Gordon Brown and the Racist Housing Policy

As my regular reader will know, I have a bee in my bonnet about housing. Frequently over the past fifteen years or more, the media has reported, without ever checking the facts, that there is a shortage of housing. When what they should have been reporting was that there is a shortage of affordable housing. This misleading reporting has lead to house prices becoming extremely over inflated and was the fuel that feed the growth in credit and the inevitable banking crash. However, this is not a posting about the Credit Crunch, but about housing.

Back in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Prime minister, her administration started selling off the social housing stock. Had this been at the market price and had the local authorities then been able to use the monies to build more accommodation then this policy could have been acceptable. But the properties were sold to the tenants for discounts of up to sixty percent and the councils were not allowed to use the funds from these sales to build more houses. Even though the revenues from the sales meant that councils would only be able to build one home for every three sold.

This policy of selling off the public housing stock was, in part, a way of manipulating the electoral system. As the thinking was that people who live in council houses would be more inclined to vote Labour. Also as there were substantial discounts, bribes, and the Labour party initially were determined to reverse the policy if elected, this made it less likely that traditional labour voters would vote to loose a cash hand out like that.

For those lucky enough to have been able to be living in a council house, or to have been allocated a council property, many did make money from this policy. However, it also greatly diminished the social housing stock to the point that only a very few people in the most desperate need of social housing ever get offered local authority housing.

When in 1997 Labour were finally re-elected, this policy of selling off social housing was not reversed. As for those that had been lucky in the housing lottery, had gained and in some cases, these people had moved up the financial social ladder too. A few had even become rich from this too.

Therefore Labour kept the policy in place as it was seen as a way of raising people out of poverty. While a laudable aim, the problem was all the really good properties were gone, about four million homes, and there was a waiting list of four million people wanting and needing social housing.

Had there been at least some building of replacement social housing stock during the time when all these homes were sold off cheaply, then the waiting list for social housing would have been lower, but that did not happen. One of the side effects of this, was to prevent people from taking positions as Nurses, Social Workers and Teachers, creating not just holes in public services but exacerbated many of the social problems we have in our society today.

It is the announcement today, Monday, by the government that councils will now be offering social housing based upon a link to the area that has triggered this posting. As I heard the news on the radio, my reaction was “what housing” as most local authorities just do not have the housing stock to rent. What they do have is not of good quality.

Then I realised that what was being meant by this announcement was social housing was to go to white people.

In the European elections two members of the BNP (The Nazi British Nationalist Party) were elected. Partly because there is a perception that immigrants get allocated houses ahead of the indigenous population. Even though this is untrue, research has shown this to be untrue, but it is part of the lies of hate that the racists put out.

By Gordon Brown pandering to the propaganda of the racists he is reinforcing the assumption that immigrants have been getting priority over British people. Additionally as there are not the homes available to allocate, nor the money to build them, this announcement will only strengthen these racist extremists.

This really is a desperate act that shows very poor political judgement by Gordon Brown. Ever since the 1997 Labour victory, Gordon Brown has been desperate for power and to be Prime minister. Two years ago he became PM without any election. Now in a desperate attempt to win back the racist working class, he is enacting racist policies.

It will fail, as this will enable the racists to say they were right that immigrants were getting the houses. And will increase the votes they get, if we ever get the election we need.

Personally I think that Gordon Brown must go. Even though a conservative government is distasteful and that is likely to be the next administration, but GB has been a disaster for this country and the economy.

Not least because even back in 1997 there was a clear need for replacement of the social housing stock that had been sold off as bribes to the tenants. But Gordon as chancellor had created the economic housing bubble via cheap and expanded credit. Solve the housing problem by letting everyone buy their own house, may seem like a good idea, but not everyone could buy. And by constantly talking about a shortage of housing, he and the rest of the government were pushing up house prices. Well with all their second homes funded by the tax payers it was in their interest to see prices boom.

The problem was that the people that needed social housing are still there and still in need of social housing. As well as having been left behind by the economic boom, they are the people suffering most from the economic bust. Oh but Gordon brown had ended Boom and Bust, and cording to Gordon its all Americas fault. The disenfranchised poor don't believe that any more than the rest of us. And when the racists come along with their scapegoats, is it any wonder that the racists get believed? Especially when its clear that the politicians in government have been lying and cheating all the way to the expenses office.

What is so stupid about our current situation here in Britain is; the money that was used to bail out the banks could have fully solved two of our major problems. That of climate change by building a series of Geo thermal power stations and the social housing crisis for less. Then we would have zero carbon emissions and no longer be subject to the fluctuations of fossil fuel prices. And had we built the social housing needed, then we would not have had the house price bubble that caused the collapse of the banks.

As an economist Gordon Brown has been a disaster for this country, as a leader whatever credibility he had disappeared when he instructed councils to allocate housing in a discriminatory manner.

On all important matters, Gordon has got it wrong. For a man that has craved power for so long, in the short time that he has had that power, he has done nothing but abuse it and condemn the British people to a dismal future.

Media and the Environment

As I have mentioned here before, I access my news and information from many sources. As simply here in Britain the mainstream media just do not cover the real issues properly. Even the Media sources that I know I can trust will waste time on trivial items that are more to do with celebrity or at best the politicians rather than the politics. Most of the Newspapers here are either so right wing that they would make The Clan blush, or so trashy that unless the shenanigans of c list well known people (that I have never heard of) is news loose the right to be called newspapers.

Therefore, I acquire my news from podcasts via radio stations from across the globe. That enables me to discover what is really happening in the world without the bias that nations and politics place upon the news.

Even when the media covers a serious issue, they frequently make stories far more dramatic than they really are. A recent example was the outbreak of Swine Flu, the H1N1 Influenza. Where the media was creating a panic and much of the reporting was seriously irrational. Frequently too most stories are over simplified. When a complex issue may need good analysis to aid understanding, the media will just not give the time to a topic. A case in point is the recent European Elections. Where the media concentrated upon the extremist parties and absolutely nothing appeared about the issues.

If we take the issue of Fishing and Fishery policy, here the print media ignore the damage the British fishing fleet has done and blame our European neighbours for the fact that fish stocks are non existent. While Europe as a whole is the worst offender globally for over fishing, Britain is part of Europe and part of the problem. But if you followed what the media says then the “blame” is placed on boats from Spain or France. Yet even before Britain joined the European Community, we had devastated our own fish stocks and sent Naval gun boats to protect trawlers who were taking the fish from Iceland.

The problem has been that partitions have consistently ignored the science regarding fish stocks and fish populations. Each state in Europe has fought to gain a greater share of the pie, rather than safeguard the long term future of the fishing industry.

This is a topic that I have to seek out the story as the mainstream media just fails to report on the topic. One of the Podcast Channels I subscribe to is Green TV, an information channel from the United Nations Environment Programme. On this was a film from Greenpeace that shows just how much damage industrial fishing is doing.

I fully understand that the communities that rely on fish and fishing are struggling to survive, but the reality is that there will be no fishing industry if we continue raping the seas. This is one problem that we can solve and do so simply. We need to allow fish stocks to recover. There will be some short term pain but it will ensure that we have healthy seas in the future.

In America, especially off the coast of Alaska, fishing is sustainable well regulated and well managed. So there are examples where best practice is working. Perhaps if the mainstream media diverted even a small amount of time or space to covering issues that really mattered, we would be better informed and able make the wise choices we need for a sustainable future.

As someone deeply interested, and deeply concerned, I have to search out the information. What I can not understand is why contemporary media is so resistant to investigating and reporting real stories and issues. It is not surprising that people are so ill informed about the real dangers that we face.

Painted Lady Butterflies

Can you remember the first film you saw at the Cinema? I can it was Bambi and my Grandmother too me and the siblings to the movie theatre. It was in this same theatre a few years latter that I was captivated by a film about Monarch Butterflies, I was nine or ten. So that was the start of my fascination with them.

As I grew older I learned more about their remarkable migration journey and that the adults that arrive in the lower forty eight, are not the same adults that overwintered in Mexico. They will have several breeding cycles on the way, migrating to the lush milkweed the larvae feed on as spring progresses.

As I educated myself about the Butterflies that we have in Britain, I discovered that there are species in Europe that have a similar remarkable habit of going through several short life cycles to enable the insects to cover the thousands of miles that they travel from Africa to Europe.

While birds regularly make that remarkable migration, and many of the summer birds in Britain are African birds. But for butterflies to make that journey really does stretch the mind. Also while bird migration is relatively well understood, I have guide books on birds that are twenty and thirty years old that show that no one knew exactly where some of these birds went in winter.

With butterflies like the Painted Lady it has only been in the last few years that it has been discovered that this butterfly make a journey that is remarkably similar to the Monarch.

