April 2001
I've had to say farewell to all thoughts of hunting Bronwen for the foresee-able
future. The whole countryside is closing down as the foot-and-mouth disease
takes hold. The Countryside March has been postponed, and it looks like the
General Election is off for the time being.
As the supermarkets are running low on British meat we are being told that
prices will have to rise by 10 to 20% because all meat now has to be imported.
I seem to remember that we were told last year that we had to pay a premium
on British meat, as imports were much cheaper.
Hard as it is to believe, the animal crackers have now designated fish &
chip shops as legitimate targets. People who eat fish should be killed, according
to this view which sure will go down well here in Yorkshire. Sometimes one wonders
if people should be allowed to run around loose!
Spring has finally sprung, and we are commencing outdoor training again at
Heimbu.
I am bloodied, but unbowed. As I can't hunt, Kiyoko has decided that the time
has finally come to tackle the rose garden here at Heimbu. It evidently has
not been touched for the last 30 years and has reached Sleeping Beauty dimensions.
I have managed to hack through it, but the problem now is how to get rid of
the stuff.
According to Plato the maximum population size in which democracy can function
is 4,000, which is about the size of an average parish. Lately I have been involved
in setting up a local residents association. The 2 main concerns of the local
populace has been to get rid of paper and glass which is not collected by the
council, and a place where young people can congreate without causing a nuisance.
So far we have managed to get the council to put up a bottlebank and a paperbank,
and already we have collected £125,000.- from various sources to build
all-weather soccer and handball pitches with a grafitti-wall and a roofed-over
area. Construction is supposed to start in July.
Never underestimate a minority.
Winston Churchill
Arthur is driving Bronwen up the wall. I feed them around 2 PM, and Arthur
always saves one chick which he clutches in his foot and keeps waving at Bronwen
which has already gobbled down her chicks. She is definetely not amused.
Spring seems to have unsprung again. We have snowdrifts up to the windowsills,
though hopefully this will be the last gasp of winter.
It is not only foot-and-mouth that is kicking us in the teeth; the Icelandic
fishermen are on strike, and Yorkshire has only 2 days supply of fish left for
the chippies. This is getting serious.
If you are not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
The countryside is burning, and the politicians are fiddling with "The
Hunting with Dogs Act."
The Silence of the Lambs so Blair can have his May Election.
Poster in Cumbria where the government is killing off all sheep whether they
are sick or healthy.
The police seems to be sueing for just about anything these days, but an Asian
copper seems to have got it down to a fine art. First he sued his Chief Constable
for racial discrimination, because he was not promoted beyond sergeant rank.
He was awarded £5000.- and promoted to Inspector. Now he is sueing for
for racial discrimination again, because he feels he was only promoted because
he is Asian.
Gardening must be one of the most dangerous hobbies imaginable. I have come
unscathed through a lifetime of Martial Arts, hunting, shooting and military
service, but everytime I get forced to do some some work in the garden I end
up hobbling round with my knees and elbows knackered, not to mention looking
like a hedgehog with thorns sticking out from my whole body.
Tony Blair announced yesterday that vets from now on will be allowed to diagnose
cases of foot and mouth without having to go through MAFF for a second opinion.
It seems some bright spark in London was worried about having to pay compensation
for animals that possibly was not infected. As a a result valuable time was
lost, the disease spread like wildfire, and the taxpayers are picking up the
bill as usual.
While on the subject of foot and mouth there are some odd logic going on here.
The cull is going through to protect Britains meat and live animal export which
is worth about £570 million a year. So far the cost to the taxpayers to
fight the disease has been £480 million plus about £250 million
a week in loss to the tourist industry. All in all, the projected cost will
be more than £9 billion. If instead of slaughtering the livestock was
vaccinated it would take maximum 1 year for the country to be declared desease
free again, possibly as little as 3 months. Also there is a rather strange trade
exchange going on; Britain imports around the same amount of meat as it exports.
Why bother?
The Ministry of Agriculture's definition of the countryside is "land
with no purpose". Maybe they ought to start culling bureaucrats suffering
from foot-in-mouth disease?