This post is exclusively about the Badger Cull and the Wounded Badger Patrol that myself and my daughter walked with the other night in Somerset.
Both myself and my youngest daughter have been getting very upset and passionate about the Badger Cull, the more we hear, the less it makes sense and feels so very wrong, a great injustice to the Britain's only bear and oldest native species.
We decided that as it was half term and she was on holiday, I would book some time off and we would travel down to one of the Cull zones to participate in one of the night walks.
I spent a small fortune kitting her out in waterproofs, boots, trousers, coat, socks and food. I did find a tin that uses a chemical reaction to heat its contents to near boiling and they had coffee, so I bought half a dozen of those to take with us.
The night before and the forecast was for gale force winds coming in from the South West. The rain was torrential and the wind was horrific and it was appearing touch and go as to whether we should or shouldn't go but as day broke, the weather cleared and was bright and sunny with showers. We made it down to Somerset in good time and parked up and met with the walkers.
What a genuinely caring, gentle and nice group they are. They were from all walks of life, farmers, teachers, a child minder and several self employed people that are sacrificing a wage to save the lives of Britain's Badgers, it was humbling and heartening to meet and talk with these very normal and kind people.
My daughter conducted interviews as she intends to write a blog to submit to the Huffington Post on the stories behind the people and the diversity of backgrounds and why they are all there. She is a little star anyway and was an immediate friend to many of them, she is vivacious and a great talker but unusually, also a good listener.
The walk was amazing, pitch dark with a sky that was incredible, stars and galaxies framed by trees, Nature's portrait. It was breath taking to stand beneath a sky so full of pinpoints, away from the light pollution, the vivid and ethereal night sky that I had forgotten about. It had been a source of inspiration to my teenage poet self and I remembered why. We had rain showers and walked through mud and puddles but the chat and the willingness of our new friends to share their experiences with us was wonderful. They did say that on the nights they don't walk they miss it, it has become part of what they do and who they are and it wasn't lost on me, I have already looked for night hikes in my local area as it was simply incredible to experience nature at a time when I am normally preparing for bed.
To be out there and sharing a cause felt good, it was almost a validation, I am helping at long last, not sitting there behind Paypal but contributing time and effort. I know that not everyone lives with in driving distance and I know that all support, however it comes, is welcomed by the activists on the ground.
We didn't see any badgers but did see the tracks of badger runs. We all marched along the footpaths, chatting and laughing, all carrying torches, all wearing hi vis jackets. Tromping through small streams, fields and paths, all the while the endless talk of strangers becoming friends. We all had questions and the questions led to stories and the all the stories tended to end up in "why?"
"Why is this happening?"
"Why are they doing this?"
"Why doesn't someone stop this?"
The interesting thing, is that this has strengthened my resolve. Meeting other people that are actively involved in trying to stop the cull by spending their spare time treading the footpaths, walking many miles into the nights in all weathers, is inspiring, I want to do my bit to halt the cull. My daughter said it was the best of nights and I am not one to disagree with her, we have already made provisional plans to get down to the Gloucestershire cull zone on Saturday night and hopefully will make it down there a few more times before the cull ends on Dec 18th.
On another interesting note, I see the National Trust have voted against vaccinating badgers. Sorry, let me rephrase, they voted TO vaccinate badgers and the Chair overruled the the legitimate vote.
Here is a list of the Supermarkets that don't support the cull, here are the good guys:
Waitrose
Mark and Spencer
Co-op
Here are the Supermarkets that do support the cull, bad guys:
Asda
Lidl
Morrisons
Tesco
Sainsburys
I already buy all my meat from the local butcher and buy my milk from Waitrose and M&S. If we had a local Co-op, I would certainly shop there as well. The more people that show solidarity for the shops that do give the farmers a fairer deal as well as opposing the cull, deserve all the support they can get.