This year though something even more remarkable has happened. As extraordinary numbers of Painted Lady Butterflies have migrated to Britain this year, about a million of them. As I am up in the north east of England I was unable to witness the migration of them on the south coast were people were reporting clouds of thousands at I time flying onto the shore, having seen the film of the Monarchs, I can paint that image in my minds eye.

However, as this has been the first time in living memory that the Painted Lady Butterflies have migrated in such numbers to Britain gives scientists the unique opportunity to learn more about their return migration to Africa. While in previous years when the insects were only coming as far as central Europe, the final brood of the year would produce adults that are slightly larger with a different morphology to make the journey back in a single flight. Now even making that journey from central Europe sounds impossible. While small birds can and do travel that far, a fragile insect making such a flight sounds impossible. But that is what they do, or is it? Researchers want to discover if the Painted Lady breeds on the way south so that as happens with Monarchs, the Butterflies seen in Europe are not the same ones that arrive in Africa.

The point is no one knows for sure, so if this is discovered this year then I will report back. But even so it is just a remarkable story.

Wolverine

While a Web Log is a very personal writing form, part diary and part an opinion column, not dissimilar to the columns that appear in newspapers. However, unlike a newspaper column it can be more like a conversation. While I am not always able to respond to comments, I do always read them. And in the case of the Polecat question, this conversation can generate new postings.

Following on from this question regarding the family Mustela, I carried out a bit more research as simply you folks, the three readers and a cat that read my nonsense, have triggered my curiosity. In looking further into the members of the Mustela family and their allies across the ocean, I discovered that in Colorado that Wolverines have been found in the state after an absence of ninety years.

As well as being a conversation success that I hope interests you folks too, I think you should all pat yourselves on the back, as long as you don't put your shoulder out trying to do that, as I may not have discovered this bit of good news had I not left my American friends confused.

On a similar note of conversation success, and I know that I am a Red Kite Bore, this year in Britain the number of Red Kites has exceeded two thousand. As fifteen to twenty years ago the Red Kite was on the verge of extinction here, with only one breeding female left, it shows just how worthwhile the conservation effort has been.

It shows that positive action can provide a space for wildlife in our lives. I personally get a thrill every time I see the Red Kites, and I know that I am lucky as I see them nearly every day, it is reassuring to know that the conservation efforts have been successful.

While I really do want to try and give as much good news as I can here, there are times when bad news can not be ignored. Locally, in a disused Quarry near Sunderland there was a nesting Peregrine Falcon nesting. However at the end of May it was discovered that the female and three chicks were dead. They had been poisoned. Persecution of raptors is a major problem in some parts of Britain, as I have reported here before. While the police and the RSPB are investigating this incident, I can guarantee that the culprit will be a Pigeon fancier.

This for me, is a personal loss, as I went to the Quarry this week in the hope of filming the Birds. I had not tried to film the Falcon previously, even though I had seen it as simply I did not want to disturb the bird.

Again the Peregrine Falcon is a bird whose numbers are recovering after suffering from pesticide pollution as well as persecution Therefore this loss will impact the population for years to come.

The day after going down to try and film the Falcon, on the radio was news that an Egg collector had been arrested with his collection of over six hundred eggs confiscated. Egg collecting is Illegal here in Britain.

It is an activity that I can not understand, as I would prefer to see the bird than have an egg of a species that is endangered. By having the eggs of endangered species it would only make me feel guilty, especially if I heard that the species had become extinct. There are so many aspects of human behaviour that I do not understand.


The Picture is the copyright of; WCS (Wildlife Conservation Service) Yellowstone Wolverine Programme.

A Night in The Wood

There are days when you can set out in the hope of seeing an aspect of the natural world and you are blessed with seeing something magical. But having had two very good days of viewing birds, I set out in the hope of seeing and filming the Badger Cubs.

As Summer has arrived the woodland canopy has closed over and I knew I would need to use Infra-red even before the sun was fully set. Also I took two Cameras with me, one that I could leave running on a tripod the other I would have to hand hold, but it meant I could watch two entrances at once. With all the batteries fully charged I was carrying many more kilos extra weight and in the hot summer sun of the early evening and an up hill hike of a couple of miles, I found myself leaking profusely.

I had taken this possibility into account and I was there two hours before I needed to be. I used that time to look around the periphery of the sett and was delighted to see some prints of a very small Deer. While the assumption could be reasonably made that it was a fawn, as here in Britain we have Muntjac Deer spreading, it is more likely to have been this diminutive Deer than a Fawn.

I also went to explore a location where I had seen signs of a Roe Deer had been returning to, a sure sign that there was a Fawn there. But at that time there were a few dog walkers about and I wanted to avoid creating a scent trail to this young Deer. Especially as one of the dogs goes silly and comes chasing after me so she can slobber me silly. Therefore as she would follow wherever my scent lead it was best that I avoided leading predators to the fawn. Sometimes it is better to not try and film or photograph an animal if in doing so it will cause a disturbance.

While the fawn was no longer there, there was a clear depression in the herbaceous undergrowth where the young deer had been laying as well as a path that the mother had been using. It is possible that the Deer were very close still, but I also found tracks from an off road motorbike, so it is equally possible that the Deer have moved far from that disturbance.

I also found where someone had been “Rabbiting”. Trees had been cut down to access the warren. These trees were sycamore, and had been coppiced rather than killed, It is just that these disturbances can effect the Badgers too. Further it should be pointed out that there was no evidence that the rabbit hunter was acting unlawfully, as the person or persons may have the permission of the landowner.

When I set up at the sett, with twenty five minutes before I could expect the Badgers to start to emerge. Even though I had been sweating, the topography of the location of the sett meant that the breeze was taking my scent away from the sett. There was evidence of fresh digging too, in the last couple of days, so it was likely that I would see the Badgers. The question was would I see the cubs?

I will not drag this out I did not see the cubs nor the Badgers. I stayed there for hours until three thirty in the morning. I could hear Deer off to my right but not see them, and off to my left I could hear a dog fox, but out of my line of sight. I also had the delight of hearing a Wood warbler singing, and I switched on the video camera and filmed the sett entrance with the hope of recording the song. As I was nearing my time there, I could also hear a Barn Owl, and a Tawny Owl. I did consider trying to record them too, but they were to distant for the microphone to pick the sounds up clearly. I do sometimes use a parabolic microphone, but I did not have that with me. It is to bulky and fragile to carry all the time.

At about an hour before I left low clouds started to creep into and caress the wood. This had the effect of deadening sounds, and it makes the sounds seem much more alien too. While over the years I have begun to recognise sounds and let them paint a picture of the animal activity around me, in a mist the distortion makes the wood sound far more sinister. As this was a light mist there was still reasonable visibility. If working in the a dark misty wood can ever be that.

Picking my way back in the dark is less easy here than in my local wood, as the trees reach across the track more and are not straight. I could use a torch but as this could disturb the mammals, I prefer to avoid this if I can. As with the mist deadening sounds for me it can also aid me in getting closer to animals going about their lives too. It was the slowest two miles I have ever walked, and while I did hear other movements, I just could not see anything even with the IR on the camera to aid me. Out of the wood after the last bus, I had a further mile to walk and up hill too. I was exhausted very thirsty and glad that I had a pan of soup ready to reheat when I got home.

Now with a hot cup of tea, beside me and a day in bed, the lazy Wood Mouse that I am, I can relax and enjoy having heard the wildlife even if I did not seen much of it.

A Heron of a Day

While there is another topic that I may be making a posting here about in the future regarding yesterdays personal events, I want to concentrate on what happened in the latter part of the day here.

I wanted to get out and view some wildlife as no matter how difficult the day has been, watching wildlife always help lift my spirits. So I headed off to one of the public hides that I have access to.

It was getting late, early evening, and I took the bus to the hide. I always get off at the wrong stop, and have to walk further than I need to. But as I was walking along the road from the wrong stop to the turning I needed to access the observing site, I startled a Squirrel who was racing along the fence that skirts the site. I was less than three feet from the squirrel. It is not the first time that something like this has happened, but it is always a delightful surprise when it does happen.

As I had packed the camera in my backpack and was was lugging the tripod with binoculars around my neck I looked like a typical Birder. As I turned the corner to make my way to the hide, I was met by a stranger who told me that if I was looking for Red Kites I should go to a nearby village. As the Red Kites were there and low in the sky. As the grass on the playing fields that is allowed to grow as meadows at this time of year, had just been cut, this did not surprise me as it would have uncovered many small mammals and frogs, raptor food basically. But I wanted to head else where, but I thanked the person for the information.

