Behind Blue Eyes

Protection of Badgers Act 1992

1 Taking, injuring or killing badgers.

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if, except as permitted by or under this Act, he wilfully kills, injures or takes, or attempts to kill, injure or take, a badger.

(2)If, in any proceedings for an offence under subsection (1) above consisting of attempting to kill, injure or take a badger, there is evidence from which it could reasonably be concluded that at the material time the accused was attempting to kill, injure or take a badger, he shall be presumed to have been attempting to kill, injure or take a badger unless the contrary is shown.

(3)A person is guilty of an offence if, except as permitted by or under this Act, he has in his possession or under his control any dead badger or any part of, or anything derived from, a dead badger.

(4)A person is not guilty of an offence under subsection (3) above if he shows that—

(a)the badger had not been killed, or had been killed otherwise than in contravention of the provisions of this Act or of the Badgers Act 1973; or

(b)the badger or other thing in his possession or control had been sold (whether to him or any other person) and, at the time of the purchase, the purchaser had had no reason to believe that the badger had been killed in contravention of any of those provisions.

(5)If a person is found committing an offence under this section on any land it shall be lawful for the owner or occupier of the land, or any servant of the owner or occupier, or any constable, to require that person forthwith to quit the land and also to give his name and address; and if that person on being so required wilfully remains on the land or refuses to give his full name or address he is guilty of an offence.

10 Licences.

(2)A licence may be granted to any person by the appropriate Minister authorising him, notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this Act, but subject to compliance with any conditions specified in the licence—

(a)for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease, to kill or take badgers, or to interfere with a badger sett, within an area specified in the licence by any means so specified;

Parliament has, in my humble opinion and for a change, quite fairly managed to balance the desire to protect a species with the need for the country to carry on functioning economically.

Badger cull plans for England being unveiled

The government has set out plans to license farmers in England to shoot badgers on their land, with tens of thousands of animals potentially targeted. The government believes the badger cull is necessary to curb TB in cattle. Cattle TB cost the UK more than £100m last year.

The Krebs Trial found that the incidence of TB fell in cattle herds inside the culling zone, but rose outside, probably because killing badgers disrupted the animals’ social structures, making them range further and along less ordered trails in search of food and territory, bringing them into contact with more cattle.

The team concluded at that time that culling could not be an ingredient of an effective bovine TB control programme; and some of them, at least, say that is still the case. However, other observers point out that in the four years since the Krebs trial concluded, the “perturbation effect” has fallen away while some benefit appears to persist inside the culled zone.

Farmers don’t like badgers. Campaigners think that badgers are pretty. Instead of being seen to support one side or the other (Labour: pro-badger; Tories: pro-farmer) why don’t we do something revolutionary for this country and do a bit more research before we decide which mast to nail our colours to?

Broken glass everywhere
People pissin’ on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far
‘cuz a man with a tow truck repossessed my car

The bill collectors, they ring my phone
and scare my wife when I’m not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station

A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin’ on you but he’s frownin’ too
Because only God knows what you’ll go through
You’ll grow in the ghetto livin’ second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You’ll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin’ big cars, spendin’ twenties and tens
And you’ll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I’m cool, huh, I’m no fool
But then you wind up droppin’ outta high school
Now you’re unemployed, all null and void
Walkin’ round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you’re a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein’ used and abused to serve like hell
’til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young so…

Don’t push me ‘cuz I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head

Apologies to those who have already seen this. I don’t tend to watch this kind of programme because I usually have something better to do than sit in front of the telly. I challenge you to watch this without jumping out of your skin as I did when I saw it. It is worth watching the whole thing if you have time. The whole thing was recorded by a BBC crew who happened to be following the officers.

I think the female officer sums it up when she shouts “FUCKING HELL”!

Next time you are reading a “bad news” story, think about this video and what you would have been doing if confronted with the same situation.

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know
This weakness I feel I must finally show

Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free
Har har, har har, har har, har har

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life

Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker

Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1159

For what feels like ages I have been trying to distil a thought process into a neat personal philosophy that could be expounded in a single blog post. It started from the idea of selbständigkeit, the principle that a self-respecting person should not have to rely upon the assistance of others for anything. I’m having difficulty explaining this now but the essence was that I felt as if I should be able to look after myself. I might not be good at everything but I should aim to be sufficiently proficient to get through without having to lean on anyone else. But I have now realised that this is utter bollocks.

My, err, great-great-(great-?)grandfather was a naval Captain. He helped build the Clifton suspension bridge by positioning ships at various points across the Avon to support the structure and equipment. No mean feat when you start to think of the basic mechanics of it. Quite large and heavy bits of equipment must have been involved. My rather crappy photo of the bridge shows quite how high up the bridge is.

My grandfather was a civil servant, but he did not sit on his backside shuffling paper around in a shiny air-conditioned office in Whitehall. His had rather mundane job titles but in effect he set up and operated important infrastructure in some of Britain’s African colonies. He was pivotal in the creation and operation of Somaliland – the bit next to the Failed Republic of Somalia that you rarely hear about because people there don’t make a habit of hijacking oil tankers.

Anyway, under this stupid boy theory, everyone is supposed to stand alone and achieve their best under their own steam. No help is asked for, none is expected. Problems are to be dealt with alone. There is nothing wrong with BE that cannot be fixed by BE, etc..

But we can’t deny that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Whether we are using something as mundane as a road or using something skill we learned from someone else we constantly depend on each other. Or it might be a nudge in the right direction when we can’t see through the fog that sometimes descends.

I am lucky enough to know giants who have lifted me up so that I can sit on their shoulders. And they have dashed my stupid theory to smithereens.

