Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Category: Personal

Subsidies in action

From blogoir I discovered this cool site trying to throw light on EU farm & agricultural subsidies.

For instance in the UK the average direct aid per farm worker is €9,236 and each hectare of farm land gets €210. Huge companies also have their snout in the trough e.g.  Tate & Lyle Europe receives an annual subsidy of over £120 million! Tate & Lyle is a company with annual turnover of over £3 billion and profits of £300m

I also see from the cabinet office that Tate & Lyle took Sir Brian Bender & his wife to Wimbledon too – must be to sample their sugar on the strawberries.

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School work

Whilst in one of my attics, trying to sort out why the shower drain isn’t working.

I came across the ironing board that I made at school when I was 13 or 14. Since it was combined woodwork/metalwork  I had to make the bracket as well!  Interestingly my mum used it until she died, giving it well over 30 years of use!

Here’s the bracket that I so struggled with nearly 50 years ago :-

In those days we also had to make things like ashtrays and matchbox holders:-


alas, no longer polished to perfection 🙂

The Pièce de résistance however was the bookcase I made. Still in use to this day in my bedroom.

An other memory of metalwork was in our final school leavers exam, we had to make a toilet roll holder. 

I was total clueless so the invigilator helped me and in fact just about made it! – Result a distinction in metalwork and a life lesson in always asking for help and getting other folks to do what you are not good at 🙂

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