Finally January went out with a whimper and February roared in, quite literally. After coming back from a camping session in Cornwall I stood helplessly in the kitchen watching 50 mph gusts of wind tear my greenhouse to shreds. It also tore down some of the trellis and many of the plants. Sadly the greenhouse is only fit for the skip and the trellis will go the same way, strangely enough the neighbours trees which have blighted me for so long are still standing. (I am sure some readers will chuckle at this)
The bad news on the economy front rumbles along and unions are planning strikes and demonstrations in protest. Even the students have got in on the act bemoaning the end of the EMA. EMA? I did not know it existed; it stands for educational maintenance allowance and is paid to 6th formers who stay on in school. For gods sake we have been paying kids to go to school. I have no idea how this sorry state of affairs happened or even when but it has and now the new coalition government want to stop it.
At long last it seems as though the Government is standing up to the European Courts. Britain has been told it has to give prisoners the right to vote. Now I may have misunderstood here but if you are in prison it is generally because you neglected your moral duty or just walked over some one else rights. The Bigwigs in Europe seem to think that just because you don’t care about any one else rights you should still be entitled to your own and so you should have the vote.
This seems to me like asking Turkeys if Christmas should be abolished. Anyway our own government has a rebellion on its hands as many backbenchers have said no to the idea even if it is enforced upon us. This could mean us even pulling out of the European human rights act if the courts of Europe reject the UK’s own elected Government in what is essentially an internal affair.
I have never been a fan of the European human rights act and to replace it with something that incorporates human responsibilities seems a lot fairer.
It is not too long before spring arrives and the clocks go forward again. I am sure my old friends the collared doves are hanging around somewhere just waiting to reclaim their old nest in my neighbour’s tree. The mercury is no longer falling and even the snowdrops are poking their heads through the frozen soil. It will seem strange not having a greenhouse this year and I will have to decide what if anything I am going to attempt to grow in the space the greenhouse used to occupy.
As the seasons change another birthday approaches and it seems to have come around even quicker than the last one which was faster than the one before. I am sure that even if Einstein’s theory of relativity was written about the speed of light it was inspired by birthdays as they come around faster each year relative to your age. When you are six years old your seventh birthday seems a long way off, when you are in your fifties it only seems like weeks since your last one and that to me is the theory of relativity.