Invasion of the bloggy snatchers

Apologies to my lovely regular readers and the occasional visitors, but I have been invaded by racist tossers charading as commercial tossers.
First I get splattergun spammed by dweebs littering the blog with their nonsensical comments containing multiple links purporting to sell stuff (I think - I didn't follow any of the links to check). I then delete a few of the comments (there were MASSES of them) and set up comment moderation (sorry, sorry to all you visitors who shouldn't have to go through more hoops to post a much enjoyed and appreciated comment) to find my email box full of comments awaiting moderation from the tossers who were now impregnating their comments with racist innuendo. Vile, idiotic, selfish, outrageous gits. Get a life.
So, comment moderation remains until such time as these comments stop, and at the first sign of a return it goes on permanently. And I have tried to remove every one of the comments originally posted by the vile, idiotic, selfish, outrageous gits.
Gits.

And another thing....

Some days it's hard to be a sanguine soul. Some days I want to reach into my desk drawer, remove something sharp and poke people with it. These days are rare, it's true, but when I have to deal with banks or insurance companies my poking finger starts to itch something awful.
The Mopsa dog has been the cause of one or two insurance claims recently. To say the insurance company were as willing to part with their money as a dog with a bone, would be understating the case. The reasons they give for why my claim is, in fact, not a claim would amaze the most truth bending ten year old caught red-handed with their tongue stuck in the jampot ("I was just trying to save the little fly at the bottom, mum").
Even the claim that they say they ARE going to pay comes with a caveat: "the amount of £143.52 will be issued direct to you in due course. Unfortunately we are unable to advise any exact time scale at the moment due to a slight delay we have in our payment system. Please be advised we are aware of the situation and doing our upmost to improve it". Do I feel the rumble of cashflow problems? I wonder if I was to write similarly (well, perhaps without the malapropism) about a necessary delay in parting with my monthly premiums, whether they would take it as an acceptable approach?
Their reasoning is spurious, every comment nonsense, and I can feel the poking finger spark alarmingly into life, full of energy for the battle ahead. Don't they know they're dealing with the tiger?

Talking of sheep...

...who, exactly, voted for the BNP in the European elections? Sometimes it's really hard to believe in freedom of speech.

I'm claiming it on expenses

Like most people, I've been watching the unravelling of the MP's expenses scandal open-mouthed. I'm so jealous I can hardly splutter forth venom. As an M.P there'd be no need to pay for my Tampax anymore; I could have my poshest rugs repaired and paid for by other tax payers; I'd enjoy a variety of houses and flats pretending I'm living in whichever one took my accountant's fancy that week; I'd get my mole problems sorted at no cost to myself, and I wouldn't have to show receipts for slap up meals or treats that cost less than £250. Best of all, none of this would put a dent in my £65,000 salary. Show me the money!
There'd be one downside though, come to think of it.
No-one would trust me ever again. I would be despised at least as much as Fred the Shred. None of my good intentions or pleas for a refocussing on the important things would have any credence. My name, my judgement and my honour would be mud and filth. I'd have to spend all my time making feeble excuses rather than bellowing "Hear, hear" in the House, and have to satisfy myself instead with cries of "I didn't break any rules" in the comfort of one of my other houses.
But at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing incontrovertibly that I'd been one of the gang responsible for ending parliament as we know it. My name will be forever secure in the history books.
And that is my 400th blog post. What a sad way to mark this mini milestone.

Empty nest

I'm seriously down today. I've spent the last couple of months tending to my incubators, had a first decent hatch of ducklings, a second lousy one, tweaked my technique and humidity and had a good third hatch. Last night eighteen glorious ducklings from one to four days old were scuttling about under the heat lamp. I covered their run with weldmesh as always and went to bed.
After six weeks of early lamb-checking rises I have my first lie- in; not because The Last Ewe has lambed, but because she's been told to get on with it as best she might as sleep deprivation can drive you crazy.
There's a polite cough by the bedside. "Are you awake?" Grunt. "We've had a bit of a disaster". I'm wide awake now. "How many ducklings were in the stable?". Eighteen. "Oh. They've all gone".
There in the corner of the stable is a huge heap of fresh earth, the discarded material from a new rat run. The rats have had every single duckling. I want to curl into a sobbing heap. All that effort, mine and the duckling's. I feel sick.
I head to the office, turn on the computer and buy a metal cage brooder that will take 50 birds.
I take Fenn for a walk and there in the grass is an empty egg, clearly predated, not hatched. Sometimes I really hate nature.

