BBC Fined

Yes the BBC has been fined over cheating in phone-in shows. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7497168.stm). It amounts to £400,000 - aFining lot of money - but what is the point.

Fining commercial broacasters is OK - the money comes from their profit but the BBC isn't supposed to make profits as its money comes from the Licence Payers. Now although I am not a licence payer, and I don't watch TV and nor do my family, I do think this action is basically unfair. What has happened is because of errors of people employed by the BBC yet they pay nothing and the penalty falls on the Licence payer who is no involved and did nothing wrong. How can that be fair?

It seems to me the companies creating the programmes ought to be fined if they have cheated and leave the BBC to pick up on the programmes if messed up, yet even that means something is paid by the innocence. So how about this as am idea.

Bonuses are paid to senior execs every year and come to rather more than the total fine so how about taking the money for the fine from the execs bonuses and relieve the pooor innocent licence payer? After all, the execs are paid quite high salaries anyway to run the BBC so if they mess up why shouldn't they carry the cost too - it is only like profits in other companies?

I bet they don't though and I bet they get bigger bonuses too. Watch out when thye are annouced.

Bread and Broken Resolutions

Well it has taken some time to come back and get postiung again. I really meant to get going but somehow.. Anyway...

A recent discovery that I need to lose a little weight has led me back to making bread. I always make soup for lunch with my wife - wholesome and low calorie but add a sandwich and the calories come along. Well I noticed Spelt Flour in my local Tesco which claimed it was the grain the Roman's used to make bread and gave a recipe for Roman Bread. Intrigued, I bought some to try.

Well Roman Bread Making is not quite like we do now in that the Spelt rises rather better so the job of making the dough is quite short. I popped two round sheets of the dough on a backing sheet, left them to rise and baked them. The result stuck a bit to the sheet but the stone ground wholemeal bread produced had wonderful flavour, not least as the sugar in repaced by honey in this bread. (They hadn't invented sugar in those days!). I found this bread, with a bowl of soup, made a great lunch and cut the calories too, A second attempt used round cake tins and greaseproof paper on the bottom and the bread came out fine.

Well after that, the bread maked from the garage got ressurected and I bought normal stone ground flour. A loaf takes nearly 3 hours to cook but only a few minutes to pop the ingredients in the machine and the smell as the loaf cooks is amazing. I am now converted to making bread which lasts us a couple of days. It is really worth having a go.

New Year Resolutions?

Right, it is now well after New Year and this is my first post. I did sort of promise myself to keep this up to date but over Christmas and New Year I seem to have forgotten. Anyway,  would not be bothering with the Resolutions as I never keep them and don't know if anyone manages past January anyway.

Well the most exciting thing that has happened in recent times was last week. I had a tiny bit of a pain in the throat on the Monday and by Tuesday I was not at all well. I staying in bed all week but by Saturday I was nearly OK and went out. Rather nasty though so I hope that doesn't happen again for a while.

We had two cats who were about 14 years old but the smaller one, Mika, was found to have  a large growth in his abdomen and he had to be 'put down' on Christmas Eve. We were all quite sad as you would expect but it set me and my wife wondering. If it had been one of us, there Health Service would have gone all out to fix it. There would have been tests, operation, drugs, you name it. In fact everything to keep the person alive. Yet if a person has very little time to live and medicine can't help, ought not we have the choice to be treated like our cat and helped out of this world?  We really do treat animals much better than ourselves  feel.

Well, Pickle, pictured above, is now having the time of his life as he gets more human company, the nice warm spots to sleep. I do wonder if life as a cat in a good home would be a better choice that being human - no work, no housework, lots of sleep and meals provided. What else could anyone want?