The Irony of Runnymede

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Spiked have been running an excellent series of articles and held a fantastic talk in the run up to the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. The video of the talk is well worth your time to watch, and I’d say they’ve probably done a better job of celebrating the anniversary than the Magna Carta 800th group who have all sorts of sponsorship but who even at this late hour are still saying:

“An official ceremony to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta will take place on Runnymede Meadows on 15 June 2015. Surrey County Council and the National Trust are the main organisers for this event. Further details will be provided on this page once they are confirmed.”

Details to be confirmed

Details to be confirmed

But that’s hardly their fault, after all they’ve not had much warnign about it have they. Fortunately the National Trust have a few more details. I hope to go along to this great celebration of democracy and freedom where the ticketed events for VIP’s lasts for 4 hours (9 to 1) and the free events open to all lasts just 2.5 hours (2 to 4:30). There was a free ticketed event down there today, which many locals apparently only found out about when they got turned away from walking their dogs in their local park, it was however reportedly “shit”.

No matter preparations for the great day tomorrow are well underway, with the Magna Carta memorial and surrounding grounds fenced off

Keeping out the commoners

Keeping out the commoners

and a police presence already on site at the memorial

Equality under the law

Equality under the law

Though I must say the two officers pictured were most pleasant, and after I nearly fell down the steps we had a rather pleasant chat about the aptness of if I’d split blood on the site (the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed from time to time and all that) and quite how all of the preparations for the event sat with the usual perception of the Magna Carta. What with Clauses 41 and 42 promising the right of safe and free passage.

There wasn’t much sign of that right in the road blocks being set up ahead of tomorrows “festivities”

Right of free passage?

Right of free passage?

Last time I saw road blocks like that was outside the houses of Parliament normally a few cones and a bit of tape does the job. I am of course sure that all this theatre is backed up by more in depth security given that it seems likely we’ll have some terribly important people in a clearing on a wooded hill side – not the sort of location traditionally chosen by unpopular rulers to make appearances. It does though I fear show how far we’ve come from the ideals that Magna Carta is held to embody, freedom from the injustices of the state, equality before the law, the right of free passage and the like that the celebrations are being restricted to representatives of the state and select and carefully vetted “representatives” of the populace, held behind high fences, closed roads and policed with the power of arbitrary detention.

I guess they don’t want any modern day chartists getting any ideas and thinking that the Magna Carta might actually stand for something and have relevance to the abuses of power by our elected state just as much as it did to the absues of power of a feudal king.

Still I’ll go along tomorrow just to say I was there and to enjoy the circus, and on the bright side people seem interested and some may stop and thing and if police guarding the event can see how badly it sits with the ideals it’s meant to be celebrating then maybe other people will as well.

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Experiments in baccy

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A while back LegIron posted an update on his Tobacco experiments and I promised I’d share what I’d been up to with my experiments. So now with all of last years leaves all packed and mellowing and the new crop in I thought it a good time for that update. Before I go any further I must point out that I don’t smoke so I’m dependent on friends for feedback as to how well it smokes and so far that feedback is good. I’m mainly growing baccy because I can and because people think you can’t (it’ll also be a valuable skill come the collapse of society or the zombie apocalypse whichever happens first). That the powers that be seem to be thinking about banning tobacco growing is just one more reason to learn how to grow and cure it.

Being the lazy sort I prefer to buy seedlings rather than starting from seed just because it’s easier and allows me to experiment with a larger number of varieties. This year I’m trying out the seedlings from http://www.uktobaccoplants.co.uk/ who have been great to deal with and sent good healthy plants. I’m still working on the best place/way to grow them in my garden but as I’m growing several varieties this year I hope to be able to experiment with cigar making.
Golden Virginia
This year I’m trying growing fewer plants but giving them more space, as ever slugs and snails are a real problem but mulch should help.

So enough of this years plans on to the interesting bits, drying and curing. I’ve tried a few methods for drying and curing based on reading various other people’s experiments and from notes from tobacco seed and plant sellers. Not sure if I’ve the best method yet but this is how I did the sample I sent LegIron and worked better and with less effort than methods I’ve used on previous years.

Continue reading →

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UK politics in 60 seconds

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To me the one defining feature of this general election campaign has been how little there is to choose between any of the parties, the main parties are the most obvious example of this but even the more “radical” fringe parties exhibit a surprising level of agreement with the main parties just below the surface. Sure they have maybe one or two “big” ideas that make them stand apart from the rest but outside of those key policy areas the differences quickly become remarkably hard to spot. Other people have already down a thoroughly good job at looking at this narrowing of the realm of political discourse – so I won’t go over that ground again. None of the parties as far as I’ve been able to tell have a clear set of beliefs or ideology that would give us any hint as to how they’ll behave in the event of unexpected circumstances. No all we have are endless lists going into the minutiae of what they’ll fund or cut, who they like or dislike and what they’re 6 favourite records are. There little to no underlying philosophy to any of these lists to tie it all together into a coherent system and then the politicians wonder why we find them out of touch and don’t trust them. I can understand that there might be some pragmatic agreement between many of the parties on many issues as they’ve all got the same set of cards to deal with so they’ve got a constrained choice, but there’s little to no imaginative thinking and no vision of the direction they want to take the country in. It’s like being asked to pick a government based on what colour of paper clip we should be using and if we should be paying for them on 30 days or 3 week terms.

I don’t blame the politicians entirely, after all they respond to what they perceive that we want so if we shout down every radical or even slightly inventive idea then we get left with a collection of identikit manifesto’s differing in little more than the colour of pen they were written in.

However fear not I’ve finally found the perfect video to summarize the entire general election campaign and the manifesto’s of all the “significant” parties. I think in just 60 seconds this makes quite clear what choices we’re being presented with and I do include the Greens, SNP and UKIP in this I’m afraid.

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