Things are either right or wrong and my head and heart pull in different directions but the simple reality is that you are either a person with morals and beliefs or you are prepared to compromise yourself knowing that every compromise will eat a little part of your soul until you are compromised. I am sick and hurting at every new and revolting development, this isn't the World I wanted for my children, it isn't the Country I wanted for myself, I can see my hopes draining away replaced by my fears. We have an environment minister that doesn't believe in man made global warming and wants to kill the wildlife in the UK. We have a PM that is intent on hunting foxes and his pals have invented an organisation called "Federation of Welsh Farmers' Packs" that has drafted a report that was widely covered by the National press that made all kinds of claims to start a debate on Fox hunting. The FWFP is actually run by the London based Countryside Alliance, nothing to do with Wales and incredibly have the ear of the PM. How much do you think it will cost to look into the viability of fox hunting whilst cutting public services because some tosspot on a horse wants to chase a small four legged animal with a pack of dogs, in what appears to me to be a cowardly, bullying sport.
This is my point, we all know this is wrong and while David Cameron is so intent on pushing through his personal sport, against the will of the electorate, spending our money to make the "evidence" fit his agenda, my aged neighbour Edna, the old lady that served Britain in WW2 and lost her fiancee, part of a Lancaster Bomber crew killed on a raid over Germany, lives in fear of the cold, doesn't have the care she should have since services have been cut and standards have fallen. Let's hunt foxes, kill badgers and build railways while the generation that kept us free, starve and freeze.
Churchill would turn in his grave.
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Friday, 25 October 2013
Lies and the abuse of power.
It appears to me that democracy has been devalued to a level not seen in a hundred years or so, harking back to the days of the landed gentry that ruled the lower classes with the iron fist of money and power. Lies didn't matter and the press were fawns to the deceit, as they always have been. Every newspaper has its own agenda. The difference now is the Internet.
The Internet is teaching me "how to see". Conspiracies hide some truth and the dismissal of individuals as lunatics, conspiracy nuts and criminals is the way to discredit and hide the truth. That is not to say that every conspiracy has a truth behind it or every nutjob is being persecuted and tarnished by the powers that be but the more you look, the more you will see the tell tail signs of the corruption and sometimes it is far too obvious.
To use four very transparent and pathetic tools that we have seen, George W Bush and Tony Blair and the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, so much spin without any substance that resulted in an illegal war that has repercussions today. It also resulted in the murder of David Kelly in the UK, an event that has been covered up and all the evidence and conspiracies are on the Internet for all to see, but it seems to point to the British Government. Isn't it shameful when your own Government will murder an innocent man for speaking out on a wrong that he can see is happening and has the information and knowledge to stop it? Just think of all the lives of our military that have been sacrificed to a lie. I am a patriot and support our armed forces 100% in whatever they do, whether it is right or wrong but I call any Government to account when it is wrong, someone must be accountable. However George W Bush insisted that anyone that opposed the war was anti the military and not a true patriot. So powerful was this lie that it shamed people into following his course.
I had a debate with a friend in the US, before the Iraq war and they condoned it because the news in the US reported the issue as crucial. In the UK the press were divided and those opposing the war had all the evidence to show the reasons were flawed and a march through London garnered anywhere from 1/2 to 1 million people (depending on who you believe), showed how divisive the issue was over here. Once the war started and the US started to see the same evidence that we had, I had a conversation with my friend and they felt betrayed and agreed that it had been the wrong decision. It's all about spin and perception and reading the "facts" with a suspicious mind.
My next points are dismissing people, it works very well to discredit their views. We see this in the UK over the HS2, when anyone that opposes it is referred to as a "Nimby" (Not In My Back Yard), a derogatory and offensive term for someone with a valid reason to oppose a scheme that churns up the Countryside, devalues property and creates irreparable damage to fauna and wildlife in the UK as well as cutting huge swathes of green belt land into a railway line that will save a few minutes from the North into London at a cost that is spiralling out of control and for a benefit that diminishes by the second. I guess this makes me a Nimby.
