People Power

The sentencing council for England and Wales issues guidelines that are mandatory unless justice is not done by following them.    A recent guideline states that a pre-sentencing report will normally be considered necessary if, for example, the defendant is "from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community."   (Are white Christians such a minority?   Asking for a friend.)

This looks like two-tier justice to me, and to many other people.   To the extent that a duly elected representative of the people has asked the sentencing council to change its guidelines to eliminate this perception.   They have refused.     

I'm sure that if the council is moved to dismiss a request from an elected MP,  they are not going to pay any attention to me.   But if they did, I would ask them the following questions that Mr Anthony Wedgewood Benn (AKA Tony Benn) raised some time ago in the matter of the excercise of power:

1) What power do you have?
2) Where did you get it from?

3) On whose behalf do you exercise it?
4) To whom are you accountable?
5) How can we get rid of you?

Big Cruiser

It's easy to forget the size of the big cruise liners.   Those coming into Valletta are not the biggest in the world but they tower over the town.

Incidentally, the little motor boat in front of the liner in the second photo seems to be guiding the big ship out of the port.  It followed the line of wash quite precisely.

Bang!

The city of Valletta is named after the Grand Master John Parisot de Vallette, of the Order of St John. He played an important part in building the city, and is revered for, against all odds, seeing off an invasion by turkish forces, of which only about one third made it back home alive.   Would that our current leaders had a similarly robust approach to dealing with invaders.

A tradition is that a cannon was fired every midday as a time-keeping excercise for the town and surroundings.   The arrival of an important piece of news was also announced by firing a cannon.   Today, a cannon is fired every midday and at 4 PM, except Sundays, as a tourist attraction.

The officer primed two cannons and fired one, the second, I guess, acting as a backup.

Fat woman

The National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta is well worth a visit, even if you're not especially into the subject.   It appears that the Maltese have lived in interesting times, ever since the first humans set foot on the islands.   Populations have come and gone since ancient times, leaving behind only some of their artifacts, many with no obvious reason for their disappearance.

This fat woman is a little sculpture, maybe 15cm long, on display there.   The bench she is sleeping on appears to be sagging under her weight.   She is topless, and wearing a pleated skirt.   Since fabrics decay over time, little carvings such as this are the reason we have some idea of what the people might have worn.

Does she have some kind of neck scarf?   I didn't notice that before.

Valletta

We are just back from a short holiday in Malta.   Anita found us a nice hotel in the centre of Valletta, the capital city.   It was unusual to find myself on a warm foreign holiday where everyone speaks English (no need to mentally rehearse every conversation), they drive of the left and they take euros.   It was busy, even in this off-season.

The first day it rained continuously, so we went to visit the Grand Master's Palace, the seat of much political evolution in past centuries.   There's not much point in my trying to summarise its history here, but let me  tell you that the armoury is amazing.  I have visited Scottish castles and the Scots know a thing or two about armour and have some impressive displays, but I've seen nothing like this.

Incidentally it was in this building that I found two uses of English that are a bit out of the ordinary.  One of the displays had a notice that talked about the use of weaponry to "offend" the enemy.  I know we talk about offensive weapons but I've never seen the verb in that context.   They also spoke of mortar cannon being made by bronze founders.   They worked in a foundry of course, but again, a use of English I had not seen before.

Boiling frogs

I read that the UK government is thinking of creating an energy rating for houses.   This is to encourage people to take measures to reduce their energy consumption, "for the planet",  (and install heat pumps).   The french government has such a scheme that has been in place for a few years now.

Every house that is put up for sale in France must have an energy rating A (good) to G (bad).   If you have an electric heat pump, this results in a better energy rating than you would get otherwise, regardless of how well or badly your house is insulated.   (Unless the heat pump is reversible so it cools the house down in Summer, when it doesn't get you any credit.) 

More recent legislation means that if you are a landlord, it is now illegal for you to rent out a dwelling that has an energy rating of G.   And from early this year, if you are selling a house with an energy rating of E or worse, not only do you have to pay for the energy rating study itself, but you also have to pay for a deeper and more expensive study to determine what work would be needed to be done (and how much it would cost) to make the energy rating "acceptable".   This of course is used as a stick to beat the vendor down on price.

(For some reason the government doesn't care if you cook with electricity or not)

Of course heat pumps are a Very Good Thing, and people should be discouraged from using any other kind of heating.   So gas boilers, that used to have VAT at 5.5%, and then more recently 10%, and as of yesterday, 20%, are being made more expensive so that heat pumps are more financially attractive.   An item on the main news on Monday pointed out that despite their higher initial cost, heat pumps, with government subsidies, can offer a payback period of only 15 years, (this is at current electricity prices that aren't going to increase, are they?) so they are in fact a real bargain.

I'm sure that this is all about saving the planet, and nothing at all to do with the fact that individual households can be denied electricity at the click of a mouse.

Cars of course are big consumers of energy and the government in France has a bonus/malus system in place - a subsidy on the price of a small new car, and a tax on the price of a big one.  In its original form it was very successful and cost the government a fortune.  Yesterday the definition of the size of a big car was reduced so the most popular mid-sized car in France now costs more than €1,000 more new than it otherwise would.

Cars also have a rating on the level of pollution they create, a "crit'air" rating (1 good, 5 bad).   Cities such as Paris, Marseille, and others, with more to come, prohibit cars with a crit'air rating 4 or 5 from entering the city.

How's the water temperature these days?

Storm damage

We spent a few days in England recently, family visit, swapping of Christmas presents, etc.   We took the ferry over on Friday afternoon and the storm arrived the next day.  The ferries were cancelled over the weekend, but the one we booked back was the first one to run once the storm had passed, on the Monday night.   

There was no major damage to anything at home, but one of the Garria that had be trained up the wall of the grange had been flattened, as in horizontal, and another had become disengaged from the wall, and was leaning over the path.   I was surprised; fixings had been pulled from the wall, steel eyes that had been holding wire supports had been bent.   I'm using new fixings, chemical (resin) wall plugs and stronger steel eyes.

I had to hard prune the flattened one (the near one in the picture), in order to get it back against the wall, and so I had to do the same with the other two plants so it doesn't all look lop-sided.  Nearly finished.  Next job - shredding the removed wood.