Tag: Nature

Jockeys, horses, Police & Protestors – The Grand National 2023

Today was the 175th Grand National horse race at Aintree, I know I am old because I still enjoy and support the running of this horse race. One horse sadly died during the race and 118 people were arrested who attempted to stop the race from going ahead. I did not enjoy the actual race this year as I was quite fearful of the risk to jockeys, horses, protestors and police had a protestor tried to take matters into their own hands and run on the course in an attempt to stop it during the running of the race. This would have been a sad and sickly sight with potential fatalities’ that would make news all around the world all for the wrong reason.  

Protestors at this years race

These protestors have decided they are hell bent now and at future race meetings aiming to stop this event by breaking in to the event on mass and trying to chain themselves to race course jumps fences in order to prevent the event from going ahead. We live in a democracy where we can without harm to ourselves or others say and do what we like. But we should not and cannot aim to inflict or forcefully implement our views onto others.

If the law makers that we vote in decided that something is wrong, immoral or cruel and we need to stop doing it,  then the legal process to stop doing the said event or activity is there and would result in something that the people as a majority do not want to happen to stop. But in no democracy should the will of a few be forced onto the many. To my mind when you say people no longer have a freedom of choice your moving swiftly into the realms of a form of fascism and totalitarianism, where you are not free to think or do things for yourself because someone else is telling you how to think and what to do and I am very strongly opposed to that kind of control, without dam good reason.

There are reasons that I can think of where people’s rights to do something should be restricted and the majority of the population did agree in this country with that restriction and that time was with gun control legislation. It is one of the greatest successes in legislation in the UK to my mind because of how many lives have potentially been saved.

But there are things that I still think we have a choice to do such as eat a beef burger or watch a horse race. Some people are passionate about the idea that I have no right to eat certain animal and fish based foods and I am also no longer able to watch horses racing at Aintree. If a utopian view of veganism was adopted overnight I would dread to see what a vegan Britain would look like and also how the vegan police would enforce and prosecute those that broke the new vegan based societal rules.

Also if animals in the countryside were no longer being farmed for their meat does this mean that there would no longer be profit or a point in looking after any domesticated animals in the countryside. What would be the point of keeping an unmilked cow or an unprofitable pig. The domesticated animal market would be dead overnight if a vegan utopia was adopted. Would we also be arresting and jailing those that continue to trying to eat meat or race horses over fences.

Well we could reintroduce rewilding which I am a huge believer in and I worked for a charity called Moor Trees as a Trustee for a number of years that works towards the rewilding of Dartmoor to a woodland and more natural environment, this is a wonderful concept and one which for many areas of the world I fully support. But a wild environment is no utopia in itself, its wild, no vets and pretty bleak and brutal at times. The natural environment is a wonder awe-inspiring place but there is no such thing as a clean death in nature or a wonderful life in the wild.

A wild environment is not some giant entertainment centre for a vegan to play and populate the planet from. Its wild, brutal and potential deadly environment to live, survive and thrive within. The domestication of plant and animal life has happened over thousands of years for very good reason. Because a wild natural environment is a brutal and repressive place to live it’s no Disney movie or fantasy play ground and often this is ignored or overlooked by vegan society advocates. You have more chance of being a happy, safe and sheltered vegan by being plugged into a computer and playing on your favourite games than you do by being at one with a completely wild environment.

Whose Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses – U2

Better to have Life on earth than a death that takes you to paradise

The headline is not intended to offend but to thought provoke and it was rattling around in my head when I woke up this morning because of a dream I had! I was also watching Question time on the BBC last night which is a political debating show prior to going to sleep. They had the usual selection of politicians and a representative from the right wing press but on the panel there was also the chief executive of Oxfam. Oxfam is a global community of people who believe in a kinder, and radically better world, where everyone has the power to thrive not just survive. We believe we can overcome poverty by fighting the injustices and inequalities that fuel it. There was also a priest/vicar from Bristol who spoke a lot of sense in the clip below.