The next is the Badger Cull and policy so full of holes that it leaks like a colander and those that endorsed it, with the exception of Owen "the Patsy" Patterson, have suddenly gone very quiet. Let's remind ourselves on what Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Tory MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, described anyone that protested against the pointless mass slaughter of Badgers:
“I thought most of them were in the habit of lying in bed until the pubs open, or until the postman arrives with the benefit cheque (or do such things get paid straight into their accounts these days?)
Harking back to Dubaya, he dismissed John Kerry as having lied about one of the many medals he received...inconceivable, a genuine war hero losing to a man that served his Vietnam war in Texas because the shirker cast doubts on the validity on one of his medals...Now that is shameless politics and proof that he who shouts loudest is the only one that gets heard, no matter what the lie.
This leads me on to the current crop of power hungry lunatics that run the show. We have David Cameron, a man with the perchance for not making any lasting decisions and allowing others to take the flak for any flawed policies. I am not sure who will take the fall for the HS2 debacle but for the Badger Cull, Cameron is hoping that Owen Patterson will be the only fall guy needed and for the Fracking controversy it is more difficult to pinpoint an individual as no-one is popping their head above the parapet.
It is very odd to think that the Country has naturally recovered from the Labour spending policies of Blair and Brown. Cameron, for all his talk about us all being in this together and all the cuts he was going to have to make, all of it has been lies. He is spending £80 billion on a train line, £2,200 per dead badger as opposed to around £300 per vaccinated badger and still hasn't made any cuts, they are due in next year and yet the economy is showing signs of recovery...DESPITE David Cameron.
When you ask a politician about the economy, vote for the one that says he will do nothing.
Let me make some predictions for you, none of them are difficult to see coming. The Government will try to persist with the Badger cull, moving the goalposts constantly to suit whatever they need to achieve. Free shooting will prove to be a complete failure so they will temporarily trap and shoot but behind the scenes the Government will unofficially trial the gassing of badgers in Cornwall and will then attempt to amend the law to allow this to happen.
David Cameron has already started his campaign to have the fox hunting law partially repealed and this will open the floodgates to illegal hunts (oh wait, that's already happened).
Sabs and the anti cull lobby will turn their attention to the pheasant shooting estates in the West Country and things will become fraught as the £22 million industry starts to get turned on it's head as the protesters manage to stop the shoots by using public byways to interfere with the shooters. The Government will attempt to revise the public byway laws.
The current proposals for revising the Wildlife laws will mean that culls against wildlife increase and the crimes against animals will also increase and won't be investigated.
Further proposals by the Conservative Party will be aimed at legal protest and the right of the individual to have his say and the Government's ability to control the Internet. The ability of groups of people to mobilise quickly for a united cause is the concern for all Governments and as part of the military cyber team that was announced last week, will come the clamp down on the freedom of expression and speech through the Internet.
This whole post is geared towards the political suicide of David Cameron, maybe this could be his obituary:
David Cameron came to power off the back of a coalition Government because he didn't have enough votes to actually win an election. Despite this, he conducted his term in office with the same brazen disregard for the voters and public opinion as Tony Blair. He lacked definition, unable to promote himself as anything when he tried to be everything, except a man with any morals. He was very fond of saying "...because it is the right thing to do." Unfortunately this was superseded by a lie and even more unfortunately, it was a phrase he used often.
He was firmly positioned in the pocket of big business, refusing to allow them to pay their full whack of taxes and pursuing the odd individual celebrity that hadn't broken the law but made full use of the loopholes that the Government left in place, in an effort to name and shame them to show that he was hard on tax dodgers...even though they weren't tax dodgers.
David was passionate about public transport, allowing the roads to fall into decay and taxing the motorist incredible amounts of money in road tax and fuel duty to promote the use of public transport. He wholeheartedly endorsed ripping up the Countryside to lay track so that a train journey from Birmingham to London could save a few minutes and with the end goal to lay track all the way to Scotland. He had high hopes that this would benefit the whole of the Country even though the train would only stop at two or three Cities.
