What Economic Powerhouse?

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond trying to convince for the need of a high speed rail link, explained the importance of connecting the UK with the ‘economic powerhouse of the south east’.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12588563

This would be the south east that is being propped up and is existing on bail outs and subsidies from the rest of the UK after the ‘south east financial powerhouse’ collapsed.

Happy Christmas

Last Times at the River

Incessant rain fell from the black parasol which hung to the horizon. Only an outstretched arm’s thumb width of last vestiges of July sun peered beneath-respectfully keeping its distance.

Summer was over.

The rain had the sustained sharp sound normally only heard on a film sound track. Exaggerated and enhanced. The river in torrent set behind but merging in the soundscape. Their symphony isolating us in our solitude. No past no future, just the passing moment.

 ”Do you want us to look after his body?” Said the vet.

“No No.” Half in panic, half in shock, half in planning our perfect closure, half in protecting my friend.

The imitation sheep skin blanket he lay on was wrapped as a shroud as he was carried on the first part of our final journey.

Now it was a blanket again as he lay on top of the funeral pyre.

 Not for him – a prince, a warrior, a friend- to be bounced half way across Scotland in a plastic bag, in the back of a van by strangers.

In life I had looked after the puppy since he followed me down a backstreet and sat on the palm of my hand for inspection, while waving a tiny paw defiantly at my face.

 In death it was only me who could guide him on his way. During the 17 years in between we took turns to look after each other.

A two handed play, but only one monologue began. To thank him, for choosing to live his one life with me. To ask for forgiveness and apologise for times when I have may have let him down, done things wrong or fallen below what he deserved. I always tried to make him happy; he reciprocated by being the perfect friend and dog.

I told him all the names of the dogs he had known in his life, who had moved on and would be waiting for him.

Rain continued without respite. A curtain of water fell from my forehead taking away tears before they existed as separate entities, consuming them in the greater one. Down my body to the ground and the puddles and rivulets. Then down the bank into the River Ericht, then into the Isla, then to the Tay and on to the oceans of the Earth to begin the cycle again.

The sun had turned his back and quietly closed the door. Darkness called time by its presence. Cocooning us closer, whilst gently ushering us to a life’s conclusion.

His body was cold and wet. Silver beads stuck to his fur. No longer with the energy of life, shrugging off what the elements would bestow on us with indifference.

Time to go. A final kiss, a final final of the final things we had done together in the close down of our experience of this thing called life.

“Wait for me and once again we will walk together, don’t forget me.”

 ”Don’t be afraid only I can do this.”

The bottom layer of paper was lit.

 The paper triggered the kindling. The kindling triggered the sticks, the sticks the logs and charcoal.

A chain reaction each stage drawing more air into the open tiered structure. A fast ferocious up draught. In less than a minute a column of energy rose defying the dark and rain.

Returning his spirit to God.

Fire consumed. Intense, unstoppable and completely.

Had I stumbled and hit my head? Passed out, feinted or collapsed? The fire was out and Ruskin gone.

A silence louder then the rain. A silence overpowering the rage of the river. A silence coming from all around. For more than a third of my life there had been a continual buzz, a hum, an unrelenting shooshing. A sound a puppy had quietly brought that slowly and smoothly grew. A sound I never heard until it was gone. The sound of life.

Alone with just the memories of more than a 1000 adventures and stories.

When does the preparation for the separation from your best friend begin? From the first second of the sound of a puppy’s yap? Or was it from first second when the first wolf came to the first camp fire 140,000 years before? Co-evolution and co-dependence.

True till death works both ways. To strive to do your best. Dogs just want to be happy. Just enjoy your shared life together. So when the end comes there are no regrets.

 No regrets.

Just live so there will be no regrets. In a world where humans engage in conflict, war, hate and indifference. That two different species can co-exist in complete happiness with each other makes the human strife all the more bizarre.

For all those who have lost a best friend not of our species

By Roger Thomas

Copenhagen: What Are We Fighting For?

“It is all something of a chess game -all the pieces have to be in the right place for the game to be won.”

Wrote Susan Watts in her BBC Newsnight Science Blog

Somehow reminding me of Broken English by Marianne Faithful. What are you fighting for?

No I don’t think Susan is correct. This is part of the problem  All this rhetoric of the ‘fight against global warming’  ‘the war on climate change’.

It is not a game, a battle, a fight or a war. People do not go into a pet shop and ask for a book on the battle of owning a puppy, or the fight in keeping goldfish, or go to Halfords and ask for something on making war on your Renault.

No we ask for caring or looking after a puppy or goldfish, or care and maintenance of a car. Anyone who using fight, battle or war in reference to climate change or running a planet, or thinks it’s a game with sides, does not understand the problem. So by default, apart from some random stab in the dark, cannot come up with answers or solutions to managing a planet on a journey to the future.

