Just the other Saturday, my wife and I were invited to a Eurovision Song Contest party. The only way to approach a gathering of this kind is to adopt an ironic posture from the outset.
After discussing the relative merits and demerits of the performers, the discussion turned to former winners, notably Dana International, the Israeli trans-gender ladyman who won a few years back. I turned to a friend and asked him if he would be prepared to do a trans-gender woman (post-op). He seemed horrified by the question and, after glancing nervously at his wife who was sitting by his side, responded:
"But I'm a married man!"
Somewhat perplexed I answered that the question was entirely hypothetical. He refused to give a straight answer to my enquiry and the subject of conversation moved on. A few days later the same chap rang me up inviting us over for a meal. He then took the opportunity to admonish me for my "inappropriate and off-colour" remarks on the Saturday in question. It isn't often I get told off for my behaviour these days, and I told him so. But he maintained his position and we had to close agreeing to differ.
Later that day, he having told me his wife felt the same way, I phoned her and pointed out that I was not used to having my light-hearted conversational banter being censored. I cited a recent conversation between me and my own wife while watching a film staring Colin Farrell, who was looking particularly cut. She announced that she would very much like to do him and asked my permission. This I granted, though adding that my condition was that I should be allowed to watch. It didn't help: she was horrified a husband and wife could have such a conversation, whether or not they thought it amusing, and seemed impervious to my insistence that the exchange between us constituted "humour". WTF? What's happened to irony? Are they screwed up, or are we disgraceful? You decide.
Friday, 31 May 2013
Monday, 27 May 2013
Is Pelagius wasting his time?
I haven't spoken much about my street recycling project lately, but it has been proceeding steadily now for nearly 2 1/2 years. Every week I collect about 10 kg of cans, glass and plastic bottles and place it in green sacks for collection by the council. I do this partly out of an inherent sense of tidiness, but more because I know the street cleaners will not recycle any of the waste they retrieve.
But recently I heard to my horror that a number of councils have been selling their recycling to places like India and China, who cherry-pick the contents, removing aluminium cans, which are as good as currency (30,000 cans per tonne; £1600-2000 per tonne), but then consigning the rest, especially plastic bottles, to their own landfill sites.
If properly managed, recycling can be a profitable business: look at the Germans, who have almost made a religion out of recycling everything they can, and making a lot of money in the process. There is almost no limit to human inventiveness when it comes to re-using that which society discards as useless, but there needs to be the political will to make such a thing happen. And right now it seems many people in Britain don't really care about these hippy ideas, or at best pay the barest of lip service to them. And as moral crimes go, that's one of the worst...
But recently I heard to my horror that a number of councils have been selling their recycling to places like India and China, who cherry-pick the contents, removing aluminium cans, which are as good as currency (30,000 cans per tonne; £1600-2000 per tonne), but then consigning the rest, especially plastic bottles, to their own landfill sites.
If properly managed, recycling can be a profitable business: look at the Germans, who have almost made a religion out of recycling everything they can, and making a lot of money in the process. There is almost no limit to human inventiveness when it comes to re-using that which society discards as useless, but there needs to be the political will to make such a thing happen. And right now it seems many people in Britain don't really care about these hippy ideas, or at best pay the barest of lip service to them. And as moral crimes go, that's one of the worst...
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Screaming bloody murder
On Tuesday, in one of the most shocking images ever seen on television, we were confronted by a man, his hands covered in blood and still grasping the implements of decapitation, explaining that his dreadful act was payback for the thousands of innocent Muslims exterminated by western armies pursuing their own agenda of hegemony.
Often following acts of terrorist outrages, words like "cowardly acts" are invoked. Yet when the details of the 9/11 attacks emerged it became clear that whatever else these terrible acts of mass murder were, one thing they were not was cowardly. The 19 hijackers in fact demonstrated extraordinary levels of courage in carrying out their awful deeds.
And likewise, while the whole nation may come together in condemnation of a disgraceful act of murder, the nation must also acknowledge that our state, and to an even greater extent the American state, has blood on its hands too. Perhaps as many as half a million Iraqi civilians died in the two Iraq wars, and untold thousands more in Afghanistan, through "friendly fire" incidents, faulty intelligence, poorly programmed drone attacks and sheer blunt stupidity. Casualties of war? If so, then our plucky drummer-boy is no less a casualty of war than they are.