It is one of the aspects of wildlife watching that really helps give faith in the human race is the willingness of many to share observations. I headed down to the hide, I planned on setting up the equipment on the path leading up to the hide so that if there was anything there when I arrived I could be ready to film straight away. As I was approaching the hide I spotted a raptor, a Sparrow hawk flying off into the trees. So to avoid missing anything like that again, I set up the camera assembly. It has taken time to get the correct combination of equipment right but even assembled, it is a portable set up.

So when I arrived at the hide and spotted a Water Rail I would have filmed it through the glass of the flaps in the hides portals but the sun was directly on the glass and it would have been the reflection I filmed and not the bird. But opening the portal does create sound and the bird moved deeper into the reeds and out of view. So often a fleeting glimpse is all you get and while this is all part of the watching experience it is rubbish for filming. Even taking stills is possible with a brief view, filming a moving image requires a sustained viewing.

Therefore I contented myself with filming a Moorhen. While it is not a rare bird, I still like to film and observe them as occasionally you can pick up aspects of behaviour that aids understanding of the bird.

I had been alone when I arrived but as I was watching the Moorhen, a couple arrived. It is a public hide and anyone that has permission to come in are welcome. While I have had difficulties with chatter boxes in the past, there was no problem here. In fact they were clearly trying to be extra quiet. I explained that only if I am trying to record a song or call can chat be a problem. Again we were able to exchange information, and share the experience of watching a pair of Grey Heron that appeared to fish.

What made this couple remarkable was that she was the photographer. So often it is the male that is the photographer while the woman acts as his spotter. Therefore it was great to see that in this case the roles were reversed. I got about ten minutes good footage of the Herons. I stopped filming as I wanted to see what else would turn up. I missed getting a sequence of a Reed Bunting that flew to the base of the reeds. But it disappeared from view before I could focus.

As on Tuesday I had been a meal for half a million sanguinatarians, midges, it was pleasant not to be feeding all these blood feeders. The Hide offers a degree of protection from this, and I was able to while away a about half an hour watching not much with this couple. They decided to leave, I have that effect on people. I suggested to the woman that she keep her camera out as she left as there was a good chance of seeing a male Pheasant who I have seen there on the last three occasions I have been there, I don't know if she saw the bird, but it was worth her being ready.

I had the hide to myself for a while and the Grey Heron returned. Perched on a stake in the middle of the pond, it sat and groomed itself. I was able to watch and film for a good long while. Other people came and went, but I stayed and continued to watch and film the Heron. It is an infrequent opportunity to be able to watch and film any animal or bird in such a sustained manner.

At a distance I saw a Sparrow Hawk, at the third of mile distance I mistook it for a Red Kite at first, and one of the other Birders said that it was a Sparrow Hawk. Well we all make mistakes. When this chap left another that had overheard his tone of correction, said that at that distance he would have thought it was a Kite too. I added that we are lucky to live in a place where we can see more than one rare bird and get confused.

I was there for three hours and when I left the Heron was still there. I will be returning soon to, as when I left I saw a Tawny Owl fly over with a mouse or a vole in its talons. While as a reserve it is there to enhance habitat and biodiversity, for me this is a real gem that I will get to know better. As long as I can remember the right bus stop to get off at.

Talking of bus stops as I was going home, tired, thirsty and hungry but happy, I approached the stop and there was a young woman there playing with her cellphone, as young people do. As my tread was as quite as I try to have when approaching wildlife, she jumped when she realised I was at the stop. We joked about it and I said perhaps I need to wear a bell or something to warn normal folks of my approach.

While she was obviously going out clubbing or doing whatever young people do these days, she too had an interest in wildlife too. But she admitted that if she went Birding or such like she would be ridiculed by her peers. I told her that she should do what she felt was right and friends who ridicule her interests, if done in a nasty way, don't sound like real friends to me. I think she wanted to talk more, but her bus arrived. I hope that she finds the confidence to do what she wants and not just follow the cynical crowd

A guide to Mustelalids

As I have left two American Cousins Befuddled by talking about Polecats, I thought I would show what the members of the European Weasel Family look like.

The pictures are not mine but come from Arkive and as they are not my images they may not be reproduced. But the site is a wonderful one and well worth several visits. Pitty I don't get paid for that shameless plug!

Weasels, Stoats and Polecat are all members of the Mustela family, along with Badgers and the American Skunk. All have anal scent glands that they use to mark their territory and each other. The American Skunk has modified glands that it uses as a defence that deodorant has no effect on, apparently. Why Americans called the skunk Polecat beats me, so if anyone does know I am interested to know.

As you can see from the picture, it looks more like a Raccoon with its mask.



The Stoat is the larger of the two common weasels and can always be identified by the black tip to the tail.



The Weasel is smaller about half the size of a Stoat, and has a tail the same colour as the main body fur.



So if I have not totally confused my American readers then I have failed in my task here.

Wood Sandpiper

I had a frustrating start to the day. I have been watching a Little Owl, I needed to work out where it was perching so I could place the camera pre focused and ready to film when and if the bird arrived. I checked the equipment before leaving home at four in the morning and set up. As a day flying Owl, and a small one, twenty three centimetres high (that's Eight to nine Inches), the camera needed to be close. Even with a decent zoom, to get a decent portrait I needed to have the camera seven metres closer than the cover I had to hide myself in. While the bird is not disturbed by the Farmer on whose land the bird is utilising, it is disturbed by other humans, and this Wood Mouse.

So I waited for five and half hours and finally the owl turned up. I pressed the record button on the remote control and I should have filmed some great footage. Not only it perching on one of the posts it uses, but returning three times with beetles and feeding. Even with the long life Battery on the Camera, it reached the point where even this was likely to have exhausted. Even knowing that was likely, I kept stopping and starting the recording when the bird returned. I had to wait until the bird moved off to finally retrieve the camera. So it was half eleven before I was able to take the camera home, and connected to the mains charger, I started to review the footage. Not a thing had recorded. It turned out that the batteries in the remote controller had died. So while I personally got some great views, I had got nothing on tape.

While this was a disappointment, I still had other things to do. Not least was a trip into Newcastle. I used the opportunity to get some veg from Grainger Market as well as some more of the specialist coffees I indulge myself with. I am pleased to see that many shops are now not just handing out plastic bags like sweets. However, this did cause me a problem as I also bought some marrow bones. While I had taken my own cloth bag as well, I needed a plastic bag to use as a barrier bag to stop cross contamination. So while part of the lesson has been learnt, there needs to be some common sense applied to this too.

On the way home I was aware that I had started to emit an odour of stale sweat. Perhaps it is because of my watching, or trying to, mammals that I am aware of just how much humans can smell. Therefore I sat well away from anyone as I did not want to offend anyone. Then a couple of stops latter someone else got on and as the air moved through the open windows on the bus my nose was assaulted by the smell not of stale sweat but something that her best friend should have told her. She must have been aware of this as she got out a deodorant in an attempt to mask this. It was one of the few times that I wished the journey was not a hour long. I did see three Red Kites on the journey home though.

While it was late afternoon before I got back home, I went for a wash before I did anything else. Much to the cats disgust as she wanted to be fed. I told her I had fed her last week. Then I set about making some stock from the marrow bones and prepare the braising steak for a slow cook in wine. While I may not get to the pub that often, my food could get me just as merry!

With my dinner slowly cooking in the oven, I went down to the river to see what was about. I got some reasonably good footage of Pied Wagtails and Grey Wagtails. I also saw Dippers, but the little buggers would not cooperate to become stars of You Tube.

As I was on the bridge filming, this old chap came along with his dog. His opening greeting was that I would never see otters here. As it is now summer I am aware that is true, but I keep my eyes open as the unexpected can happen. Well after we had been talking for about half an hour, well he was doing most of the talking, I spotted a small trout in the river almost under the bridge. I pointed this out to him. As we were looking a Dog Otter grabbed the trout. A couple of expletives latter, we lost sight of the mammal. I spent the next hour scanning the river, looking under the bridge too, but I could not find him.

Disappointed not to have found the otter again I made my way to where the Sand Martins are nesting, and tried to film them coming and going, I think I had some success there. I also tried to film the trout who were leaping. While I think I filmed some splashes, I will need to load the footage onto the computer and slow the footage down to see if I actually caught the Trout. To add to the frustrations of the day, I had a trout rising and leaping six feet from where I was on the bank. I tried to film this one and for half an hour I tried to follow the flies that the trout was feeding on. But not once did it rise. As this requires a great deal of concentration, I took a break to stretch my legs. That trout must have known as the moment I moved, it jumped twice in as many minutes.

