Britain's New Mammal

Yesterday I heard via the media a rather strange story that a Skunk had been rescued from the wild in Britain. It appears that because of a change in the law here so that pet owners can no longer get vets to remove the scent glands, people have released them into the countryside. Now while I could go on about the effect of these invaders on the wild, what makes this news rather interesting is that about six months ago I was told that there appears to be one, a Skunk, in the local area.

While I have not seen any sign of it myself, having now discovered that a few irresponsible people have released Skunks into the wild, I realise that the sighting could be credible. I will admit that I was sceptical when I first heard of the sighting, but I always keep an open mind. However I now wish that I had posted about it at the time, I was just not sure if it was someone pulling my leg.

What concerns me is that the skunk will feed on the eggs of ground nesting birds such as Sky Larks and Woodcock, both relatively rare in Britain but thriving here. However, if it is just one individual the threat may be small, but if there have been multiple releases then there could be the core of breeding populations now roaming Britain. Even if the numbers released are small, I have no doubt that animals will link up and given half a chance they will breed.

While the impact of the actions of a few irresponsible people has yet to be discovered on native populations, this is an experiment that should never have been allowed yo happen. It may be that the impact is very small and the Skunks will not compete with or displace native species, but experience says that will not be the case.

I would love to see a Skunk in the wild, but I would go to America to do that (Invitations Welcome), and not here in Britain. All I can do is hope that the numbers that have been released are so small and to dispersed to establish, but I suspect that Skunks are here to stay.

Goodbye Greenland

I have long been predicting that we will see a sudden and significant rise in sea levels. Further that this will happen in the next few years, and by this I mean the next three or four years. While the science backs up this prediction, what I have not known was exactly what mechanism would cause this.

One of the difficulties is that Climate science is not simple and with so many conflicting climate models offering different time tables for the effects of human induced climate change, my own research appeared to be at odds with the majority of opinions in the public domain. However when I communicate with scientists carrying out the front line research, they agree that we will see the disastrous effects of climate change in this coming decade rather than in the next half century.

The reason for this is that politicians keep talking about limiting the global average rise in temperature to two degrees C. While the science already shows that the average global rise will be four degrees C. Therefore politicians are lagging well behind what needs to be done. The main reason for this is that politicians are only looking at local effects rather than the global effects. Therefore, they fail to recognise the consequential effects of climate change.

In Europe one of the main preparations has been the way that the EU has effectively closed the boarders to immigration so as to stop the climate refugees that will come. Even without a rise in sea levels, water shortages and drought will force people to flee the affected areas. But it is the impacts on food and agriculture that will be the greatest impact in the short term. The British government has assumed that if we suffer crop failures or even a simple shortage we can just buy what we need from the world markets. But this policy is based upon a false assumption. As if there are crop failures or shortages, then it will not only effect Britain but will be global and other nations will be trying to do the same for their populations.

However, no matter how much the climate models inform our political leaders that there will be a rise in sea levels, they ignore this as it simply looks like something that will happen to far in the future for them to seize that nettle. But when that effect of human induced climate change does happen, we will loose agricultural land. As this will occur globally all other nations will need to buy in food from the commodity markets too.

The effect on poor nations will be that they will excluded from this, and their populations will starve. This cynical impact of the planning by political leaders is not just inhumane it fails to recognise the reality of our current situation. Britain because of the banking bailout has to borrow money from other nations. Most notably China. When the sea levels rise and they have the need to feed their people from the world market what does the British government think will happen? As nations like China have a culture of saving and have the cash to lend to the financial markets, if they cant buy the wheat or rice they need from Europe or America, do you really think they will lend us the cash we need? Of course not.

The attitude of much of the developed world regarding tackling climate change is analogous to a string of communities along a river. The developed nations are those that live closest to the source of the river where it is clean and pure. Yet each community is also using the river as its sewer and each community suffers from their drinking water getting more polluted. Rather than stopping the pollution small efforts are made to reduce it rather than tackling it properly. Just like pollution in a river, where it will cause outbreaks of collora and the infection will move up river impacting the communities at the start of the chain, Climate change will effect all of us.

The climate is already changing and as the effects are similar to natural cycles, droughts in Africa, Hurricanes in the Atlantic, flooding in Asia, people have been able to dismiss the effects as not having been the result of global warming. However, it is the effects upon the glaciers that can not be dismissed as part of any natural cycle. The receding of these rivers of ice will permanently change the ecology of the mountains and the water courses they feed. But the way that they are melting has shown the mechanism that will create the sudden and dramatic change to sea levels. As behind the wall of ice melt water builds up. In countries like Switzerland the authorities will build drainage tunnels into the ice, often a couple of kilometres long, so that when this water escapes it does not flood the valley and the communities under the glacier. Once the drainage tunnel is dug instruments are located to monitor the liquid water build up as the risk is not just flooding but the whole river of ice speeding up and creating an ice avalanche.

Now if we relocate this to the Greenland ice cap and the same mechanism is at work there. But there is no one digging tunnels in the ice to place instruments to monitor the build up of liquid water. Therefore a sudden breakup of these ice rivers is likely to happen in the next three or four year period. Already there has been a loss of thickness of the Greenland Ice Cap. As well as the ice becoming highly porous over the last decade and the water has drained into the glaciers. In some places it has already escaped into the sea, but the volume of melt water that has already disappeared into the ice is far greater than has been released into the sea. The theory is that some of this melt water has drained into the aquifer, into the ground. While this appears to be good news, it actually means that the glaciers are now flowing over water logged ground rather than the friction of wet rock. This speeds up the flow of the ice, and the faster the ice flows the faster it cracks and brakes up. It is these fractures that allows the sudden release of the glacier lakes.

Add to this the fact that while a global average rise in temperature of even just two degrees, at the poles the local rise will be six to ten degrees and you have enough heat to melt the polar ice, not just on the sea but on land too.

Anyone who has defrosted a freezer will know that while most of the melting is gradual, eventually the melting speeds up. This will be the same in the poles. Already we have seen sudden and dramatic break ups of areas of sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic waters.

None of this I write with pleasure, I would have loved it if the science disproved the reality of human induced climate change, but the reality is that we are stumbling towards a global disaster that will have more impact than the all the wars of the last century.

Wall Street Crash - 80 Years On

As can be imagined over the past couple of months there have been numerous programmes on television and the radio marking the banking collapse of a year ago. Most were explaining what happened. Yet with and on the expectation that we can return to normal without the risky games that the banking sector of the economy were playing.

On the day that marks the 1929 wall street crash I would have thought that people would have learned the lesson by now. The 1929 crash was caused by an asset bubble of shares bursting. The damage was caused by the fact that people had borrowed millions to buy these shares. The way it worked was that for $100 you could buy $1000 of stock. So if a share rise of ten percent then you doubled your money. But if that same stock fell by even just five percent you had a debt of nine hundred dollars to pay. Therefore, when the Wall street stock market started to fall on that fateful day everyone tried to sell their shares causing prices to fall further thus creating a perfect financial storm.

It was the need to repay this credit and the loss of capital that created the depression in 1929. The banking collapse of last year was the result of a similar problem except this time the asset bubble that burst was house prices. This in its self should not have ever brought about the banking collapse but while the credit bubble was supported by rises in house prices far to little of the lending was secured. And this was part of the reason for the events that threw the world into financial crisis. The other part was the “Credit Default Swaps”.