David fully believed that spending money in a time of austerity was the way to put the Country back on track. This appeared very similar to the Labour "spend your way out of debt" policies that had beset the Country previously but as has been pointed out to me, this is not a Conservative policy so it can't be the same. He did get a little defensive when the cost of his little project, estimated at £15.4 billion rose to £42 billion after they miscalculated, an easy mistake to make, however that bounder Boris Johnson has estimated the cost will be closer to £70 billion and those cads at the Institute of Economic Affairs estimate it will be in excess of £80 billion.
David Cameron, a man of the Countryside and of the people. OK, so being born into money, having the finest education that money can buy and never having sampled a speck of poverty except for those people you see shopping at Lidl, Aldi, Tesco or Sainsburys could rule him out of touch with people but as the Sainted David has said many times, "Hug a hoodie, because it's the right thing to do." Or something like that. He is also an advocate of the Big Society, an interesting idea that failed to catch on when it transpired that no-one actually knew what it was but the words are there and it looked good in print at the time. I think this was announced shortly before all the threatened cuts to services and he hoped that other people would do the jobs for free, as part of the Big Society. As with many of his good ideas, it was quickly forgotten.
But his Countryside credentials are beyond reproach, a fox hunter. Yep, the man that sits astride a huge horse and bravely hunts down fox cubs with a pack of hounds, a brave and noble sport of the landed gentry as they smother faces of their children with the blood of a fox cub at their first hunt. David was none too pleased that the sport was banned but has taken every opportunity to open the doors to allow it back as a recognised and legal part of Country life and is currently in negotiations to have the law repealed.
David has taken the plight of the farmers and Bovine TB very seriously and has refused to let anything stand in his way in his personal fight to eradicate this terrible and costly disease. Facts, science, morality and voters are some of the obstacles he has had to overcome in his fight to mass exterminate the badger population in the UK. Not content with one fight, David decided that fracking was also a good idea, despite an earthquake in Lancashire that was rumoured to be caused by fracking. But in the words of his best friend's father in law, Tory Lord Howell,
“However, there are large, uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly in parts of the north-east, where there is plenty of room for fracking.”
Yes, we know how desolate and uninhabitable the North East is, I mean no-one goes to the stunning Alnwick Castle or Dracula's Whitby Abbey and Newcastle is only a great City for a night out, no reason to go there and the people from the North East are not really one of my favourite people in the UK with a really cool accent and the most beautiful route from Scotland to the UK is only through the Northumberland. Why would anyone want to retain any of that, after all, it's only a desolate uninhabited dump.
So in closing, this obituary to David Cameron's short but eventful political career, here is a man that never really achieved anything. He never made a real decision, he never won an election yet he became the Prime Minister of the UK and yet managed to piss it all away, losing die hard voters with every wrong turn he made, a man that found himself in a hole and kept digging, lacking the imagination or common sense to stop. A man that held his family and friends close, particularly as advisers to hold senior political posts. A man with his finger on the pulse, a man connected, particularly to the media at around the time of the politician's expenses scandal when very few Conservative MP's were found fiddling, except for the odd scapegoat. Here is a man that was cute enough to sign his text messages to the Rebekah Brooks (of the Sun Newspaper), "lol" because he thought it meant "lots of love", isn't that sweet? Come on, you know Rebekah Brooks, she was Chief Executive at News International, you know, arrested for bribing the police and hacking the phone of a dead child, yes, that Rebekah Brooks, that David signs his texts lots of love to.
A man that wore a thin veneer of civility and possibly was a finer actor than Tony Blair but lacked the ability to be hated or loved. So here we are, an obituary for an invisible man, someone that will be remembered for killing animals and ruining the British land and yet we won't remember anything else about his time in power. He wasn't a winner or a loser, he was simply someone that didn't win an election to become the Prime Minister, a not unremarkable feat by what transpires is an unremarkable man.
