flog / My Journey with a Remarkable Tree

For many years having been of the school of loonies…of the Lunatic Left, the Loony Enviro Faction or just the plain Misguided and Unrealistic the last few weeks have been quietly satisfying.

Not because I take any pleasure in observing the turmoil striking the financial community but because perhaps right now ‘the system’ that is based on continued growth looks … well, unrealistic.

I even have some sympathy for the traders who are at this time the focus for so much anger. The market just does what it does and the germ of this particular crash was in the crash of the twin towers. It was then that with the global economy on the brink following 9-11 that the US government pumped in heaps of cash and said to a shocked America “go shopping!”

With the wholesale cost of money cheap and bundles of it sloshing around the markets just looked for innovative ways to sell it. While the gravy train rolled along Bush, Blair, Brown and the rest were happy to look like masters of the Universe.  Now that the inevitable bubble has burst their solution is offer the same remedy; to pump more borrowed money into the system. To perpetuate the notion that business as usual is sustainable or even possible.

Now for some time many of us have maintained that continued growth in the global economy is just not possible. The environmental constraints that having only one planet places upon the system makes a bigger crunch inevitable. Economies like the US, Britain and the developed world consume the potential of 3 planets to sustain their lifestyles so we’re already in deep debt to the world’s poor and the ecosystem as whole. As the competition for the earth’s resources like oil, timber, fish and even water and soil becomes focused on diminishing returns then the holes in the free market system will become un-pluggable with more monetary debt. There is no buy back on extinction.

In the coming weeks much will be talked about the economy and much less about the environment. In fact there is something of a trend to say that in these times of troubled finances we can less afford to make the environment a priority. We ignore the signs of an imminent collapse in the ability of the earth to support our way of life with peril. And the signs are writ large.

It’s time to ask, just who is running the asylum!

Three years ago I wrote on this blog about a bizarre twist to the Lockerbie Crash Link.

On Sunday 28th August at 7:00 pm 2005 the BBC Main TV News run a report that stated that the CIA had admitted planted incriminating evidence at the scene of the 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am crash site.

It referred to a piece of printed circuit board alleged to be part of the bomb timing device that blew up the Pan Am jet over Scotland. It was a crucial part of evidence that put Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi away for life for most murderous act of terrorism on British Soil. That the CIA should admit to planting this pivotal piece of evidence was breathtaking and I remember turning to the others in the room to confirm that I was hearing this news bulletin for real.
That evening I searched the BBC website for the news item and it was nowhere to be found. It was if it had never been broadcast. Somebody somewhere within the establishment killed the story.
I was then really interested to see that the BBC included the Lockerbie Crash in it’s ‘Conspiracy Files’ Series. I was as keen to hear anything about that news report as anything else but I guess I wasn’t surprised that they made no mention of it.

So the conspiracy theory continues!

Note I have sent this blog to the BBC I await their comment - Samantha Anstiss was Executive Producer

Update 8th Sept…

I’ve been having a bit of a nightmare with virus attacks on my blog but hopefully I’ve fixed it. I’ll be checking the outcome of this attempt to rid myself of bugs in the morning. Fingers crossed x

Hello

I’m sorry for the lack of posts in recent months … In the last weeks my site has been subjected to some hack attacks and I had to take it down until I could be sure that it was clean. I have upgraded the software and hopefully all will be well for a while.

I have some things to say but tonight I’m just pleased to be able to post here again.

Come back soon for fresh posting!

Ken

I’m not sure whether I’m disturbed or flattered to find that the US Department of Defense Network Information Center was my No.1 fan last month. Someone there liked my site so much they visited more pages and downloaded more images than anyone else. Unfortunately I’m unable to return the compliment as their site is strictly top secret.

All the same I kind of like the idea that there’s someone there in the military machine who likes trees and loves the environment, someone who cherishes the idea of non-violence. If you’re that person, welcome back, the world needs more of you guys.

When I become depressed by all the images of violence that the war on terror has unleashed upon us I can keep a warm feeling inside that at least one person within the security forces feels like I do. But hey maybe there’s a small clique of tree-huggers in there, dreaming of the forest behind the high fences and inside the secure zone.

I bet those people are really busy right now looking for a certain person … It’ll be 7 years this summer since President Bush declared, “Bin Laden, you can run but you can’t hide.”

Errm, just to let you know, he’s not in my address book in case you were looking.

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Postscript… On the day of their visit my email server was deluged with nearly 4000 emails disrupting my service.

The evidence that Bio-fuels are neither a magic bullet  solution to climate change or a sustainable energy alternative is already proven. That it is an environmental and human rights disaster is already clear.

Yet on 15th April, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) will be introduced across the UK.  From that day, all forecourts will have to sell petrol and diesel with a 2.5% minimum blend of biofuels unless they choose to opt out at a penalty cost of 15 pence per litre.

The government has accepted that there is a problem and has ordered a study but rather than postpone its move to make Bio-fuels compulsory they are pressing ahead with the deeply flawed logic of turning food into fuel and rainforest into green deserts of bio crop.

Every day indigenous people are being forced from their homelands to make way for plantations, often by violent means.

From next month we will be forced to be complicit in the destruction of the rainforest and it’s teeming diversity because this government cannot accept it got it wrong.

Join the campaign to halt Bio-fuels

Boris Johnson jokingly said that he was in favour of Sharia law to deal with bicycle thieves after getting his nicked.