The fear of the pig

How can someone who keeps pigs not be thinking about swine flu?
Like everyone, I'm confused. Do we have a pandemic of pigs, every known breed keeling over from some deadly virus? No. Is eating pork somehow dangerous this week when it wasn't last? No. Are people in Mexico dying from a ghastly influenza because their health care system isn't looking after them properly? Yes. Is there a risk to vulnerable people? It would seem so, yes. Is there a need to take this all very seriously indeed? With people dying, yes, of course. Is religion entering the fray? Yes; Israel wants to change the name to Mexican flu because Jews are not allowed to eat pork (although I'm Jewish and I raise pigs, but there you are, there's always one). And another country whose predominant population also abhors the swine is killing all its pigs even though there are no cases of swine flu yet reported there and there is no suggestion that it is present in the pigs raised by minority groups for their use, either (do you get the feeling that Salem has moved to Egypt?).
Why do we so easily rush to blame something other than human error; inadequate health systems and inadequate care of livestock (if that's behind this and at the moment it seems unlikely that any pig has been involved) are down to people failing each other and their animals.
I'm very concerned for the poor pig whose name has been taken in vain and is now global public enemy no.1, and of course for pig farmers. And no, it hasn't taken anyone's mind off the financial crisis, just in case any politicians are deluding themselves.

Some light relief

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Time for an off-farm topic rant

Lordy, lordy, I'm getting crosser by the second.
You'd think, wouldn't you, what with the Freedom of Information Act, the desire for open government (huh!), and the stated aim of helping small businesses stay in business during this painful financial slough of despond, that access to information about government grants and tendering opportunities would be freely available to all, not on a pay per view basis like some seedy porn channel in a one night stay hotel chain.
Whether you are a third sector organisation with charitable aims of alleviating poverty, or simply a micro company doing everything you can to provide a product or service, unless you can come up with the dosh, you cannot find out what opportunities exist that you may be eminently able to exploit/deliver beautifully to a client's satisfaction. Some portals say that you can register for free (again huh!), but in fact give you a peek into limited possibilities and then pull out the stops to rake in your cash (from a couple of hundred quid up to nearly a thousand) for access to the fuller picture.
At any time I think this would be a serious failure to ensure equal access to public sector contracts and grants, would wonder if it was in fact legal, would hate the fact that some middleman was given a contract to control access to this information on behalf of the public sector by provison of some halting, circuitous, irritating portal, but now? Now you can add immoral, spiteful, stupid and shortsighted to the charges.
Next thing we'll have to pay some company somewhere enough to make them profits just for supplying us with water....
Anyone for a gallon of air? Going cheap.

Please sir, can I have some more?

When I saw this on the news I couldn't believe it. Farmers queueing for grants, first come first served, with no reference to levels of need or strategic use of sparse funding where it would have most impact.
What next? First come first served pensions? Egg and spoon races to determine child benefits? Begging bowls for incapacity benefit and disability living allowances?
If this is how we deal with government finances, why do we need civil servants or politicians, or democratic decision-making processes? Let's just have a free-for-all; the market place has gone entirely mad.

Western world preoccupations

I know that you can get terribly maudlin about the state of humanity, and spend a lifetime weeping pointlessly into your beer or beard about things you intend to do nothing much about - infant mortality, torture, abuse of human rights and so on. But there are times when media preoccupations are downright obscene considering what is truly important, and when the ability to value what's significant is appallingly flawed.
This whole week's nonsensical fixation on two light entertainment figures having made a daft balls-up made me want to chuck the whole media industry into a large blender and flick the switch. I wasn't madly bothered about the Russian oligarchy losing its roubles, although I had a moment of unsurprised horror when I read that $70 billion of the $700 billion coughed up by the ailing US government to prop up the financial sector would be going to pay bonuses to those workers who still somehow thought they had reached their performance targets.
But what really pulled me up short was a story so utterly horrific that I couldn't understand why it wasn't front page news and the leader for every TV bulletin.

Somalian rape victim, 13, stoned to death.

There aren't many stories in the press that can make me cry with shame and horror. This did.

Bit of blatant self interest

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days; I was busy voting myself a £24k annual expense award. I put my hand up, but no-one seems to have sent me any forms to fill in. Do I need to become an MP first?