I really thought that it was time to call it a day. So I was walking along the river towards the bus stop. It is not that far home from there, a mile no more, but up hill, five hundred feet of elevation. When there as the bus stop and route terminus, I heard a strange call. I spotted the bird that was calling and it was a plover type. I stopped and filmed it, recording the call too, this was going to be helpful as I was confused by what I was seeing. It looked like a sandpiper but the legs looked the wrong colour, they were paler than I would have expected. So I wondered if it was a Greenshank, but it was to small. I was able to film for several minutes and got some great footage, but I really could not make a positive identification. When the bus arrived I still had time to film a bit more as I wanted to be sure I got clear footage of the details needed for identification.

As the bus driver was interested we talked for a bit too and had I had time I could have filmed a sub adult Grey wagtail that appeared right by the bus stand.

After a nice meal, coffee and the regulation cuddle from the cat, I finally was able to look at the tape and with a field guide in hand, I realised why I could not identify the bird as it is genuinely rare. A wood Sandpiper.

While the day has been full of minor frustrations, it ended with a real delight.

Common Toad

While sitting at my computer, I spotted a small shape just under my back gate. As I watched I saw movement. A quick dash down stairs, get the camera and IR light ready but it was no longer by the gate. Outside to check, and there he was a Common Toad.

I spent ten minutes filming him. While I have not checked the footage yet, I may have caught him grabbing an insect to feed on. If I did not already have a reputation, then standing around in the dark in the road filming a toad cross the road would give me one.

The New Speaker

I am sorry to bore my overseas reader about British politics, but today was the election by the members of parliament of a new speaker. As my British reader will know and I will remind the overseas reader, unless you have both fallen asleep, the the old Speaker was forced out over the expenses scandal. Presumably because he did not save them from making all these inflated and false claims. As the house of commons still works on eighteenth century rules, I can only guess that was why they wanted him out. It couldn't be that he was just plain incompetent?

Anyway, this morning there were headlines saying that the Labour party, the governing party were trying to do a “stitch up” where a former minister would be elected. Now personally I could not see that happening, and I being sarcastic here, not with that candidate. But I suspect that is what has happened with the person who has been elected.

While in many respects who becomes speaker is a real side issue, the fact that John Bercow was reviled to have changed the designation of his second home to avoid capital gains tax on a three hundred thousand pound gain, shows that he is just untrustworthy as the rest of them.

Overfishing and Fish Farming

When I was a child and living in London the local Fish and Chip shop had a wide range of fish on the menu, Cod, Skate and Place were normally there. As I was a vegetarian for twenty five years I never noticed that Fish and Chip shops stopped using all but Cod.

When I was vegetarian it was the one flesh food that I did miss, that and Duck. While I may have missed the narrowing of the fish menu that the majority of people were eating, my environmental instincts were fully aware of the raping of the seas that was going on.

While there are many aspects of environmental policy where Europe is a world leader, in Fishing and marine policy Europe is the worst offender. Having depleted our stocks to the point where they have collapsed, European boats sail to international waters across the planet and hover up the fish that is left.

Again going back to my childhood the Russian “Factory Ships” were being blamed for the depletion of fish stocks. When the reality was that British and European fishing boats were depleting the stocks via overfishing. Even now European fisheries policy is an incomprehensible madness. Where there is a quota system in place, and any fishing boat catching more than there quota of a species has to dump the dead and dying fish overboard. Therefore there is an known volume of fish that is killed over and above the tonnage that is deemed, by the politicians, to be sustainable.

The main difficulty is that the politicos are trying to preserve the fishing industries of the various member states, while failing to grasp the nettle that will ensure there are fish to maintain the industry at all.

I have spoken to retired fishermen who acknowledge that they were taking far more fish than was sustainable. Even in Economic terms back in the 1970s and 80s so much fish was being landed that prices were depressed. Basic supply and demand, so the fishermen just caught even more fish. This had the effect of speeding the collapse of the fish populations.

Scientists are now predicting that in forty years there will be no fish left for us humans to fish. That is simply based upon the rate of overfishing that exists already. Add into that the effects of acidification of the oceans and the imbalances of the food chain that overfishing is causing then the loss of fish in the sea could happen much sooner. I have heard credible estimates that could see the collapse of all fish stocks in ten to fifteen years.

Overfishing is not something new. While this bit may seem that I have gone off at a tangent, it illustrates the point perfectly. On television in Britain there is a genealogy programme called Who do you think you are. This takes well known people and helps them trace their family history. In one programme a local actor had his family history traced and one of his ancestors had owned and run a fish factory in North Shields. Yet later family members in the early twentieth century had apparently run the business into the ground. However the reality was, as a result of the research, that the Herring stocks that the business relied upon were declining back then and that was why the business shrank and finally closed down.

There really is a head in the sand attitude to this problem of overfishing and the decline of the fishing fleet. North Shields the local fishing port, still has a few boats there, but when you talk to the fishermen they will always tell you just how many more boats there used to be. Yet the fishermen never seem to make the link between the fewer boats, the smaller catches and the decline in fish stocks. They will tell you that they need more quota, but greater quota will not add fish to the sea. The greatest difficulty to overcome is the mindset that goes for the short term gain of high profits now rather than the long term future of the industry.

The whole of human history and the spread of humans across the planet the coast and fishing has been integral to our success as a species. Therefore, it is likely that the loss of all the fish will effect the ability of the human species to survive.

I have frequently spoken of the need for a new economic model to ensure that we keep the balance of our human needs now to the needs of future generations. It really does perplex me that humans can not understand the need to work with the natural world and natural systems rather than fighting them. After all as every gardener knows you do not pull up the whole tomato plant to harvest the tomatoes. So why take all the fish from the sea if you want fish tomorrow?

While I am not easily shocked by the stupidity of human ideas, the proposal by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee to resolve the problem of overfishing, really does take the biscuit. (American translation: Cookies) To resolve the problem of overfishing is to increase fish farming.

What do they think the Farmed Fish feed on? Too grow a ton of farmed fish requires two tons of wild caught fish. So the way to preserve the fish in the sea is to keep catching fish but feed them to farmed fish! Did someone switch off the thought processes?

Again this may seem that I am going off at a tangent, but when I moved to the village here three years ago, when BT (British Telecommunications) came to affix the phone line. They own the physical infrastructure of the telecommunications network. The engineer told me that BT had nearly sold off the physical infrastructure, but had changed their minds when there was a clamour of businesses wanting to buy the asset. The point being that BT did not and still do not understand the value of that asset. The problem being that graduates from universities and business schools are all taught to think about maximising short term returns from an asset but not to develop the skills to plan for the long term. As these people saturate the management of businesses like BT and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee, there is a lack of understanding about sustaining and growing a process in a way that ensures long term viability.

In the case of BT they failed to understand the investments and improvements that were needed ten to fifteen years ago, and BT became wedded to the century old technology of twin copper wires. Yet in Asia they have gone for fibre optic technology. Therefore as a nation Britain has lost the digital race, on the back of short term profits. It is the same philosophy that caused the American automotive industry to collapse.

With fishing the technology that has enabled fishing boats to harvest greater and greater tonnages of fish, a hundred tons plus per net is not uncommon. It makes profits yes, but only until the fish has gone. Farming fish may seem like a good idea but by not thinking through the whole system, it will only speed up the collapse of all fish species and the whole food chain of the oceans.

If I were a teacher giving out report cards on the some of these committees and businesses then I could use a stamp that just said “Must Try Harder”

Its A Strange World

After dealing with my difficulties with the English language, and tucking in my Freudian slip away too, I headed out across the woods. I wanted to get to a point that is on the far side of the wood where I have been leaving titbits for the Red Kites and where I have regularly been seeing a Kestrel.

But it was the walk through the woods that was amusing. I had only just entered the woods when I saw one of the blokes from the village who used to regularly boast about all he saw in the woods. While I have no problem with a little friendly competition, when I first came to the village it really did seem as though everyone was seeing so much but were also rather aggressive about it, almost like they were staking a claim of ownership on the forest. Personally its a place to be shared, and while I would never expect them to disclose the locations of Setts, Dens, Lairs and Nests there was a real attitude problem I had to overcome. Now this individual always claimed to be regularly filming the wildlife, just as I was trying to do. But I never saw him with a camera, and he was frequently drunk and does spend most of the day in the pubs. While it was few months ago now, I had just been out filming something, I think it was insects and encountered him and I showed him the footage. Well since then, I have not suffered the same confrontational attitude from this disparate group of men. On passing and greeting him he said your out wildlifing again, as though he should be surprised. Now to me, I find it surprising that so many of the supposedly dedicated wildlife watchers spend so much time in the pub.