Question time 30th April 2023

It is heart warming to know that there are organisations and people out there that do such good works for lives on earth. The people in the audience of the Question Time show also consistently argued for a better environment, fairer immigration system and also had local needs such as an aspiration for more affordable housing for the young. These simple political desires of a better global environment, fairer immigration system and aspirations to have somewhere to call ones home are very much the present aspirations of the majority of British people that I know and I would even argue reflect the majority view of the UK at the moment.

But you would not think that when listening to Government Conservative Politicians and spokesmen from media outlets such as the Spectator or Daily Telegraph in the UK that seem to try to argue and peddle the idea that every decision being made in government is good and in the interest of people of Britain and their doing their best for the environment, immigrants and life as a whole. The things that keep on going wrong for them and getting worse do so because the challenges are complicated and difficult not because there solutions are flawed and doomed to failure, the audience did not buy those answers and that narrative for one minute which was heart warming to see on the News Night show last night.   

  

Coldplay – Paradise

Christmas is a time for giving    

Presents wrapped, cards written, items posted, pennies counted – One thing my Mum and Dad have both taught me is that giving is not about the joy of getting things back to you but its more about the pleasure in doing something for others.

My Mum is the present giver and my Dad is the charity donator. So after sorting out my Christmas cards and presents I turned to looking at renewing or donating afresh to a new charity or two for 2023.

Over the last 13 months I have been giving a small monthly payment to International Rescue Committee who are basically the good guys that go in and provide support on the ground or to people fleeing war zones and area of crisis across the world. It makes me feel like I can contribute to something and help people out in the world with a small donation that they then choose where the money goes to and to people in most need.

I also became a member of a charity called Moor Trees back in 2020, they advocate for and actively re-establish the planting of woodlands on and around Devon and Dartmoor. I really am impressed by the hard work that this charity does and the results they have achieved I worked as a trustee with them in the past and really am inspired by what they do.

I also nearly forgot – I am also a member of the Green Party of England and Wales and they are doing really well in Exeter which is great news too.

With regard to the International Rescue Committee my payment card that I used to pay them has just expired and I don’t know whether to renew my donation to them or change it and become a member of a charity that concentrates more on issue concerning climate change and the environment. If I were to change charities I would want to give to an organisation that is having a positive impact on tackling climate change and protecting the environment and not perhaps just worrying about it.

I am going to try and do a little more research on who is best to donate to prior to making a decision. Below are a list of the few I am considering contributing to.

I have today discovered a charity called Green Alliance they are also on WordPress so have signed up to follow them they are an independent think tank and charity focused on leadership for the environment. Since 1979, they have been working with the most influential leaders in business, NGOs and politics to accelerate political action and create transformative policy for a green and prosperous UK.

There is another organisation called the Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization working at the intersection of business, agriculture, and forests to make responsible business the new normal. Who are building an alliance to protect forests, improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities, promote their human rights, and help them mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.

Finally I have also just found an organisation called Cool Earth on its website it says Cool Earth exists because right now, the world is in a climate crisis.

The most effective way to fight back is to protect the best carbon-storing technology that already exists: rainforest.

And the best way to do that? Back, support, and listen to the people living there.

Indigenous peoples and local communities have lived in balance with rainforest for thousands of years and are the real rainforest experts.

They are people who face extreme injustice whilst living on the front line of the climate crisis.

We champion the relationship between people, rainforest and climate.

Cool Earth exists to give cash direct to rainforest communities, to fund projects that create choice, tackle the root causes of deforestation and protect vital carbon sinks.

Their mission is to back people, to protect the rainforest and fight the climate crisis.

I think I will probably sign up to donate to Cool Earth and probably renew my donation to International Rescue Committee.

U2 – Desire

Political leadership in the UK today and does it have what it take to survive this century?

Tonight in the UK there was a political debate concerning who will be the next leader of the Conservative Party and UK government. They will not be elected by the people for the people but rather chosen by the conservative members of parliament to then be voted for by the members of the conservative party members.

Therefore they are not trying to decide how to govern but who can out conservative vote each other. That is the most important point that they have reached in their political career to date. Sometimes politics does seem just like a numbers game where you have to convince enough people of your point of view and direction that it is just enough to get you over the next winning line.