It's a dirty, stinking world out there, and the fact is that we are partly responsible for making it that way
Often following acts of terrorist outrages, words like "cowardly acts" are invoked. Yet when the details of the 9/11 attacks emerged it became clear that whatever else these terrible acts of mass murder were, one thing they were not was cowardly. The 19 hijackers in fact demonstrated extraordinary levels of courage in carrying out their awful deeds.
And likewise, while the whole nation may come together in condemnation of a disgraceful act of murder, the nation must also acknowledge that our state, and to an even greater extent the American state, has blood on its hands too. Perhaps as many as half a million Iraqi civilians died in the two Iraq wars, and untold thousands more in Afghanistan, through "friendly fire" incidents, faulty intelligence, poorly programmed drone attacks and sheer blunt stupidity. Casualties of war? If so, then our plucky drummer-boy is no less a casualty of war than they are.
It's a dirty, stinking world out there, and the fact is that we are partly responsible for making it that way
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
On the verge of a great milestone
Just after my son died in 2006 I devised several little projects designed to distract me from the pain of grief, but also as bargaining counters. My thought was "By the time I've completed that (whatever that was), I'll be all right."
One project I undertook was to see every one of the "Four star", or highest rated films in Halliwell's Film Guide. Do you know it? It's been my bible for nearly 40 years, and goes back over half a dozen editions. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I necessary agree with every review he gives; indeed I sometimes disagree violently. And it would certainly be fair to say, as a friend once pointed out cogently,
"Halliwell likes a film with a beginning, a middle and an end, and in that order"
Nonetheless, on the whole I have great respect generally for his analysis and insight. For my money at least, his film guide is the best one out there.
Halliwell uses a rating system ranging from "No Stars at all", which as he explains in his introduction:
indicates a totally routine production or worse, such films may be watchable but at least are equally missable.
Next, 1 star,
films of minor merit or failed giants,
2 stars, more competent productions and generally entertaining.
3 stars is awarded to films of a very high standard of professional excellence or great historical interest,
and finally on to 4 stars", an accolade he reserves only for films that are:
"Outstanding in many ways, a milestone in cinema history, remarkable in acting, directing, writing, photography or some other aspect of technique."
He awards this Victoria Cross of movie accolades sparingly, as we might expect.. Of the 23,000 plus movies reviewed, just 256 receive this exalted award. That means only 1% of the films listed achieve this highest rating, unlike the American Leonard Maltin, in whose guide nearly 5% of the movies achieve his highest rating. So Halliwell is certainly discerning, if nothing else.
In bestowing his highest honour, Halliwell chooses with infinite care, sampling classics from across the history of cinema; from silent shorts made in 1916, such as Chaplin's immortal Easy Street, as well as a few great features from that era, such as Intolerance, moving through each cinema epoch, picking priceless gems from each era of the movies out of the 25,000-odd that are listed in the guide. If we scrutinise the list, we find to our delight we have already seen many of them and loved them as unconditionally as he has: You know, ones like Laurence of Arabia or Fargo, movies everyone has seen. Some, however, were a little more obscure; certainly I had never heard of most of them. I went through the list one by one, identifying films I hadn't yet seen. Of the 256 listed movies, I had already seen 198. There were 58 left to see.
Shortly after we discovered LoveFilm and began whittling away at the list. It was immensely satisfying at first, and I knocked off a few glorious oversights in my cinematic education during the first few months. But it soon became apparent that many of the films on the list were hard to find: They were often unobtainable through Lovefilm, for reasons I have never fully understood. So I resorted to buying some of them through Amazon, in turn having to buy a DVD player that could adapt to both regions because some of the movies I was after were only available in the American format. This widened my range still further, but even then some titles remained elusive. Then my brother, bless him, a fellow film buff and as it happens a big collector of DVDs, filled in several of the gaps and the list dwindled once again/
As the years advanced, I steadily made inroads into the all-important list. By 2010, from which point I began keeping this blog, there were only 20 films outstanding. I started publishing a monthly film review in which I reviewed the remaining movies on the list as I tracked them down, one by glorious one.
And by the time this year dawned, only a handful eluded me. And now, now I can sense the event horizon is at hand. With mounting excitement I have just this week realised that I am just two films away from achieving my great goal- and both are within my grasp as we speak!