These were deemed as being rather clever ways of providing security for property loans when there was no real security in the property asset. Especially where there was no real expectation that the person with the mortgage would ever be able to repay. These only worked while house prices were rising. As soon as property prices levelled off and started to fall, these started to poison the capital reserves of the banks. However, it was not until folks started to default on their loans did even the banks realise that these “Credit Default Swaps”, now regarded as securities, were undermining the values of the banks and especially the reserves of the banks.

The problem was not just the so called sub prime loans though. As house prices rose the banks had been inventive in the way they priced their mortgage products. In fact before the banking crash, it was impossible in Britain to get a straight forward repayment mortgage. Therefore, most mortgages were discounted for the first two years. The logic being that with house prices rising constantly even if the borrower could not afford the repayments once the discounted period ended, the rise in prices would cover this if they needed to sell or they could re-mortgage, getting another two years where you were not paying off any of the capital nor paying the full interest just the discounted rate.

As this all relied upon the housing market continuing to rise, therefore everyone was at risk of loosing their home if they were unable to maintain payments. But the banks failed to see or understand that trying to repossess homes from people was further undermining the banks balance sheets.

The problem was that the Banks along with governments around the world, were manipulating the housing and property markets. The banks knew they were safe as long as property values kept rising. Governments wanted property values to keep rising as all the lending against the values were funding the boom and providing the tax income states need.

Here is the crux of what really went wrong, as if someone earns a thousand per month that is all they have to spend. But if you then add in the spending power of several credit cards and many folks were able to live a much more affluent lifestyle than their income would normally allow. Add to this the ability to use your home as an ATM and you have the illusion that you are richer that you really are.

The banks were making good profits from all this, or I should say they thought they were. But profits from lending are only profits when the loan is paid off. While this is common sense, it was not to the banks. This was where most of the bonuses were generated, with selling more credit. Combined with the credit default swaps, the culture became one of selling more credit no matter what.

However the big difference between the 1929 crash and the 2008 one was the way that governments intervened. While the “New Deal” and similar projects helped lessen the effects of the recession then, the interventions were on the whole to little to late. This time though governments moved much faster, the only trouble was that they helped the wrong people and in the wrong way. By bailing out the banks in the way that Britain and America have done, the governments have allowed the banks to continue with the folly that created the situation in the first place.

By propping up the banks, particularly in Britain, we have created a long slow burn recession. While some tax payers money is involved, the majority of the way the bank bail out has been funded had been with governments borrowing from other governments. But it will be from future tax revenues that this money will have to be repaid. It is this fact that could cause a further crash in the future.

The optimistic view is that the banks recover and governments can sell them back to the private investors for a profit. This will greatly reduce the vast borrowing requirements of governments. However, governments have to expect the unexpected and with the British government borrowing so much from the capital markets, we have no room for manoeuvre when something unexpected happens. This could be a weather event like flooding or the H1N1 flu suddenly taking hold, or a terrorist attack causing a disruption to the economy and the government would become paralysed from this.

But also the problems that first caused the banks to collapse was the banks assuming they could repossess property to recoup losses, will start to happen again when the banks think it is all over. Therefore the way the banks were saved from collapse had built into its structure the means of a further financial failure. Except it will be the banks that are now owned by the government that will take the hit, therefore further undermining the economy.

The notion that an economy can just keep expanding is a false one. In the 1920s it was the assumption that shares could/would only increase in value that showed this was false. In this past decade it was the assumption that house/property prices would only rise that showed this was false. For real economic stability the needs to be a truly fair economic system that ensures that people are paid a fair price for goods and services and that those that gain the most, via taxation, contribute more to the communal need.

Nick Griffin and the BNP

On Thursday night, on a programme called question time was an odious man called Nick Griffin MEP, who is the leader of the British National Party. I explain this as I know that my blog has readers from across the planet and while everyone in Britain was aware of this, I don't know if this controversial has been reported around the globe.

It was controversial as the BNP is a racist far right fascist party. However as this party has two elected representatives in the European parliament with nearly a million voters having voted for them, then really the BBC had no real option.

Firstly I think it was brave of the BBC to bite the bullet and have Nick Griffin on as if they had not it would have been beaching its own policy for minority parties. Additionally had the tried to keep him or the BNP off television then they would have been guilty of censorship. Ultimately we can only defeat these racists by hearing what they have to say and challenging them. Also as we live in a free society we can not undermine our own values by oppressing his freedoms.

Many of his lies were challenged and while he tried to refute that he was a racist, his own words trapped him, ensnared him and tripped him up. There was one moment that brought a wry smile to my face as one of the other panellists was Bonny Greer, the American Playwright. At one point Griffin was trying to defend his involvement with David Duke the former leader of the Ku-Klux-Klan. Griffin said that David Duke was the leader of the non Violent KKK! This brought an angry response from Bonny Greer. However in my mind I started to hear the song “Strange Fruit” Also I wanted to ask if Griffin was talking about the KKK members that went around trying to stop lynchings?

It was not a pleasant programme to watch, and while I had been tempted to post on this before the event, I was glad that I waited until after seeing it. If the hostile, but well behaved, audience is a true reflection of the British People then we don't have to much to worry about.

There is an interesting foot note to this as a court recently (within the last week) has ruled that the parties constitution is unlawful as it excludes non white members. So perhaps if all the non whites then join the party they can vote to disband the party.

Chicken and Cooking Skills

It is something that I find rather amusing, but my better half cant cook. Or to be more accurate, she never learnt to cook. Therefore, I wonder if she is with me for my looks? Or my erudite wit? Or my ability to delight her pallet? Well while I could play are gargoyle I can not yet do it without make up, and when we are together the air is filled with laughter. But I suspect that my ability to cook is a major bonus.

I explain this as while we had been together on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, she had left and I was not expecting her to return. However her plans were forced to change as the result of others changing their plans and not letting her know until she was already on route. So when she telephoned and asked if she could come back, I was pleased. But as that also meant she needed feeding, we talked about what she could get on the way so we could have dinner together.

The difficulty for her is that as she never learnt to cook she lacks the ability to spot an ingredient that a meal can be built around. I am learning what she likes and enjoys, so I made a couple of suggestions, then the cell signal dropped out. Living in a village, I have a very poor mobile phone signal and while this can be useful when I don't want to talk to someone, here I did. After trying a couple of times I got through. We agreed on some chicken, and I planned the rest my end.

When she arrived I was more or less ready to start cooking, and the Free Range Chicken Breasts were great, but the price was more than I would have been prepared to pay. She had visited the posh supermarket, and while the quality from them is always excellent, they are not cheap. These Chicken breasts from Waitrose cost £5.32 Yet for £5.99 I could have purchased a whole Free Range Chicken from the Granger Market and it would have taken only ten or fifteen minutes to fully joint the fowl.

The incident illustrates for me the problems that so many people face, they lack the kitchen skills to enable them to make cost effective choices. I have no problem with the choice she made, the chicken was succulent, tasty and was of the welfare standard that I would have bought myself. Yet even if I talk to other people who are buying chicken pieces from a cheap (caged) range of birds in another supermarket, they seem not to realise how much they can save by buying a whole chicken and jointing it themselves.

Now I know that people often live busy lives and often cooking from scratch can seem daunting or time consuming, but often it requires a degree of planning or preparation. Taking the example of chicken as an example, when the issue of chicken welfare was in the news, I pointed out to a couple of locals that for the price of the low welfare chicken pieces they had bought, they could have bought two Free Range birds for the same price and have ended up with more portions.

While my better half has come from a more affluent background than me, locally in my village the majority struggle to make ends meet financially. Therefore while I would have made a different choice, it was not as imperative for us than it is for the people who are living on the breadline.

