The Arab Depression
All things come to those who wait, apparently.
Patience is a virtue, again, apparently.
But is it? People have been waiting patiently for the Gaddafi regime to fall in Libya for 40 years, and it was a similar situation in Egypt, and Syria. Eventually patience gives way, and generally it’s an explosive breakthrough.
I have heard lots of people through the years described as having a ‘long fuse’ these people tend to bottle everything up inside until they can’t stand any more, generally then these are the people that blow up – it always comes as a surprise and it’s generally effective but did bottling their feelings up for all that time really help?
I too have been accused of bottling things up – although I would never describe myself as patient.
I have been diagnosed as having depression, and apparently the trigger for that was that after my Father died I held back my emotions (for reasons I won’t go into here) for several years. Now I have a diagnosis of Dysthymia, essentially early onset grumpy old man.
It’s not widely talked about by anyone, and like most forms of depression it’s treatable, not curable.
Over the years since I was first told I was depressed I have had several sessions of counselling, and one rather bad experience of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in the hope that the depression would just go away, along with several different kinds of medication.
My current therapist is great, and I am currently feeling generally well.
I see on the news almost once a week that large numbers of the population ‘suffer’ from depression. Just to explain I don’t like to use the word suffer because it has connotations of victim and most of the depressives I have met are anything but victims.
Some days my depression can make me almost a zombie, not caring about anything at all including eating, cleaning my appearance. On those day’s just motivating myself to get out of bed is a struggle, I do get out of bed, and I do go to work, and everything else you have to do to be part of normal society, but the other part of those day’s is the feeling of being outside, and I don’t mean in the open air. That feeling of disconnection at its worse isn’t just from the rest of the world but from myself.
I generally score my mood everyday out of ten. The lowest it’s ever been is 1. The highest it’s been in the last 3 years is 6 or 7. I would say my current average is 4 or a 5. When I hit a 5 or above Sandie (my long suffering wife) and I have a little celebration.
So how do I get from Egypt, Syria and Libya to depression?
I can’t profess to know much about the current problems any of these countries, but I have noticed on the news the pre-occupation (understandably so) with what happens next.
Imagine, if you will, that all of these countries have been in some level of “depression” since there dictators took power. Coming out of that is going to be a long slow process. They are going to need help and guidance, but they also need to be self sufficient. They are going to be tired and exhausted, and again we should help wherever we can, and they are going to relapse, probably the most depressing statement of all, but it’s true.
But if we are going to be true allies of these countries in the future we are going to need to support them.
When we supply advice and guidance it should be without strings attached. Where there infrastructure is damaged we should offer to fix it or supply the material to do so, but this shouldn’t be tied to massive high interest loans and certainly shouldn’t only be done to forward our own agenda.
And when they relapse we should offer them a firm but guiding hand at the earliest possible moment, not an iron fist.
In my not very humble opinion the next 10-20 years in the Middle East are going to be intensely interesting as the youngsters who have seem the “Arab Spring” come into power.
Summer Leys
Heard, then saw my Second Grasshopper Warbler at Summer Ley's this morning, couldn't get a picture thoughGood morning otherwise: Reed Warblers Great Crested Grebe Common Tern (juvenile as well) Pochard Tufted Duck Coot Tree Sparrow Cormorant Mute Swan Mallard Great Tit Crow So other than the grasshopper warbler nothing amazing, but a nice hour or so anyway. Pictures to Follow.
Political parties pledge to plant trees
Political parties pledge to plant trees. Just quickie. We need to make sure that ALL political parties support our woodlands no matter whatever else they have a policy so that our future is assured.
A morning at Summer Leys
I had a great morning today, first time I was able to walk round for the first time in ages due to a few medical issues.
I can’t say I saw much in the way of unusual birds, but I did get to see a good few birds, and I saw the amazing site of a colony of House Martins – I even got a picture of one leaving it’s nest (a hole in an old Railway platform) 
I arrived about 7am, and stayed until 10:30.
Walking round that early was amazing, the noise was incredible. A bit late for the full dawn chorus, but impressive all the same. There was as always millions of Gulls, but also Redshank, Plovers, and Lapwings, as well as numerous ducks and swans.
I got to the Bird feeder hide just as a lady was giving the small bird their breakfasts. And many of the pictures I took were of them tucking in.
It’s really inspired me to get off my backside and get back out there volunteering. So more of that to come.
Why does 2011 feel like 1981!
I feel a rant coming on.
