Month: October 2013

I told you so, part 94.

I told you the Post Office was being given to the rich for far less money than it was actually worth, but disguised Tory incompetent, St Vincent Cable went ahead anyway.

One of the world’s largest investment banks told ministers ahead of the Royal Mail flotation that they could sell the postal business for £10bn, around two and a half times more than the government finally received for it.

The Guardian says J P Morgan told the government they could get £10 billion for it, and other banks said £7 billion, which is still twice what they flogged it off for.


Presumably, the thinking from Cable and the other Tories was that as well as the huge corporations helping themselves to what used to belong to all of us, enough small investors would manage the minimum purchase, get the profit a couple of days later, and then vote Tory out of gratitude. And their shares? The big corporations will have taken those as well.

A new experiment!

The Wrath of Grapes

I picked all our grapes a few days ago, all eight pounds of them.






























They were, as you can see, not really ripe. With it being October, they seemed unlikely to ripen further, and various beasties were beginning to attack them. It seemed merely a matter of time before the local blackbirds had a go. 
I didn’t wash them. I didn’t want to remove any wild yeast that might be there, waiting to help me make wine. I removed one small snail, four ladybirds, two earwigs, and numerous spiders. More spiders left of their own accord when I started squishing the grapes to get the juice.

I didn’t do the time honoured thing of treading the grapes with my feet, partly because the container wasn’t big and strong enough, but also to prevent any possibility of the wine, if any resulted, giving drinkers a nasty case of Athlete’s Mouth.




























Here they are, squished up. I left all the bits in for a couple of days, so the juice could take some of the colour of the ones that ripened. When I removed as much solid matter as I could, I ended up with this…















As you can see, it looks as if it has decided to ferment. I wish I hadn’t disposed of all the demi-johns I used to use for home brewing.

More follows, maybe…