In previous posts I have levelled some of the blame towards the education system and various governments. However as my GF was educated at a private school and also did not get any education in cooking or home economic skills, perhaps the failure is not as much in governments hands as I have been saying. I would love to see all children, Boys and Girls, are taught how to cook at home, but that requires the parents knowing how to cook first. Yet it seems that we are loosing culinary skills with each new generation. So perhaps cooking and home economics should be taught in schools, all schools.

Even before my better half got back from the city with the chicken pieces, I was thinking about making a posting on a very similar topic as a couple of weeks ago, knowing that my FF was going to be visiting, I had bought some fresh Place. I always check that the fish I buy is from sustainable sources and this was. However even I was surprised at the low price, 99 pence per pound. For two pounds cash I had four beautiful whole fish. As A flat fish there is not a great deal of flesh on them, but it is really easy to fillet them and that was exactly what I did. Then latter at the supermarket, I spotted that for the same weight of the fillets frozen Place was four times the price.

Was this simply just another example of up being willing to pay extra, a lot extra for things that we have lost the skills to do? While that is partly true, the answer came in a television programme that I was watching just before my better half turned up. In a visit to Peterhead Fish Market, the largest wholesale fish market in Europe, while there was plenty of fish there, most of the fish was destined for export as in Britain most people will not eat anything but Cod. The presenter even highlighted a box of Place that the fishing boat would only get forty pounds for. Therefore while it means that by going to a reputable and responsible Fishmonger I was able to get a bargain, the processors are the people who make the real money and not the fishermen. Its the same principal with chicken pieces, the retailers and the processors make the money.

Before anyone asks, a box of fish at wholesale will have a stone of fish, that's one hundred and twelve pounds of fish. That's less than thirty six pence per pound. So if we in Britain ate more of other species, caught sustainably, there would not be the problems with over fishing while still retaining the fishing industry. Equally if more people stopped wasting money buying chicken portions especially from low welfare standard birds and started jointing their own from free range, well folks could rapidly make a difference.

And incidentally the way I cooked the chicken pieces was to coat one side with a mixture of red Thai spices mixed with Greek style Yoghurt and slow cook for an hour in a covered casserole. Fragrant, tasty, low fat and it made my better half's tummy happy.

Congo - Blood River

When I was a child I knew that Stanley had found another explorer, who was lost, with the now famous phrase of; “Dr Livingston I presume” However, that was all I knew, and even asking a teacher at school did not enlighten me much. So I had to visit the library to try and discover more. Even then I got a sanitised version of Henry Morton Stanley's adventures in the dark heart of Africa. I had doubts about the veracity of the accounts as in his descriptions of Gorillas they were described as wild fierce beasts, yet images shown on television at the same time as I was on my own voyage of discovery were showing Gorillas as peaceful and gentle.

Apart from discovering that Henry M Stanley had mapped and navigated the Congo River, I was no more enlightened about the man at the time. In some ways I am glad to be living at a time when history was being revised to tell the true story. Even I as a child could have doubts about the history I was being informed then and the truth was far less pleasant than the daring adventurer that was being painted.

The tropical rain forests of central Africa, over two million square miles, were not penetrated by western explorers until the latter half of the nineteenth century where there was an exuberance of species and diversity found. All previously unknown, except to the peoples who had lived there for tens of thousands of years. Yet even before Stanley, in 1859 Paul De Chaillu returned from the Congo basin with hundreds of specimens of species previously unknown to science, and wild tales of the Gorilla as this fiercest near human beast of the jungle. Even exaggerating the the tales by claiming that they would abduct women to fornicate with. His book Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, published in 1861 was the inspiration for King Kong. While not the only one much 19th century literature described African wildlife in terms of myth and fantasy.

However it was Paul De Chaillu's descriptions of the peoples in the forest that had the greatest influence on the men that came latter. Men like Henry Morton Stanley, who on August 9th 1877 reached the mouth of the river Congo having traversed it from its source in the heart of Africa. In his book The Dark Continent, the peoples he encountered, he described as protohumans. This more than anything else triggered the colonial gold rush of the land grab that European countries made for Africa. After all if the land has no human people it was free to be claimed by who ever.

It took Britain, Spain, France, Portugal and Germany only eight years from the publication of The Dark Continent to divide up most of the Equatorial forest between them. However, the largest slice, half the area, was taken not by a country but by an individual, King Leopold II of Belgium Who took the land of the Congo, as his personal pleasure land. He owned every thing, the trees, the animals and the people.

The first resource he exploited in his ironically named “Congo Free State”, was Ivory from the Forest Elephants, so much so that in less than five years the elephants nearly became extinct. The next resource to be exploited was natural latex from the rubber tree. At this point in the nineteenth century rubber was essential for the then new technology of electricity and as insulation on the telegraph wires. As the rubber trees grew wild in the forests, Leopold II (who never set foot on African soil) needed the local knowledge of the various tribes to utilise this resources.

Leopold's exploitation of the forest and the lands set a new standard of horror and abuse in Africa, one that remains to this day. People that failed to produce the volumes of rubber the Belgium king wanted would be whipped for being lazy. And if a village failed to produce its quota of rubber then selected people would have their hand chopped off. Those selected were frequently children.

While European people acknowledge the genocide in Germany, in the Congo was the first modern Genocide and between 1885 to 1908 there were at least four million people killed with estimates that ten million people were mascaraed by the Belgium's All this shaped the peoples of the region and is reflected in the brutality of the modern wars and civil wars of today.

Of course the public myth was that western white men were there to civilise the natives. But the reality was that it was making a profit at any cost. While slavery was already abolished in Europe, the African land grab enabled the racist mentality of the people who still thought that slavery was a good thing to fulfil their dreams and those people who were genuinely going to Africa to help the indigenous peoples were soon made to fall into line with the system. The white man had absolute power there, even the most lowly clerk had this power and that power corrupted the colonialists.

While the public face of colonisation was to civilise and educate the native peoples, the education that Africa learnt was one of brutal exploitation of resources and people. It is from this understanding of the past that I can see and understand the problems of modern Africa today.

The regime of Leopold II though started the first Human Rights campaign of the modern age. One that would be mirrored years latter by the Blood Diamond campaign the Red Rubber campaign Slave Rubber was the first to use photographs of the excesses of the Belgium overseers, like Leon Romme who was notorious for decorating his mansion with the heads of the Congolese

The campaign did work as the king was forced to hand over the colony to the Belgium state, and slowly, very slowly the worst excesses of the colonialists diminished. However the myth of the colonial powers being there to civilise prevailed for another half century.

However, it was the exploitation of the wildlife that has been the hardest lesson that we gave the Africans. The native peoples of Africa (along with all indigenous peoples) had learned how to utilise the natural resources of the rain forest in a sustainable manner. The colonialists saw this abundance and harvested it with no thought or regard to its regeneration or conservation.

However with the discovery of the Mountain Gorilla in 1902 in Kivu the rush by naturalists to the region where the Gorillas lived started a change in the western attitude towards the forest and conservation. Conservationists like Carl Akeley brought a new understanding of the nature of the Gorilla to the world. Gorillas were not the wild man beast of myth but gentle shy vegetarians. This started to change the attitude of people towards the jungle, it was no longer seen as primeval and needing to be tamed and controlled but conserved and preserved.

It was as a result of the efforts of Carl Akeley that the first national park was created in Africa, to protect the Mountain Gorilla at Kivu, although it was originally called Albert National Park. The intention was that the park would be free of people. But the area had been inhabited for thousands of years. This brought great resentment from the peoples, and to them it showed that they were of less importance than the wildlife. Further it reflected the old colonial attitude that indigenous populations were irrelevant and unimportant.