May, so far, has shown (to me at least) that there is common misconception in the country that our politicians are useless but the best we can hope for.
Only apathy makes this true.
I guiltily didn’t vote in the last locals or in referendum for AV. But it was at least a conscious decision. in my local ward the choice of councillors were the incumbent useless idiots (labour) or the three completely unknown tories. We didn’t get told anything about their policies, or them and none of them bothered to drop even a simple leaflet through the door. And as for AV, we didn’t get any information about that either, other than a pamphlet through the door that said SAY NO to AV, but nothing else – no arguments why and no information from the Yes campaign at all.
So it really isn’t my apathy I am ranting about but that of the country and of the politicians themselves.
At the last election we had a real chance to change the political landscape in the country by not voting for the usual suspects. Unfortunately not enough of use did it and since then we have been ConDem-ed to a return to Thatcherism.
Don’t be fooled by the inclusion of the Lib democrats – they are just there for the power now. 100 years or so out of power and they don’t want to let go now.
Already local services are being cut, and like the Thatcher government we are being told that it’s not the government that’s doing it as it’s up to the local council that decides what to cut. True – but they have been told very clearly that they have to cut something – and it’s going to be the obvious stuff that’s going to go. So if your vulnerable (old, disabled, or otherwise) your buggered. Live in a small village without a car – better hope that the village store doesn’t go bust – because there won’t be a bus to take you out of town.
The Police service is being cut – your government will tell you they are making efficiencies in the back office – possibly – but 85% of the police budget is manpower so to meet the cuts required of them they will have to cut people.
The NHS is getting a "real" increase in funding – doubt it – they still have to pay for energy, fuel, etc. I know that the increase is inflation + a bit, but we all know that our costs have gone up more than inflation – imagine that multiplied by the scale of a hospital and then answer me if it’s a "Real" increase. Add that to the usual attempts by the Tories to privatise everything in sight – and get ready for cuts cuts cuts.
It’s about time we all started to get a little more involved and started to send a message to all of the main parties that they need to work for us!
Leave my Forest ALONE!
It’s a long time since 1997, and I suppose many of us forgot why we felt so happy about the demise of the Tory government.
I’d even started to think about the end 80’s and the start of the 90’s as the good old days.
But it’s good to know that the Tories haven’t changed (even those that are wearing yellow ties these days). They get in government and it’s cut cut cut, sell sell sell.
And now it’s our bloody forests that they want to sell – so that, and I quote, “to put the forests back into the hands of the public”! I already own them – and I think personally that the forestry commission are doing a bloody good job. and all they will make from the sale is £250million – which sounds a lot but to put it into context: The national deficit is at least £1trillion, and £250million is less than 0.02% of that! and the cost of running the forest, currently £16million a year, will still be there, if slightly reduced.
So why is it that this government has chosen to sell of something we already own. To set a precedent. They did it with the “Universal” child benefit. And now it’s about privatisation.
After nationalisation of the banks (which was a good idea, sabotaged because no one in government had the balls to take control) Camerlegg is now trying to make us accept privatisation as the norm – and not just for the forest – watch out for your NHS.
Climate change and idiots
The sun is shining, little fluffy white clouds cross the sky gently gambolling like happy lambs, trees sway gently in a light summer breeze, the smells of summer rise from the meadows, the sound of leather on willow from the village green is the only unnatural sound in an otherwise natural landscape.
Actually that’s not true at all, I’m on a train heading into London, it’s pissing down outside, and it’s proper cold rain; the weather forecaster has predicted that it’ll all get better later (heard that before) as the rain heads out to the north sea even though it feels like the north sea is landing on us. Still the rivers are extremely low, in Northamptonshire anyway, and this is the first decent rain we have had in some time. Everybody say’s we need it, or the garden needs it (mines already mostly dead) and they’re right, we do.
But already this morning I have heard people make comments like “What about global warming?”, or “it’s been a crap summer, I thought the weather was supposed to get better”
The first thing is STOP TALKING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING! yes, the overall global temperature will rise (it will, even the most sceptical climate nay sayer will agree with that) but weather is an essentially chaotic system and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to estimate the effects of a global rise of even 1 or 2 degrees on a small area in a long term forecast.
