So, farewell then...

Brian Haw has died. He set up his tent in Parliament Square ten years ago to protest at Britain's treatment of Iraq and his camp became a focal point for wider protest at the invasion and, more generally, at the erosion of civil liberties in this country. His occupation of Parliament Square survived quite a few legal challenges, though eventually Mayor Boris managed to get him off the grass, so he camped on the pavement instead.

His form of protest rather polarised opinion, and many thought that the peace camp outside Parliament was just an eyesore created by noisy nutters with not enough to do. His supporters point to the fact that his presence in that place meant that the protest stayed alive and in the media far longer than any one march or petition could have done.

I admired his persistence, and take some comfort from the fact that despite enormous effort by The Powers That Be, the justice system in this country allowed him to stay there and continue his protest. Illness, not the law, brought it to an end. My sympathy goes to his family and friends.

Pensive over pensions

While understanding the feelings of public sector workers over the proposed worsening of their pension entitlements, my sympathy is somewhat limited. I'm more than content to pay tax that goes towards employing people to provide services that benefit society, and I'd certainly argue that they should be decently paid for what is often undervalued work. I also accept the argument that taxpayers should fund pensions for public sector workers. In the private sector, employee pensions are funded out of profit, and employers provide them to attract and retain good staff. If we as a country want to attract and retain good people for public services, which don't make a profit as such but benefit society generally, then we'll have to put up the money. But it's far less clear to me why my taxes should pay for pension schemes that are generally accepted to be far better than a private sector worker on similar pay could expect.

I exclude from this the armed services and the emergency services; the hazardous and unsocial nature of their work amply deserves special treatment. But I do often think many in the public sector have no real idea what it's like in the private sector. Virtually nobody in the private sector has a defined benefit pension any more; it's all defined contribution. In other words, no promises what you'll get, you take the risk of how the investments go. And for self-employed people like me, my entire pension contribution is literally cash out of my own pocket. I saw figures from PwC that said that the average private sector worker would have to put nearly a third of their salary away to get a pension of the same level as an equivalent public sector worker with the same years of service.

The public sector also has the advantage that their pension scheme is underwritten by the state, and the management charges are tiny when spread across the number of participants. I bear all the charges on my modest plans. And I don't get paid holidays nor do I get paid to be off sick, nor do I get any kind of pay-off if I lose a contract. That's all part of the territory of being self-employed, of course, and I knew all that before going for it. But I pay tax and NI at the same rate as everyone else, and I look at my pension statements and the news that much of the public sector is threatening to strike over the pensions that even after reduction will be far more generous (partly at my expense) than I can manage for myself, and you'll excuse me if I don't come on the march...

Our daily bread

The BBC news website has an interesting story marking the 50th anniversary of the 'Chorleywood' breadmaking process. By all means read the full text, but here are some of the salient points:

Soft, springy, white bread - that did not go stale quickly - was what the public wanted. The research bakers at Chorleywood discovered that by adding hard fats, extra yeast and a number of chemicals and then mixing at high speed you got a dough that was ready to bake in a fraction of the time it normally took. It allowed bread to be made easily and economically with low protein British wheat.

But with industrial bakers quickly adopting the process, rather than helping small bakeries, the research at Chorleywood helped put thousands of them out of business.

Evidently 80% of British bread is now made this way. The process requires some ingredients that traditional bakers didn't use: enzymes and oxidants are added.

I think most of us know that the only use for this kind of bread is the bacon butty, in which the bread is only a kind of edible tray and brown sauce dispenser. I use the word 'edible' in a strict sense.

For well over a year, my talented Mrs QO has produced real bread - the sort that's labelled 'artisan' these days. Here are the last two loaves:

Most of her bread is sourdough. This is old-style baking at its best, and involves leaving organic flour mixed with a little water around the place until it's colonised by naturally occurring wild yeasts. These little guys get some of their lactobacillus friends round to party and before long you're getting carbon dioxide and lactic acid into the mix. Add more flour to keep the party going and you're off.

Now I shall have to leave Mrs QO to outline the fine detail of the production process from there, but the end result is a loaf with texture and flavour that is simply startling if all you've ever had is Chorleywood. (I hazard a guess that if you live in Chorleywood you're missing texture and flavour in all sorts of things, but that's by the by.) And because of the slightly acidic nature of the bread it lasts very well indeed. And it's cheap. It means having to do some work at home, of course.

I wouldn't be the first to draw parallels between the kind of bread we like to eat and the kind of lives we lead. I'm sure you can fill that in for yourselves. One last comment from the BBC story:

Almost a third of the bread bought in Britain - 680,000 tonnes a year - is thrown away.

A third is thrown away? Well, I guess that's a start.

In the north country

One of the reasons I've been absent from the blog of late is that I've taken on another voluntary role in helping to manage a local nature reserve. You'd think this is mostly a case of being out there doing physical stuff like planting trees, cutting back scrub and so on - and there is a good deal of that to do - but there's a surprising amount of background work to do as well in organising and publicising fund-raising events, staying in touch with the council and the Wildlife Trust, liaising with other organisations using the site for events, communicating with the wider community at meetings and through newsletters... it all adds up. But it's very satisfying and gives a genuine sense of belonging to the neighbourhood.

Dearie me, that was almost emetically worthy, wasn't it? Let me be honest and admit that the main reason I've been absent from the blog of late is sheer laziness.