While in the 1950s the Belgium Congo was the most developed part of Africa, with the wealth generated from the mineral resources meaning that it had good primary education and more hospital beds than the whole of the rest of Africa, the attitude towards the indigenous peoples was patronising to say the least. With only the people who resulted from mixed birth being treated with any degree of respect, and even then they were refereed to as evolving. Meaning they were evolving into humans. There were even skin colour charts produced that determined where people could live.

It was not until the advent of television that white western peoples could see the poverty that Africa and Africans suffered while the colonialists were living in the lap of luxury did the movements for freedom and independence take hold. Not just in physical form but in the minds of people across the world. By the 1960s most of the African nations gained independence and there was a genuine optimism across the continent. However the western governments that had been the colonial masters and the major industrial nations still wanted to exert their influence and via a form of industrial colonisation particularly by mining and oil companies, African independence was not as free as it should have been.

Frequently be fermenting tribal differences and illegally supplying arms to disaffected groups, American, Canadian, British and oil and mining companies from other countries were able to exploit the unrest to effectively continue stealing the newly formed states resources. Often simply because the mining companies were not allowed to extract the minerals as cheaply as they had previously. Further, these industrial giants via a system of bribes and the use of mercenaries were able to offer to solve the wars they created in return for much more favourable terms on the mineral concessions. Also government carried out similar activities if they disliked the politics of a particular government.

Therefore, potentially wealthy nations were robbed of the income to develop. Not only that but the infrastructure that was left behind from colonial times was left to decay as the wealth was leaving the country rather than being retained to aid development. All the while the corruption of this system was becoming engrained into the business and social culture.

Further the exploitation of timber and other wildlife resources meant that traditional cultures could no longer live in harmony with the land. Following the example set by their former colonial masters this gave rise to the massive poaching problems that beset Africa. With The Rhino and Elephants baring the most well known brunt of this.

However staying with the Congo, when Mobutu emerged as a leader in the Congo and the state became Zaire it was principally his roots as a man of the jungle that gained him his support and respect.

This is where the history of the Congo meets my personal quest for understanding of who people like Stanley were and my growing discovery of the magic of the wildlife in the Congo rain forest. While my primary interest was discovery of regarding the natural fauna of the region, and to protect the rain forest. I was a campaigner at an early age, the more I discovered about the exploitation of the rain forest and other environmental issues, the more I realised that they went hand in hand with the abuses of human rights.

While under Mobutu's rule, Zaire was relatively peaceful, this enabled the wildlife to survive relatively unhindered. There was still poaching and the growing bush meat trade, but there was not the wholesale felling of the rainforest that was occurring in neighbouring states. Further the wildlife was able to live with far less disturbance than was happening in other parts of Africa.

Now I don't want to create the false impression that Zaire was some bastion of good government, the wholesale and corrupt exploitation of the countries mineral wealth was a serious cancer at the heart of this forest state. Mobutu was siphoning off Zaire's wealth into foreign banks and squandered on building lavish palaces while he became more isolated from the people he ruled. In fact Mobutu had become a mirror image Leopold II. While he did not practice genocide himself it was the Genocide in Rwanda that proved to be his down fall.

He fled into exile leaving the country ravaged by civil war and internal slavery. Many of the mines were abandoned by the mining companies to the armies and militia. Who either kidnapped people to work as slaves in the mines. Or would extract a tax from the miners who are trying to secure a scant living from the mines. This form of tax collection though can not be avoided as if you don't pay the men with guns, you die, they kill you and take their form of tax anyway.

Recent investigations by the united nations have highlighted a couple of the mining and mineral companies that are profiting from this, including a British company. But all of them are involved although they work hard to keep this hidden and out of the public eye. We are all complicit in this as some of the rare and exotic metals used in making mobile telephones will have come from this trade.

The history of the Congo basin is littered with racism and exploitation. The plundering of the natural resources and corruption. While Africans themselves can not be excused for their role in this theft of the continents wealth, nor the violence that they inflict upon each other we in the west have to recognise our part in this too.

As a child I became interested in Africa because of the wildlife. I quickly learned of the threats to the habitat of the rainforest and the mass extermination of species that was following in the wake of that loss of habitat. Equally I discovered that the attitudes towards Africa was greatly influenced by the exaggerated writings of Paul De Chaillu and Henry Morton Stanley. This all combined with the lies of colonisation to give us today the situation where there is a level violence, rape and pillage that would put a Viking to shame.

However if you scanned the media for coverage of the current situation then there has been scant coverage. More hours of television and more lines have been given to the plight of the Gorillas than to the five million people that have died in recent years.

This is not Africa problem it is ours as we need to stop the illegal logging and protect the rain forest to deal with climate change. We in the west need to stop the wars that create the refugees that come to Europe and America. Further as war prevents farming being practised, stopping war and violence will reduce the need for the west to provide food aid and alleviate the current food crisis. However, the last aspect is more complicated. If we stopped our obsession with having the latest gizmo's or gadget like the latest mobile telephone every five minutes, we would not only stop the modern form of slavery that is happening in the mines of the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and other places, we would not have suffered the credit induced banking collapse and the recession.

There are important ethics in all the choices we make. I have often spoken about needing a new form of Green Economics. Here are ways that it truly would benefit us all.

Incidentally while it is true that Stanley did meet Dr Livingston on his journey down the Congo River, it was a myth that he was lost. He was at a mission station on the banks of the Congo. It was just that it took so long for letters to reach Europe that Stanley assumed he was lost.

Zimbabwe

While Zimbabwe may have fallen off the headlines, the violence there still continues. While the unity government has brought an end to the shortages and the hyper inflation, Zanu PF, and the War Veterans allied to Robert Mugabe are still running amok trying to steal the farms from the white farmers.

Under white rule, ninety percent of the land was owned by white farmers. While this was clearly unjust for the majority indigenous black population, when the former British colony gained independence the agreement was that the farms would be bought from the white farmers. This would give the Zimbabweans land to farm themselves. However, Mugabe and Zanu PF started to just take the farms. The land was then given to the War Veterans who did not farm or work the land but just stripped out the irrigation pipes and all the other equipment and sold it.

All this had the effect of ruining the economy as the farms failed to be able to grow the food that fed the population and provided the export earnings. Also the farm workers became unemployed with each new occupation, further damaging the economy. As did the violence and state aided lawlessness. Therefore a cycle of destruction became embedded in the government.

While this was allowed to happen by the state, Robert Mugabe blamed Britain for the problems. There had been an agreement from Britain and other nations that money would be provided to allow the Zimbabwean government start buying the farms back. But Britain stopped providing these funds when thirty eight million pounds disappeared into Robert Mugabe's own accounts and the government via Zanu PF, started just stealing the farms.

Therefore, following the last rigged election, it became clear to even Mugabe that political change was needed. However, the powers behind the throne, the Zanu PF leadership, could not allow this as they risked being charged with crimes against humanity.

But Morgan Tsvangirai was a genuine peace maker and became prime minister in the unity government. While this reduced the violence, it has not stopped it. Zanu PF, aided by the army and the police are still trying to seize farms from the white farmers and inflicting violence upon the black farm workers, while the worlds media is not looking.

The old adage of “If it Bleeds it Leads” clearly applies to the media still and it is often Human Rights organisations and NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) who try to alert the world to the plight of the innocent civilian populations.