I would like to end all of this on a personal note. It is well known that the English are animal lovers and not everyone understands the depth and passion of that love so I think I should try and explain it.
Running made me fall in love with the Countryside. Running is the reason I took up photography, so I could capture the most amazing and beautiful things I was seeing in the morning. I would chat to the swans and ducks on my way past. I still do.
The photography has taken me all over the Country and I am accompanied by birdsong everywhere, it is awe inspiring and humbling.
In the deep beauty of Cumbria I saw a red squirrel and that was the highlight of that trip. Not the incredible scenery, a red squirrel that I saw fleetingly. I love this land with a passion that hurts sometimes and to love the land is to love the nature that shapes it in the way it does, that includes the wildlife, the creatures that cohabit this amazing planet with us. We have a duty of care to them, it is as simple as that. To betray that duty of care is morally wrong and it breaks my heart to see it happening.
Oppose the cull, HS2 and fracking. Oppose any of the legislation that is suggested to extend the right to kill wildlife and curtail our freedom to roam the byways and speak our minds and finally, vote these fools out at the next election, let your voice be heard and take back your dignity and democracy.
The Internet is teaching me "how to see". Conspiracies hide some truth and the dismissal of individuals as lunatics, conspiracy nuts and criminals is the way to discredit and hide the truth. That is not to say that every conspiracy has a truth behind it or every nutjob is being persecuted and tarnished by the powers that be but the more you look, the more you will see the tell tail signs of the corruption and sometimes it is far too obvious.
To use four very transparent and pathetic tools that we have seen, George W Bush and Tony Blair and the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, so much spin without any substance that resulted in an illegal war that has repercussions today. It also resulted in the murder of David Kelly in the UK, an event that has been covered up and all the evidence and conspiracies are on the Internet for all to see, but it seems to point to the British Government. Isn't it shameful when your own Government will murder an innocent man for speaking out on a wrong that he can see is happening and has the information and knowledge to stop it? Just think of all the lives of our military that have been sacrificed to a lie. I am a patriot and support our armed forces 100% in whatever they do, whether it is right or wrong but I call any Government to account when it is wrong, someone must be accountable. However George W Bush insisted that anyone that opposed the war was anti the military and not a true patriot. So powerful was this lie that it shamed people into following his course.
I had a debate with a friend in the US, before the Iraq war and they condoned it because the news in the US reported the issue as crucial. In the UK the press were divided and those opposing the war had all the evidence to show the reasons were flawed and a march through London garnered anywhere from 1/2 to 1 million people (depending on who you believe), showed how divisive the issue was over here. Once the war started and the US started to see the same evidence that we had, I had a conversation with my friend and they felt betrayed and agreed that it had been the wrong decision. It's all about spin and perception and reading the "facts" with a suspicious mind.
My next points are dismissing people, it works very well to discredit their views. We see this in the UK over the HS2, when anyone that opposes it is referred to as a "Nimby" (Not In My Back Yard), a derogatory and offensive term for someone with a valid reason to oppose a scheme that churns up the Countryside, devalues property and creates irreparable damage to fauna and wildlife in the UK as well as cutting huge swathes of green belt land into a railway line that will save a few minutes from the North into London at a cost that is spiralling out of control and for a benefit that diminishes by the second. I guess this makes me a Nimby.
The next is the Badger Cull and policy so full of holes that it leaks like a colander and those that endorsed it, with the exception of Owen "the Patsy" Patterson, have suddenly gone very quiet. Let's remind ourselves on what Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Tory MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, described anyone that protested against the pointless mass slaughter of Badgers:
“I thought most of them were in the habit of lying in bed until the pubs open, or until the postman arrives with the benefit cheque (or do such things get paid straight into their accounts these days?)