The films in question are: Aladdin, Disney's 1992 animation, and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Fred Schepisi's 1978 film. The first of these is sitting on our priority list on LoveFilm, whilst the second I have finally been able to buy, albeit at the exorbitant price of £25.
And now a strange calm seems to have come over me. For some reason I have not raced to see them both and thereby complete my project.. I know they are there, I say to myself, no hurry. What am I waiting for? you may ask. What's going on? And then I realise what is happening. I'll be all right then. Those dread, stupid words coming back to mock me after six long years. Because the answer is, of course, I will not be all right then, nor will I ever be be. True, I have become a little more accepting of my predicament in the interim. Through daily practise, I have become more skilled at dealing with my loss But I will never be truly whole again, and it would be better to accept that quietly, and perhaps not make any more silly bargains in the future.
Despite this, I am still able to say my film-finding exercise has been rather marvellous: 58 films, some of which have almost literally assumed the status of life-changers: from silent classics such as Birth of a Nation and Sunrise, to outrageous pre-code musical masterpieces like Love Me Tonight, or supremely elegant masterpieces from the 40s like Trouble in Paradise and To Be or Not to Be; classics from the French cinema like Boudo Saved From Drowning and Les Enfants Terrible and on to post-war miracles like The Red Balloon and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie.
In the last analysis I can pronounce the whole thing a brilliant success: I have enriched my life immeasurably in the process. But have I entirely dispensed with bargaining? Alas, I fear not. You see, I write down all the books I have read and all the new films I have seen in a special notebook which, by my estimation, has enough pages left to last another twenty years. Surely, by the time I finally fill all that I'll be all right. Won't I?
One project I undertook was to see every one of the "Four star", or highest rated films in Halliwell's Film Guide. Do you know it? It's been my bible for nearly 40 years, and goes back over half a dozen editions. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I necessary agree with every review he gives; indeed I sometimes disagree violently. And it would certainly be fair to say, as a friend once pointed out cogently,
"Halliwell likes a film with a beginning, a middle and an end, and in that order"
Nonetheless, on the whole I have great respect generally for his analysis and insight. For my money at least, his film guide is the best one out there.
Halliwell uses a rating system ranging from "No Stars at all", which as he explains in his introduction:
indicates a totally routine production or worse, such films may be watchable but at least are equally missable.
Next, 1 star,
films of minor merit or failed giants,
2 stars, more competent productions and generally entertaining.
3 stars is awarded to films of a very high standard of professional excellence or great historical interest,
and finally on to 4 stars", an accolade he reserves only for films that are:
"Outstanding in many ways, a milestone in cinema history, remarkable in acting, directing, writing, photography or some other aspect of technique."
He awards this Victoria Cross of movie accolades sparingly, as we might expect.. Of the 23,000 plus movies reviewed, just 256 receive this exalted award. That means only 1% of the films listed achieve this highest rating, unlike the American Leonard Maltin, in whose guide nearly 5% of the movies achieve his highest rating. So Halliwell is certainly discerning, if nothing else.
In bestowing his highest honour, Halliwell chooses with infinite care, sampling classics from across the history of cinema; from silent shorts made in 1916, such as Chaplin's immortal Easy Street, as well as a few great features from that era, such as Intolerance, moving through each cinema epoch, picking priceless gems from each era of the movies out of the 25,000-odd that are listed in the guide. If we scrutinise the list, we find to our delight we have already seen many of them and loved them as unconditionally as he has: You know, ones like Laurence of Arabia or Fargo, movies everyone has seen. Some, however, were a little more obscure; certainly I had never heard of most of them. I went through the list one by one, identifying films I hadn't yet seen. Of the 256 listed movies, I had already seen 198. There were 58 left to see.
Shortly after we discovered LoveFilm and began whittling away at the list. It was immensely satisfying at first, and I knocked off a few glorious oversights in my cinematic education during the first few months. But it soon became apparent that many of the films on the list were hard to find: They were often unobtainable through Lovefilm, for reasons I have never fully understood. So I resorted to buying some of them through Amazon, in turn having to buy a DVD player that could adapt to both regions because some of the movies I was after were only available in the American format. This widened my range still further, but even then some titles remained elusive. Then my brother, bless him, a fellow film buff and as it happens a big collector of DVDs, filled in several of the gaps and the list dwindled once again/
As the years advanced, I steadily made inroads into the all-important list. By 2010, from which point I began keeping this blog, there were only 20 films outstanding. I started publishing a monthly film review in which I reviewed the remaining movies on the list as I tracked them down, one by glorious one.
