Kew Gardens & It's the economy stupid

A crowd admire

One of the most dramatic aspects of the V&A is the reception area that's entered from the Cromwell entrance, above the ticketing area is a glass Sculpture from Dale Chihuly it's called the 'Rotunda Chandelier' and having spent Thursday morning at the museum it came as something of a (pleasant) surprise to enter a Kew Gardens dotted with more of Dale's glass sculptures.

Blown Glass amongst the Japanese Garden

Near the main entrance 

Almost like a crazy dream

A view from one of the Glass Houses 

Having marvelled at the works I was intrigued to find out more about the artist behind the works - check out some stuff about him here.

I'm not sure if some of the visitors to Kew were avoiding the centre of London while it's besieged by the Extinction rebellion  crowd but not sure I've seen so many visitors (away from the Music events)

Extinction Rebellion

Climate change activists are now dominating  UK news while parliament is in recess, like Brexit the debate is heated and not always logical - emotions are fuelled by use of  dog whistle terms like 'Children and Grandchildren'.

 I heard a radio discussion where a younger caller was somewhat patronised as he critiqued the 'middle class hippies' - he made the point that UK is not the prime polluter (we're 15th) , and if you look at the figures he has a very good point, be much better if large scale demo's were held in Beijing (China is the worst polluter),  and UK consumers avoided buying products from worst polluters -

(Note what Australia does with a fairly low population it has less than half the UK's population and its overall pollution is surprisingly close to the UK's figures)

It's the economy stupid.

Cut it - Yesterday was another meat free day for me

One of the (many) appealing things about Bernie Sanders progressive campaign to be US president is that he recognises that vast inequalities in income and rate of taxation in the USA is a major issue in tackling the big issues of today.

Higher taxation and fairer wealth as well as income distribution would mean that poverty, ill health and poor husbandry of  the earth's resources could at least be  debated - for me he's a beacon of hope for our collective future.