While Robert Mugabe remains as president, I can not see an end to this situation I hope that other African leaders will start to apply pressure to make Mugabe leave office. Only then with a democratically elected government restraining the police and the army can true peace become established. Further had the Nobel peace prize been awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, the media's attention would have been turned to Zimbabwe and the dictator Mugabe would not be able to continue his abuse of power unnoticed.

Watch the Skies

No I don't mean for UFOs! For birds. I was sitting at my computer, reading some research material and exchanging some silly text messages with my better half when I looked up and saw not one, but three Red Kites gently gliding over the roof tops of the street. Now I could have dashed out to get some pictures, but I just sat there and delighted in the display they gave me. They are magnificent birds.

That brings me to blow my own trumpet a little, this morning there was a comment posted on one of my films of the red kites (I say one as there are several, is this OCD?) saying something similar. Well I had a look and discovered that my videos have been seen by over twenty thousand people. Now that really did shock me.

Also on the theme of keeping your eyes pealed, the other day I spotted two pairs of crows mobbing each other. It looked rather curious so I kept watching, only to realise the three were Magpies and the fourth was a Jackdaw and it was the Jackdaw that was trying to snatch food from the Magpies. When I first saw them it was at a distance, but as they flew nearer I could see the species and the behaviour. So it pays to watch even the most common bird.

While I may never see a UFO, I bet I will see more magnificent birds.

Coal and Climate Change

As I live in a former mining village, there are still plenty of people who used to work in the coal mines here. Even though the Chopwell pit closed in 1966. Therefore most of the people who were actually involved in mining are retired. There are others who were the children of miners who still hanker for this dead industry. While most of the retired miners are actually glad to see the back of the industry.

It was a seriously dangerous industry and in the 1930s one fifth of all miners were injured in some way or another in the mines and as a quarter of the working population was employed in mining that meant that many hundreds of thousands of people in the mining areas were injured or disabled at any one time. As is typical in my village, the houses were owned by the mine company, therefore if a miner lost his job via injury then the family lost their house too.

Thus it is the retired former miners who know what it really was like who tend to be less willing to accept the modern practice of open cast mining. For them every scuttle of coal is mixed with blood and bones.

Yet anyone who listens to government ministers talking about the energy mix to deal with climate change, will hear them constantly mention clean coal along with wind and nuclear power. That means the government is betting on some form of carbon capture and storage technology being developed and adopted. Thus far this technology has yet to be proven to work especially on the scale of the large power stations that operate in the real world.

Also the energy regulator this week was predicting price rises of sixty percent for energy costs in Britain The main reasons for this increase in charges is the costs of carbon capture as while the technology works after a fashion, it only does this at a price. Further is the cost of building nuclear, and this does not take account of the hidden costs of decommissioning or the nuclear waste.

However there will be a major environmental cost of the government relying upon the mythical clean coal, the landscape will be scared with the wounds of open cast mines. Its ironic but just as America and its government is waking up to the damage of “Mountain Topping” and is starting to regulate against the practice, here in Britain the government is allowing similar practices.

In the immediate area, a five mile radius of my home, there are plans for three open cast sites. If I extend that radius to ten miles there are eight sites either planned or working.

If clean coal can not be made to work the government will be adding to the carbon emissions rather than reducing them. Also the waste from open cast mining creates pollution with heavy metals and other toxins leaching out of the spoil while the mines are operated. It was only during the 1980s that the spoil heaps from the deep mines were cleaned up and the environment started to recover. This can be seen in the clean water and fish now back in the rivers and becks and the return of animals like Otters. What the government is planning and already carrying out, is reversing the clean up of recent decades.

There have been increasing reports over the last five years where central government has overruled local planning rejections of open casting and enforced this unwanted industry upon communities across the country, all in the name of “The National Interest” Further the government is attempting to change the planning rules to make it easier for them to speed up infrastructure projects like mines and nuclear power stations. In effect impose them upon communities that don't want them.

While it may surprise some, back in the early part of the last century miners were considered the lowest of the low, in the same way that the unemployed are today. I suspect that if this government plan goes ahead and many more open cast sites are opened up, the mines and the people working on them will be equally despised. Especially as people see the areas that were once beautiful become scared by the mines again.

Sugar and Fair Trade

Britain has for centuries had a sweet tooth, and since the Napoleonic wars to meet the demand for sugar British farmers have grown Sugar Beet as a crop so that it was not reliant upon imports for sugar. Even though this is a far more expensive way of producing sugar, sugar from cane is far cheaper to produce, the government has guaranteed the prices to farmers for over one hundred and fifty years. Even when Britain joined the then Common market of Europe, this system was allowed to continue.

As the EU from its inception following the second world war developed an agricultural policy designed to ensure that Europe could feed its self, this British sugar subsidy fitted well into the Common Agricultural Policy. Therefore while the average consumer thinks we have a free market in many foods, our politicians even tell us that they can not interfere with the major retailers as this (food) is a free market, in reality it is not.

While these interventions are frequently hidden, it costs the European tax payer two thousand Euros per year to maintain this cheap food policy. Yet the reality is that this cheap food policy hides the real cost of food production while allowing the large retailers to make vast profits. Equally the large scale industrial agricultural producers have often made vast profits chasing subsidies rather than growing the food that people want or need. This is one of the main reasons why the UK imports forty percent of its food.

In the primary commodity crops there is a significant over production. In most years this means that for commodities the free market price is low. The effect is that greater subsidies are paid thus the following year more of that crop is grown suppressing the free market price increasing the subsidy payment and feeding into this ridiculous cycle. While here I am talking specifically about Europe, the system is very similar in the US and Canada.

This is where Sugar and the growing of Sugar beet for sugar is so unique. Sugar beet is grown across Europe but mainly as a fodder crop for livestock. Also Sugar beet is a catch crop grown on land that is normally used for wheat and barely in the periods between a harvest and sowing of the next crop. Therefore, sugar beet is a real cash crop. For farmers in the years following the Napoleonic wars it must have been a welcome boost to income and as the beet has only ever been allowed to be sold to one company, British Sugar, the farmer had a guaranteed price and market for this crop.

But the Napoleonic wars were in the 19th century and we are now in the 21st century. Keeping a system in place that was designed for a situation that no longer exists is madness. But as with many aspects of the common agricultural policy it is nearly impossible to change any aspect, no matter how far it is past its sell by date.

With the British sugar subsidies reform is attempted to be implemented and this year the price that British Sugar will pay for sugar beet will be twenty-six pounds per ton while last year it was twenty-seven pounds per ton. The farmers have said that they will not even plant or grow sugar beet if that is all they will get. This small price cut looks as though it will help dismantle an industry that is no longer needed or wanted.

The sugar produced by British Sugar is heavily subsidised and if we were paying the true cost of producing this sugar were reflected in the price of a kilo of sugar on the shelves of supermarkets then it would be double the cost. While I am an advocate of any state ensuring its own food security, that only applies to the key commodities that are essential in the diet. Sugar from cane is far easier to produce and process. The only problem is that sugar cane can not be grown in Britain, we do not have the right climate.

Further by trying to produce our own sugar we are stopping imports of sugar and cane from developing countries where they need the foreign exchange to develop. While relying on the exploitation of the so called free market would not help the countries in developing world that grow sugar cane, there is a real opportunity to develop a fair trade system that enables genuine development for the poor.

If British Sugar develops a fair trade purchasing policy especially with the island states in the Caribbean, by ensuring a fair price is paid to the farmers, then in time we in will be enabling these developing countries will no longer need development money or aid. The current subsidy of sugar beet needs to change. We need a system that meets the needs of today not the 1850s. Changing the system to a fair trade system that benefits poor countries will reduce the amount of money the tax payers spoon out, while boosting the economies of the developing world. Also by enabling the developing world to export crops that we can not grow here, they can develop their health care and education systems and reduce third world poverty.