“Either way, since they are all malingerers and scroungers there is no real incentive to leap out of bed as soon as the dawn chorus strikes up,”
Funny, having worked for most of my life, paid my taxes on time, no criminal record, I don't drink and I get up at 5.30 every morning, I never viewed myself as a "malingerer or scrounger". Offensive? You bet and I am sure in a parallel Universe it had the desired effect of tarring all protesters with a blanket brush but all it has done in this instance is make this infantile little man appear as out of touch and simply rude.Harking back to Dubaya, he dismissed John Kerry as having lied about one of the many medals he received...inconceivable, a genuine war hero losing to a man that served his Vietnam war in Texas because the shirker cast doubts on the validity on one of his medals...Now that is shameless politics and proof that he who shouts loudest is the only one that gets heard, no matter what the lie.
This leads me on to the current crop of power hungry lunatics that run the show. We have David Cameron, a man with the perchance for not making any lasting decisions and allowing others to take the flak for any flawed policies. I am not sure who will take the fall for the HS2 debacle but for the Badger Cull, Cameron is hoping that Owen Patterson will be the only fall guy needed and for the Fracking controversy it is more difficult to pinpoint an individual as no-one is popping their head above the parapet.
It is very odd to think that the Country has naturally recovered from the Labour spending policies of Blair and Brown. Cameron, for all his talk about us all being in this together and all the cuts he was going to have to make, all of it has been lies. He is spending £80 billion on a train line, £2,200 per dead badger as opposed to around £300 per vaccinated badger and still hasn't made any cuts, they are due in next year and yet the economy is showing signs of recovery...DESPITE David Cameron.
When you ask a politician about the economy, vote for the one that says he will do nothing.
Let me make some predictions for you, none of them are difficult to see coming. The Government will try to persist with the Badger cull, moving the goalposts constantly to suit whatever they need to achieve. Free shooting will prove to be a complete failure so they will temporarily trap and shoot but behind the scenes the Government will unofficially trial the gassing of badgers in Cornwall and will then attempt to amend the law to allow this to happen.
David Cameron has already started his campaign to have the fox hunting law partially repealed and this will open the floodgates to illegal hunts (oh wait, that's already happened).
Sabs and the anti cull lobby will turn their attention to the pheasant shooting estates in the West Country and things will become fraught as the £22 million industry starts to get turned on it's head as the protesters manage to stop the shoots by using public byways to interfere with the shooters. The Government will attempt to revise the public byway laws.
The current proposals for revising the Wildlife laws will mean that culls against wildlife increase and the crimes against animals will also increase and won't be investigated.
Further proposals by the Conservative Party will be aimed at legal protest and the right of the individual to have his say and the Government's ability to control the Internet. The ability of groups of people to mobilise quickly for a united cause is the concern for all Governments and as part of the military cyber team that was announced last week, will come the clamp down on the freedom of expression and speech through the Internet.
This whole post is geared towards the political suicide of David Cameron, maybe this could be his obituary:
David Cameron came to power off the back of a coalition Government because he didn't have enough votes to actually win an election. Despite this, he conducted his term in office with the same brazen disregard for the voters and public opinion as Tony Blair. He lacked definition, unable to promote himself as anything when he tried to be everything, except a man with any morals. He was very fond of saying "...because it is the right thing to do." Unfortunately this was superseded by a lie and even more unfortunately, it was a phrase he used often.
He was firmly positioned in the pocket of big business, refusing to allow them to pay their full whack of taxes and pursuing the odd individual celebrity that hadn't broken the law but made full use of the loopholes that the Government left in place, in an effort to name and shame them to show that he was hard on tax dodgers...even though they weren't tax dodgers.
David was passionate about public transport, allowing the roads to fall into decay and taxing the motorist incredible amounts of money in road tax and fuel duty to promote the use of public transport. He wholeheartedly endorsed ripping up the Countryside to lay track so that a train journey from Birmingham to London could save a few minutes and with the end goal to lay track all the way to Scotland. He had high hopes that this would benefit the whole of the Country even though the train would only stop at two or three Cities.