Sir Alan says it's ok to lie

Did millions of viewers watch Siralan Sugar's Gerald Ratner moment last night? Did we really see Claire's victory tossed carelessly to a proven liar?
Perhaps I'm being over fussy and prissy, but last week when Lee's CV lies were revealed, I thought his firing was a no-brainer. When he escaped I thought Siralan was keeping him on for a spectacular runner-up firing: "What? Hire a liar and put him in charge of important business in my organisation? Never!". He was obviously lining up Claire to slide into pole position.
But no. Suffering from the myopia that saw the Badger relegated to second place (and Claire is after all the Badger Mark II), Siralan has told the world that it's fine to lie, that we all do it, and promptly picked a prime example of the dishonest charmer breed to represent the kind of person he wants in his organisation.
The brazenness of this decision has all the trappings of the insular view that led Ratner to tell the world that his products were "total crap". Now we all know, endorsed by the small man himself, that his staff are untrustworthy. I can see the painful twisting of Margaret's mouth.
Siralan, it was great tv, but you're fired!

Going the Reagan and Bush route

I know that we are told that folks in the UK like to tag along on the coat tails of the Americans, but I always thought that was a myth, that the British just enjoyed the parts of US culture that it fancied and left the rest (bible-belt belligerence, donuts for breakfast, domesticated Humvees etc) alone. But no, it appears that we are more umbilically linked than I thought.
London (that's our capital, apparently, for those of us who breathe the air hundreds of miles away) was given a choice and London has chosen to be represented by a lying political buffoon. It's like having Donald Duck as mayor. Or Ricky Gervais. I cringe with embarrassment at the image this presents of the UK on the international scene. My sympathy for those Americans gobsmacked by being represented by Bush (both) or Reagan has reached a new high.
In my conspiracy theory moments (of which I have few), I suspect the Tories have been incredibly clever: by putting up Boris for Mayor they have taunted the populace: "if you are prepared to elect this man for London, then you are prepared to vote in David Cameron and his tribe, just because you are so pissed off with Labour".
The fact that they are right shows just how appalling the state of government is. When government is taken over by show business, we are in serious trouble. Brown: get your finger out!
So I offer a flower or two from my walk in the woods yesterday, as a calming influence.

Over my ranting body

I watched the news in utter dismay last night. Yup, the civil servants are now downloading information onto discs so that your identity can be stolen and abused. 25 million parents and their children have been added to the hordes who will now refuse identity cards. If the attempted introduction of these cards doesn't create more resistance than the poll tax riots, I'll eat my passport.
(And I can't believe that I actually agree with George Osborne on this).

From whimsical to strident in one easy step

Cosy in my chair, empty supper plate being licked by one of the cats, dogs snoozing at my feet. Turn on the telly for some Sunday evening soft soap - nothing too enervating or illuminating required.
And then the ads come on and I find myself moving from calm to crazy in seconds. Is it just me or will Boots have to withdraw their new ad within the week? A breathily voiced woman (surely no-one speaks like this for real?) pants over some pseudo scientific face product. We see and hear how this stuff has resulted in women queuing like desperadoes in a state of heightened agitation, giving high-pitched screams, elbowing their fellow women painfully aside, and praised for their innovative use of handbags to bash each other on the head.
What is all this ridiculous stereotyping of women as violent idiots? Considering women must make up the massive majority of Boots customers you think they would avoid wholesale sneering at their lifeblood. We've moved on guys. Get a grip.

