THE VIEW FROM HEIMBU
JANUARY 2004
So what will the Year of Urd bring us? The signs do not look good. War, hunger and pestilence seems to be looming everywhere, but it was probably always thus. Happy New Year to you all.
Bronwen, my old Redtail hawk, caught her last rabbit on the first hunt of the new year. The chase proved too much for her old heart and damaged lungs, and she and the rabbit died together the way I'm sure she would have wanted to go. I'll never get another hawk like her as she was a one-off, but it has been a privelege to follow her on her hunts and to learn from her.
One of our local gay-bashers has ended up with a bit of a problem with his mates. He was carted into Leeds General Infirmary with a heart attack, and the medics had to remove a vein in his leg to replace a blocked artery in his chest. Unfortunately he had a tattoo on the leg which used to read "I love women", but which now reads "I love men"
The Dear Leader has announched that he will resign if the Hutton Enquiry shows that he told a lie. This begs a few questions. Does he no longer know whether he tells lies or not, or does he think that it is acceptable to tell lies as long as he is not caught out?
It seems that we are on the verge of losing the "War on Terror", but I don't think that al-Qaida et all are the real enemy. Either the American and the British Governments have lost all sense of proportion, or there is something a lot more sinister at foot. Laws coming into force this year give the authorieties in both countries the right to bypass any human rights that you may have left, and if history teach us anything, it does teach us that any Government having absolute power over its citizens, will use that power. The original problem will fade into insignificance compared to the proposed solution.
The American Air Force is bombing East Yorkshire. A 25 kilos bomb has just been dropped on a village down the road from here. Luckily it did not explode or hit anyone; it just made a crater in the parking space of a local animal feed company. Aki has suggested that maybe I should be a little more careful about what I write in the View.
The East Riding of Yorkshire Council has just announced that it has been named the second best-run council in the UK. After picking my chin back up from the sidewalk where it dropped at hearing the news, I had a word with one of my contacts in county hall, and it was all explained to me. A council is regarded as being well-run if it fills in on time all the forms that the Government sends them (and there are evidently a lot of forms). The service, if any, that they offer to the poor buggers who pay their wages is seen as completely irrelevant.
The Crime Statistics for last year was published yesterday, and only in the Orwellian mind of Tony Blair can an 18% rise in violent crime being hailed as a big victory for the forces of law and order. Last year we were told that the rise was due to a new way of recording crime, and this year the rise was explained on the fact that people are now more willing to report crime as they can see that the Government is really cracking down on the violence. Yeah, right.
Another interesting fact coming out by reading the statistics was that the majority of prisoners are inside for motoring offences. While there are surely people that should not be allowed behind the wheel of a car (Erling has suggested that Aki and I are both prime candidates) it surprised me that so many were inside compared to burglars, rapist, murderers and drug dealers. A chat with the local bobby enlightened me. Motorists usually do not fight the rap, and if they do, they are not entitled to Legal Aid, they mostly have funds available so their families are not qualified for receiving help from the Social Services, and it looks good on the statistics. Professional criminals on the other hand are just a pain in the backside and a drain on the public purse, and therefore much better left alone if possible. There is a certain kind of logic in all this, I suppose.
Earlier this year BBC Radio 4 run a program where the listeners could vote on a law that they would like to see on the books, and one of the stalwarts of the Peoples's Party was at hand, promising that he would push through a Private Member's Bill. Unfortunately what people voted for by a great majority was a law that would allow them to defend themselves against intruders in their own home without having to go to jail as a result. Shock, horror. The MP at once washed his hands on the whole affair, stating that he would not condone vigilantism. It's been a long time since an Englishman's home was his castle, it seems.
The East Riding Council has just decided to flog the Picture Playhouse, the oldest chinema in Britain and a Grade 11 listed building, to a pub chain, against the will of the entire Beverley population. It seems that the electorate, both locally and nationally, more and more is seen as an irrelevance by the politicians.
