyrex bowl works well as a double boiler! Simmer a few inches of water in a saucepan. stack bowl on top of a saucepan, making sure the bowl fits snugly.

I will also add my super orange marmalade recipe (Courtesy Mrs Willies, Worcestershire)

Quick and easy Marmalade
2lb of Seville oranges
4lb of sugar
 

Place the whole oranges in 3 pints of water and boil until the liquid has reduced to one and a half pints, remove oranges and cut them in half, scoop the insides into a seive and press as much of the pulp through as you can discarding the rest, cut the skins into as thin or fat chunks as you like and put both back into the water along with the sugar and boil until skeining, the put into previously warmed jars*

Going to hell in a handcart

Since 1979 this county has been ruled by Thatcher and sons of Thatcher, yes Blair is one of her children too. The rhetoric was to improve our lot but the reality was to empower rich people at the expense of the rest of us.

They stole from the councils, stole from the people and lined their nests. She brought in universal business rates that took money away from councils, then she set up council tax to steal from the people, her bastard progeny "new labour" then oversaw the biggest swindle of all time in bailing out the banks until their successors could sell the assets to their friends. Privatisation stole assets that we had all paid for and gave them away at cut price to their money grubbing mates, now we have the Tory pygmies blaming the working poor for all our ills!

"Les aristocrates a la lanterne" I say vive la revolution.

Michael Sheen gave a brilliant speech in Tredegar in defence of the NHS

"To those who have discarded all principles, save that of profit before all else; to those who have turned their backs on the very idea of a truly democratic society, and aligned themselves to nothing but self-interest; to those who have betrayed the vision of equality, and justice, and compassion for all - that vision that provided the crucible from which came forth the National Health Service - I say to you, as Aneurin Bevan said in Trafalgar Square in 1956: you have besmirched the name of Britain; you have made us ashamed of the things of which formerly we were proud; you have offended against every principle of decency and there is only way in which you can even begin to restore your tarnished reputation. Get out. Get out! Get out!"

I can't say how good it was to hear these words, especially now that we have suffered another general election under the same tired old first past the post system that Blair promised to reform and was also 2010 election promise of the Liberal Democrats!

All you stupid little Englanders, Tories and other ne'er-do-wells please pack your bags and scurry off to your hole in the ground, GET OUT. GET OUT! GET OUT!!! 

Clueless

Cameron wants to ban encryption without understanding that most of what he proposes is not possible.

The Home Office set up a Twitter account and then tweet that they have arrested "immigration offenders" without understanding the Contempt of Court Act.
Both of these is happening when there are some of the brainiest people employed by both the civil service and by political parties.

The government determined to carry on with the privatisation of the Post Office when every other privatisation have been of dubious value to tax payers and the paying public.

Grayling wreaks havoc on the judicial system.

IDS wrecks the lives of countless disabled people and the working poor.

Gove makes such a mess of the Education Department that he is "promoted" to Chief Whip.

I read a description of these people in a forward to Nicholas Nickleby where he describes the people running "schools" as incapable pettifoggers and, reading that, in my mind I can only see Cameron, and his Bullingdon club mates and the lickspittles that enabled the present government.

Don't get me started on the situation in Carmarthenshire where cronyism is the only way to go and Buggin's turn gives any old fool the job of their dreams.

A POX ON ALL THEIR HOUSES!

Spam and Scams

Every day one hears of people having their computers or their phone hacked and money disappearing mysteriously.

Many people pay money for third party security for their computers and phones; but they neglect basic security themselves. They are running another operating system that is by default lying on its back waiting to be defiled, but it's OK because Symantec or somebody else is looking after them.

They are also quite happy to use those computers to do their banking and shopping; in fact to run their lives for them with all their utilities bills etc., getting them a discount for doing things online. The killer is that they are hooked in to social media 24/7 and when an email/message comes from their bank/service provider with a clickable link they are likely to just click and follow, they even have these banks/service providers as friends in Facebook or Twitter.