The lunatics are taking over the asylum

Two emails in my in-box yesterday (actually there were hundreds, most of which were trying to give me loans, a bigger cock or dodgy medications) that set my brain on fire. First was the announcement by Arts Council England that Alan Davey is to be their new CEO. That's Alan Davey the Director of Culture at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport - yup, he's the man at the ministry. So, the arm's length principle has finally been tossed out of the window. The arts can relax now they know that all decisions are being handed down directly from Labour Party central. And why is that so hellishly worrying, principles of independent decision-making aside? It's partly explained by the tenor of the second email.
More than a year ago I ranted about the Olympics stealing money from more important parts of publicly funded life. And yes, I know folks dismiss petitions as pointless, but I eagerly signed the one asking the Prime Minister to stop the Chancellor (then Gordon Brown) from using lottery money to fund the Olympics in 2012. My second email announced that the petition had finally received a response: It says, feebly, that "The Government is determined to ensure that the temporary diversion of funding from the existing good causes to the Olympic good cause is done with the least possible disruption."
If I may be so blunt, this is bollocks. The source of funding for most arts organisations, Grants For the Arts, administered by the Arts Council has already been cut by over a third and try telling artists and their audiences and workshop participants that this is causing "the least possible disruption".
Mandarin Alan Davey (that's him in the photo) will be in no position whatsoever to claw back what his masters have ravaged from the arts pot. He may understand better than anyone how things work within the political machinery but he can never champion the arts sector in shaming the government to change their tune. He has been put in place to ensure the ranting stops at his door. However, being realistic, I suspect that he is simply the final nail in the Arts Council coffin and his real job is to dismantle it or at least disarm it. Not that it has shown much ability to fight in recent times, what with the outgoing CEO saying back in June that it was not an appropriate time to appear hostile to the government. At the time this comment threw me sideways - if the government is deliberately hurting the sector you represent, it is always appropriate to speak your mind, and vigorously. Perhaps he killed the concept of the Arts Council stone dead at that moment. Jennie Lee, the First Minister for Arts will be turning and twisting in her grave. And I suspect that most Arts Council staff will be feeling equally uncomfortable.

Disgusted of Devon

Words fail me.






Photograph: John Stillwell/PA from Guardian website

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

I've been blog visiting. And most unusually I have been contrary in most of my comments. Not in a bad mood, but I seem to have disagreed or disapproved (how smug am I?) of all kinds of writings that I more usually cuddle up to quite comfortably. So I have chuntered, set challenges, and generally been a fairly insignificant pain. Now it's your turn to tell me I am a vicious, carnivorous butcher and will be reincarnated as a slug. Or perhaps an intensively farmed pig. Sorry. On best behaviour tomorrow.

Weaning lambs

Tonight will be a noisy night. Bleating will carry over the barns and penetrate through dreams. Several times I will be half out of the bed in Pavlovian response before I remember that today the lambs were weaned and their calls are unlikely to be due to being caught in fencing, fox attack or rustling. The ewes have been put into a field with a minimum amount of grazing to dry up their milk, and their lambs are on rich pasture in the orchard to fatten. They will share the orchard with the geese whose diet is also grass, and I must remember each morning to shut the goose hut door once the birds are out, or the lambs will bounce up the ramp and bash around inside the hut, causing damage with their sharp little feet and growing girths.
A decade ago, new to sheep, I was devastated to come home to find two unknown but happy Jack Russells, one still a pup, blood dripping from their jaws, yapping in hysterical excitement in the garden. I shut them up in the porch and went into the field to find three ewes down, their cheeks torn out, their tails ripped, their lambs unharmed. The vet came and humanely destroyed the ewes. I said to him, naively, that their lambs hadn't yet been weaned. "They have now" was his blunt but right response.

Stealing great big chunks of your heart

Taking a little piece of your heart; that's what some folks specialise in. They develop a career to ensure daily unhappiness, grief and upset. There is nothing of the saving grace of Robin Hood about them. They raid a home, remove any and every item associated with love, friendship and years of toil and then scatter them to the four winds in their greed and vileness.
There are burglars in the area. They have temporarily destroyed the happiness of my neighbour. They have done over another neighbour and no doubt they are on the prowl planning grief to the next in line, possibly me. I worry most for my two big beautiful dogs. They have deep growls and are wonderfully alert to strange noises and people. Although this is a serious bad man deterrent it also makes them targets for destruction and even the prospect of this makes me gulp with anger and fear and turns me into an adrenalin fuelled Mother tiger.
The police appear to be taking the burglaries seriously, but I'm not sure what they can do without a big piece of luck in being at the right place at the right time; no easy feat in such a sparsely populated part of the world. Let's hope the bastard burglars are clumsy and have left a heap of forensic evidence.
But I do roll my eyes when one of the local towns, with perhaps the lowest crime rate in the country, wants to install people stalking kit. The mayor for West Devon is quoted as saying "there are one or two people who are against CCTV, but there are equal numbers for it, as well as a silent majority who we presume have no problem with it." I will refrain from much comment, but he really does presume, doesn't he?
If and when they catch the bastard burglars, I suggest we resurrect the stocks and pelt them with rotten cabbages. A cruel and unusual punishment fitting, I feel, to the crime.

Thanks to The Policeman's Blog for the police dog video.