All that said, it was great to spend the weekend in the far north, a part of the country Mrs QO and I have loved as long as we've been together, which is quite some time now. Many parts of Nottinghamshire are beautiful, many parts are peaceful and unspoiled, but we don't have any landscape like the Cumbrian fells.

















Photographs never do justice to the high northern skies, nor can they capture the tumbling music of the curlews crying overhead as I took this shot.

I love my home county, and my roots are here. But from time to time it's good to go to those less tamed places.

















What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Voting dust settles

I was very pleased that in the Rushcliffe Borough Council elections, the voters in my ward returned our two Green Party candidates. The People's Verdant Republic of Lady Bay is the only Green ward in the Borough - one very visible sign of what a delightfully individual place it is. The rest of the Borough is predominantly Conservative, of course, though I think it fair to say that Rushcliffe Borough Council (RBC) has never come across as so offensively 'Foaming Nutter Tory' as the Big County Council Brother across the way at County Hall. RBC has quietly got on with being a very well run local council with very little in the way of scandal or fuss over inefficiency. Not much to laugh at all, really.

Turning to the AV vote. Well, the blogosphere was fairly heated over this one, but the country has decisively rejected the offered change. I voted 'No' in the end, despite wavering until the day itself. In the end I came down to the position that change is needed, but this single option wasn't the right change. As David Pannick QC pointed out in The Times on the day of the referendum, a better approach would be to do as Australia did. First, have a referendum on whether we want change at all. If the electorate says 'yes, we do', then have a further referendum on a range of options. Constitutional reform is a serious business, and not one to be entered into via a bodged political compromise. Many of the LibDem supporters of AV were pushing it not because it was the solution they really wanted, but because it would have been a demonstration that they could get something out of the coalition. That's perfectly understandable, but just because something might have been politically advantageous for the LibDem party doesn't mean it's a good thing to do for the country in the long term.

I don't at all go along with the view that no electoral reform will now be possible for a generation. I think there's actually quite an appetite for it, but the electorate is more sophisticated than the political circus at Westminster seems to believe, and will be looking for a properly presented set of proposals - not a back of the envelope quick fix.

Great British Engineering

Whether or not you're a royalist, an ardent republican or a 'couldn't give a toss'-ist, surely you'd have to admit there were some good things about yesterday's marital malarkey.

There's something deeply appealing about a huge crowd of people just having fun, for example, even if part of your brain is a bit appalled that that's their definition of fun. The service itself was beautiful, I thought; lovely music and nice to see trees lining the nave. And I must admit I do get a kick from the precision and pomp with which the military can do their stuff on such ceremonial occasions.

But let's not lose sight of the real triumph of the day - British engineering. Three examples in particular left me breathless and emotional. I think the images will speak for themselves.

Alternatively...

OK, so I said 'sod politics' in the last post, but the forthcoming referendum for AV has been making me think. A painful and unusual sensation.

Nearly a year ago I was able to share with you a startling vision of how the prospect of electoral change formed part of the birth of the Conservative/LibDem coalition. Having moved on, the LibDems are getting the chance of a popular vote for electoral reform, one of their main demands before forming the coalition. They're getting the chance of a fairly minor reform, and one which Nick Clegg is reported to have described as a 'miserable little compromise. A bit like the coalition, yes. But a stepping-stone towards a more profound reform, they hope.

I haven't yet decided which way to vote. On the one hand, I believe that if someone's proposing any significant constitutional reform, it's down to them to make the case, and the default position if you're undecided, or find the case unconvincing, is that you vote that things should stay as they are. And I find the pro-AV case unconvincing. On the other hand, I believe that our current system is unfit for purpose, and perhaps any change is preferable to leaving things as they are, even if we have no clear idea of the consequences of the change.

The real trouble to my mind is that however we elect our politicians, the kind of people who are politicians, and the political system itself, aren't what we need. The main parties are so closely aligned along the middle ground that there isn't a great deal of clear water between them anymore. If you're old enough you can remember a youngish Maggie Thatcher facing off an elderly Michael Foot, with people like Norman Tebbitt and Arthur Scargill chipping in from the sidelines. Plenty of clear water there. Nowadays they're all Euro-Pols, from the same three or four bloody schools and the same two universities... professional politicians from their teens, doing it for a living rather than from conviction. They don't seem to argue about what they'd do so much as how quickly they'd do it. And in any case, it's increasingly clear to me that the politicians make very few decisions, and set very little policy. That stuff's all a bit confusing, so they leave it to the policy advisers in the Ministries. These advisers are of course not elected, and can do their planning of policy without having to worry about popular approval. For example, when Ken Clarke talks about prison versus community punishment, you can bet half a dollar that most of it has come via a nice lady called Julie Taylor, who is Director of Offender Management, Strategy Directorate, Ministry of Justice. I will apologise if wrong but as far as I can find out, she hasn't risen to her current extremely well paid level by being a lawyer, or a prison governor, or a probation worker. Apparently she's a former hospital administrator. I'm sure she's a very able woman. But I'm sure you'll take my point: who is actually in charge? How fitted to the task are they? And on whose authority do they act?

A plague on all their houses, then, say I. (Bet they're worried now, eh?)

The last word on the forthcoming referendum goes to one of my neighbours, overheard outside the pub earlier on:

"Tell you what I'm going to do... I'm going to put a tick in the box marked 'yes', then write underneath 'but alternatively, no'. That's an alternative vote, innit?"