And by the time this year dawned, only a handful eluded me. And now, now I can sense the event horizon is at hand. With mounting excitement I have just this week realised that I am just two films away from achieving my great goal- and both are within my grasp as we speak!
The films in question are: Aladdin, Disney's 1992 animation, and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Fred Schepisi's 1978 film. The first of these is sitting on our priority list on LoveFilm, whilst the second I have finally been able to buy, albeit at the exorbitant price of £25.
And now a strange calm seems to have come over me. For some reason I have not raced to see them both and thereby complete my project.. I know they are there, I say to myself, no hurry. What am I waiting for? you may ask. What's going on? And then I realise what is happening. I'll be all right then. Those dread, stupid words coming back to mock me after six long years. Because the answer is, of course, I will not be all right then, nor will I ever be be. True, I have become a little more accepting of my predicament in the interim. Through daily practise, I have become more skilled at dealing with my loss But I will never be truly whole again, and it would be better to accept that quietly, and perhaps not make any more silly bargains in the future.
Despite this, I am still able to say my film-finding exercise has been rather marvellous: 58 films, some of which have almost literally assumed the status of life-changers: from silent classics such as Birth of a Nation and Sunrise, to outrageous pre-code musical masterpieces like Love Me Tonight, or supremely elegant masterpieces from the 40s like Trouble in Paradise and To Be or Not to Be; classics from the French cinema like Boudo Saved From Drowning and Les Enfants Terrible and on to post-war miracles like The Red Balloon and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie.
In the last analysis I can pronounce the whole thing a brilliant success: I have enriched my life immeasurably in the process. But have I entirely dispensed with bargaining? Alas, I fear not. You see, I write down all the books I have read and all the new films I have seen in a special notebook which, by my estimation, has enough pages left to last another twenty years. Surely, by the time I finally fill all that I'll be all right. Won't I?
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
It's all our fault, apparently
All day long I've been listening to pundit after pundit wheeling out the received wisdom that the crisis in Accident and Emergency is down, in large part, to the GP's contract of 2004, which allowed GPs to hand over responsibility for out-of-hours work to the (mainly private) OOH companies. It is said that the ending of evening and weekend surgeries has placed intolerable demands on A and E departments. Well here's the news: it's crap.
Sure, GPs said goodbye to Saturday morning "emergency" surgeries in 2004, and I can't say I grieve their parting. But evening surgeries? I've been a GP since 1979, and neither I, not any other GP I know has ever conducted an evening surgery (though my afternoon surgeries often extended in to the evening as far as 8 pm.) I've also done quite a bit of work for the OOH services, and they are in general hard working and efficient concerns who do what it says on the label: supplying GP-type services in the evenings and weekends.
So what's really going on? The fact is, demand is increasing in all areas of the NHS, as great wells of unmet need gradually begin to be addressed. Then there's the burgeoning immigrant population, many of whom generate enormous demand on our services because they often have poor health when they arrive; plus the fact that some cultures demand to see a doctor straight away for whatever ailment they happen to be labouring with at the time (I'm thinking here particularly of immigrants from central Asia, though I would be lying if I said they had a monopoly on excessively high demand). Then there's the persistent view of a huge number of patients, whatever their ethnic background, that if the GPs are closed, well, you go to A and E, right? Wrong. A number of studies have confirmed that many of the people sitting in A and E departments, whingeing on about how long they are having to wait shouldn't be there in the first place. Accident and Emergency. Think what those words mean. Yet any day of the week you'll find people waiting to be seen for their sore throat or bad back which they've had for days. These people need educating, pronto, by doing a quick screening and simply turning away those who are using the service inappropriately. Before they slope off you could tell them:
"This unit is called 'Accident and Emergency'. Your problem is neither an accident nor an emergency. The right place for you is just over there, marked 'Out of Hours GP Clinic.'"