We have one planet and a long journey ahead of us if we decide to embark for the rest of the way. What we don’t want is some attempt on how to look after this planet on that journey based on some trading floor madness mentality that last year crashed something as simple as an economic system.

We can only hope nothing is achieved or agreed in Copenhagen. (It is better to have no decisions rather than a bad or wrong ones.) Then after the craziness has subsided, perhaps then we can do the job properly.

Celtic Lion

Tuesday 15th December update

From The Independent: The battle lines are drawn. The armies are lined up. The guns are loaded. But here in Copenhagen, a phony war is underway.

A fine example

Lion Connections

Picture from David Icke’s site after Earwicga sent us a quote fron Kathy Kelly’s book, Other Lands Have Dreams,

 ”Courage is the ability to control your fear and courage is contagious.”

Bearded Collies Do Anything For An Egg Custard

As my Beardie Collie Ruskin followed me as a puppy on a window cleaning round he had to learn fast. At 14 weeks after his vaccinations he joined me. It proved impossible to have him on a lead and carrying a ladder, bucket, crate to stand on etc. So he used to trot in front, when we came to a junction etc he would look back to be given the new direction. Stop, straight on, left or right.

 One of our treats was stopping at the bakers and sharing an egg custard together.

 After a couple of years I passed my test and we got a car. He would sit on the front seat and when he saw another dog sometimes he would bark. As he knew all the direction commands this would develop into a game while travelling. If I saw a dog first I would shout “Doggie on the left or doggie on the right”. When he spotted it he would bark back to confirm. Or bark first if he spotted a dog before me.

 A Morrisons supermarket opened. On my first visit one evening, large egg custards were on sale for 10p before they went out of date. When we got home I gave him one. He wouldn’t eat it as it was a whole one. Once I told him it was all his, he was very happy. He always knew at the end of a days work when I said supermarket, we were going to get egg custards.

 A few years later I got a job as a shopfitter travelling all over the country in a large transit van. We were changing the central gondolas for Safeway supermarkets. As the newest foreman I was given the short straw. I was given all the distance work. Cheshire to Norfolk, Cheshire to Inverness, Cheshire to Newcastle, Cardiff or Hull.

 I was also given an 18 year old apprentice who couldn’t drive, couldn’t read a map, didn’t know the job and didn’t have his own tools. All the other vans had two drivers, so share the distance work. Apart from me.

 All I would be given was an instruction Safeway Gateshead, Safeway Swaffam or Safeway Cardiff etc. No directions.

 Even without someone who could read a map getting to the town or city was no problem. The 18 year old would just sleep the entire journey. As we were a team Ruskin always came too. With 3,4 or 500 miles to drive he would sometimes fall asleep as well. As I pulled off the motorway or trunk road and slowed down he would wake up, knowing we were near our destination.

 Looking round he would sniff the air vents getting used to the new air. Opening the windows and turning on the blower slightly. “Supermarket”. Sniffing the air when I came to a round about I would ask him sraight on left or right. He would tell me by barking and looking. He could smell the bakery.

 Never once was he was wrong. The store manager many times was surprised we found the place without directions.

 All I did was buy an egg custard for my Bearded Collie sat nav. Eh before sat navs were invented.

What Is It Good For?

As Others See Us

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228028&title=gay-marriage-is-bad-for-small

Polish Up the Mind

Quite some years ago me and my friend Dodd were talking about the Clint Eastwood film Firefox. Here the missiles were controlled by the pilots thoughts, but as it was a Russian plane, which Eastwood was stealing, so he had to think in Russian. Now we were discussing whether someone whose first language was English could thinkt in Russian. Purely by coincidence my old French teacher was passing, so was handy to ask whether you think in a foreign language. Anyway let’s leave that conversation of 27 years ago.

Friday night I went to a quiz night in aid of the Blairgowrie Hillwalking Club. Apart from a nice night I met a drop dead gorgeous lady. So beautiful I had to keep looking at her, I couldn’t help it. What is the etiquette in a situation like that, when you meet someone for the first time? I know they write songs about it.

The other thing was I thought she looked like Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. Those who have been following the posts will know this is in keeping of context. In Magic Boxes, Horns, Thieves and Warriors I wrote about the author J M Barrie living at Kirriemuir just up the road, and the dog in the book, Nana, was thought to be a Bearded Collie. 

Now she said they were going Rambling the next morning, others said if I wanted to go just turn up at the Wellmeadow in Blairgowrie. Having bought some chicken that was going out of date and a bottle of wine when I got home I had to make a curry and drink the wine. It would have been rude not to. Still I woke at 7.15 and decided to go for a nice days walking.

The Ramblers’ site said to meet at 9.30 am, plenty of time. So I left the house, then met Steve, who with an eagle eye for detail noticed my walking boots.  I referred him to the review on this site, as I had to get into town. When I got there no one was about, so I waited until 10.00, still no one, so guessed they might have gone early, they didn’t know I was turning up, so no reason to wait.