Now I have to jump forward a little bit as while I was sitting and waiting for the Red Kites, I spotted another villager who does get out watching the wildlife rather than just talks about it. As he was at risk of walking into the shot that I had so carefully set up, I broke my cover and called him over to my hide. He too had spotted the Red Kites coming in and was happy to try and watch from my better vantage point. It looked as though all my efforts were going to pay off, but a dog walker appeared and the dog started trying to chase off the Kite. The Kite moved off and we chatted to the dog walker who was alarmed that her dog could have injured the Kite had it not flown off. But was also delighted to have been so close to the Red Kite, she was ten or fifteen feet from the bird as it aborted a food snatch.

Well better luck next time will have to remain my philosophy. That had not been the only abortive attempt where others out in the countryside had appeared at the wrong moment today, but it was the most dramatic. While I can get disgruntled by inconsiderate people (adults) in public hides, or at a well known viewing spot, I see these sorts of disruptions are part of the filming or watching experience. As the countryside has to be for everybody.

Returning to the other villager, after having missed filming the Kite snatching prey from the ground, we chatted for a while. We were both hoping to see the kite return too. But he said something that I found extraordinary; that I had done more to get the villagers using the woods than anyone else ever did. I was really confused by this and explained what he meant.

My longest and most loyal reader, I think is still the only one, may remember that when I first moved to the village and was first exploring the woods I was told that there were Wild Bore in the Wood. Rather than being frightened by this I went looking for signs, tracks and traces, but could find none. While I learned from the ranger that indeed about two or three years before I had moved to the village two Bore had escaped from a farm, she had not seen any trace of them. In fact looking for the mythical Wild Bore helped me discover loads about the biodiversity in the woods. But no sign or trace of the Wild Bore did I ever see. A couple of years latter I discovered that the two that escaped were recaptured less than a week after they escaped. But while I was being constantly told that there are Wild Bore in the woods, by the same blokes who were supposedly such great countrymen, I was able to honestly counter that I could not find any trace of them. There was and is no sign of feeding, of wallowing or more importantly the marks that should be there on the trees, therefore I started to confidently say that there are no Wild Bore in the local woods.

Unbeknownst to me though several of these men that I was having difficulty with regarding the wildlife sightings were coming into the Pubs with stories of having seen Wild Bore and their dramatic escapes. Here in Britain I have for a long while said that every pub should be subtitled “Ye Olde Pack of Lies”. And it was in dispelling the myth of the Wild Bore that got people to start using the woods again for walking dogs or as a place of leisure.

But equally effective in helping others venture forth into the woods again was simply that I was going into the woods on a regular basis. When I first came to the village there was problems with Poaching. While that was predominantly rabbits and I was alert to the enquiries from people who seemed too interested in the locations of warrens or dens, I was also aware that Deer are regularly poached. This disrupted the activities of the poachers as they could no longer carry out their nefarious activities without the risk of being seen or caught. It seems that the Wild Bore myth was one being perpetuated by the poachers and by busting that myth people felt safe in returning to the woods.

While I can understand what I was being told, personally I disagree as people would have discovered there were no Wild Bore in the woods for themselves, it was a nice compliment. It is just a shame that the Wild Bore has been replaced by the “Wildlife Bore”

While that has not been the only source of difficulties that I have had in the village, this does explain the sources of many of my problems. As again going back to when I first went to explore the pubs, in one I was offered drugs by a young man that lived just up the street from me when I lived in the first cottage I was in when I first came to the village. As well as refusing the drugs, I passed details on to the neighbourhood watch. I discovered that the individual had just come out f prison after serving four years for drugs related offences. However, the young man's father was also one of the major poachers.

Therefore, there was a concerted effort by this minority to try and drive me out of the village. Well they did not succeed and the hostility and the problems have dissipated. I doubt that all the problems have gone and I dare say there will be some clashes in the future but as they have discovered I do stand up for myself. Even when one of the idiots tried to set my hair on fire, I dealt with it by reporting it to the police rather than just thumping the moron, showed that I was not someone to be messed with.

There were times when I really wondered what asylum I had moved to, but it really was the last gasps of the thugs to control and terrorise the village.

Anyway returning to my walk across the woods today, I came across some of the people that dress up in medieval costumes and come to the wood to play. Seeing any group that play with Swords and shields is amusing to me, not least because they take themselves far to seriously. To me it is just adult dressing up. As I had to pass this group I called out a greeting to them as I approached of; “Salutations, I am but a poor artisan on a pilgrimage, I beg the leave of your liege to pass unimpeded”

The two woman turned grinned and laughed, the three men just looked embarrassed at being caught playing their dressing up games. I wonder how they would have reacted if I had asked if they had seen “My Precious”, or asked for reports of orcs?

Well it takes all sorts to make a world, and at least it makes life interesting.

Books and Food

Yesterday, Friday, I had a welcome knock on the door, it was my post woman with a parcel. Two books of many that I have been desperate to get copies of had arrived. Anyone that knows the New Naturalist series will know just how expensive these books have become. These are second hand copies, and far from being first editions, as the first editions can change hands at over a thousand pounds a time. Even so these two still cost more than a weeks rent. I will not tell you whose grandmother I sold to get these. But what I find frustrating is that many of the collectors of these books never read them, nor are the illustrated with exceptional images, well they are from a scientific perspective and not as collectors items. This means that for anyone wanting to study the aspects of natural history covered in each volume it becomes extremely expensive. I would not mind that they have become collectable if the knowledge contained within was being used by the collectors but it is not, and it makes it much more difficult for us folks who want to learn and put that knowledge to practical use.

Okay that rant over, but it really is silly what is happening. Another aspect of life that has had me warm under the collar has been the supermarket. How can I afford food after spending the rent on books? I don't know but I will think of something! But being serious, I knew there was another major supermarket in Consett but I did not know where. Around the town centre there are the budget stores that sell the highly processed rubbish that would fit into any chemistry lab, but I needed to find somewhere where I could get real food.

There were two factors that drove me on. The first was not being able to get Passata in the two village shops. Now to me sieved tomatoes is a basic, but I was even told in one shop that Passata is a posh ingredient. The other occurrence was that I had bought a tub of Fair Trade organic chocolate Ice Cream, I can see you all drooling at that but there's more. It was the supermarkets own brand and from their finest range, and was crap. It reminded me of the worst of the cheap stuff that my mother used to buy, and put me off eating ice cream for years. At the same supermarket I bought some locally produced quality Ice cream and that was brilliant, so I have no hesitation in recommending Bill and Geoff Lanchester Dairy Ice Cream. Psst you can pay me now.

Anyway, I went in search of this other supermarket. The main consideration for me has to be can I carry the shopping from the store to the bus? As Consett was a Steel town the new retail development went on the sites where the industrial activity was, but as there was no longer a need for buses to take the workers to these locations, there are not the buses any more. I found the store and it is not to far to carry the shopping ether.

Now no one can really get excited about supermarket shopping, but I was genuinely pleased by the selection and prices. Now I know that I have raged about the supermarkets low pricing policy, but equally I have railed about the over charging too, and like everyone else I have to live on a budget too. However, what pleased me was items like the organic muesli being only pennies dearer than the non organic. Or that the fresh herbs were only fifty pence per pack and not sixty four of the one I normally use. The biggest saving was the Passata, thirty two pence where I had been paying sixty five pence.

Further I was pleased to see that many of the items were “Fair Trade”. While I have not yet tried them I got some Fair Trade Coffee and some Organic Fair Trade Tea, and if they are decent I will return.

The one product that kept me going to the original supermarket was the cat food as my cat preferred that over all the posh brands. So it was with trepidation that I tried her on the other supermarkets brand. Well a clean bowl latter and she is demanding to be fed again, this looks like a success. Even with having to pay the fares, rather than get the free bus, I still saved on what I would have paid. With what looks like a wider choice too, the real deciding factor will be quality. Perhaps I should have got some Chocolate Ice Cream? The first person to say yes wins a prize of some rubbish ice cream. I never said that I was generous!

Keeping on the topic of food, today was the day that the Farmers Market was happening at Gibside this month. I had intended to get there early, but the best laid plans of mice... Thanks Roberts Burns, all those years latter you are right. As I had reasons to go out checking on the Badgers, so I did not return till well after four in the morning. So I ended up falling asleep, the lazy mouse that I am.

But it amazing what coffee can do, and I went off to the farmers market. I had two primary objectives, as I wanted some sausages from the local rare breed farmer that I know and also helps with some of the conservation work in the local woods. I like to buy her sausages not because of the work she does in the wood, but because they are a very good product. The ones I bought last time were from Berkshire Pigs these were from Welsh Pigs, and tasty they are too.