I do not  use online banking and do not fill in direct debit forms online either, because I think that the internet is fun and stupidly insecure, I am sceptical about any email/message from people that I don't know personally, and I know that Facebook/Twitter is as secure as a colander; they are not your friends, they view you as a data source and a revenue stream that they derive their incomes from.

My computers all run Linux because I feel that anything that is Open Source by default has huge numbers of people looking at the underlying code to make sure there are no serious security holes. I tend not to click on any link that comes in an email/message because that way madness lies.

Toodle ooh  for now, I'm off to make my foil helmet to save me from all those alphabet soup people that are supposed to be guaranteeing our safety!

Elmer Fudd

It has been a busy couple of weeks for shooting from the hip expert Elmer Fudd, he is fully in favour of his friend blighting the views from Carmarthenshire County Council's most famous house, the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne, and discounts the opinion, against the wind turbine, of the community council of which he was the chairman, until he suffered a vote of no confidence. This man who clings to his seat by just 5 votes doesn't seem to worry about the people of the  two most populous wards of his fiefdom. He should note that there was an overwhelming vote of no confidence by the people of his local communities in the form of a petition against the Mwche Turbine.

The Community Councillor that moved the motion of no confidence said it was purely because of his conduct as a community councillor, but I would argue that you cannot separate the actions of the individual from either of his elected positions. He sees that there is nothing wrong lobbying on behalf of his friend rather than represent the feelings of his electors. Perhaps he ought to consider his position and do the honourable thing?

Now I know that I am tilting at windmills looking for honour amongst the nest of vipers that is the ruling clique in Carmarthenshire County Council whose planning decisions are notoriously Quixotic , but these things have to be said.

A dishonourable end

With all the shenanigans going on in Carmarthenshire surely we must have reached a watershed. I am the only person here that thinks things can't get any blacker for the busted flush that is the ruling clique in the county.
In any rational world someone would have fallen on their sword but it seems that that might just be wishful thinking on my part.
Who signed off on the Garnant golf club deal?
Who backed the seemingly bottomless pit of Parc y Scarlets?
Who pushed the council into the backing of a bowling alley?
All of these things have cost this council millions of pounds, with no seeming return on any of it.
Is this any sort of probity?
Then there is the unlawful payments fiasco!
Now we have the WAO  Public Interest Reports which slam both officers and the Executive Board, come on guys its time to go!

Of course I have to thank caebrwyn @ http://carmarthenplanning.blogspot.co.uk cneifiwr @  http://cneifiwr-emlyn.blogspot.co.uk/ and MrsAngry @ http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/ for keeping an eye on all of the goings on with local government here and away.

New year joy in Blunderland

Here we are barely two weeks into the new year and already I am baffled. Now you might say that there is nothing new there but I am talking about the glory that is our local county council. If you wanted a picture of openness and accountability you might be better off looking towards North Korea or inside the NSA.

At the monthly meeting the council had a debate about something they weren't allowed to talk about and the main subject was not in the room, I mean really how can this be? The so-called executive board talked about it and the blogoshere is awash with speculation, but most of us are still in the dark about the unlawful payments fiasco!

We had legal opinion withheld and waffle offered in its place, pace Linda Double-Barrel and then there were mysterious breaks in transmission; really professional and well worth the gadzillions laid out for the webcast! Not that I would want it stopped now that we have it, rather that than the PR guff that gets posted out under the misnomer of Carmarthenshire News.

I was always under the impression that the county council was set up to look after the best interests of the people that pay council tax and not to pander to special cases and lame ducks. One might ask to what I allude? Perhaps a golf club or maybe a racecourse, then there might be a rugby club and a clutch of overpaid executives with alledgedly lucrative tax dodges; but there is no doubt that the people of Carmarthenshire are not getting what they deserve of their elected representatives who worry more about their allowances and perks than either the lowly underpaid workers in their employ or the benighted council tax payer.

Of course they don't have to answer to the electors of Carmarthenshire until they have wittered away the next three years twiddling their thumbs and looking the other way while Llanelli sinks under the spill off from a favoured housing development or the kids in the north-east of the county while away their lives just getting to and from a new school built on a flood plain.

Are you all shivering the way I am?? Euchhh!