Dr. Harold Shipman, who was at Leeds University at the same time as I was (though I don't particularly remember him) has just topped himself. You may recall that he was doing porridge for killing a possible 240 of his patients so I suppose he had a certain kind of expertise in the field of lifetaking.
There has recently been a battle of words in the House of Commons between MPs from Nottingham and Yorkshire regarding a sign on the M1 welcoming people to Nottingham, the Robin Hood County. Robin Hood was a Yorkshireman, born in the village of Loxley, so the English were told in no certain terms to stop claiming otherwise.
The possibility of a total smoking ban in pubs and restaurants is looming, something which has made the landlord of the Tan Hill Inn, high up in the Pennines, put up a notice behind the bar.
NOTICE
The landlord smokes, his wife smokes, all the staff smoke, most of the locals smoke, those who have made it up the hill need a smoke and when the wind is in the East, the pub smokes. So if you want a smoke-free zone, go outside.
So the Great Escapologist made it again. Tony Blair managed to push through the House of Common the University Top-up bill with a 5 vote majority. Though one might well question the point of this bill. In theory it will give an extra 1 billion pounds to the universities, but it has also been estimated that it will cost around the same to administer. That aside the logic of the whole thing seems suspect in the extreme. Graduates are supposed to start paying when their salaries reach £20,000.- a year. Except if you're working class, in which case you don't have to pay no matter how much money you make. A lot of the top universities survive only because they admit foreign students (in the case of the London School of Economics 70% are non-British) who pay the full whack. What's left for most natives are courses in Media Knowledge, Golf Course Management and Councelling.
I was at University in the UK the last time the People's Party was in power. That time anyone with a decent education were queing up to leave the country, mostly ending up in the US of A. (Anyone remember the Braindrain?) I suspect the same thing will happen now. If you somehow have managed to get a meaningful degree you will find that you are taxed to the eyeballs. It will be very tempting to look for pastures new beyond the reach
Heimbu, like most of the country, is completely snowed under. For the first time since I arrived in the UK I have had to shovel the drive in order to get out of the house.
Twenty-first century Western society seems to have developed 4 distinct types of people, namely the Preditor and the Scavenger and the Prey and the Outsider.
The typical preditors are some top politicians and business people, some criminals and most policemen, while the scavengers largely consist of the average politicians and bureaucrats, quite a few lawyers and the bottomfeeders among the criminal classes. The prey, on who the preditors and the scavengers feed, make up the estimated 90% of the population who seem to be unable to cope on their own in any meaningfull way. And finally there are the individuals who make up the outsider section of society. They don't accept "entitlements", they don't look for "protection" from the very people who would prosecute them, they make their own rules and live or die by them. They are the people we are being told that society must be protected from, because they still live free.
The Hutton Report is finally out, and the Dear Leader has been declared whiter than the driven snow. The whole affair was the fault of the nasty BBC. The Chairman of the Corporation resigned immideately, and as there were calls for more heads to roll the Director-General also fell on his sword.
I might be mistaken, but to me it seems that we are witnessing a major power struggle between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. First Blair was brought to the brink of defeat over the Universities Top-up Fees Bill, with Brown only calling off his hounds in the last moment after having humiliated Blair and completely gutted the Act.
It has also been obvious that the BBC has had a political agenda of getting Blair in the last year or so, after the appontment of a Labour stalwart and Brown ally as Chairman. Now that he has been forced out will Blair have the guts to appont Alistair Campbell in his place? The situation is reminding me more and more of the former Soviet Union.
A Victorian painting of monkeys dressed up as musicians has been removed from a Barnsley art gallery, as it was seen as being demeaning to monkeys. Did some monkey complain?
After the snow we have had the rain and the thaw. York is under water again, but then it usually is around this time of the year.
So I'm off to Japan for a few weeks in February. I've already taken Arthur over to Markus for safe-keeping. The Berkut eagles are laying again; hopefully we'll get more than one surciving chick this year.