All around our pretty village of Embleton we are living in a “war zone”. It's a war against nature promoted by our government and carried out by our farmers. Hundreds of acres of blasted desiccated plants are witness to the evil madness of “set aside”. In all my 77 years of life I have never seen such deliberate destruction of plants, insects, amphibians and fungi – all in the name of profit and maintenance of high food prices.
The ancient Greeks knew very well that in politics those that most want “power” are the very worst people who should have it. It seems we are all more or less willing victims of this immutable law as the west's democratic countries rush along from one folly to the next. Spraying tons of poison on hundreds of acres is pure ecological madness. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves. We are constantly being urged to save carbon in the so-called “climate emergency” but here we are deliberately preventing healthy plants collecting carbon (the soil provides one of our most important carbon sinks where plants are grazed by animals). It's effectively murder on a grand scale.
No doubt the companies which provide the chemicals and the farmers who reap the profits are delighted with their good luck. As always, the politicians will be very pleased with themselves (just as they are to send more and more weapons to kill Russians). For the rest of us – are we just powerless voting fodder with a chance every few years to choose the least bad option? Neither our councillors nor our MPs are likely to raise a finger to stop this madness.
Readers may sympathise with my rant which briefly sums up my present feelings:
ANGRY AND SAD
We could but we won't
We should but we don't
We mess with the Earth
Want bounty not dearth
So we take what we can
For self-serving man
We escaped from our caves
But the poor are still slaves
And the rich run the show
As all governments know
All our money is debt
Can't pay it back yet
Farmers murder our soil
While we love to burn oil
You can see with your eyes
It's not very wise
Our kids sure will suffer
when the show hits the buffer
Our lives could be good
How I wish that they would
But our culture is bust
We can't do what we must
So that's why I'm mad
and angry and sad
Dangerous Politicians
In the USA we have Biden and Trump – both at fairly extreme ends of the active danger spectrum. Here in the UK, we have the silken slick Sunak who is simply dangerous by default. In the US there is at least (and at last) some potentially intelligent and principled opposition in the form of Ron DeSantis on the “right” and Robert Kennedy Jnr on the “left”. In the UK we have no opposition worth the name. Seeing the UK Foreign Secretary pictured with a machine gun and saying how glad he is to see Moscow being bombed really boosted my blood pressure! It is most definitely NOT a good idea to attack Moscow with British weapons. Such irresponsible populist comment may be fun for the news media, but the content is certainly not endorsed by any sensible UK citizen. Killing people is not a civilised way to solve arguments.