David fully believed that spending money in a time of austerity was the way to put the Country back on track. This appeared very similar to the Labour "spend your way out of debt" policies that had beset the Country previously but as has been pointed out to me, this is not a Conservative policy so it can't be the same. He did get a little defensive when the cost of his little project, estimated at £15.4 billion rose to £42 billion after they miscalculated, an easy mistake to make, however that bounder Boris Johnson has estimated the cost will be closer to £70 billion and those cads at the Institute of Economic Affairs estimate it will be in excess of £80 billion.
David Cameron, a man of the Countryside and of the people. OK, so being born into money, having the finest education that money can buy and never having sampled a speck of poverty except for those people you see shopping at Lidl, Aldi, Tesco or Sainsburys could rule him out of touch with people but as the Sainted David has said many times, "Hug a hoodie, because it's the right thing to do." Or something like that. He is also an advocate of the Big Society, an interesting idea that failed to catch on when it transpired that no-one actually knew what it was but the words are there and it looked good in print at the time. I think this was announced shortly before all the threatened cuts to services and he hoped that other people would do the jobs for free, as part of the Big Society. As with many of his good ideas, it was quickly forgotten.
But his Countryside credentials are beyond reproach, a fox hunter. Yep, the man that sits astride a huge horse and bravely hunts down fox cubs with a pack of hounds, a brave and noble sport of the landed gentry as they smother faces of their children with the blood of a fox cub at their first hunt. David was none too pleased that the sport was banned but has taken every opportunity to open the doors to allow it back as a recognised and legal part of Country life and is currently in negotiations to have the law repealed.
David has taken the plight of the farmers and Bovine TB very seriously and has refused to let anything stand in his way in his personal fight to eradicate this terrible and costly disease. Facts, science, morality and voters are some of the obstacles he has had to overcome in his fight to mass exterminate the badger population in the UK. Not content with one fight, David decided that fracking was also a good idea, despite an earthquake in Lancashire that was rumoured to be caused by fracking. But in the words of his best friend's father in law, Tory Lord Howell,
“However, there are large, uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly in parts of the north-east, where there is plenty of room for fracking.”
Yes, we know how desolate and uninhabitable the North East is, I mean no-one goes to the stunning Alnwick Castle or Dracula's Whitby Abbey and Newcastle is only a great City for a night out, no reason to go there and the people from the North East are not really one of my favourite people in the UK with a really cool accent and the most beautiful route from Scotland to the UK is only through the Northumberland. Why would anyone want to retain any of that, after all, it's only a desolate uninhabited dump.
So in closing, this obituary to David Cameron's short but eventful political career, here is a man that never really achieved anything. He never made a real decision, he never won an election yet he became the Prime Minister of the UK and yet managed to piss it all away, losing die hard voters with every wrong turn he made, a man that found himself in a hole and kept digging, lacking the imagination or common sense to stop. A man that held his family and friends close, particularly as advisers to hold senior political posts. A man with his finger on the pulse, a man connected, particularly to the media at around the time of the politician's expenses scandal when very few Conservative MP's were found fiddling, except for the odd scapegoat. Here is a man that was cute enough to sign his text messages to the Rebekah Brooks (of the Sun Newspaper), "lol" because he thought it meant "lots of love", isn't that sweet? Come on, you know Rebekah Brooks, she was Chief Executive at News International, you know, arrested for bribing the police and hacking the phone of a dead child, yes, that Rebekah Brooks, that David signs his texts lots of love to.
A man that wore a thin veneer of civility and possibly was a finer actor than Tony Blair but lacked the ability to be hated or loved. So here we are, an obituary for an invisible man, someone that will be remembered for killing animals and ruining the British land and yet we won't remember anything else about his time in power. He wasn't a winner or a loser, he was simply someone that didn't win an election to become the Prime Minister, a not unremarkable feat by what transpires is an unremarkable man.
