Saturday 3 December 2011

Gimme the real Ozzy any day of the week

The Safari is dismayed at the rantings of a certain Osbourne this week, sadly not totally unexpected from this shower of sh*tes purporting to be the Greenest Government Ever. In the same week it was also reported, somewhat quietly, that the farmland Bird Index has dropped to its lowest level ever without any hint about what this GGE might do about it. How long before we can walk through England's green and pleasant land without hearing a Skylark singling or seeing a Lapwing plunging earthwards...10 years, five...and what exactly were Grey Partridges? In the uplands the Duke and Duchess of nowhere-you've-ever-heard-of still demand their minions to blast our Hen Harriers/Goshawks/Red Kites/Eagles out of the sky because their great-great-great-great-great granddaddy was a mate of Billy the Conqs who gave em thousands of Saxon acres to play with. Meanwhile in the lowlands Warren is plagued by a wealthy numbnut's 'gardener' who thinks its acceptable to shoot the roosting Mallards on 'his' ornamental lake as they sleep. Possibly less than five years if our glorious Chancellor manages to cover all the best bits of habitat in concrete to boost the economy by building thousands of houses no one can afford to buy or massive extensions to ports which won't receive ships full of goods until people have the money to pay for them...in the meantime he'll have ripped out the spiritual soul of the country, something we perhaps need more than ever to wean us away from the non-entity of celebrity culture and other trite sh*te Saturday night TV bombards us with these days. The viewing figures for best documentaries for ages Frozen Planet and the Origins of Us are nowhere near those of the daily offerings of any of the totally mundane soaps, dancing, singing or sitting around in a hotel garden...we seem to been overcome with despair...even the tiny carrot of  no fuel duty rise can't dent our loathing for the numpties currently in charge. Yes we know no matter who you vote for the government always gets in but this lot need to be got out double quick before they make some serious mistakes that will take decades or longer to undo.
We reckon its all to do with a total lack of connection and understanding of the natural world - strange as some of these people are allegedly farmers, but then if they are in the NFU their leader Peter Kendall worryingly doesn't seem to have  clue what's on his farm either and doesn't believe there is a biodiversity crisis on our farmland...well of course there isn't because when he walks round he doesn't see any biodiversity except the stuff he doesn't like, Rabbits, corvids and Woodpigeons...there's only these commensals left...oh b*llocks to it just make the proper Ozzy Prime Minister for a couple of months, we might actually hear some sense for a change.
We believe it's all down to education or more precisely the lack of it. Pound to a penny GO, DC, NC, CS, PK nor many, if any of their cronies could tell a Yellowhammer from Yellow Loosetrife. How can they make decisions about things they know absolutely nothing about. What's needed is a return to the nature table in Primary schools backed up by proper natural natural history lessons in the curriculum right through to GCSE, rather than a mini-beast hunt here and there and a 'habitats' session covering no more than a couple of day's work in four or more years schooling and then nothing in the teenage years. Then maybe the planners, developers, council officials, brickies, postmen, hairdressers, TV celebrities might actually have some inkling of what is around them and how it fits together and importantly how they fit into IT.
Enough of the rant - today we saw one of the Peregrines over the garden upsetting the local Feral Pigeons - there seems to still be loads of them so they're just not eating them fast enough!!!
On ourr walk to the park with Frank we kept an eye out for plants still flowering and got a reasonable list...Daisy, Black Medick, Chickweed, Dove's Foot Cranesbill, Lesser Celandine! Greater Periwinkle (naturalised in the park), Fox & Cubs and Wall Barley. A Goldcrest was unseen in the tree-tops.
Here's a question for yer - anyone got a spare 25 grand lying around getting dusty in a forgotten draw somewhere? We were discussing betting at work yesterday and we said we had a sure fire system for winning on the horses, trouble is we don't have enough capital to make it work :-(  Our colleagues didn't believe us so when we got home last night we gave it a try with Monopoly money...wish we had real money!!! The result...after all yesterday's races we ended up with NET winnings of ...wait for it...a few pence short of £ 15,000 (about 150% return on yer money) ...for one day's work - Tax free!!! The reason why we couldn't do it for real was our highest stake was almost £10,000 (the return on that was £22,528 or about a year's salary, which of course IS taxable).
Tried it again with today's races and managed to make a NET profit of...
Where to next? A day at the races I think...(can't beat a bit of Queen - or Marx Bros).
In the meantime pin back yer lugholes and let this shower of nobodies rattle yer brains - they would never have won X-factor and they can't dance but they do have fun and Johnny X really gives those skins a severe thrashing. At the Club is still one of our fave albums - the ending is a gas!!! But we never realised they made a second album...duhhh - we can feel a download coming up...





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