The other item that I was hoping to buy was some game. I wanted to get either some Grey Squirrel or Wood Pigeon. I realise that this will upset some people, but both are pest species and I personally follow the Native American philosophy where you respect the life you consume. Further, I have had that view long before I learnt about first nations cultures. Therefore I hope that talking about this does not generate more “hate mail”. I fully respect people who chose not to eat meat, I made that choice myself for twenty five years, but as situations changed, I felt that for me, the best way of supporting farmers and game keepers that were respecting the environment was to buy the products that support their livelihood. So I bought some pigeons. I have eaten them before, but never cooked them. Well I have now, and I enjoyed it too. The carcase is also allowing me to make some stock too.

I also got some Gooseberries, I had already got some from my favourite Green Grocers in Consett yesterday, but I can cook and freeze something with them. My mind is already buzzing with ideas. Also I got some neck of lamb from the same farm that I bought lamb from last month. That was excellent and I knew that for one of my planned videos I needed a neck for that. At the very least I can put it in the freezer until I am ready to cook that.

I know that people think that I have been teasing folks regarding the cooking videos, I promise that I am not, it is just that getting them right is important to me. While I have limited equipment and resources, I still want to ensure that I make them the best I can. And this takes time. So please bare with me I will bore you with them soon. Also it has to be said that I have seen the rubbish I turn out when I work to quickly, perhaps you folks are now hoping I will read my Blog Posts, sorry I have not got time for that. In fact on that topic, I read a friends blog, she is an animator, a real one, and in a posting today on film making I realise that I am in fact working quite quickly.

After getting the ferry back home, yes it was pouring with rain, again! I cooked my very late lunch
and started filming the stuff I needed for more of the cooking films and the bits I am missing to complete some of them. Not easy when you have a cat that is demanding attention. As I also wanted to show how to make your own stock, I set a pan on to simmer. While I worked on the ruff cut of the next video, I know that the last one looked like I had posted the ruff cut, but it was finished, honest. I noticed something that I have never seen described in the natural history literature. My resident Blackbird often comes and sings, and as the rain had eased there he was singing. But what I have started to realise is he is calling his mate when there is food in my yard.

The sparrows that are the dominant visitor can be quite messy and drop a lot of seed and Meal worms, and as a ground feeder the Blackbirds take advantage of this. But the male will sing to call the female to the food when its in abundance. He only sings in the afternoon or late afternoon when the food is there. Now I have never read of birds singing to call their mate to a good food source, so am I seeing something previously unrecognised?

Also as I was simmering the stock pot I opened the kitchen window to stop the house getting all steamed up, and I heard a Cuckoo calling. I am sorry but bad weather or not, days don't get much better than this.

Polecat

Yesterday, Thursday, I noticed something rather odd in my back yard when I returned from my wanderings. While I don't have any natural soil in my yard, I do have various pots and containers that are growing a few weeds. Well a lot of weeds or wild flowers as I call them. Well under the seed feeder a Smooth-Sow Thistle grew in some spilt soil. As it was not well anchored I was not surprised that it had flopped over as it had already grown to a hight of four feet.

If it had been knocked over, my guess was that it was a Jackdaw. But when I went to look I could see some indistinct small mammal prints, a mouse or vole, so do I have something unknown in my yard?

As one of the locals had called round, I left the matter and started to think about what I was being asked to do. He has an allotment and a member of the weasel family is coming in and is taking eggs from his hens.

As anyone from Britain will know, the wildlife film maker Simon King on this years Spring watch, struggled to see and film a Polecat, and this chap thought that that was what was taking his hens eggs. Personally my guess was a Weasel or a Stoat, but even so I was interested to try and film or get some pictures.

So after refreshing with tea, it kept the British Empire going, we headed for his allotment. There were signs of a Stoat, hairs and prints, and we worked out where it had been getting in. But to film I would need to use the shed as a hide, or stay in the shed with the chickens. While I have agreed to try, I can not do this straight away as I have other things to do. But I did agree to go down early in the morning today to see if we could see the stoat.

So up early, I was making some coffee when I saw a movement in the yard where the Smooth-Sow Thistle had been knocked over. As I could not see anything I turned back to pouring out my coffee. Mug in hand, I returned my gaze to the yard to see a Polecat drinking from the large plastic dog bowl that serves as a bird bath. It must have noticed my movement as he or she in two bounds was out and under the gate. As the polecat has a bandit mask (yes Tree like your Racoon's) and in spring watch there had been a great description of how to spot a true pole cat from a Ferret Polecat hybrid and this was a true polecat.

Had it not been that my Camera was packed for transport, I would have had it to hand, if I would have been able to film it though I doubt it. There was a lot of luck in seeing this. I went down to the allotment and there was no sign of the Stoat and no eggs had gone. The chap thought the Stoat was visiting between six and seven in the morning. As if he went early to collect the eggs they were all there. But at seven there would be fewer eggs. I did ask the question are you sure the eggs are being taken? And that it is just not that his girls are being lazy? But he assures me that the eggs are being taken. There are signs of a Stoat so he is probably correct.

I have been thinking of getting a camera trap, as used on Spring watch, but they are not cheap and I can not afford one just yet. I think I need to find and film a Yeti so that I can sell the footage and make my fortune. But as I failed to film the Stoat or the Polecat, I guess I should not start spending that money just yet.

Redaction – Word of the Day

Now I have to admit that I love learning new words and this mouse has been accused of being more than a little verbose. So I am introducing a new word for today; Redaction. As I know that many of my readers (that's a human and two cats) are not in Britain and the British public has had to learn this new word today. As for its meaning... well it means censorship. Or to be even more precise the censorship of the receipts submitted by our esteemed honourable elected citizens who make up our parliament.

As even my overseas reader will know, there has been a bit of controversy here in the UK as our MPs have been making expenses claims for Duck Houses, or cleaning out their Moats as legitimate additional costs to be our representatives. As revealed by a newspaper who “obtained” copies of these receipts in their non redacted form.

The revelations the newspaper discovered has angered the electorate and created a political storm that I have never seen before, and I am older than god! While there are many trivial items that MPs have claimed for, that have made them look petty and foolish, it is the property speculation at the tax payers expense and the tax evasion that really has caused the most outrage.

Yet the Newspaper was criticised by some as the MPs were publishing (as of Thursday) their expenses anyway. Part of this criticism centred on the fact that some of these documents contain bank account details and other personal data. While I agree that this sort of personal data should be protected, these documents in their redacted form would never have disclosed any of the details that has caused the storm that has sunk about one hundred MPs.

Here in Britain there is a distaste when we see other governments use censorship, even though the British state has always done this. Even so censorship creates the feeling that governments have something to hide.

Even now with all the outcry still ringing in our MPs ears, our political leaders still don't understand what open and honest government is about. We the people are being treated like fools. So far MPs have repaid half a million pounds in wrongly claimed expenses. While this corruption is no where near the scale of what happens in other nations, it is still corruption.

In the European elections recently, two members of the racist BNP (British Nationalist Party) were elected, and it is the failure of these mainstream parties that is enabling vile extremists to be elected. The two main parties, Labour and Conservative, appear to be self serving at the best of times, and with the MPs misappropriating taxpayers money in the way they have, this attempt to keep the details of the thefts and frauds hidden via redaction only aids the extremists.

If this was not a good enough attempt to shoot themselves in the foot, this week our esteemed leader, Gordon Brown, announces that finally there will be an enquiry into the Iraq war. Except that it will be held in private. So it looks like there will be redaction on the deliberately misleading intelligence, and the legal opinion that said the war was not lawful.

All we need now is an Iranian style General Election and we really will have democracy here in Britain. Or has that been redacted too?

Encounters with Wildlife to Remember

At the risk of repeating myself; I said at the risk of repeating myself, I am well aware that I frequently burn the candle at both ends. Often in the middle too, but there is just so much going on in the natural world that want to see and experience that I do push myself. On Tuesday evening once I had finished doing the boring chores that we all have to do, I was going to head out to watch the Badgers again. Am I at the risk of repeating myself yet again? My poor reader is probably sick of theses Badgers, tough as I will never tire of seeing them.

But on Tuesday it was gone nine in the evening and I realised that I needed to get some milk for my tea when returning. As a true son of Albion, I need milk in my tea and I need tea or I suffer withdrawal symptoms. I think that's why the colonists threw that tea party in Boston all those years ago. So I went to get some Milk, as I left the shop I spotted the pale ghost of a bird heading for the green behind the shop. Mad dash to see if I could see it and perched in the tree was the Barn Owl.

I spent three quarters of an hour watching it, I did not have a camera or binoculars, but I did not need them. Eventually it flew off towards some waste land that used to be allotments and is now a haven for wildlife. Having dallied I knew that I risked disturbing the Badgers if I tried to visit the sett so I went to the pub instead. It has been so long since I have been to the pub, and apart from the odd glass of wine, well I have to check that the wine is good enough to cook with, I was in serious danger of having my membership for the Dipsomaniacs society revoked.