In my local hospital the OOH centre lies directly adjacent to A and E, so it's hardly a great stretch for them to wander next door where they can be seen in a more appropriate setting. That alone would ease the pressure enormously. Not that GPs are completely without blame. A lot of them restrict their surgeries artificially to no more than 15 patients in a session, regardless of how many people have asked to be seen, and some even have the highly aggressive warning pinned to their notice boards saying
"ONE PROBLEM PER CONSULTATION ONLY"
which is ridiculous and unfair, especially to the elderly and disabled, who often suffer from multiple health problems and may find it extremely difficult to get to the surgery at all.
The changes brought about in 2004 were meant to bring doctors in Britain into line with custom and practice in the rest of Europe, and is no bad thing. As long as they do their work properly during the day, that is.
Sure, GPs said goodbye to Saturday morning "emergency" surgeries in 2004, and I can't say I grieve their parting. But evening surgeries? I've been a GP since 1979, and neither I, not any other GP I know has ever conducted an evening surgery (though my afternoon surgeries often extended in to the evening as far as 8 pm.) I've also done quite a bit of work for the OOH services, and they are in general hard working and efficient concerns who do what it says on the label: supplying GP-type services in the evenings and weekends.
So what's really going on? The fact is, demand is increasing in all areas of the NHS, as great wells of unmet need gradually begin to be addressed. Then there's the burgeoning immigrant population, many of whom generate enormous demand on our services because they often have poor health when they arrive; plus the fact that some cultures demand to see a doctor straight away for whatever ailment they happen to be labouring with at the time (I'm thinking here particularly of immigrants from central Asia, though I would be lying if I said they had a monopoly on excessively high demand). Then there's the persistent view of a huge number of patients, whatever their ethnic background, that if the GPs are closed, well, you go to A and E, right? Wrong. A number of studies have confirmed that many of the people sitting in A and E departments, whingeing on about how long they are having to wait shouldn't be there in the first place. Accident and Emergency. Think what those words mean. Yet any day of the week you'll find people waiting to be seen for their sore throat or bad back which they've had for days. These people need educating, pronto, by doing a quick screening and simply turning away those who are using the service inappropriately. Before they slope off you could tell them:
"This unit is called 'Accident and Emergency'. Your problem is neither an accident nor an emergency. The right place for you is just over there, marked 'Out of Hours GP Clinic.'"
In my local hospital the OOH centre lies directly adjacent to A and E, so it's hardly a great stretch for them to wander next door where they can be seen in a more appropriate setting. That alone would ease the pressure enormously. Not that GPs are completely without blame. A lot of them restrict their surgeries artificially to no more than 15 patients in a session, regardless of how many people have asked to be seen, and some even have the highly aggressive warning pinned to their notice boards saying
"ONE PROBLEM PER CONSULTATION ONLY"
which is ridiculous and unfair, especially to the elderly and disabled, who often suffer from multiple health problems and may find it extremely difficult to get to the surgery at all.
The changes brought about in 2004 were meant to bring doctors in Britain into line with custom and practice in the rest of Europe, and is no bad thing. As long as they do their work properly during the day, that is.
Sunday, 12 May 2013
Dying Declaration
Under English law, great importance is attached to the dying declaration. It is assumed no one will, in the final moments of their lives, have any agenda other than the simple truth to be on their minds- therefore any statements are usually taken as fact. I accept that a suicide note is not quite the exact equivalent of a dying declaration, but to mind it is awfully close.
Hence we must take very careful note of the note left by a woman who committed suicide last week, which indicated one of the reasons for her decision to end her life: the pressure brought about by the government's benefit changes.
This is the price we pay for Tory philosophy in practice: the weak go under, and perhaps as they say to each other in private, so be it. This country can't afford to give the poor the luxury of spare rooms in their homes, though it can afford to have laws giving huge tax breaks to some of the largest companies in the world. And you thought the coalition was a nightmare? Imagine if the Tories had got in with a thumping majority- perish the thought...
Hence we must take very careful note of the note left by a woman who committed suicide last week, which indicated one of the reasons for her decision to end her life: the pressure brought about by the government's benefit changes.