I can’t argue that the British system is one in which is by any definition the best system of governance in the world. But it is one in which I am content to live within and be governed by and that is more than I can say than other forms of governance in the world.

The world in our life time faces some huge fundamental questions concerning why we are governed the way that we are is there such a thing as society, or a global citizen and if so what is the point of that society and the citizens that live within it and who should it strive to work for and in which way.

The machine that is human global system of production, destruction, pollution and poverty, wealth and power really has been a shambolic eclectic mix and mishmash of peoples working together and  against each other and also those not even being given an opportunity to work at all.  

What makes me liberal minded is that I respect your right to do what you do so long as it does not impact negatively on the lives of others.

What makes me conservative minded is my respect for what has gone in the past try to learn from what was done well and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

What makes me socialist minded is my belief in social justice and the rights and just treatment which we are all born into or must continually strive to work and fight for and defend.   

But mostly I am a believer in the right to life for the earth, humanity and those generations as yet unborn. Pro life and providing all creatures and peoples with an opportunity to exist on a planet that is not infested with humans hell bent & blinded by their own ignorance or greed in causing its potential destruction.

When you understand how we count economic success, productivity and all so called positive outcomes in our political institutions there all invariably deeply floored in many ways.

We don’t have a constitution or economic or political system in place YET that strives to protect all lives on earth and the earth itself. Imagine rather than how many dollars or pounds a country helped make each year that instead we considered success by how many species had been saved from extinsion or how many sustainable forests were being protected replanted and not being cut down or how many people did not have to feel that they had no way out other than to commit suicide. An eco economy or socially just policies for people and planet is where we need to be moving to but I just don’t see that kind of vision in any political leaders of our next government yet and i hope to see such vision in my lifetime though if we are to have a good chance of surviving the next 100 years of human and planetary struggle. We must strive to let people and planet live, thrive and be protected and respected.

These are the dreams and ideals I aspire to hope that can one day come true, these are the hopes and fears that I have that I pray to god about and these are the ideals that I hope an atheist or a believer in a righteous and just god could both hope and believe in living for and working towards too.

An alternative to reality

In this our only planet where we have choice on how we choose to live, why do we make choices that make it so dam hard for the citizens and life to exist upon it? If life on earth were a computer game, then we always seems to be playing it on the exceptionally hard setting with maximum blood and gore.

What if God had sent a female messiah instead of Jesus who instead of being nailed to a cross for our sins had settled down got married and had a family. I am sure the world of men (& women) would have lived through a great deal less religious and politically justified wars.

Having a male perspective on life and God, I think is a dangerous thing at times and where some sensible people would wish, pray and hope for peace. Others sometimes try to fight the good fight verbally and physically looking for a moral prerogative for war and justification for the death of others.

It would not be so easy to rouse a female divine force to war as it appears to arouse a male divine force.  

Yahweh is said to have or have had a wife according to some scholars called Asherah, I wonder if Yahweh ever bothered listening to Asherah or whether she left him for an alterntive extraordinary being such as Buddha?

God in this world has been shaped as a very male deity and look where that has gotten us!

Hymn to Her

The birds in the breeze

During lockdown due to Covid-19, this feels like a life time away now. I bought myself a bird table and began to regularly feed the birds outside my front window by where I would work at home and just from watching them feeding I was able to appreciate a simple truth – that life is not perfect or harmonious balence and there is a continues battle for the pecking order for how things are and how they should be.

The birds fly in so elegantly on their wings, but they would always be squabbling amongst themselves on the bird table trying to boss each other around to ensure they got what they wanted. I do not know whether this was because they were hungry or starving or just the way they do things.  

finches at feeder

The big birds such as seagulls would also often be the first to the table and would have the first cuts of bread put out on the table. The Pigeons or sparrows would never join them at the table but would wait their turn for the seed too small for the seagulls to successful take off the bird table or bird feeders. I never saw a seagull attach a smaller bird but then again the smaller birds would never challenge the gulls.

We picture in our heads birds such as seagulls, pigeons or sparrows as peaceful creatures of the animal kingdom. But to see up close the squabbles and infighting that goes on in order to enable them to feed is an eye opener. There is no humanitarian or religious distributor of food to the birds it is in fact every bird for themselves.