I was glad that I did go to the pub as it left me feeling refreshed for Wednesday and ready to explore more today. I headed for one of the public hides at the Sheldon Pond. While none of the birds there are rare, and the hide is the least appealing, it really can be a gem of a place to see the birds. Initially is was just gulls, mainly Black Headed Gulls, but there was one that may have been a Bonaparte's Gull. I did film it and I will have to check the footage carefully, but the bill looked black. It could be that it was just coated with mud, or in disguise, but even if it was a Black Headed it was still a treat to see one as clearly and for a prolonged time.

Then I spotted a Little Grebe with her chicks. My view was partly obscured but I did film them and while one of the chicks could dive for its self it was demanding food from its parent, probably the mother. I think I got the footage of the chick being feed, I need to load it on to the computer to be sure though. Then something really extraordinary started to unfold before me, a coot came in and started to harass the Little Grebe Family. I did try and film what was happening but as they were all diving, I could not see exactly what was going on. It was only when it was all over did I realise that the Coot had taken one of the Little Grebe chicks. I did not get it on film, and while it would have been amazing footage, I personally don't feel that comfortable seeing any life lost, even though I know that it is natural behaviour.

While I was still reeling from having seen that, a Sparrow Hawk suddenly appeared and the Coot was now the Hawks Dinner.

While I stayed for a while longer, I decided that I would head home for a late lunch. Fortified with a mushroom pasta concoction, and the regulation tea, I went out again for a wander into the woods. I chose the path that previously had been impassable because of the ruts the felling equipment had made. The tracks have been reinstated, well sort of, and it is now possible to walk without the risk of braking your (add your own limb of choice)...

I was heading for the wild flower meadow as I wanted to see what insects were about, but when I got there the wind was picking up and the clouds were gathering. Note to self, put wet suite on the wish list. Fortunately this time it did not rain more than the odd splish and splash, and I spent an hour or so examining the life in the education pond. Laying in the grass looking at the life in the pond, is it any wonder that people think that I am an adult sized child.

When I went back I followed the same track, and I spotted fresh Deer prints. They had not been there when I arrived. Keeping the camera ready, I followed them, the Deer was following the track and with the wind in my face, all I needed to do was keep as quiet as I could. At one point on this path a burn (stream) cuts the route, and as I got near the dip where the burn is I spotted the white flash of the Deer's tail. I was much closer than I expected. I slowed my pace and checked for tracks and the Deer still seemed to be following the path. Then I heard the Deer s it crashed into the undergrowth just as a group of youngsters appeared on Bikes. Mister, mister did you see the Deer? The excitedly asked. Well not as well a I would have liked, but those four lads have had an encounter with wildlife they will remember.

Chopwell Wood

At the beginning of the month, I received a critical comment on my film of the environmental damage caused in my local wood by the tree felling there. In this comment I was accused of stirring excrement. When the reasons stated by the Forestry Commission for the harvesting of the timber, I fully agreed with. As by selectively felling the Pines, Spruce and Larch it will be possible to replant with native broad leaf species thus starting the process of restoring the ancient woodland that Chopwell wood is, I was alarmed to see the way the work was being carried out.

While I have previously reported here that I have been helping grow from seed some of these trees, what I was reluctant to add was just how badly organised the process and the plantings are. It became clear right from the start that while there are good intentions among the people that should be the custodians of the local forest, there is a reluctance to actually do any of the actual practical work.

Further, within the woods there are many groups that use the woods and there has to be a balance of needs. So while on You Tube there are many videos of the mountain bikers enjoying the woods, my film was not about the effects of the Bikes and Bikers in the Forest. There are places that are designated bike tracks and for the most part I do not have a problem with the Mountain Bikers. In fact the young men who helped build the course are regularly involved in helping with other tasks in the wood. Further, the Mountain Bikers help keep the forest safe as simply they too love the wood and via that love of the landscape they too would fight to preserve the place.

The real problem for the woods is the groups that are supposed to be conserving and protecting Chopwell Wood. While the Forestry Commission has improved its attitude towards conservation greatly, in the past ten to fifteen years, they still have much further to go. There was a time when the Forestry Commission a government agency, totally ignored the environment, and for them conservation was a dirty word. While attitudes have improved, there still are a few people in the organisation that resent the demands to protect the environment the law now requires.

Staying focused on the local woods rather than critiquing Forestry Commission policy in general, seventeen years ago the Forestry Commission was, under instruction from the Government, going to sell the forest that is Chopwell Woods off. The buyer was to be a Quarry company who wanted to extract the sand and gravel with the added bonus of extracting the tonnes of coal that lay under the soil. From that battle to save the wood a community group formed to protect and care for the Forest, The Friends of Chopwell Wood. Over the years this organisation has done great things for the woods, but they have lost focus. It should have been this organisation that should have been monitoring and ensuring that the felling was not damaging in the way it has been.

Chopwell Wood always was an important matrix of habitats and while some work has been done for the wildlife, The Friends of Chopwell Wood, have focused a lot of time effort and money on the history and historical preservation rather than working on the conservation. Had the group, FoCW, used the past years to enhance the mixture of habitats the wood has, enhancing the woodland as an ecosystem by increasing the bio-diversity the forest would have much greater legal protection. All in line with the governments own bio-diversity action plan.

To give a specific example; Chopwell Wood was a stronghold for the native Red Squirrel when the FoCW started, but when I became involved with the organisation as an active member; the Red Squirrels were nearly extinct in the woods. They are now extinct there and I may well have been one of the last people to see Reds in the wood. I even offered to help lead an effort to try and retain the Endangered Red Squirrels in the wood, but was blocked by the FoCW. The Forestry Commission was supportive, but the Friends refused to fund the traps that would be needed to catch the invasive Grey Squirrels. While I would have needed to get some training and a Licence from English Nature, funding for this was refused as it was deemed to be too much like hard work and the FoCW thought that the Forestry Commission should be doing this.

There are unfortunately many other examples where the conservation organisation, FoCW, have failed to understand what conservation is really about. While they will tinker with building log piles or doing coppice work, the real conservation work is frequently ignored. Far too much of the work that the FoCW do and fund is park management that is trying to stop the wood evolving.

While the wood is a habitat for wildlife, it is also a place of recreation and leisure for many people. Last year the number of visits to Chopwell Woods was over a quarter of a million. That may be people walking their dogs, or the Mountain Bikers, or the horse riders, and it is only by ensuring that the wood is used and loved that the wood will stay safe and protected. It is not impossible to maintain the landscapes and habitats for the flora and fauna, which is also welcoming to the people who use the wood.

Therefore management of these habitats, such as Chopwell Wood requires care to be taken so that a minimum of disruption, disturbance and damage is done. In some of the beautiful places in Britain such as the Lake District where the shear numbers of visitors walking the paths was and is causing erosion the solution was not stopping people from walking, but sensitively improving the trails with local stone. There it has taken great effort, but the paths in the Lakeland Fells are improved by this without impairing the appearance or distracting from the beauty that draws people to use the fells.

I just wish that the same principal could be applied to the local woods. Where the way the paths are maintained is just by trucking in stone chipping's. While it is more expensive to do so, wood chips can be used. This would help maintain the habitat, ensuring that the paths will drain properly while keeping the sensitive marsh habitat that has enabled rare, endangered and protected species to thrive while still enabling the human visitors to safely use the woods. However, the FoCW seem determined to make the Forestry Commission to pay for all such works. When the FoCW could pay the difference in cost and save the taxpayer some money. Often this means that much needed work gets delayed at best or is never carried out.

This attitude of conflict rather than co-operation with the Forestry Commission means that when a real problem arises there is far less urgency or importance placed upon any concerns raised. Thus when the felling started the failures and failings of the contractors were not redressed.

As the areas where the felling was taking place were cordoned off to ensure public safety, it was not always easy to monitor the work. My first sighting of the work in progress was disturbing as the contractors were working in an area that was not within the cordon and the statutory warning notices were completely missing. But what disturbed me most was that three young children went very close to the working machines and while they were chased off, no one stopped working even though the children were in the danger area. Where the trees were falling, it appeared that speed of work was more important than safety to the contractors.

There were other occasions when I saw other harvesting activity that was far from safe, but trying to film this was not always possible. Yet it was the deliberate destruction of the nest site of a Red Kite that first alerted me to some real problems with the way the felling work was being carried out. Hindsight now clearly shows that the contractors were not willing to stop work, as the law requires, when dealing with a rare nesting bird. Therefore a broadleaf tree was cut down as removing the nest removed, in their minds, the problem. Even though they could have moved on to other areas of the wood so the nest need not have caused disruption to the felling work. It should also be recorded that there was other Broadleaf trees that were damaged by the way the felling work was carried out. Even though these broadleaf trees were not supposed to be touched.

