Simon Barnes On The Environment
On the way up to Burnley yesterday, I read my copy of The Times. Saturday’s edition is always graced by the nature notes of Simon Barnes, who is one of my favourite journalists and firmly in the tradition of great reporters.
Yesterday, he talked about the banning of the pesticides, that may be harming bees and finishes his piece with this.
Politics is based on short-termism — what politician ever thinks beyond four or five years?
But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in.
Well said, as ever! But politicians only want power, not legacies.
The Plight Of The Bees
It would appear that bees are not doing well. Over the years, I’ve known a few people who kept bees and we even had a Primary School teacher called Adams, who was a bee enthusiast and sometime keeper. My physio at the Angel, was even given a jar of Stamford Hill honey from an Orthodox Jewish client. Read why honey is kosher here.
I like my honey and I would miss it, if it disappeared, so I’m watching the arguments on whether neonicotinoids should be banned. Many of the arguments are outlined is this article from the BBC in Scotland, about whether if a ban is brought in, Scotland should delay implementation.
It is the classic argument, where commercial interests, which in this case are farmers and pesticide manufacturers are arguing against the emotions of various lobby groups.
We seem to be getting a lot of arguments like this these days, with fracking, nuclear power, waste incinerators and HS2 producing similar stands-off.
With the bees and neonicotinoids, there is a solution and that is research, performed scientifically over a period of years. But I suspect both sides of the argument, would probably not want to wait for any conclusions and then if it was against their views, they wouldn’t accept it anyway.
Janice Turner in the Times last week, published an article entitled, Hectoring won’t persuade the MMR-deniers. The title alone says it all, about those who are against MMR.
So this argument about bees and neonicotinoids, will buzz on for years.
The Anonymous Widower 