Climate Change Refugees

In the past month or so there have been a couple informative documentaries on British television regarding immigration into Britain and Europe. Even before the banking collapse and the recession that followed, there was a strong anti immigration undercurrent. A major part of the problem was that there was no distinction being made in most of the media between economic migrants and those seeking asylum

Add to this mix the fact that within the European Union, workers are free to work anywhere within the EU area, and some people were complaining about “These Eastern Europeans” coming over and taking our (British) jobs. This mix allowed racist and prejudiced people and groups to gain a voice.

The reality regarding the guest workers from Eastern Europe was simply that these people came over here with a solid work ethic and were willing to work in jobs where British workers would not take the jobs. Often in jobs such as agriculture, fruit picking for example, and were often far better skilled and qualified than many of the people who are unemployed in Britain are.

Then on Thursday there was a report on the news that one council were going from door to door to discover what were the issues regarding immigration that caused many of the people to vote for the Neo Nazi party, the BNP. Taking that one council estate (housing Project) as an example, the average reading age was only seven, and the people are effectively functionally illiterate.

I have long held the view that the majority of the people who foster racial prejudice are ignorant so while the statistic regarding the functional illiteracy is shocking, it is not surprising. The problem must have been that these people were let down by the education system. Therefore these folks need extensive help to learn to read and write before they can even be helped to find work. Over the years governments have failed these people, and in recent years the guest workers from overseas has partially hidden this. These overseas workers have done jobs that these functionally illiterate British people could have done, they are unwilling to undertake these jobs.

Therefore while the British economy benefited from this before the recession, the social problems of this significant minority of British people who are unemployable was always there. Further these social problems were being blamed on the immigrants rather than our own ignorant and often lazy indigenous people. Even sections of the mainstream media have ignored this and blamed the migrants rather than looked at the real problems of these socially deprived people.

I know that I may be accused of stereotyping people here, and not all of the socially deprived people on council estates will be functionally illiterate or work shy, but I have met far too many people who are like this. Also if they can not read properly that makes them more susceptible to the lies and propaganda of the far right. Its far to easy to look for scapegoats when there is a problem, and sections of the mainstream media will panda to the image of the migrants being the cause of the unemployed and deprived rather than looking at poor parenting, lack of aspiration, and the failures of education.

As well as government failures, the employers have failed to provide the apprenticeships or training for the workforce, abdicating it to the government and creating the skills shortages that require the British economy to need overseas workers with the skills.

The media, or at least large sections of the media have, also created many of the problems for migrants by failing to distinguish between economic migrants and those seeking asylum Here we are talking about the illegal economic migrant who does not have the right to reside in Britain or work here. As these people have no settled immigration status they are often exploited by employers who fail to pay them the legal minimum wage and are often treated like slaves, the media should be kicking up a stink about that. But no they like to portray them as a drain upon the economy and the social systems in Britain. Personally I think if the media told the truth about how illegal migrants were treated here, exploited and abused, it would do more to stop economic migrants than anything else. As simply the news would filter back that it was not the path to a steady well paid job, or opportunity entering Europe or Britain Illegally.

However for those seeking asylum it should be a different matter. As the UK along with the rest of the world, have obligations under international law to offer refuge to anyone who has a well grounded fear of persecution.

With the numbers of conflicts, wars, civil wars and oppressive regimes across the globe, there are many more than there should be. By this I don't mean that there are to many coming here, to Britain or to Europe, but that we should be doing more to stop the wars and end the conflicts. Equally we should stop supporting the oppressive régimes that frequently generate the refuges that come seeking asylum

Across Europe there is a crack down on immigration and the recession has turned the EU into Fortress Europe. While this is stopping the economic migrants getting into Europe, it is also stopping the asylum seekers from getting the opportunity to claim refuge status. This is breaking international law.

The problem of immigration will not end until we help boost the economic position of the economic migrants. If they were not lacking opportunities and were escaping poverty they would not be coming. Equally if we stopped the support for states where wars are raging and we in Europe worked genuinely towards peace across the globe then there would be far fewer people needing to seek refuge.

There is a hidden reason behind the shutting down of Europe's Boarders, that is the effects of climate change. There are predictions of the effect of climate change that will create the greatest movement of humans ever seen on the planet. By closing the boarders now, we in Europe will stop the people fleeing the effects of human induced climate change from getting in.

This is not speculation as recently I was contacted by a man who works for Customs and Excise and years ago used to extract the urine from me for believing that “Global Warming” was real. To him it was akin to believing in Aliens. He contacted me as he had been given a briefing of the emergency powers the government would enact when climate change creates a crisis. Be this a continent wide famine in Africa or Asia. Or a sudden rise in sea level.

When I used to know him, we drank regularly in the same public house (when I could afford to drink), and he was always hostile to the concept that humans could effect the whole planet. That was over ten years ago and I never thought I would ever see him again when I stopped patronising that public house.

When he attended the briefing regarding the government plans for dealing with climate change, he asked if this was just a theoretical plan, as he still did not believe in climate change. He was quickly disabused of this as the British government as does Europe, knows that we have gone far to far to stop the effects of climate change. Even if we stopped burning all fossilised carbon today we would not stop the impacts of climate change happening.

Therefore he decided to contact me if he could. This he did, via friends. I feel that he had to tell me more than he was comfortable with revealing, but what he was told by his employers, our government, convinced him that climate change is real. I wish that our government would tell all of us what they really know as if this can convince an arch sceptic then perhaps it will convince us all to make the changes needed.

Europe closing its borders will not stop the effects of climate change and it will do us no good if we refuse to help the rest of the world when the damage of climate change befalls the planet.

Sharing the Beach revisited

Last week I posted regarding a beach in California where the courts evicted the seals from their traditional pupping beach. I could not understand why people can not share the beach are and leave the seals alone.

While prior to posting I had been in contact with two people involved in the case, when they each discovered that I was talking to the other, they withdrew their cooperation. To me that illustrates just how childish everyone was regarding the La Jolla beach. This left me not knowing for sure what the situation in today. However, following the posting I was contacted by another individual who was also involved in the dispute.

It was reassuring to finally talk to an adult regarding the whole saga. So little common sense was exercised in this matter that the folks that wanted the seals evicted caused the city authority to have to pay for three thousand cubic yards of sand to be removed from the beach. This was to ensure that there was no seal poo or urine left on the beach. Also the City of San Diego had to pay the costs of the plaintiffs too. The aspect that was never reported though was that the people who were complaining about the seals were the owners of cafés and stores that fronted the children's pool beach. Therefore it was not really about ensuring that this small cove remained available to the people but that the business owners did not loose income. They could have adjusted to cater for the many seal watchers that were visiting the beach.

Now the seals have lost their pupping beach and while the seals are still trying to use the beach, the people are driving the seals away and more than half of the seal pups have been abandoned and some have died as a result.

When will people grow up and stop behaving like spoilt brats?

America Bombs the Moon

Yesterday, Friday, I had a really surreal dream. In this dream I was fully awake and on the news was a report that America had bombed the moon. What had the Moon done to America? Was the bin Liner hiding there? Or was it simply that we have messed up our planet so much that we decided that we needed to start damaging the rest of the Solar System.

The other aspect of the dream that made me sure that it was a dream, was another news report on the radio was that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I must have a really crazy imagination to come up with this sort of stuff. I did think I could contact Hollywood, but it was all far to wacky for anyone to believe it. It had me wondering about that mushroom soup I had.

