Mark Thomas: It's the Stupid Economy

I've been listening to the Mark Thomas podcasts for the last few months, which discuss the state of the economy, the inequality of taxation (i.e. the rich pay accountants to get out of it, and us mugs at the bottom pay for it - or they just move to Switzerland and only come to the UK to test a fast car and winge), and how in his words the UK is "up a Creek called Shit". The podcasts feature interviews with a range of people who actually know what they are talking about, and are worth listening to. All kinds of interesting snippets come up, such as the fact that the Inland Revenue rent their building from a company registered offshore, who therefore do not pay the IR any tax. Only this government could manage that.

We went to see his show at The Stables last week, and it was a thoroughly entertaining evening. The general premise of the show revolves around him creating a People's Manifesto: each audience comes up with a policy, and he tries to push it through (within limits: the fluorescent additive in dog food to make glow in the dark dog crap, to help avoid nasty nocturnal night-soiling of your shoes, did not make it in).

Milton Keynes opted for:

To replace organ donor cards with an opt out scheme. It will automatically be assumed that people consent to donating their organs on death and those who do not wish to do so should carry a card or sign a register to indicate their wishes.

Much as I like this, I prefer Huddersfield's:

Margaret Thatcher should pay for her own funeral.

...although that does spoil my wish to see her to be shot out of a cannon into the Thames...

The shows look like they will be a run up to a Radio 4 programme, so I look forward to hearing the full range of often weird and sometimes wonderful suggestions. We met Mark after the show for a book signing and were pleasantly surprised that he's actually a nice bloke, very chatty, and happy to rant with the wife about banks. It's also nice to find someone who is passionate about correcting injustice. His website is worth a look through, and if you get the chance to (and have something to say about the current state of affairs), go to the show.

Spicy Goat

We finally got hold of some goat, from the garden centre of all places (which apparently is branching out into sourcing a lot of local produce). It is apparently a very healthy cut of meat, though that wasn't especially clear from the cuts we got. Still, if the meat proves popular, they may get a better choice of cuts in. The meat tends to come from Woburn, and they always have a nice range of gamey produce, and the cheaper cuts make a really nice stew. With the goat though, I figured I'd do a curry. The recipe I used was pinched from the Cumbrian Goat Experience; I halved it, adapted it slightly to what was in the fridge, and did it in the slow cooker (8 hours on high) rather than the oven.

Ingredients:
2 Chops of Stewing Goat (bones removed, and roughly diced)
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground cumin
0.5 tbsp ground cardamom
0.5 tsp ground ginger
0.5 tsp hot paprika
1" cinnamon stick
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 sliced carrot
1 diced onion
1 sliced leek
100ml white wine
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Water
Salt and pepper Vegetable oil.

Guidelines:

1) Coat the goat meat with the spices. Turn the slow cooker on high.
2) Fry the garlic, onions, carrots and leek for a few minutes until softened.
3) Add any left over spices and fry for a couple more minutes.
4) Transfer to your slow cooker.
5) Brown the goat meat quickly in it, in small batches and add to the vegetables.
6) Pour the wine into the frying pan to de-glaze, then add it to the meat
7) Add the chopped tomatoes and some water.
8) Cook for around 8 hours on high.

The recipe worked well, and tasted fantastic. In future I would use half the cardamom, and add a teaspoon of turmeric. I'd also not add any water, and thicken with tomato purée about an hour before serving. Eight hours is easily sufficient to make the goat meat very tender, and It just fell apart. I served it with cous cous, and it is something I will definitely try again.

DIY Polariser

I've been getting bored with some of the macro shots I've been taking recently. After I built the ringlight I was able to get some really cool close ups with some interesting lighting patterns. With this in mind I put together a really simple cross polariser. The result of my first set of shots with this setup is below - a photo of a CD tray.



The making of this photo is incredibly simple, and all you need is two polarising filters. One is on the camera, and relatively speaking this is the cheap one. The other goes behind the object you are photographing, with a fairly bright light source behind that. So, the polariser between the light source and the object needs to be bigger. Polarising film is not too cheap, but luckily I was given an old broken laptop a while back.

An LCD screen uses polarised light in order to work, and therefore has a polarising film built in. I stripped away the casing and was left with a bare screen made up of several bits of plastic (LCD screen, a few clear magnifiers etc, a clear piece of nice solid acrylic); unfortunately the polariser was stuck to the LCD screen, and as shown in the photo below needed to be pulled away...



After removing the polarising film, I did spend a while trying to remove the sticky residue and flatten it out, before realising it would be much simpler to stick it down to the nice and rigid piece of acrylic which also came out of the screen.



After that, it was just a quick job to set up a bright light below the polariser, and take a few photos of various bits of plastic.