A Reason to Turn Off
As I came out of Cambridge this afternoon, Radio 5 was interviewing Mark Serwotka. Now if there is ever a man that makes me reach for the off switch or change to another channel, it is him.
I’ve nothing particular against the Welsh, but his voice and the same moans about everything he is always droning on about, make me wonder if they were glad when he left. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say anything positive about anything!
So I switched him off.
Norman Borlaug
I’d never heard of Norman Baulaug until yesterday. But as his obituary in the Times today stated.
Norman Borlaug has, in the opinion of many experts, saved more human lives than any other individual in history. He was the grandfather of the “Green Revolution” in which, between 1961 and 1980, wheat crop yields doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled around the world. His experiments with hybrid wheat strains and nitrogenous fertiliser created strains of the staple food impervious to pests, bad weather and poor soil, enabling the world to support a far greater human population than many thought possible after the Second World War. Yet his methods and message fell out of favour, to the detriment of millions — especially in Africa.
Read the full obituary and you get a flavour of someone who was not only a great scientist, but someone who was a deep thinker. He warned against population growth and felt that his advanced crops would only give a breathing space.
But it still did not prevent others from rubbishing his achievements.
Therein lies the rub. Some of his methods of using lots of fertiliser may well be challenged, but we all should agree with his policy of growing crops on the productive land. Surely, this should leave more land for other more idealistic uses. He even signed an agreement with one of founders of Greenpeace on this.
But one paragraph in the obituary is this.
Others followed his example, and India’s wheat crop increased from 12 million tonnes in 1965 to 17 million in 1967. That year Pakistan, a country dependent on wheat imports, imported 42,000 tonnes of seeds. It was self-sufficient in seed stocks 12 months later.
It just shows how if you are more efficient, things can a lot better.
If I have a gripe with him personally, it is that the greater part of his work was with wheat! I can’t eat it or wheat products because I’m a coeliac.
But as I repeat many times. It will not be politicians who get us out of the mess that they have created, but the scientists and engineers. We need a lot more like Norman Borlaug.
Kentish Lamb
This is a tale that probably should have been handled better.
If we are going to eat meat, then we should educate children about where it comes from.
Perhaps not go as far as my youngest who spent several summers in the Hunt Kennels, cutting up animals for the hounds. What everybody does forget though is that the Hunt has traditionally been the receptor of all the dead animals of the countryside. You have a horse that needs to be put down and it’s more humane to do the deed in a field on a sunny day and then give the carcase to the Hunt, rather than submit the animal to all the stress of going to the slaughterhouse.
Life is hard and we all have to die someday. But when that day comes, death should be as painless and without stress as possible.
I’m afraid that the laws on abbatoirs brought in by the EU, don’t make that process any better for animals, as they often have to travel miles before death, because so many have closed. And when it comes to transporting animals, such as sheep, miles to slaughter in Southern Italy or Greece, I’m totally against it. It’s actually cheaper to transport them as carcases, because you get three times as many animals on the truck. So you need to refrigerate, but you only need a third of the drivers.
The best beef I ever tasted was illegal.
Twenty years ago, a local farmer used to kill his own cattle and then butcher them in his kitchen. He just took the bullock into the field, gave him some grass and then shot him. No stress and the meat was superb.
But then he was a real countryman, who has forgotten several times more about life in Suffolk, than I know now.
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
The full quote is.
If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try and try again.
Strangely, I can’t find the origin on the Internet, although there is a version, which adds “Then Quit” to the end.
But obviously, Prudence’s law officers don’t have quitting in mind, when they consider the case of three accused of a bomb plot to blow up airliners. They are dint to try, try, try and try again until they get the right result.
I don’t look at this with any view of justice, but it strikes me that if they’ve failed twice to get a conviction, that there’s every chance that a third attempt will fail. Especially, as it will be impossible to find a jury that has not heard of the case.
I think now is the time to give up!
The CRB/ISA Farce
It’s not often that those two newspapers at the opposite end of the political spectrum; the Guardian and the Daily Mail, agree on anything. And Esther Ranzten is in the same camp too.
We need to have checks on those that work with children, but are we looking in the wrong place and the wrong way for a start? I don’t have the figures, but aren’t don’t a lot of serious cases involving child abuse and even murder down to the parents or those that live with one of the parents?
So perhaps we should do checks on all parents. And while we’re at it, lets check grandparents, like me! And au-pairs too!
Everybody too, was getting under the collar about this on Nicky Campbell’s phone-in this morning. And probably rightly so, as estimates say that over eleven million of us, will have to be checked.
No-one seems to have done any risk analysis on this. Does anybody look at the statistics of harm that comes to children?
Lets take fire for a start. This bland set of statistics gives the number of fire deaths in 2005. It shows that 200 or so died in domestic fires, of whom a proportion were children. Do we insist on smoke alarms working? No! A fire officer once told me that kids remove the PP9 batteries from them for their toys and game machines.