Extreme as it seemed even in jest, cutting off the hands of bike snatchers didn’t even stir the ex-Synod members, retired Generals and Brigadiers, the likes of whom who called for the sacking of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury for even discussing something altogether milder.

These last weeks I’ve been wondering if Boris is as enthusiastic about Sharia Law as he was having been caught hiding over a Quarter of a Million in donations received from wealthy individuals to his campaign coffers. That and taking a ‘rent free’ office from a property developer needing help with a local planning issue in Westminster.

As a candidate for Mayor of London this guy is a joke. It pretty much sums up the state of politics that he is the best man the Conservatives can field for the job of running the Capital. Ken must be quaking in his boots!

While the London Evening Standard does it’s best to trash Livingstone’s hopes, Boris does a pretty good job on himself.  You should check out some of his gaffs on You Tube, I especially liked the football tackle. What a prat!

On the bicycle affair, Paul Merton put it beautifully, “If he can’t look after his bike what chance has he of looking after London!”

Of late there’s been much talk about our ‘broken society’ from the likes of David Cameron and the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. According to them the glue that binds society is breaking down and our sense of community is in decline.

I would agree that we are becoming disconnected from one another and our true nature but if anything is broken it is our political system. It’s a system broke of ideas. It’s one that trots out the same agenda election after election regardless of party. So homogenised that it hardly seems worth voting.

If society is disconnected its no surprise when parliament is inhabited by a bunch of schizophrenics. Climate change is now regarded as our biggest threat and yet while piloting a bill through parliament to control emissions this government plans for more runways, roads and coal fired power stations.

This week members of parliament were indignant that one of their own should be bugged while talking to a constituent in prison. However the following day Gordon Brown found it appropriate to make it easier for the security services to bug the rest of us.

And while just about every week a politician is embroiled in one kind of a fiddle or another the government launches a benefit fraud campaign. It invites the general public to shop their neighbours with a confidential hot-line. If there’s one thing that divides people its fear and suspicion. So while the politicians talk of the need to mend society; to build bridges it turns neighbours into snoopers. Catching fraudsters should be police business.

Crime and Justice will no doubt be high on the agenda in the forthcoming election campaign. Governments love prisons and and while they’re busy building more they hardly seem to question why they don’t work as a deterrent or deliver reform. They love long sentences too, as long as it doesn’t apply to them.

Having been grassed up for paying his son money for work he was less than entitled to, Conservative MP Derek Conway is hardly repentant. His penalty is hardly draconian either; he will have to pay back just £13,000 of the £40,000 he scammed from his bit of HP Benefit Fraud. It doesn’t look like he’s going to do time other than a ten day ban from the Houses of Parliament, hardly porridge. Meanwhile a single mother-of-four has been jailed for eight months for illegally claiming half that. The council spooks caught her living a ‘high life’ on Burger King money while claiming benefit. 

While politicians live in their disconnected world the policies they put forward will continue to miss the point. To be pointless and without benefit… Benefit Fraud

Going nuclear is the wrong decision for all the wrong reasons.

If you care to see my thoughts on the subject search this blog on ‘Nuclear’ but for now my best response to this lunacy is to simply don’t buy it!

Here’s what you do, call your energy supplier and tell them you won’t be buying your electricty from them while a percentage of their supply comes from Nuclear. Then change to Ecotricity an energy company which generates all of its energy from wind.

For once we have an alternative. Lets show them exactly what we think of their toxic nonsense! Don’t buy it!

I’ve been in India for the last month so I appologise for the lack of posting. However I’ve got some things to show and tell so come back soon!

Keep smiling!

I’ve started seeing more DVLA ’don’t pay your tax you don’t use your car’ wheel clamps on the street.  There doesn’t seem to have been much of an outcry at this rather draconian response to non-payment of road fund licence. Surprising since following a clamping the DVLA move fairly quickly to crushing the vehicle.

The motoring organisations seem to support this heavy handed approach taring all non payers as criminals who need to be removed from the roads and or society. In days gone by I can imagine being in the situation of being without the cash to tax a vehicle but having to use it till the money comes in. An offence perhaps but does this kind of poverty warrant the seizure and destruction of a vehicle and further impoverishment?

And what is the natural progession of this kind of ‘name and shame’ justice? How about non payment of council tax, will offenders return home to find themselves barred from their home? Will they have days to find the cash or see their home auctioned to pay back tax and charges? It seems possible.

Mostly the people who clamour for such measures are the least likely in society to ever find themselves prey to the attention of a ballif. If they only knew!

Not so long ago I rented my home to someone who should have paid the council tax as part of the agreement, but he missed a couple of payments. He paid the arears but it was too late, the debt had been placed into the hands of the council’s debt collection agency. I became involved in an attempt to resolve the situation but I quickly realised that I was actually dealing with licenced extortionists. A £300 bill quickly became a £500 bill and rising! The baliff was little more than a bad mouthed thug with the legal right to enter my home and remove anything of value and all the time the bill got bigger. He made his point very forcefully that unless he received money he would be back to seize goods whoever they belonged to. It was a nightmare.

Thankfully I identified a legal error in their proceedings and was able to stop them in their tracks but it was a close run thing.  And as there was no outstanding monies the case was closed.

It was an education in just how frightening debt can be and how unjust the system is for people who find themselves rightly or wrongly in the ‘recovery’ system. It’s also an example of how errors are made and how devastating the consequences can be.

It made me realise just how without compassion we have become for those who cannot afford to keep up the payments.