Wednesday, February 23, 2011

We've Got Some Serious Mental Disconnect Going On Here

There's an MSN article about Greeks starting an I Won't Pay movement.
At dawn last Friday, about 100 bleary-eyed activists from a Communist Party-backed labor union covered ticket machines with plastic bags at Athens metro stations, preventing passengers from paying their fares, to protest public transport ticket price hikes.

Other activists have taped up ticket machines on buses and trams. And thousands of people simply don't bother validating their public transport tickets when they take the subway or the bus.

"The people have paid already through their taxes, so they should be able to travel for free," said Konstantinos Thimianos, 36, an activist standing at the metro picket line in central Syntagma Square.
This being MSNBC, you don't get any sense of scale. It could be a dozen protestors doing it or it could be a nationwide movement. Whatever the size of the thing, here's the mind-bending part.
(M)any see the "I Won't Pay" movement as something much simpler: the people's refusal to pay for the mistakes of a series of governments accused of squandering the nation's future through corruption and cronyism.
Umm, dude, Greece is a democracy. If the government has wrecked the place, the person to blame is always nearby.

You did this to us on purpose, didn't you?

Tuna without mayonnaise?!

When I picked Grilled Tuna Skewers with Yakitori style dip and Pea shoot salad - Page 35 as one of my recipes for this week I didn't quite realise just how expensive fresh tuna was - just shy of £10 for enough to make this dish.  I swithered in the supermarket but crossed my fingers as it was scanned through the till that this Giraffe would be worth it. 

Had an interesting conversation with boy whilst preparing it as when I explained what it was he assumed that if this was fresh tuna what comes in a can must be dried tuna - close but no cigar.  The dish itself was very straightforward to make however I saw straight away that there was going to be way too much yakitori.  I halved the quantities but could have easily quartered them as there was a lot wasted.



Instructions said to grill for 1 minute on each side, I should have followed this but thought they looked a bit underdone so gave them longer but in retrospect they would have been better pinker.  I served with the prescribed pea shoots, but also brown rice and stir fried veg and the skewers themselves sprinkled with sesame and black onion seeds.  Another one without a photo for guidance but I reckon mine looked pretty good.

Boy took one bite of the tuna and declared that I must make them again!  Me and Mr pretty much aggreed with him as it was indeed delicious and very filling with the brown rice and veggies.  Had never tried pea shoots before despite seeing them feature a lot on Masterchef.  A definate pea flavour to them but not many in a bag for £1.  Will definatly be keeping an eye out in the reduced section for any yellow stickied fresh tuna.  Girl suggested that if I was indeed ever making them again could she just have proper tuna, with some mayonnaise please.


Some Pointless Macro Photography

I was playing around with my Nikon D60 artillery piece this weekend and shot this photo. I liked it a lot, so I thought I'd share. I uploaded a nice version of it, so I think the photo is worth a click.

A Little on Wisconsin

Here are just a few tidbits of idle thought on the showdown in Wisconsin.
  • I saw this in a comment thread elsewhere and found it an excellent summary of the Unions' position: They're fighting over money that isn't there.

  • If you run away, as the Democrats have done, you leave the press to interview your opponents.

  • Unions exist to prevent oppression of the workers by their management. In this case, the management is the voters as represented by their elected officials. Calling us all oppressors probably isn't a good idea.

  • Seriously, they're doomed. Even if the governor caves, which seems unlikely, they're doomed. Where is the $3B going to come from? Even if they split it evenly between taxes and cuts, the Unions are going to get whacked. The game is over and they've lost, the only thing left to determine is the score.