Category: General

Fish Dependence Day

Purely by chance I found an article on a French news site – next to one on the rising level of the Seine, but I think that’s just coincidence – on Fish Dependence Day. I had never heard of this before. According to the WWF France has already consumed its year’s quota of fish in less than six months. France consumes 35kg of fish per person per year which is one and a half times the European average and makes France the fifth largest consumer.

Some countries such as Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Estonia produce as much or more fish than they consume.  But those countries which consume more than they produce have to import from other countries and in many instances the people of these other countries have more need of the fish than European consumers, and I don’t suppose they see much financial benefit from the sale of these fish either.

Apparently 48% of North Atlantic fish stocks are overexploited and this figure rises to a horrific 93% in the Mediterranean.

One thing that struck me was that there was no mention of the UK. I have seen the French and Spanish refrigerated lorries queuing up on the quayside of Scottish ports like Ullapool ready to load the catches of crabs and langoustines as soon as the fishing boats dock.  Mr Cameron has forgotten to warn us that on 24th June this year there will be nary a foreign HGV in sight and the Scottish fishermen will be offering their catch to passers-by. In your dreams, Cameron!

What I want is for 24th June 2016 to be British fish independence day when we can reclaim our fishing grounds and catch our own fish with no Brussels-imposed limits, no throwing surplus fish back into the sea and with fishery protection vessels chasing the foreign trawlers away.

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/fish-dependence-2016-update

 

Ah ha

Madrid is an ugly city. Madrid is a heavy city. Outside a few older neighbourhoods that become home to throbbing, pulsating hives of tourists Madrid is an unremarkable collection of post-war blocks. I live in one of the more unremarkable neighbourhoods. The pavements are covered in excrement, mostly of the canine sort. There are few buildings of any interest. Those that are of interest would be entirely unremarkable if they were found in almost any other place. Madrid is a heavy city. Whenever I leave it, I often do as I work in one of its suburbs, I feel Continue reading “Ah ha”

My Telegraph will soon be no more!

 

I received this email this morning:

Dear MyTelegraph User,

As part of our continued investment in your digital experience, we have now completed migrating our website to a new platform, which we hope you’ve had a chance to explore.

We would like to inform you that from June 8 the MyTelegraph section of the website will no longer be available. If you want to preserve any of your content, please follow the instructions below on how to export your My Telegraph blogs.

Link the announcement on MyTelegraph.

My Telegraph

What happened, it appears to have disappeared into the blue yonder?

Must have been whilst I was in Wales and I failed to notice.  Did it die without a whimper?

Anyone got any info on it all?There now appears to be no comment anywhere except the published letters or am I missing something?

‘They Think It’s All Over.’

I’m a wee bit Reginald* tonight.

On the evening of 16th December 1964, I was part of a crowd of just under 5,000 which crammed itself into Muirton Park (record attendance 29,972 when we were robbed 1-3 in the Cup by one of the teams from the Armpit of the Universe which is rightly reviled  throughout the civilised world). Also known as Dundee.

Where was I? Oh yes, 16th December 1964. We had  finally managed to afford floodlights, thanks to selling Jim Townsend to Middlesbrough  for £20,000  and we had invited a top team for the official onswitch.  It was the FA Cup  holders, West Ham. Continue reading “‘They Think It’s All Over.’”

Julian, Gregorian, Jaydubyian

There’s never enough time to do all the chores and leisure that a human wants to do. There’s still many mountains to climb, rivers to cross, swamps to ford, twisters to outrun. More time is needed and I have the solution.

Previously, I proposed an extra hour in the day. A 25 hour day would be manna from heaven. This gives us more time but it’s as clear as daylight that this pilot plan does not fix the problem. My suggestion now is to add an extra month to the calendar. This idea is not as crazy as it sounds. It’s obviously been done before.

Consider the calendarial ber month prefixes: sept, oct, nov, dec. I’m not an expert on these things but an educated guess would be, seven, eight, nine, ten. Yet these months September, October, November, December are months number nine, ten, eleven and twelve respectively. Somebody, somewhere along the line has added a few extra months to the total. Well played, that man, I know where you’re coming from. They must have been short of time in the Dark Ages or whatever and thus made more time available. Continue reading “Julian, Gregorian, Jaydubyian”

An Interesting Election

Local elections in the United Kingdom have yielded interesting results. Wavey Davey’s beleaguered Conservatives did remarkably indifferently in England and Wales. Proving that Scotland is if nothing else a world onto itself Ruth Davidson led her party from the political wilderness into being the official opposition at Holyrood. The fragrant Wee Nippy, as I predicted last year, remains the leader of the devolved regional government but  without a majority. The SNP overplayed the nationalist card. Unionist Scots are growing highly adept at tactical voting and this has helped to destroy the majority that Alex Salmond, the historical, present and eternal source of all Continue reading “An Interesting Election”

The Trial of the Last Century

Having watched the excellent ten part The People v O.J. Simpson on TV, marred only by the miscasting of Cuba Gooding Jr. as OJ- in this critic’s eyes he’s too small to play the part, I read the book that the series was based on. The book is a real clichéd page turner. I’m not undermining the book by saying that. It is a comprehensive recount of the tragedy.

We can all recall the events of the trial and the pre-trial low speed chase when it actually happened but in hindsight this case really was something else. The book could easily pass as a piece of fiction. It’s got all the potboiler ingredients. I could name four dozen plays that would make a first down. There were dysfunctional prosecuting lawyers, duelling with themselves defense lawyers, a vain judge, a Brentwood Hello (don’t ask), racist cops, barking dogs, DNA experts (unheard of at the time), OJ’s hanger-ons, the first public awareness of the name Kardashian, XtraLarge gloves that didn’t fit, a biased jury and on and on I could go on. As the writer weaves the reader through all the entanglements it’s easy to forget that two people were murdered.

There are lots of asides in the book that the TV show missed. When the National Enquirer ran topless photos of the prosecutor, Marcia Clark, she was so humiliated she sobbed in court. Her co-prosecutor, Scott Gordon, quick as a flash jotted down a response on the paper next to her. “The Enquirer was going to publish the same photos of me but Greenpeace wouldn’t let them do it”. This made Clark smile.

The verdict went in Simpson’s favor, though once a rogue always a rogue. He is currently serving a jail term for armed robbery and kidnapping. His luck might have run out but never forget that this was a bad man that got away with a double murder.