Summer 2004, Portugal. The tabloids had been full of stories about one of England’s leading players in the run-up to the European Championships. On the streets of Lisbon and on the terraces of the shiny stadiums the English crowds were singing

He scores with his head
He scores with his cock
Wayne Rooney drinks Super Bock

Given the usual standard of football “humour”, I thought this was quite good. The revelations apparently had no effect on England’s performance in the competition: we went out at the quarters as normal.

When I think about the obsession of Britain’s newspaper buyers for stories like this I do not feel a swell of patriotic pride. We have a long way to go before we can consider ourselves a civilised nation. Only when the target customers of the main purveyors of “news” are not in the slightest bit interested in who has been fucking who will we be able to imagine ourselves to be a bit mature. I couldn’t give a toss, quite frankly. John Terry and William Hague can get their kit off or not with whoever they damned well please and I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know. I am in the minority in this country in September 2010. Which is why I don’t pay “journalists” to uncover the uninteresting truth in these matters.

The other month while I was out running I caught sight of a vaguely familiar face walking in the opposite direction. Only as I passed him by did I realise that it was David Laws. He cut a lonely figure in the late evening twilight. He didn’t look as though he was exactly full of joie de vivre. I didn’t have the time or lung capacity to offer words of support and even if I had been able I would not have known what to say, so I did the next best thing in the British lexicon: I turned my head towards him and moved my chin down and forehead forward about a quarter of a millimetre and then back up again.

Journalists might say that they are saving the world from corruption, nepotism and fraud but they know perfectly well that those who buy the papers are only looking for the gossip. I challenge any mainstream “journalist” or blogger to state unequivocally that there is nothing in their private life that they are not at least mildly embarrassed about. Would they want their petty trysts splashed on the front pages of the rags? Would they be happy for others to trawl through a list of their previous partners and then publish photos of the ugliest or least suitable? Would their readers?

There is nothing quite so unpleasantly British as tall poppy syndrome. Only people with nothing of interest in their own life can possibly be so obsessive about what others get up to legally in their own time. Only those with no reputation to be proud of would wilfully spend their time airing someone else’s dirty washing. In Britain no success story can be without scandal or rumour. No wonder so many people are scared to stick their necks out and get involved in anything.

I don’t blame the papers themselves, they are only businesses catering to their customers. I don’t want a privacy law. I don’t want regulation or publishing prudishness. I want my fellow citizens to grow up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05dowd.html?_r=2&ref=maureendowd

From Carlisle to Penzance via Wigan, there is one thing which every town in England excels at. Broken glass. On the pavement. On the road. On the verges. This afternoon on my way to the tube station I was conscious that my trainers might burst if I was not careful.

What is wrong with people? Why can’t they leave the bus stops alone? Why can’t they put their bottles in the bin?

A journey in numbers: 12 days, around 8 hours in the saddle each day, 949 miles in total, 2 punctures and several sense-of-humour failures. But, of course, the numbers mean nothing in themselves. A strange aspect of humanity kicks in during this kind of endurance challenge: as soon as I was off the bike the memory of how hard I had been working just a few seconds ago was gone. On the last day I cycled at full capacity almost without a break for six hours. By the time I reached the finish line my body was telling me that it was close to total exhaustion and yet my brain was saying “hey, that wasn’t so bad after all”. And by the time I had inhaled a pint of cider and a pasty I had forgotten the entire 12-day ordeal.

When the body is working at that intensity the brain cannot concentrate on much beyond simple survival. It’s wonderful. The mind does not ponder the stresses and strains of day-to-day life. “Real life” seemed a million miles away as I turned the pedals. Even remembering the name of the last town we had been through became quite difficult sometimes. The routine of getting up, eating, cycling, eating, cycling, eating, sleeping was all encompassing. On a good day it was possible to switch off entirely and plough through the miles without even thinking about it. On a hard day each yard was a test of character. Occasionally it seemed as though the journey would never end, at other times the nation seemed in the palm of my hands. The trick is just to keep going, ignore the discomfort, try not to think too hard about the distances and whistle a tune.

The challenge is not one of simple physical fitness. I think most people with a reasonable level of fitness have the physical attributes needed to complete the same journey. The difficult part was the mental challenge of pushing on in difficult circumstances. The toughest day for me was from Chepstow to Tiverton via Bristol and the A38. The wind was against us all day. I think I averaged about eight miles per hour. I had a puncture on the outskirts of Bristol. It then poured with rain until lunch time. The hills, wind and heavy traffic made for a pretty unpleasant day. But we all made it to our destination and dined in the best pub I have ever been to. The hard days just make the less hard days seem easier – the next day seemed like a breeze in comparison.

Those of you who wondered whether I could manage it were entirely justified. I was not sure myself whether I would be able to hold firm until the bitter end. After all, a challenge is not really a challenge if you know you can complete it before you set out.

Cycling really is a fantastic way of seeing the country. We saw pretty much everything that Britain has to offer: pristine Scottish lakes and rivers so beautiful that my eyes hurt; the rolling countryside of Shropshire; ancient towns; mountains; coastline; Warrington and Cowdenbeath. We were welcomed warmly everywhere we went. People were helpful and friendly to us, offering us refuge from the downpours and serving us tea and cake even while we dripped and sweated all over their establishments. Despite the deluge of problems which we have imposed on ourselves, Britain is a stunningly beautiful, thriving, vibrant, pleasant and welcoming country. Even in poor weather, the countryside is outstanding. For those of us who live in one of the big cities it is easy to forget how close we are to empty space, to narrow country lanes, to picture postcard market towns, to warm hospitality. We really must learn to take advantage and to be proud of this fantastic country of ours.

Now get your wallets out an give some of your hard-earned to those who don’t have the advantages that we enjoy.