This is the price we pay for Tory philosophy in practice: the weak go under, and perhaps as they say to each other in private, so be it. This country can't afford to give the poor the luxury of spare rooms in their homes, though it can afford to have laws giving huge tax breaks to some of the largest companies in the world. And you thought the coalition was a nightmare? Imagine if the Tories had got in with a thumping majority- perish the thought...
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Nice one Steven
Steven Hawing has just revealed he will not be attending a science conference in Israel, in keeping with the academic boycott which was launched recently to attract the World's attention to the appalling treatment of Palestinian academics at the hands of a brutal Israeli state. Naturally the authorities have reacted with horror, and this morning on The Today Programme a spokesman for the Israelis bemoaned the fact of his "political act" and claiming that what is needed is a dialogue between the two sides. He even had the gall to say the Israelis have no power inside Gaza and the West Bank, completely ignoring the fact that those lands are under military occupation and that therefore they hold all the power. He spoke about reaching a "compromise", yet all the evidence in the past has shown that this is what the Israelis have consistently refused to do. At all. About anything.
As the world's most famous scientist, Hawking's decision not to attend has had precisely the effect intended: to bring the plight of the Palestinian people to as wide an audience as possible. No wonder the Israelis are annoyed. They want to sell the lie that Israel is a fair, democratic state doing the best it can while living in the midst of a group of terrorists determined to push them into the sea.
The other day I was watching a re-run of that great ITV documentary series The World at War. This episode was showing how the Germans constructed the ghetto in Warsaw to house the Jewish population. Their last task was to build a high concrete wall around the ghetto so that movement in and out of that hideously overcrowded hell-hole could be carefully controlled. Strange thing: it looked remarkably similar to the wall the Israelis have built around the West Bank. The Germans viewed the Jews as Untermenschen, beneath contempt, sub-human, to be controlled and manipulated at their will. Just like the Israelis are doing right now. Steven Hawking has reminded the world of this injustice, and I say, Good on ya mate!
As the world's most famous scientist, Hawking's decision not to attend has had precisely the effect intended: to bring the plight of the Palestinian people to as wide an audience as possible. No wonder the Israelis are annoyed. They want to sell the lie that Israel is a fair, democratic state doing the best it can while living in the midst of a group of terrorists determined to push them into the sea.
The other day I was watching a re-run of that great ITV documentary series The World at War. This episode was showing how the Germans constructed the ghetto in Warsaw to house the Jewish population. Their last task was to build a high concrete wall around the ghetto so that movement in and out of that hideously overcrowded hell-hole could be carefully controlled. Strange thing: it looked remarkably similar to the wall the Israelis have built around the West Bank. The Germans viewed the Jews as Untermenschen, beneath contempt, sub-human, to be controlled and manipulated at their will. Just like the Israelis are doing right now. Steven Hawking has reminded the world of this injustice, and I say, Good on ya mate!
Sunday, 5 May 2013
We're all making plans for Nigel
Burn him at the stake? Make him Prime Minister? The former definitely the opinion of the other political parties; the latter the gut feeling of many of their electorate. By tapping into the zeitgeist of uninformed prejudice which lurks just below the surface of a large body of the British people, he has, seemingly even to his own astonishment, sent profound shock waves through the establishment.
Looking exactly like his own Spitting Image model, Nigel has exposed a rich and powerful vein in "public opinion". It's not the anti-European sentiments; most people don't give a toss about that. No, I'm afraid it's the racism, despite the fact that Nigel and his cronies preface every remark they utter with the phrase "I'm not a racist". They protest too much, I fancy. The fact is, all over the country people have noticed they come across more and more people of exotic origin sharing the streets with them: jabbering into their phones in some impenetrable language, women with nothing but their eyes showing, shopping in new ethnic stores which are springing up all over our high streets. And they don't like it. They reckon our "way of life" is being destroyed, missing the point that foreign immigration adds more to our society than it takes away. But you won't win many votes saying that right now.
As a dispassionate observer of the political scene, the local election results on Friday were absolutely fascinating, not least for the squirming seen from all the other parties as they backtracked furiously from their "bunch of clowns" outbursts, now looking seriously insulting since 26% of the voters didn't agree with that assessment.
Nigel is right to say what happened on Thursday marked a sea change in British politics. The trouble is, it's an extremely worrying one. If we give these boys their head in a General Election and they make significant inroads by, say, winning more seats than the Lib Dems, which seems highly likely, our country will be much worse off as a result. And whose fault will that be? Yours, if you're dumb enough to give them your vote.
Looking exactly like his own Spitting Image model, Nigel has exposed a rich and powerful vein in "public opinion". It's not the anti-European sentiments; most people don't give a toss about that. No, I'm afraid it's the racism, despite the fact that Nigel and his cronies preface every remark they utter with the phrase "I'm not a racist". They protest too much, I fancy. The fact is, all over the country people have noticed they come across more and more people of exotic origin sharing the streets with them: jabbering into their phones in some impenetrable language, women with nothing but their eyes showing, shopping in new ethnic stores which are springing up all over our high streets. And they don't like it. They reckon our "way of life" is being destroyed, missing the point that foreign immigration adds more to our society than it takes away. But you won't win many votes saying that right now.
As a dispassionate observer of the political scene, the local election results on Friday were absolutely fascinating, not least for the squirming seen from all the other parties as they backtracked furiously from their "bunch of clowns" outbursts, now looking seriously insulting since 26% of the voters didn't agree with that assessment.
Nigel is right to say what happened on Thursday marked a sea change in British politics. The trouble is, it's an extremely worrying one. If we give these boys their head in a General Election and they make significant inroads by, say, winning more seats than the Lib Dems, which seems highly likely, our country will be much worse off as a result. And whose fault will that be? Yours, if you're dumb enough to give them your vote.
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Beelieve it
I was up early a few days ago and listened to the Morning Chorus- such as it was. A bird here, a bird there; a pathetic echo of the tremendous sound I recall from my childhood. Similarly, the sound of bees harvesting their nectar is not what it was. The bee population has fallen by 30% in the last few years, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that human activity, as with the reduction of the urban bird population, is responsible. The reasons for these declines are complex and diverse: we know, for instance, that bee numbers were falling even before the age of neo-nicotinoidss, though it now becoming clear that that agent is speeding it up alarmingly.
The introduction of neo-nicotinoid pesticides have been a boon to farmers. It has reduced spoiling of oilseed rape plants almost to zero; hence farmers who have converted their land almost to a monoculture of the yellow cash-crop have seen their profit margins increase substantially. So it is scarcely surprising that it is they and the manufacturers who have been most opposed to any moratorium on its use. It's money, man.
Fortunately the EU heard wiser council when they put in place a temporary ban on its use until more research has been carried out. But we've seen all this before. When DDT was invented towards the end of World War II it was hailed as a miracle. It killed the lice that carried typhus so well we thought the problem had been solved. Meanwhile it was leeching into the environment, where it continued to reek havoc on all kinds of life forms decades after its use was finally ended, most notably when it was absorbed by birds of prey, especially peregrine falcons, whose eggshells became more fragile, causing their chicks to hatch prematurely and die.
I'm sure there was a body of opinion out there at the time saying "So what if falcons become extinct? We have our profits to think of." Just like today, when farmers and the pesticide companies will say "What's the problem with wiping out a few insects?" despite the fact that bees are actually vital to the rural economy. I've heard of cutting off your nose to spite your face, but baby, this is crazy.
The introduction of neo-nicotinoid pesticides have been a boon to farmers. It has reduced spoiling of oilseed rape plants almost to zero; hence farmers who have converted their land almost to a monoculture of the yellow cash-crop have seen their profit margins increase substantially. So it is scarcely surprising that it is they and the manufacturers who have been most opposed to any moratorium on its use. It's money, man.
Fortunately the EU heard wiser council when they put in place a temporary ban on its use until more research has been carried out. But we've seen all this before. When DDT was invented towards the end of World War II it was hailed as a miracle. It killed the lice that carried typhus so well we thought the problem had been solved. Meanwhile it was leeching into the environment, where it continued to reek havoc on all kinds of life forms decades after its use was finally ended, most notably when it was absorbed by birds of prey, especially peregrine falcons, whose eggshells became more fragile, causing their chicks to hatch prematurely and die.
I'm sure there was a body of opinion out there at the time saying "So what if falcons become extinct? We have our profits to think of." Just like today, when farmers and the pesticide companies will say "What's the problem with wiping out a few insects?" despite the fact that bees are actually vital to the rural economy. I've heard of cutting off your nose to spite your face, but baby, this is crazy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)