Scotland to join Canada ???

I was born in Scotland and though I've long since escaped to Australia, I still take an interest in what goes on there, including the off on will we won't we independence saga.

Now, from the department of odd ideas comes the suggestion that Scotland should leave the UK and join Canada, rather than the EU.

Well given that 62% of Scots voted to stay in the EU it's probably not the point, but there's a germ of an idea there.

Last time around one of the great sticking points was what to do about the currency. The poms would not agree to Scotland, post independence, staying in the Sterling zone, and the Euro, due to the Greek debacle was seen as mildly toxic.

Well, the Canadian dollar, stable, traded internationally, and so on might just be a good transition alternative ...

Gardening and the death of newspapers

Newspapers are dying, fading into oblivion.

Staff cuts and the loss of advertising revenue is gradually destroying both quality journalism and all the fluffy non journalism that used to fill the weekend papers and pad out the weekday papers.

As a consequence they're growing thinner, and even though they've transitioned to tabloid (mostly) the papers are almost as thin now as in the last days of the broadsheet editions.

And this has an unexpected impact on gardening.

For years we've used the quality press as biodegradable layer over the soil when mulching - much easier to deal with than the nasty black plastic woven stuff that couch grass roots get stuck in, and truly biodegradable so once the mulch layer (either bark or sugar cane mulch) has biodegraded the lot can simply be dug into the soil to improve its structure.

Well, yesterday being Easter Monday I was happily mulching away, working through a three week stockpile of The Age, which in the old days would have happily covered the garden bed I was working on, but this time only went half as far ...