Having got ready for the day I might as well go off on my own. What I wanted to do was recky the first part off the route to the Iron Age remains I mentioned in the Scarpa boot review. So off I went on the first part of the Cateran Trail out of Blairgowrie. covered in Magic Boxes, Horns, Thieves and Warriors.

Half way to the the Bridge of Cally I stopped for dinner. On some rocks, by a wall, in the sun,  just me the birds and the valley. After getting my sandwich box out of my small day ruck sac and eating, I thought it would be nice to have a parlech. BANG. Parlech is Polish for smoke. The bag, the box were the ones I used 2 years ago when I was working with 250 Poles in the berry fields. It seemed polite and an opportunity to learn Polish especially sitting around on  warm sunny dinner times.

Looking east from my dinnertime spot. No Ruskin, no Rafa, no 250 Polish, but they were all with me. memories I have collected. All with love.

The deja vue of the context, the subconscious memory had come back. I had thought in Polish. Out of nowhere the English part of my brain had been bypassed and I thought directly in Polish. My French teacher, Roger Strange, was correct. He told me thinking in another language was to do with context. If he went to France after a day or so he didn’t think in English, he thought in French, there was no English interface between thought and French words. Here I was in a similar context, in my own mind, and had gone straight to Polish.

But it was deeper than that and more more meshed more coherent. My friend Rafa had been the one teaching me the most Polish, had known my dog Ruskin. When he died Rafa put a tribute to Ruskin on his page, for all those who couldn’t attend his funeral. Now this was the first time since Ruskin had gone, I was starting getting comfortable with walking on my own, something I had never done for more than a third of my life. So I was probably thinking of Rafa in the web of thoughts. Rafa linked sunny days, Ruskin and walking.

But I was also out in the country looking at the hills. The Sunday before I had been in Alva at a Bearded Collie show, outside the hall the hills also rose steeply. I had been previously told by a Kennel Club Crufts Judge and experts with working farm dogs I was one of the best dog handlers they had ever seen. Which was nice, but was it just because I had the best dog in the world or that we went everywhere together and had the to build our relationship?

The hills rise steeply, on them small dots of sheep. For obedience for Bearded Collies perhaps the only word should be 'fetch'.

I had had a lovely day. But I never told the lady who took me I had never been out since August. Her dogs were lovely. All the dogs were lovely and all the people were, apart from the Chairman of the Bearded Collie Club of Scotland, who didn’t want to speak to me, even say hello, but some people are like that. Having not been out for so long or met anyone I was a little lacking in confidence and unsure of myself.

At the Alva show they were talking about rescue for Bearded Collies either through the owners circumstances changing or they didn’t know how to communicate with their dogs. I offered to help. In recent weeks I had been learning more about psychology of dogs, instead of just using intuition. From the reference I put on the Genepools and Co-evolution pages and Have We Breed Out the Wolf I got into Theory of the Mind.  Covering many areas, one was the differences in thinking.

Pat Scott's working Beardies won 1st and 2nd in obedience. 5 years ago Ruskin would have won. By cheating and the judges might not have spotted how. I would have let a few top dogs go first. Ruskin would have watched what they did, then done it better. Pat and her dogs were brilliant, but Ruskin would have stood on the shoulders of giants. All he would have asked for was the occasional look of the eyes to reassure him he was doing it right.

Linking my coalescence of thoughts, purely from the initiation of thinking in  Polish, was what I was doing there. Celtic Lion is  limited company. Some regard me as one of the best Earth system ecologists. If not the best, one of the most influential. I am a member of the UK’s Sustainable Development Research Network which advises the Government. The agenda for the 2005 G8 held in Perthshire, of climate change and Africa was derived from my original work for a United Nations report I was asked to contribute to.

The intention of Celtic Lion was to set up one of the world’s leading environmental and development strategy companies. Creating a minimum of 140 jobs in the area but most important for me saving, peoples lives and stopping the extinction of animal and plant species. I had been one of the scientists who set up the next generation of climate models which was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007. When Al Gore was notified of his Nobel he quoted my work for the British Government.

Things had been put on hold a bit with Ruskin’s illness in his final months. But life had to go on and on 9th August I went to work for the first time without him. I was stopped by the police in Blairgowrie. While one spoke to me two came up behind me and whacked me to the ground without any warning or provocation from me.

When I was lying in the gutter of the road one stood on my head and started being abusive to me. He was swearing and threatening me. He thought he was hard, I could have taken him apart anytime I desired and he would never have seen a thing.  I wouldn’t have hurt him physically, he would have just been on the sick at the taxpayers expense with ’pyschological and loss of confidence problems’.  