And then road accidents!
We need a proper holistic strategy that gives maximum protection to everybody and not just children. And it needs to be done through education, training and watchfulness from everybody.
Not by the heavy hand of bureaucracy!
One caller on Nicky Campbell’s show suggested that it was a government money-raising exercise. I couldn’t possibly comment, but eleven millions at upwards of fifty pounds a time is a lot of revenue for Prudence and his cronies.
But perhaps the most chilling example of how this will all fail concerns the case today of Russell Carter. He had been convicted of armed robbery in the US, but this was unknown in the UK and he was able to get jobs that put people in danger. In the end he murdered his boss.
The Oldest Circle of Church Bells in Christendom
This news item on the BBC surprised me. Partly because a complete set of bells had survived from the fifteenth century, but also because they were in Ipswich. Locally, they are called Wolsey’s Bells, as the famous Cardinal would have heard them in his childhood in the town.
They are in the church of St. Lawrence, which has been restored as a community restaurant and gallery.
Wedding Boom at Gretna Green
According to the BBC, the number of weddings today in Gretna Green is more than double the normal level today.
There are rumours that many are members of the emergency services.
Michael and Rochelle
Michael Shields, who was jailed for an attack in Bulgaria has now been released by the Home Secretary using his prerogative. The conviction was always dubious, especially when it involved such a horrendous offence. You just feel that in such cases, everyone should make their best efforts to get the right conviction. I don’t think they did here and preferred the anyone would do to discourage the others. I have not seen the evidence, but because that eminent organisation, Fair Trials International, have been supporting Mr. Shields, the conclusion is most likely just.
Rochelle Adams is a 19 year-old Canadian, who made the mistake of falling in love and getting married to Adam from Wales. In fact, she was just a few months younger than my late wife was when we got married in 1968, We succeeded and were married for 39 years until her untimely death.
A few years ago, Rochelle would have been allowed to stay in the United Kingdom, as is fit and proper for anybody setting out in that noble joining between two people. But because we must protect people against forced marriages, she can’t, and so Adam and Rochelle must start their married life for eighteen months five thousand kilometres apart until she is 21. She should then be able to get a spousal visa. Or one would hope so, but if Prudence’s disreputable bunch are still in power, you could imagine a different result.
Now the Home Secretary has the power under the Forced Marriages Act to allow Rochelle to stay. As the BBC says.
He had the discretion to let Mrs Wallis remain with her husband at their home near Aberystwyth but refused to do so because many other innocent victims may also be caught out by the same rule.
But he remains stubborn and is hiding behind the bureaucratic mess that has been created in the last few years. We need to protect against forced marriages, but there are better ways of doing it. After all one forced marriage case involved a thirty-year-old or so doctor! Did their Act help?
Perhaps though you can see his reasoning. Allow one exception and he’d have to allow many more because of a very badly drafted piece of legislation. And let’s face it Prudence and his cronies have been responsible for a lot of that!
Or could I just be cynical and say there are more Labour votes on Merseyside than in the Aberystwyth area?
The Return of the Elm
Look at the paintings of John Constable and you’ll see lots of English Elms. Sadly most of them are no more as they were devastated by Dutch Elm disease in the 1980s. At our previous house, we had several large specimens and I can remember the day they all came down. We’d tried everything that we could to save them, but you can’t resist nature.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the English Elm.
Ulmus procera Salisb., the English Elm or Atinian Elm was, before the advent of Dutch elm disease, one of the largest and fastest-growing deciduous trees in Europe. A survey of genetic diversity in Spain, Italy and the UK revealed that the English Elms are genetically identical, clones of a single tree, the Atinian Elm once widely used for training vines, and brought to the British Isles by Romans. Thus, the origin of U. procera is widely believed to be Italy, although it is possible the tree hailed from what is now Turkey, where it is still used in the cultivation of raisins.
But, we still have some English Elm in this country and they seem to be resistant to the disease. This seems to be surprising, if they are all genetic identical, so perhaps they are not, or there is another factor.
The Conservation Foundation is now distributing elm saplings to schools, that have been grown from this possibly disease-resistant strain of English Elm.
This is the sort of initiative that we should all support.
Incidentally, some years ago, I met David Bellamy, one of the founders of the Conservation Foundation. One of my companies had won a green award.
He was not as I expected, in that many media experts are full of their own ego and never listen to your point of view. I found him to be very much a listener, who made some extraordinary incisive points, that many would not accept.
He is very much a maverick and we need more thinkers like that. They may not always be right, but challenging them often produces a train of thought and a result, that is infinitely better than a conservative approach.
I always describe myself as scientifically green.
The English Elm project ticks all the boxes, as those children in thirty years time will want to take their kids back to their school to show their children, their elm trees.
Ipswich Film Theatre
The Corn Exchange cinema in Ipswich is to close.
Sad, but it was a place where my late wife and myself spent many happy days watching good films.
The Anonymous Widower 