You are HSBC.

Ironically this corporate BS from HSBC (stuffed with idiotic clichés from the dark days of the City of Culture) is no more than seventy yards from the branch it closed down just a couple of years ago; and it is  not even in Hull ... and it's oh so tasteful; diving off the Humber Bridge has become a way out of Hull for a few desperate folks lately.

Similar diversions from the criminal nature of HSBC are being pasted all over the country with equally emetic, gobshite being proclaimed. They are said to be too big to fail and might be too big to jail but do we really have to put up with this patronising garbage? Can we not have a little truth? Maybe something like ...

More than just the local bank ... you are the rancid stench something far, far bigger. You are the go-to guys for the drug cartels, terrorists, murderers and embezzlers. You're not an island, you conspire globally in Ponzis, rigging markets, tax evasion, fraud, foreign exchange manipulation ...you "violated every goddamn law in the book". You are HSBC.

(The "violated every goddamn law ..." quote is from Jack Blum, attorney and former Senate investigator.)

Democracy in action

Voting yesterday for two local county councillors and two parish councillors. We get to do this every three or four years I'm not sure which. It really makes very little difference which monkey sits on the Council; I think the old Athenian sortition or selection by lot would do as well but in these enlightened times we must have universal suffrage so voting it is ... The result? Well, for the very few that care, the Tories won  (they always do) but Labour were wiped out completely for the first time ever (serves them right). 

In three weeks time we go at it again, this time for the European Parliament. You'll recall the result of the referendum on this tedious EU issue so the prospect voting for something the majority do not want to even be in has brought out the "Brexit Party" once again to "put the fear of God" into the mired political status quo. (I shall vote for them, there is no logical reason not to). Let the good times roll ... sorry, I meant to say let the people decide ...

Burnt 'umber

"This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
                                      Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Now here's an odd thing to do with memory and and all that jazz. I clearly remember coming home from school at lunchtime and listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide on the radio at home with my mother. But as it was first aired in 1978 and I was 21 and living in the Big Smoke by then this could not possibly have happened... I much prefer the memory to the fact ...

Honesty

Lunaria annua

Being the sort of gardener that likes to let things sort themselves out, (no point in fooling with Nature because, as someone once said, Nature cannot be fooled) I find a lot of these nice purple flowers cropping up in all sorts of places at this time of year. The well tempered cultivator might well call them weeds but I call them welcome additions to my small patch of land. You might not recognise the flowers but I'm pretty sure you'll have seen the transparent seed heads in floral displays. There's also a white variety and even a pinkish one but today, being the first of the month, is all about purple.

Honesty is the English name for this plant but other cultures have a more mercenary name, money plant, silver dollars, Judas coins and (my  favourite) La monnaie du pape being just a few choice alternatives. Botanists call it Lunaria annua despite it being a biennial ... whatever its name if you just leave it alone it'll settle in nicely, my kind of plant.

And honesty being best policy means that I must own that Margot Juby took these pictures.