Windrush rumbles on. Brexit Ireland Negotiations at a deadlock. Meetings and Frogs

Dandelions flowering a pristine gold 

The Windrush scandal continues to reverberate with the Prime Minister and colleagues issuing apologies.  Citizens perfectly entitled to be here are being subjected to life changing mis-treatment by an uncaring bureaucracy. Promises have been made to rectify the situation, but the issues are likely to linger.

Attitudes to illegal immigrants came to the fore as a major  public concern and were picked up by politicians on both sides of the house. This allowed the deliberate and very public establishment of a hostile environment on illegal immigration.

The bureaucracy has now built up its own momentum in absorbing the attitudes turned public policy. The burden of proof now lies with the individual. Woe betide the person who accidentally falls into a machinery whose aim is to aggressively combat immigration numbers. Landlords, employers and other government departments have been co-opted under the pain of punishment to make their judgments on whether to provide or refuse their services. As usual, the victims are often those who cannot fight back, or afford to pay for some of the impossible hoops that they are made to jump through.

Brexit has really been in the background, despite the fact that several weeks of negotiations have been going on. The talks on the future of the border between Northern Ireland and Eire appear to have gone nowwhere. The EU still insists that there should be no hard border - to meet the concerns of the Irish and retain the benefits of the Good Friday agreement. The UK has suggested having a unique "customs partnership", something already rejected previously by the EU 27. The EU has asked for new proposals.

President Trump appears to be making significant progress in getting North Korea to make positive moods on the subject of nuclear disarmament, prior to the planned meeting between the two leaders at as an yet unspecified date.

I finally completed the Bulletin and sent it off to the printer yesterday, adding to the three other books also now off our hands, making life easier. We therefore set off in the evening relatively unburdened to help with this months CETC event on business models. What might have seemed a dry subject was quite lively as we had talks on social enterprises, investment and growth strategies and one company sharing it's experiences with it's model based on the internet of thinks and data analysis.

Had an interesting project at the Norris Museum today, creating some possible window displays to attract passers by. Lets wait and see if they meet with the director's approval.

Could not see any frogspawn in the pond anymore, though it could have sunk down. However, I was surprised to see two frog's heads peeking out of the water rather than the one I expected. So far, not much is happening with the frogs eggs in the garage, they still appear to be at the blastula stage, where the cells reproduce but overall the clump retains the same volume, though it becomes hollow as development continues. The water temperature seems to stay in the range 15 to 20 degC and there is a population of phototropic brown algae in the water shown as a brown cloud at the side facing the windows.