There is much talk of duties and rights these days, and most people tend to be more aware of their rights than their duties. This seems to apply to local government, too. For the moment I am involved in a discussion with our local council concerning public conveniences; they want to close them all down to save money; we want to keep them open for rather obvious reasons. Generally when I grew up you popped behind a bush and did your business if you were caught short As I now live in a town I can see that this might cause problems, so a certain curtailing from the authorities of a basic human right is reasonable. But in so doing they take on a duty of care, which ideally should be provided for free so as not to discrimenate against those of us who are economically challenged. It's a funny old world.
It looks like we are going to have a bumper year when it comes to apples here at Heimbu. The birds have already seen off all the cherries, but that's the norm; I still haven't a clue what our cherries taste like.
We've been a bit worried about our resident hedgehog, as we haven't seen her for more than two weeks, but yesterday she showed up with a little hoglet in tow.
Age and deceit will overcome youth and speed. I'm old and deceitful.
A summer of riots all over Northern England culuminated with complete mayhem in Bradford last night. What is going on here? Talking to people I get the distinct feeling that race is not really too much of an issue; it is more the feeling of having no stake in the wider community. This applies equally to all young people in the inner city slums no matter what their racial background is; there simply is no role for them; they have been thrown on the scrapheap while they are still children. The government has given up trying to give them an education; their parents live in a different world; the only time they are noticed is when society feels threatened.
Most people seem to be easily fooled by what looks like a good deal. At the supermarkets you have the buy two, get one free deal for something you wouldn't normally be thinking of buying. Quantity seems more important than quality. Gadgets are deemed more important than true mastery.
The ruling classes no longer rule, and the working classes no longer work.
Bronwen never ceases to amaze me. For various reasons we have not been able to hunt for 3 weeks, but yesterday I had the afternoon off. It was blowing a full gale, and branches were dropping all over our hunting wood; I really should have just packed up and gone home. She powered up to the top of one of the tallest trees, had a good scan around and then dived towards the little pond in the middle of the wood. We'll be having Peking duck for dinner tonight
The Government has changed MAFF - the Department of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries into DEFRA - the Department for the Eredication of Farming and Real Agriculture.
A chap is suing a drug company for £8.5 million claiming treatment for a non-malignant tumour changed his personality. Before taking the drug he was a shy 42-year old virgin whose idea of a wild night out was a game of bridge and a small glass of red wine. After the treatment he went to bed with several women during the week before spending extremely active weekends of sex with his regular girlfriend. I might be missing something here, but what exactly is he complaining about?
As an aside to the recent race riots Bradford Council has gone to great lengths to see that the libraries are stocked with books in Urdu and issued leaflets in the same language for non-English speakers regarding all council services. Evidently several million pounds has been spent on this, but there is a slight hitch; if you have gone to school in Pakistan you are basically fluent in English, if not you can't read Urdu anyway. Oh, well; back to the drawing board, I presume.
The seasons are really completely out of whack. After a week of proper Summer weather suddenly Autumn has arrived; it's cold, with gale-force wind and rain.
We now have a good inkling of why the govrnment is so reluctant to ban tobacco commercials (the odd million pound bung, aside). Phillip Morris has just done research which shows that even though smoking-related sicknesses cost the health services a small fortune, they still save millions on the fact that smokers die on an average 15 years earlier, thus saving on pensions and nursing care, plus the fact that the government is raking in billions in tobacco taxes. Is it a co-insidence that suddenly there is a lot of noise coming from the Parliament that cannabis ought to be legalized (and taxed)? It is supposed to be 4 times more cancer-causing than tobacco.
As of tomorrow the Government are over-riding all local councils regarding footpaths. No matter what they will open. I don't know what is going on in the rest of the country as the media seems to have completely lost interest, but here in Yorkshire the situation is desperate. Strangely enough when the nearest case of foot-and-mouth was more than 100 miles away we were told by MAFF as it then were, that the countryside had to be completely closed, thus laying waste to the local tourist industry. Now as we are looking disaster in the face we are being told by DEFRA as it now is, that it no longer matters. Is this complete incompetance, or is it something even more sinister going on?
The Summer is on again. It was to be expected, though, as the Summer Course is rapidly approaching. In the last 9 years we've had heatwaves at every course.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal Aristotle
The police are looking for a couple of armed robbers that raided a Leeds pub recently. They ignored the cash, but downed a pint of beer each before making their getaway. I know it has been hot recently, but surely it hasn't been that bad.
Communist papers released last week may explain why Bulgaria's army hasn't tried to invade anyone for a long time. A General and a Field Marshall fought a duel in 1971. They fired 37 shots at each other... and every one missed.
The Stav Summer course and the Stav-thing have been and gone. There should be a full report up on the Heimbu web-site shortly. The weather as usual was glorious apart from a couple of showers. A certain Stav master who shall remain un-named, spent the better part of 2 days driving up and down the highways and byways of East Yorkshire looking for the venue (being a master of Stav obviously does nothing for your map-reading skills), but otherwise things went well.