With the spilling of the hydraulic oil, while there was visible oil sheen wherever the machinery went, it was not possible to pinpoint the exact cause. The contractors knew and had the Forestry Commission been and the FoCW been much more alert then the damage could have been stopped months ahead of the machine catching fire as a result of this leak. Now a fire in a machine the size of a truck in a woodland is a serious matter, we are lucky to still have the wood at all. The dumped empty hydraulic oil containers remained in situ for months. One effect of posting my film was that they were finally removed.

As my regular reader knows, I did have problems with my computer that meant I lost some footage that I had wanted to use in the film of the damage in the wood. While I know that it was not perfect, I am still learning the skills, I am proud of the film. It was made up of clips that I had shot for other things, but when added to the film of the hydraulic oil in the snow and the sequences of the felling (I know that was far to long and I am doing lines; I must Edit Better) it made for a film that told a story and showed what we are in danger of loosing.

So if telling the truth and alerting people of damage that’s harming a place that many people love is stirring manure, then I am guilty. I suspect that my critic assumed that I was against the Mountain Bikers or the other users of the wood. If I wanted to exclude other people from the forest, why would I write so much about it?

The Collapse of British Dairy

When I was a child there was a joke that went; A farmer talking to his neighbour said “I have crossed a chicken with a spider, The neighbour asks why. The farmer says well there are eight in the family and we all like a leg. So the neighbour asks “Well what does it taste like?” The farmers reply is, “I don't know as we cant catch it”

As well as being a silly joke, it was rather prescient as there are practices in the agricultural industry that just look wrong. I have talked in previous posts about having read a book that was predicting BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (I know I have probably misspelt it) back in 1977 and this prompted me to become vegetarian for many years. The same applies to the gross abomination of the hundred pints of milk per day cow that is the Holstein

Following my posting on the report by Dom Broom of Cambridge University, I was emailed by a farmer who said that while the report gave a technical description of starvation, where the body tissue is converted to produce milk, and that it is offensive to suggest that farmers are deliberately harming their livestock is offensive. I would have pasted the comments verbatim had they not been liberally fertilised with expletives (enough to make a Mouse Blush), but even in that response there is an acknowledgement that the animal is suffering by simply having been breed to produce that much milk. While I know that most farmers do not intend to inflict suffering, there are many practices that farmers are taught to carry out that are seriously impacting animal welfare.

The Holstein suffers from mastitis more than any other breed as well as greater lameness, and infertility. This drive to greater and greater milk volume per cow is totally crazy and has gone beyond the limits of what the animals can take. Add to this the zero grazing methods of farming, where the cattle are housed in vast sheds and their food is brought to them, and that is no longer farming but a milk factory.

This abuse of the animals, the sentient creatures, that produce the milk is not only about animal welfare but the unsustainability of the economics of the systems in place. Just as occurred with the banks, were the business model for banking was to lend greater and greater sums of money, also requiring the banks to borrow even larger sums themselves, would eventually lead to a collapse when people and or businesses had over borrowed and could no longer repay. It is a question of sustainability. With the Industrial Agriculture of the milk industry driving the price of milk lower and lower from over production, that is basic economics. While this may have benefited some industrial farmers, it has led to the crazy situation where cows seriously suffer to produce that milk.

The crazy economics of this so called free market has led to the bankruptcy of the Farmers cooperative, The Dairy Farmers of Britain, and the closure on Friday of the Blaydon Dairy, via that local dairy I used to get my milk. But now with that closure and the importation of liquid milk from Europe, four hundred farmers are now at risk of going under.

That means in the North East of England, there is no dairy to take the milk produced by the small and family owned farms. Many of these traditional farms are in isolated upland areas, like the North Yorkshire Moors and the Foot Hills of the Pennines where I live, and through to the Northumberland Moors, farmers can not find anywhere to sell there milk. The official receiver of The Dairy Farmers of Britain are now only paying ten pence per litre for this milk. This is half the cost of production.

All of this situation has been the result directly and indirectly of the industrial system of production. While Farmers and agricultural workers never set out to create a system that abused the animals that provide milk, nor did farmers design the economic food chain, they are responsible for the short term economic thinking that has lead to this crisis.

Last year, there was a food crisis with grain crops, this fed into the present crisis in the British Milk industry. With oil prices on the rise again, we need to start thinking and acting towards ensuring that food is produced as close to the consumer as possible.

Over the past twenty five years in Britain, food production has become much more centralised and industrial. It is no coincidence that this has coincided with the environmental degradation of farmland exemplified by the loss of sixty percent of farmland bird species, as well as the growth in power of the large retailers. While farming is a business it should also be a way of life. In an Industrial milking factory where the cows are milked in their hundreds by robots, where is the human eye to spot a cow that is not looking her best, or looks ill, lame or suffering in some other way?

BSE was the result of industrial agriculture, even Foot and Mouth spread because of industrial agriculture, both cost Britain billions. As we loose major parts of the Milk Field in Britain, does the consumer really believe that importing liquid milk will maintain low consumer prices?

Parliament is investigating zero grazing farming and it may well lead to a ban on this abusive system. Farming needs to change with welfare and quality being the primary focus. The big retailers need to have regulations imposed upon them so that can not abuse their power.

If I could, I would buy my milk direct from one of the local farms, but years ago it became illegal for farmers to sell “Green Top” milk. That was the result of pressure from the Multi National food companies, and what government needs to do is stop abdicating responsibility to big businesses.

I now can not buy local milk at all, what milk I can get has travelled at least four hundred miles to get to me.

Newly Fledged Birds

Because my home is located on a hill; well the whole village is, in fact the whole landscape is, personally I think this is a spot on the earth that god forgot to iron. Anyway, as my home is located on a hill the bottom of the back gate is four feet or so higher than the back door, so when on Friday night I was refilling the bird feeders I spotted a set of paws going past my back gate. So I went to investigate. I could not see the animal that had passed but as I was laying on the ground looking under the cars parked in the back lane, one of the daughters of a near neighbour pulled up and parked her car.

Thinking I may be injured she dashed across to see if I was all right, phone in hand ready to call an ambulance. I reassured her that I was fine, and started to explain my odd behaviour, when the Fox that I was looking for re-emerged. Even though my camera was just inside the yard, all I could do was stay still and we both remained quiet as we watched the fox look at us. He, from my prostate position I could see it was a dog fox, and slowly walked away. She was delighted with the sighting, as was I, and we had a little chat.

I knew this young woman by sight but other than a greeting on passing in the street, I had never spoken to her. While I have never hidden my enthusiasm for the local wildlife, she (and she is not the first) told me that I was subject to a number of rumours regarding what other people felt was my odd behaviour, but she clearly could see why I was frequently seen looking through binoculars or a camera. While there is part of me that is sick of hearing all that crap, slowly people are realising that I am not watching other people but the natural world.

She was delighted to see the Fox herself and it had been several years since she saw one. I told her that I frequently go watching the Badgers, and she did ask if I would take her one day. But with the way that rumours and gossip happens in this village, I said I could see the rumour mill working overtime if I were to do that. I said I would think about it and suggested that she think of someone to be her chaperon if I did take her.

The funniest part of talking to her though was that a number of people have seen me going out or returning in the night. Now these are people who are returning from night clubs or nights on the town. For them to out at two or three in the morning there is no problem, but when they see me, its a different story, I must be up to no good, as I am sober.

Now I know that there has been problems here in the village, in the past, with Drugs and Under age Drinking as well as other social problems, but just because another citizen does not keep to the normal periods of activity does not mean they are involved in something suspicious. What amuses me, in an ironic way, is that when the problems were at their greatest, none of these people that are gossiping about me were doing anything to stop the criminality that was going on.

The following day, while in the kitchen, I saw at the feeder a whole flock of sparrows. More than I have ever seen before. I soon realised that about five or six of the ten or more that were there were newly fledged. The give away was the wing fluttering begging for food from the parents. So it looks like “Café Mouse” has helped feed another family. Then when I had finished doing the washing up, sorry about swearing there, and was making some coffee, I saw four young starlings. Again they can be distinguished from the parents as the feathers are duller and lack the sheen as well as them not having the spots on the plumage. Another family my feeders have aided.

Then even latter, after having had to re-affix the feeder after the jackdaws had pulled it down, smart birds are those corvids, I saw the pair of collard doves. Over the past three weeks I had only seen one in the yard. There had been a collard dove that had been taken by a raptor, so I was worried that I had lost one of the pair. Now I have no way of telling if this was the regular pair, but I hope it is. As they clearly were gathering seed to feed young. That means there are eight species that have used my back yard café to raise chicks this year.