juicy

It’s not often I come down on the side of corporations, especially when food is involved (except for that rogue McDonalds post a couple weeks back, of course), but I’m with the drinks manufacturers on this one.

Apparently food campaigners have slammed “juice drinks” for their low percentage of actual juice, usually only 5 to 10%, and say that it means that parents are paying over the odds proportionally (as opposed to buying pure juice). A representative for one of the drinks companies replied: “None of these drinks are pure. It is fairly obvious that if you had a pure blackcurrant drink, for example, it would be intensely sweet and not at all what children want.”

Well, exactly. And I don’t see food campaigners complaining about the exorbitant cost of bottled water - christ, you can get it for free out of your taps. Adding a little flavouring to it seems not any worse and while most “juice drinks” do contain a lot of sugar, they also don’t contain caffeine, so it’s hardly the end of the world.

Have people forgotten about cordial in this country already? When I arrived, it was all people gave their kids and the only difference is that they added the water themselves. I’m afraid you must pay extra for the convenience of having it already mixed up.

test a pet

Poor old Boudicca has been quite poorly lately - a nasty abcess that needed (expensive) surgery and an unwillingness to eat which required constant hand and force-feeding.

No suprise she’s not in the mood for the BBC’s Test Your Pet project. Have to wait until she’s a bit more interested in food. Somehow I doubt the cat will score a single point in the intelligence stakes.

how enlightened

“A US General has been discharged over alleged abuse of prisoners by US troops in jails she ran.”

The station spoke to one of the six soldiers charged, Sergeant Chip Frederick - a reservist whose full-time job is as a prison officer in the US state of Virginia.
Sgt Frederick said he and his fellow reservists had never been told how to deal with prisoners, or what lines should not be crossed.

“We had no training whatsoever,” he said. 

(My emphasis) Goodness. What exactly does this say about prisons in the US?

downriver saturday

Took me a while to upload the photos, but I’ve posted a few from River Day II. We took a bike ride downriver on Sunday and had lunch at the Pike and Eel before continuing on to Baits Bite Lock and then coming back the way we came.

The photo I didn’t get was when one of the pushy ponies on Stourbridge Common decided to have a rub up against one of the bikes we’d leant against a fence. When it fell over, he proceeded to stamp all over it, trashing the basket and brakes (easily fixed, but still). It was the same one as is standing in the middle of the path, the scamp.

Sadly, I was more concerned with rescuing the bike than taking photos. Must learn not to value possessions above photo ops.

go jackie

Jackie Chan becomes UN ambassador. Excellent. I should go on record here as saying I absolutely love Jackie Chan. He really is one of my very favourite actors ever. I like the cartoon series, too!

no doom or gloom

In honour of the fine weather, a couple of nice stories selected from the BBC for a change:

Looks like the Great Bustard is coming back to England, but it would have been nice if they’d not mentioned how it was hunted to extinction due to it’s “delicious and succulent meat”.

Animal testing is down, which is fantastic news. I don’t expect it to stop completely, but I’m glad to see alternatives being used. Not keen on the use of genetically modifed animals of course, as the complexity of genetics means messing with them could make the results even more skewed than they already are. A mouse is not a human and its systems work quite dramatically differently.

And a bus shelter in Wales gets a secret makeover. How sweet is that? Odd choice of wording in the article though. How do you “carpet a floor with shelves”?

And finally, the latest Millionaire’s Quiz. I would have won ?32,000 had I played, but managed to get 13 out of 15 correct. Bloody Welsh. ;-)

messing about near the river

What a lovely, lovely day it was today. One of the nice things about the weather, such as it is, is that you really appreciate the nice days. Nice, long Saturday with lots accomplished. I managed to re-organise a lot of the outbuilding before we went out to Scotsdales for pond adhesive and cobbles. Seemed sensible to have lunch out there so we stopped off in Granchester and ate at the Green Man. Seems the food is always better outside of the city and it was lovely, indeed.



In fact, it was so pretty I’ve made a special Granchester album.

Page 1 of 4 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »