The Story not Told

The Robert Frost Poem The road less travelled, was apparently inspired by one of his friends who was indecisive about taking the lead when out walking together. And like to poem itself there is an untold or little told story there.

Yesterday I had to go into Consett and decided to have a coffee before getting the bus back, as I had over half an hour to wait, it can make for a pleasant way to pass the time. I was sitting there with my toasted tea cake and coffee when a chap who is a regular there came in. I have often seen him sitting there in a commanding position and from the way he was giving instructions to the staff, I had assumed he owned the place. However yesterday it became clear that he was just another customer. He came and sat at my table and was like a “Motor Mouth” trying to engage in conversation. I had always been brought up, well dragged up, not to talk with my mouth full, so while I found his verbal assault irritating, I was polite and I waited until I had finished before really speaking to him.

I suspect that he is just alone and lonely and does not realise just how irritating he can be. Here in Britain in most pubs you can find people like him in every town. I am left wondering though what his story may be? Incidentally, it was the weather and the flooding that formed our brief conversation.

His talk was just how unfair it was that the North East should have thunder storms and flooding while the rest of England basked in sunshine. No matter how slowly you explain to some people about Climate Change, they don't get it. As I was going though, he told me that Climate Change is a myth! I would liked to have stayed and debated but I had things to do and a bus to catch.

I really can not understand how anyone can still hold that belief. But as there are people who still don't believe the moon landings happened, I know they did I watched them on TV, or that the murder of six million people in the concentration camps happened, well it should not surprise me but it still does.

The fact is that we are all so poorly informed. The newspapers will talk of flooding events but often with the emphasis on flood defences or the lack of them. Rarely will they mention Climate change and then only to say that this one event can not bee blamed on Climate Change. Well with a plethora of the one off events over the last ten years, I think that we can saw with accuracy that this is Climate change. With the holocaust, when ever there is a person blind to history in the news, it would be possible to run articles that shows the Genocide in Europe rather than the xenophobic reporting that happens.

In respect of the moon landing being faked, after forty years if they had been faked then at least one of the insiders would have started singing like a bird.

It was with the incident in the café in the back of my mind and my frustration with the newspapers here, at the back of my mind that I watched some of the TV I had downloaded. With absolutely nothing on TV that I wanted to or was prepared to watch, from what I have missed already there is normally something worth watching. I know that I am unusual (odd) but I will watch some of the parliamentary debates or news programmes, simply as I want to know what is going on in the world.

It was one of these that I watched. The premise of the programme was if Chinas Economy and Economic growth could help pull us out of recession. There were many of the assumptions in the programme that made me wonder if the reporter had understood what happened when the banks collapsed, but there were two environmental stories there that were ignored. At one point the reporter was in a city that had been industrialised and the pollution was so bad it was visible. While the communists did stop him investigating that story, he was not really trying that hard. But many of the economic aspects that the report was trying to promote, were the very activities that were creating the pollution that is killing people in China.

However it was at the start of the report that reporter visited a town where two thousand people had been moved to, as their previous village had run out of water. This was dismissed in a single line.

As a dictatorship, the communists in China can relocate a large village, just like that. But it shows a lack of understanding regarding the causes. Climate change and industrialisation are the causes there. Here was a story untold, when the lessons from that could help us in the western developed world as well as the Chinese Leadership.

It can be a lonely path walking that road less travelled, or covering the stories less read, that's why my readership numbers in the tens, if that. But I can not understand why it is that the mainstream media ignore what is so obviously the story of greater importance.

Even looking at the matter from an economic one, if China were to suffer such a serious drought that they had to relocate ever increasing numbers of people, that will reduce the cheap goods we in the west rely upon. That effects our economy too. However, as the rivers are suffering pollution too from the massive expansion of industry in China, as well as multiplying the problems of water for drinking and agriculture, the effect will show through in economies in the developed western world too.

I realise that the media always want to over simplify serious topics, but ignoring the environmental stories when it is clear that the effect has devastated a community, a region, a country, is beyond my understanding. It seems to me that the media just ignores anything challenging, when their role is to report accurately what is happening in our world.

Perhaps if more journalist walked along that path less trod and told the stories less told, then people would be better able to make the sensible choices that we all need to deal with the multiplicity of environmental threats we all face.