I would like to end all of this on a personal note. It is well known that the English are animal lovers and not everyone understands the depth and passion of that love so I think I should try and explain it.
Running made me fall in love with the Countryside. Running is the reason I took up photography, so I could capture the most amazing and beautiful things I was seeing in the morning. I would chat to the swans and ducks on my way past. I still do.
The photography has taken me all over the Country and I am accompanied by birdsong everywhere, it is awe inspiring and humbling.
In the deep beauty of Cumbria I saw a red squirrel and that was the highlight of that trip. Not the incredible scenery, a red squirrel that I saw fleetingly. I love this land with a passion that hurts sometimes and to love the land is to love the nature that shapes it in the way it does, that includes the wildlife, the creatures that cohabit this amazing planet with us. We have a duty of care to them, it is as simple as that. To betray that duty of care is morally wrong and it breaks my heart to see it happening.
Oppose the cull, HS2 and fracking. Oppose any of the legislation that is suggested to extend the right to kill wildlife and curtail our freedom to roam the byways and speak our minds and finally, vote these fools out at the next election, let your voice be heard and take back your dignity and democracy.
Friday, 18 October 2013
A 1001 words.
I have had a great many things to say and as they became more and more, I wrote less and less until I scrapped everything I had to say and decided on an inconsequential post with some pretty pictures. I could have talked about my running and how "runners knee" has meant no running for 6 weeks, I could have told you about the last, awesome, Soundgarden gig at Brixton that I took my daughters to. I could have waxed lyrical about the new gluten free restaurants that are springing up around London or had another attack on the Government and their Badger Cull or Cameron's cull as it is being called now. I was having thoughts on class and politics and had some ideas on how a true democracy could be achieved, I also have some thoughts on teenagers and their inability to cope with peer pressure and our inability to understand their world, all that coming off the back of a suicide attempt by one of my daughter's friends. I also considered writing about the Clacton Airshow and maybe journeys taken this year, scarce though they are.
No, I decided, after seeing some most wonderful photographs on the Internet, that pictures could paint a 1001 words if a word was added. I saw some portraits of people, average shots taken on the street...I say average, shots of everyday people taken on the street with a simple line of text explaining them. It made for a very moving montage, adding some additional depth. As an example, there was a shot of a couple kissing and she had a blue blanket. The text was simple, she gave the blue blanket to a homeless woman sleeping on the street purely because she needed it more. It adds a narrative to what appears to be a simple story.
I can't compete with that but what I can do is say in as few words as possible, why the picture was taken, what it means to me so to start it off:
Get the gist? I see a Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster and it is enough to bring a tear of pride to my eyes, "Aching pride". So with that in mind.
No, I decided, after seeing some most wonderful photographs on the Internet, that pictures could paint a 1001 words if a word was added. I saw some portraits of people, average shots taken on the street...I say average, shots of everyday people taken on the street with a simple line of text explaining them. It made for a very moving montage, adding some additional depth. As an example, there was a shot of a couple kissing and she had a blue blanket. The text was simple, she gave the blue blanket to a homeless woman sleeping on the street purely because she needed it more. It adds a narrative to what appears to be a simple story.
I can't compete with that but what I can do is say in as few words as possible, why the picture was taken, what it means to me so to start it off:
"Aching pride"
Get the gist? I see a Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster and it is enough to bring a tear of pride to my eyes, "Aching pride". So with that in mind.
"A reason to run"
"Awe inspiring"
"Nature is art"
"Clean simplicity"
"Blessed"
"The witness"
None of these pictures have been through Photoshop and only the brightness and contrast may have been adjusted on some of them and some are as taken. These are all from this year. I have taken far less photos than other years but I think the shots I have taken have been better than other years.
I will leave you with the one shot that despite the fact it wasn't taken this year, has broken my heart this year.
"I don't want you to be a memory"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)