Then today, when I knew that I was fully awake I discovered that America had bombed the moon and that Barack Obama had actually been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While I know that I am being deliberately flippant, the reality is that thus far Barack Obama has not yet done anything to earn a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact while I was pleased to see Barack Obama elected and I still think he can do some serious good, but he is not a peacemaker.

This Year 2009, under President Bahamas leadership, America has killed more civilians in Pakistan than President Bush did in 2007/8.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been made meaningless by awarding it for promises not yet met.

On this basis can I have the Oscar for a film that I may make in 2013?

Sharing the Beach

I have a good friend whom lives over in Maine, who has a very tolerant view of her local critters, tossing water onto skunks aside. She understands that to have all the great things around her and her kin, she has to put up with some things that are less than pleasant. If I had skunks I think I too would want to repel them as well. It is heartening to find other people that care about the local environment enough to put up with Raccoons and Skunks eating the cat food and the yoghurt.

But this is not the attitude of everyone. In San Diego I heard of a situation that ended up in court, the American way, when Harbour Seals returned to a beach to breed. However the story was being reported as look at what the nasty federal government and city authorities have done and the people had to go to court to get our beach back.

Therefore I did some digging and realised that this was far from as straight forward as it looked. In La Jolla, San Diego California a benefactor donated a strip of beach to the city. This beach had been protected by a harbour wall built by the Scripps family to make a safe secluded swimming beach. And in 1931 Ellen Browning Scripps donated it to the city of San Diego as the children's pool.

I have no doubt that this beach about four hundred yards wide, along with the seventy three miles of other public beach was much enjoyed by the public. Then twenty years ago seals started to return. I say return as just off the shore at this cove is a rock named Seal rock, so from at least 1909 seals were known to be using the beach and rock as a nursery. As maps from that date show this.

So when the seals first started to return, a small number of volunteers arranged a vigil to protect the seals and prevent any harmful interactions between the seals and humans bathing at the beach. As Harbour seals are protected by federal law and the city of San Diego was worried that faeces may cause a health hazard, they were worried about being sued, so the beach was closed to bathers.

Now this was a small section of a large expanse of public beach, but the way that some people reacted, you would think that the city and the federal government had stripped them of all their human rights. To my way of thinking, adults were behaving like spoilt children of five years old who could not share the beach. In fact the childish behaviour of the adults may have been the impetus for some adolescences who tortured and attacked the seals.

This lead to federal officers from the US Fish and Wildlife service being stationed at the beach. As it turned out it was a good job they were there as on 23rd March 2003 a group of swimmers who became known as the “La Jolla Nine” swam on to the seal beach, frightening the seals off the beach, and one of the swimmers got attacked by a male seal who was just trying to protect his harem of females. Female seals can be dangerous, but a male is even worse. He was injured but was lucky to get away with such a stupid action. It is akin to trying to poke a tiger with a stick or pull a lions tail or chase after a moose during the rut. Well the La Jolla nine were charged with disturbing the seals, and found guilty.

Then the people against the seals started causing panic by saying that there were Great White Sharks off the coast and they were eating the seals. It was like a scene from Jaws. While it is true that many species of sharks will eat seals, the shark is a much maligned creature. In fact Peter Benchley regrets having written Jaws as he now realises that his book has increased fear and persecution of sharks.

Well a law suit was brought against the city of San Diego and the seals lost. As Ellen Browning Scripps had gifted the cove, called the Children's Pool to the city in trust. While the verdict may be correct from a very precise legal definition, it really was unfair and unjust. The seals will have been using that beach for thousands of years, long before humans settled there in La Jolla, and what was wrong with sharing? There was other beaches that swimmers and surfers could use.

The irony is that Ellen Browning Scripps was a member of the family that bestowed the funds that supports the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, a place of learning and research that is dedicated to improving the marine environment and was crucial in the work that increased the numbers of seals in the ocean around San Diego. Therefore I doubt that she would have wanted to see the seals cleared out of the cove.

Science in the Media

As my regular reader already knows, I am a fully qualified Geek, and first class nerd. And I am looking to meet... Phew I don't need to do that any more. But seriously, I do try and keep myself informed of the latest science. As an environmentalist I am not anti science, I just question the way science is applied. Often when a discovery is made, there is a rush to publish and exploit an idea (especially if someone can see a way of making money from that discovery), so it was refreshing that the discovery of the oldest human ancestor, the team spent a long time examining the evidence and working out where this fossilised skeleton fitted in the tree of life.

Reading these scientific papers it is not possible to rush to the keyboard, and post anything meaningful straight away either. The scientific press and the journalists that write on these topics get advance notice of the reports and get to read the details. But under this system can not publish anything until the date of publication in the journals. That enables the journalists and science writers to gain an understanding of the report and write something meaningful.

I tell you this, as just a blogger, I don't have that privilege so I have to read the scientific papers at the same time as everyone else. Thus I need time to absorb and understand what the reports is saying. Normally this would not be an issue, but in the case of Ardipithecus ramidus where the mainstream media were over the story like a rash, the way the media were reporting the story made it even more confusing.

In some reports it was described as the missing link found, in other more serious papers it was put in better context, but I was left wondering if some of the journalists had even read the original scientific paper. Then as I thought about this, I realised that the papers and media that were reporting most accurately were the ones that were less bias than the ones that were distorting the scientific paper. Put bluntly the media with a right wing bias were shaping their reports to meet a right wing view of how the world should be. These are the same papers that have been most sceptical about scientific realities like climate change.

In some the reporting of Ardipithecus ramidus there was even a barely concealed creationist agenda. That is something that here in Britain is fairly new, but it is disturbing to see. However, what is most alarming is the simple fact that the majority of people in this country are being so poorly informed.

While I realise that Ardipithecus ramidus is not that important to most people, and even if we do fully work out human evolution it will not have much impact upon most peoples lives, but other scientific matters are important to peoples lives. I know that mentioning “Climate Change” will cause folks to glaze over, but had “Climate Change” been reported without a political bias perhaps we would not have the mess we have now.

As for Ardipithecus ramidus, it looks as though she was a cousin rather than a direct ancestor. It maybe that she is from an evolutionary dead end and humans branched off from her species earlier in the evolutionary path. The most interesting aspect of the discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus is that it looks likely that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, evolved along side us rather than us descending directly from them. Therefore the mythical “missing link” may not exist. It is likely that there will be a whole series of missing links.

How Not to Improve Housing Stock

Using public transport is a useful way of getting to know people within a community and waiting by the bus stops I have often fallen into conversation with folks from the village. One major topic has been about the fate of some bungalows. The elderly residents were moved out to new environmentally sustainable housing that was built near the centre of the village, but the old properties sat empty for a while. While they needed updating, they were good solid structures, and as there is a shortage of social housing, I really hoped that the council would retain them. I even wrote to my local councillors making suggestions of how that could be done. But the properties were demolished. To me that was a waste.

Also the council have been, and still are, in a process of refurbishing the social housing stock in the village. Some of this work has been major work causing disruption to the tenants. One woman I know, told me that she had to have her kitchen floor dug out and replaced as the floors in the properties were seriously damp. The other works included replacing doors and windows, as well as heating systems. Then to add the icing on this metaphorical cake, extra insulation was added to the properties making them much more energy efficient and cost effective to live in. On the whole I think that people are pleased with the results.

However, I was still puzzled by the councils actions of demolishing perfectly good housing stock when there is a need for these houses. Especially as the council plans to build more homes in the village.

