Water and Ice
We're making slow progress with the pond, but the weather's not always been helpful, so other garden tasks have also been done. At this time of year that means quite a bit of leaf-sweeping and a little trimming and pruning where necessary. Last night the temperature went below freezing around midnight and stayed below until about 9 this morning. The pond still had a few millimetres of ice on it at sunset this evening.
Last Monday's GB2CW Morse practice broadcast was slightly less inaudible than the previous week's, but not really copyable. Last Thursday morning's was as good as usual, and I did a bit better than average. This evening's was a much stronger signal than last Monday's, but there was interference on the band which made actually copying it somewhat tricky. I went to the local radio club on Wednesday evening.
We've been to Stroud three times in the last ten days. The Farmers Market on Saturdays is worth visiting, and this weekend we also visited a craft fair a little way out on the Cirencester road. Roadworks in Selsey have made getting to Stroud and back a little trickier this week, so we've explored a couple of alternative routes. While they're workable, they're definitely not as simple as the one we usually use (when the road's open). Thanks to the coming General Election political canvassers have been out in force recently, and on Friday we also encountered a couple of the candidates. Stroud was, in 2017, taken from the Conservatives (who held it in 2015) by Labour with a fairly small margin. This time the Lib-Dems have stepped aside in favour of the Greens, hoping that teir combined vote might give them a win. At the 2019 European Parliament elections the Greens and the Lib-Dems did way better than they'd managed at the 2014 European Parliament elections, but it was an election held in exceptional circumstances, and as the European Parliament elections use a proportional system there's more incentive to vote for the party you actually like. Also, turnout for European Parliament elections is usually under 50% (against 75% for General Elections) and about 10% of the electorate for them is European citizens who don't have a vote in General Elections. For the General Election's first-past-the-post system supporters of smaller parties may well vote tactically for the least worst of the most likely suspects. It's complicated...
Here are some dodgy pie charts showing the proportions of votes in the last four big elections.
Last Monday's GB2CW Morse practice broadcast was slightly less inaudible than the previous week's, but not really copyable. Last Thursday morning's was as good as usual, and I did a bit better than average. This evening's was a much stronger signal than last Monday's, but there was interference on the band which made actually copying it somewhat tricky. I went to the local radio club on Wednesday evening.
We've been to Stroud three times in the last ten days. The Farmers Market on Saturdays is worth visiting, and this weekend we also visited a craft fair a little way out on the Cirencester road. Roadworks in Selsey have made getting to Stroud and back a little trickier this week, so we've explored a couple of alternative routes. While they're workable, they're definitely not as simple as the one we usually use (when the road's open). Thanks to the coming General Election political canvassers have been out in force recently, and on Friday we also encountered a couple of the candidates. Stroud was, in 2017, taken from the Conservatives (who held it in 2015) by Labour with a fairly small margin. This time the Lib-Dems have stepped aside in favour of the Greens, hoping that teir combined vote might give them a win. At the 2019 European Parliament elections the Greens and the Lib-Dems did way better than they'd managed at the 2014 European Parliament elections, but it was an election held in exceptional circumstances, and as the European Parliament elections use a proportional system there's more incentive to vote for the party you actually like. Also, turnout for European Parliament elections is usually under 50% (against 75% for General Elections) and about 10% of the electorate for them is European citizens who don't have a vote in General Elections. For the General Election's first-past-the-post system supporters of smaller parties may well vote tactically for the least worst of the most likely suspects. It's complicated...
Here are some dodgy pie charts showing the proportions of votes in the last four big elections.