After they got me to Perth police station the motive for the actions was becoming apparent. The police seemed to feel their attack on me was justified as a continuation of traditional football violence between Scotland and England. Though my mother’s family were Scottish and my father’s Welsh, I was born in Cheshire a few miles from the Welsh border. And unfortunately had a northern English accent. Enough justification for the police to launch a racially motivated attack.

Having lived in the countryside all my life I come across a catalogue of incidents. Sheep with baler twine wrapped around their legs. Hedgehogs caught in polythene shrink wrap. Cows slidden down muddy banks and caught their legs in fences. As an ecologist I often find plants I would like to identify. Plant and other species identification an important aspect of the understanding of climate change. So for these and other reasons I had a knife on me, I hand it to the police and they charged me with having an offensive weapon. No questions no explanations asked for, just charged me, and so the   police could conceal assaulting me threw in resisting arrest, the injuries I sustained the 3 officers concealed by writing false statements saying I resisted arrest and attacked them.

They were nothing but lying foul mouthed racist thugs. If they had been members of the public they would have been locked up. But as they are police officers we have to pay them to attack innocent people.

The justice system then stitched me up with a con trip. I was told the charges had been changed to possession of a knife. As I had told the police I had the knife there was no defence and would automatically be found guilty, so had to plead guilty. Days later I was informed by Perth Court that wasn’t the charge. What I had been charged with neither the police, the Prosecution, the Sheriff or the solicitors revealed to me. Had they told me the real charge I would have had a defence. All that money and resources used in attacking me and locking me up and prosecuting me would have been wasted. So a false charge was made up was made up to ensure a conviction for a real charge I had a defence to.

All that was reason I hadn’t been out. The police attacked me in a racist attack then covered it up by saying I attacked them. But I hadn’t even defended myself. The police made out they were heroes gallantly overpowering me. If you don’t know me I am the same weight as but only an inch taller than Mike Tyson when he first won the world heavy weight title. Never ever, in their wildest fantasies, could those police officers ever have overpowered me. I didn’t defend myself to protect them from accidental injury.

So what do I do if Blairgowrie police attack me again. My dad who was a police officer for 25 years, would have said deck ‘em, stick them on their backsides. Others have said the same, if the police are going to attack you and then lie to cover their action, you may as well get your monies worth and give them a taste of their own medicine. Other people have quite sensibly advised me not to defend myself against an attack from the police, whatever they do to me, for fear of the consequences.

So thanks to the Bearded Collie Club, Blairgowrie Ramblers and Hillwalkers I was out in the country, my environment. For the first time in many months.

And then one of the realisations from the Theory of Mind struck me. All species or people don’t think the same. I had expected police officers, the prosecutors the courts to have some affinity with the way I thought. We are all on this planet together, we need to work  together to make a better futire for all life. But the justice system didn’t think the same did they. I was just fodder to be processed through it. No attempt at due process or the rule of law or the consequences on society or life or anything. They just wanted a conviction for the statistics, regardless of how many people died, how many species were made extinct, how much suffering was caused. Misconceived self interest.

I packed my bag and continued on my walk.

Australian Bush Fires: Could They Have Been Prevented?

The news, as in NEW has been reporting on the fires in Australia. I had been following the build up for a week and did try and get a sort of warning through an email from a Bearded Collie discussion group to someone in the area on Saturday, due to Celtic Lion’s research base we did know what would happen before it did.  Quite disconcerting sitting at the other side of the world and knowing what would happen and being helpless to assist.

We had had them predicted within the official system since 1991. Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council and Cheshire County Council in the UK knew about them from that date. From the evidence Cheshire police were hired to commit a number of serious offences to ensure the prevention strategies were not implemented. Under international law this would come under terrorism related offences. But who investigates when the police are involved in terrorism. Nobody.

The UK Government did know about the bush fires in 2001. The knowledge of and how to prevent them were contained in the proposal to use the Millennium Dome London as a global environmental management centre. This was the shortlisted and favourite proposal, was the one the Government’s own consultants wanted to back and should have been the winner on the competition criteria. Unfortunately for those who died and suffered in Australia, the UK Government decided on an entertainment venue instead.

Though they don’t deny they knew about the fires plus other natural hazards and had the prevention strategy, as No 10 Downing Street’s website indicates.

How it was explained to me. Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council, Cheshire County Council, Cheshire police and the UK Government all in their different ways had to oppose the prevention of natural hazards as the technology would have created so many jobs it would have undermined the control of these bodies over the economy and social systems. Tayside police did know in 2006 what would happen but decided as the offences were committed outside of Scotland they were out of their jurisdiction and decided to take no action.

Those who died in Australia were probably deliberately allowed to die just so bureaucratic systems in the UK could maintain their positions of control.

For those concerned with the state of the world please consider supporting our option.

Roger Thomas

The author is a member of the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Research Network, and contributed to 2 Nobel Prizes in 2007