Now I could go into a detailed explanation of how central government funds social house building and not local government, but that would you dear reader as much as it would bore me. Suffice to say, the decision to demolish housing or refurbish homes is often dependent upon grants from central government. Equally local authorities need grants from central government to build new houses. Therefore local councils housing policy is often dictated by the economic realities of the grants provided as well as the conditions (strings) attached to these funds.

While checking the news headlines I came across this story. It suddenly became clear why the local council were demolishing existing properties. As the Government (central), gave a commitment to bring the social housing stock up to a basic standard, my local authority is enabling its self to meet the government targets by demolishing perfectly good houses so that they can meet this.

This is truly twisted logic, as if the houses that were demolished were left until the funds were available to bring them to this basic standard, then there would be the social housing stock to fulfil the need for social housing. Now the council needs to build twenty more homes just to replace what has been lost. As the local authority has already announced that in my village thirty new homes will be built, the net gain will only be ten new homes. I am far from being a NIMBY (Not in my back yard), and I know that there is a real need for affordable social housing. But new building should only be used once all the existing properties have been refurbished, improved or adapted.

As I have said in previous postings here before, the local council has been demolishing many hundreds of houses in various areas within the borough. This was done as these were houses that were deemed to be causing social problems. Predominantly they were properties owned by private (slum) landlords who did not care about who they housed. Therefore they were properties often in a poor state of repair and with extremely high rents. The council reasoned that people did not want to live in these houses so they were surplus to requirements.

When in fact what was needed was refurbishment of these properties and the council stopping the rouge landlords from creating the social problems in these areas. To enable the local authority to demolish these homes, the council used compulsory purchase powers, so why not use these powers to buy this housing stock and refurbish them therefore adding to the housing stock for social need rather than destroy sound housing.

There is no sense in the actions of this local authority and there housing actions are geared just to meeting targets rather than geared to meeting housing need. On the logic that the council are operating on, if the local authority demolishes all its houses it can claim that all there homes meet basic standards required by government. But if I were to suggest that the local council will think that's a good idea and do that.

The requirement for local authorities to bring their housing stock up to a basic standard was and remains a very good pledge, as morally people in social housing need to expect a better standard from a social landlord than folks often get from private landlords. It will empower the local authority and the tenants of private landlords to press the poor quality landlords to improve private rented stock as well. As it is now, poor quality private landlords can escape their responsibilities by simply arguing that they are no worse than council housing.

I really do wish that someone would apply some sense to the housing policy in Britain. As I have repeatedly said here in previous postings, there is no shortage of housing, not in this area nor large parts of Britain either, the problem is the affordability of housing. In this village just this morning I counted twenty properties that are available to rent, but on checking the asking rents are at least twenty percent higher than is reasonable.

Demolishing houses will only add to the problems of affordability and feed into the situation that created the banking bubble, and the inevitable crash. Please can we have some common sense? Oh I forgot sense is not that common!

Red Kites and Lapwings

On Thursday I had need to go into Consett. As the day before I had been feeling a little under the weather, I had was not able to go and sit in a hide watching for the migrating birds. So it was delightful while on the Bus coming back from the town to see three young Red Kites wheeling in the sky over Ebchester.

I could tell they were young as the distinctive fork in the tail does not form until the birds get older. But the birds were low enough to be sure of identification. Also it is the first time that I have seen the birds over and around Ebchester, so they are extending their range too.

While I had other things to do in Consett, I used the opportunity to get something in special for K (the Wood Mouses better half) as she was coming over Thursday evening. I quite enjoy cooking when I am doing it for someone special, and as I am getting to know her tastes better, I can plan meals that I know she will like.

I have been trying to work out how you can tell if a relationship is serious, and on Thursday I finally found out. When you can have a serious and earnest discussion about the merits of an Iron and Ironing board. I should point out dear reader that as a scruffy Wood Mouse that is perpetually outdoors, I gave up Ironing a good while ago. But female Wood Mice have different (Better) standards, so we now own the accoutrements for pressing garments. Therefore I guess that the relationship no longer requires training wheels.

On the Friday, I had to make a small supermarket run. This was mainly to get the stuff for the cat. I think I should have trained her to do her own shopping, but I did not and I have to do it for her. So I got the free bus. As I have not used this for a while, preferring to shop in smaller shops than the major retailer that provides this service, I had not seen many of the senior woman from the village for a while too. I had a nice chat with one in particular who I get on well with, and when I told her about my better half, well I guess it is now the hot news in the village oral web.

I know that there have been a few folks that have spotted us together, and I have been told I have a new GF. Told mind you not asked. As our activities have been rather domestic when in the village, it has been amusing to hear the speculation. While we have not hidden ourselves away, it has rather interesting to see the way that folks have tried to ask without asking. Well I have no doubt that the news will spread now.

On the journey back from the major retailer, I spotted a large flock, fifty or so, Lapwings on a field. It is a sure sign that Autumn has arrived.

Neo-colonialism

Back in 1836 there started a series of Enclosures Acts. These were followed by further acts in 1840 and the General Enclosures Act of 1945. This took the common land from the peasant farmers in Britain and gave it to the Lords, Earls and titled gentry of England.

Under the previous system of common land, each peasant (I would have been one of them) would get a strip of land each year, enough that could be ploughed in a day. On this acre the peasant could grow enough food to feed his family, and in good years a small surplice to sell at market. Along with grazing rights on the common land this system prevented mass starvation and developed a sense of community. No one was likely to get rich, but nor did anyone starve.

While the enclosure of land into the field system we have today helped increase food production, it also meant that millions of people were forced off the land and were no longer able to feed themselves. It was probably the creation of all this unemployment that triggered the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

While the commoners rights system was not the most productive in terms of yield or economic returns, the system was fair to everyone. Further as each peasant farmer got a different strip of land every year, it was in his best interest to keep the land in good order. Also if a peasant were unwell at the time of ploughing, or sowing or harvest, his neighbours helped. Further the peasant was able to carry out his main trade be that thatching or basket making or green woodworking etc.

The Enclosures Acts changed the way that the people in Britain lived and worked. It changed the economy as people now needed to earn money to buy the food they once grew themselves.

Across the planet rich countries are responding to the looming food crisis by using the same principals as happened in Britain in the early 1800s. In countries like the Ukraine, British agricultural businesses are buying or taking long leases on the farm land. In one example a single field that is now producing wheat for a British company was once occupied by one hundred and forty smallholdings where Ukrainian families were growing their own food. While they get some money for the leased land, they now lack the ability to feed themselves without money and they are now unemployed.

The food grown there is not for the Ukrainian people either, so while it generates exports for the country, this undermines the food security for that state. Similar deals are being made by the oil rich gulf states who are buying up wast areas of Africa. This displaces the people who already occupy the land and removes the ability for African Nations to feed themselves.

This is not new as often indigenous people loose their means of providing for themselves when forests are licensed for logging. While their hunter gathering may not generate a measurable economic activity, once their hunting and gathering is stopped the people become the poor and unemployed that become an economic drain on the state.

A further example of this neo colonialism can be found in the way that European industrial fishing vessel have been hovering up the fish from the coast of Africa. This has led to the indigenous fishermen in countries like Senegal unable to catch enough fish to feed their families let alone catch a small surplice to sell and provide the income to educate children or pay for health care.

Had the Enclosure acts not occurred here it is likely that we would have a far more sustainable and diverse countryside here in Britain. The closer that the reasons for poverty and famine are scrutinised the theft of land from the people are frequently at the roots of these events.