My point I hope I am making is that even though our natural environment is beautiful and offers much wonder. The natural environment can be harsh and brutal place and a daily struggle to feed and survive.

Life for us humans can at times be harsh and brutal and many times in human history our darkest times have been when man inflicts darkness and pain upon man. But ultimately this should not detract us from the beauty of the human spirit and hopefully its ability to overcome daily struggles and the desire and will to survive, prosper and flourish.  

Environmental catastrophe or slow car crash syndrome!

I don’t know if you have ever been in a car accident or crash but for a very brief moment in time all your senses are heightened and it feels like everything that is happening in slow motion even though time ticks along at its same old pace. Your eyes are wide open and if like I was, your in the passenger seat then all you can do is sit and watch the driver hopefully move the vehicle to somewhere safe (if your lucky).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on the current state of knowledge about climate change. Today they issued a IPCC report is ‘code red for humanity’

Though many will still scoff at the idea of climate change and claim it’s still a matter of what ever they can try and stretch our little brains into believing it is, so long as it is anything other than actual climate change and does not interfere with their capitalist freedoms to make money at the expense of others, such naysayers will always exist on a spectrum of opinions and ideas about ever changing situations on big issues. There are many that still don’t believe that Covid-19 exists but at least they never stopped the development of vaccines and medical advancements for the rest of us.

We could seriously be looking at the car crash of a situation that could very much destroy this planet and all life on it if we are not careful, the idea of the destruction of wildlife, climate change and irreversible decline in climate are ideas that have been around the block since when I was a child and yet still we get headlines like those of today like this warning that this was some how not foreseen, certainly not acted upon as quickly as it could have been and were still in the eye of the storm or the screeching of the breaks of the car crash of a situation.

Just as with Covid-19 I feel that humanity has within it the capacity to do what is right, when it is asked to and by those that need to. But time really will wait for no man, women or environment to see if we learn our own collective climate changing lessons.  

Rory Ellis – Road of no return

How our brains are processing the pandemic

BBC News – How are Brains are processing the pandemic
The Prodigy – Poson

I don’t know about you but nothing feels normal about this year and it is just a little bat sh*t crazy. It seems on the news that one problem was kind of sorted and a new thing would pop straight up in its place a little bit like the arcade game below.

Hammer Hitting Arcade Game – Almost like watching the news during Covin-19 Pandemic.

Mad world on life support

Well social isolation for all except those that work in the serve us sector the cleaners, the shelf stackers and carers are prity much keeping society on life support from now on and they are the so called low skilled and certainly low paid.

Sheding tears for fears

Mother Nature proving just how puny we really are

The industrialised and calculated damage to the planet and to the plants and animals that live on it and how humanity seems to think it can carry on regardless without consequence is truly being tested this decade. We have had record temperatures, flooding, fires and now Coronavirus. The flooding , fires and temperatures records didn’t really seem to get under the skin of the corporations, billionaires and governments running our show globally.

Even though we have seen a lot of mass marketing by governments organisations and billionaires concerning how much they care and what great lengths they are going to in order to help our species continue to industrially manipulation the planet, butcher wildlife to make more room for the crap we buy before it goes to landfill whilst worshiping at the altar of capitalism it just does not really feel as if anything has changed.

That is until Coronavirus came along, everything seems to have changed now and people in charge are mobilising as if war has just been declared. It really does feel like it has got under the authorities skin. My chances of living or dying in this world dont seem to have changed that much and someone living in a piss poor country trying to escape to a better life to a richer continent, their life chances don’t seem to have changed much. But for our leaders and people in charge they now realise more now then ever before that like us all are just mere mortals and only human.

When I was a child at school back in the early 1990’s my geography teacher started to tell us about climate change, the industrial deforesting and destruction of biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest and the amount of undiscovered by man, species we were losing by the bucket load. She darkly commented ‘well of course it won’t affect my generation but it will of course affect yours’ and then laughed and carried on with the lesson. Even back then and still to this day I very much knew she was right.

I don’t know whether to fear Coronavirus or to be in awe of its simple deadly efficiency. Well only time will tell.

Mumford & Sons – Wilder Mind