So is the planet in trouble? no not really, the planet is a big ball of molten rock with an iron core that is hurtling through space, and whatever happens on the surface short of hitting another planet the planet will survive. So life must be in trouble then? Again probably not, life has proven to be pretty resilient, there have been several near extinction events on the planet and the important word there is NEAR, life in one form or another has survived and whatever we do it almost certainly will again. So we must be in trouble? Harder to answer this one but I guess the answer is maybe (it’s definitely not yes) Man is one of the few animals that can change their environment to enable them to survive and is certainly the best at it, but it’s probably fairly reasonable to suggest that in a global climate catastrophe our numbers would be severely limited, remember though every single person on the planet has been traced back to a single mother and a single father (I think they are a couple of thousand years apart so I’m not sure how that works…)
So what it is it we are worried about, everything I have said above is that climate change is survivable, but so is cancer and I don’t want that either!
Climate change is a great way to describe what’s happening, it just doesn’t have the punch of “Global Warming”. The climate is changing that is beyond doubt, the figures are out there on the web for all to see and question, and they stand up pretty well to questioning. I recently watched a BBC Panorama documentary about climate change and the presenter asked all of the scientists involved in either side of the debate three questions:
1) Is the climate changing
2) Is this caused by Green house gases
3) Is the increase caused by Man
They were given for possible answers: Certainly, Most Likely, Least Likely, Definitely not.
Not one of them gave either of the last two possible answers, and the vast majority said Certainly, or at the very worst, somewhere between certainly and most likely. Not one of them! even the most ardent climate change sceptic wasn’t sceptical at all. They all accepted it was happening (or had happened), that it was caused by greenhouse gases (Carbon dioxide, methane, etc…) and that Man had caused a large increase in green house gases since the start of the industrial revolution. The only argument for these scientists (at least as far as the documentary explained) was how we stop (or at this stage, reduce) climate change. Which sounds like a reasonable debate to me, certainly not the schism in the scientific community that certain daily publications and other media sources would have us believe.
So what can we do about it? it’s not a question, if some models are correct, we have a lot of time to answer and of course that’s where the arguments start, or not really, essentially we need to stop burning fossil fuels and find a sustainable alternative. The arguments seem to boil down to should we act independently or should we wait for (and therefore join in) everyone else.
During the 80’s I was very pro unilateral disarmament (still am in fact) I strongly believe that we should lead the way, set an example, and in the case of nuclear weapons our meagre arsenal only serves to make us a target – it is our alliance with America that is the real deterrent. I also believe this is true of greenhouse gas reduction.
Waiting for everyone else is really a stalling tactic by people (and I include everyone, government and citizen alike) to stick with the status quo for as long as possible. Internationally agreed targets tend to be to little to late. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that if we wait for the international community to agree then it will definitely be too late (it may already be anyway).
So if Britain acts alone what impact will that have? well firstly we need to recognise that much of our current reduction in our green house gas emissions is down to the fact that we have exported our manufacturing processes to other countries, often developing countries who use less efficient manufacturing techniques and therefore actually create more emissions. so the numbers that we should judge ourselves by are the emissions we create PLUS the emissions of that we import in terms of goods and services from other countries. This means in reality that the argument that acting alone won’t have much effect globally is moot, if we insist, for example, that all manufactured goods outside of our borders must meet strict carbon targets the factories that make them will also, probably, use the same techniques to manufacture goods for there other global customers. If they don’t and these are goods we can’t do without, we start making them again internally, using highly efficient (at least from a greenhouse gas point of view) techniques and export the goods to other countries that are also “climate change” aware, which if nothing else would improve the balance of payments.
To do this we would have to invest heavily in our engineers and scientists, which will also be good for the country for us to become once again a centre for invention and wealth creation.
In fact acting alone has very few downsides; it will be expensive without doubt, and at a time of economic uncertainty it’s probably very unpopular to spend money on something that because of Media spin people see as at least as “just a theory” and unlikely to affect them. But investment in the right places will give use the intellectual property rights to many of the technologies that will see us through, and will improve the economy. It’s probably a controversial point, but the Depression in the 30’s required a world war to get the economies of the world balanced, maybe Climate change is our world war?
The title of this piece was Climate Change and Idiots, and I guess your wondering where the idiots are? look around you, anyone who is complacent about climate change or who doesn’t think that it’s something they can do something about could be described, reasonably I think, as an idiot.
Back in the park
As I said in my last post I haven’t spent much time in the park recently, but at the end of June I spent a sunny Saturday, the first for about 4 weeks, in the park. It was a “Conservation Volunteer” weekend, and with 7 volunteers (an excellent number, the highest I can remember for some time) we got on with killing plants.
Doesn’t sound like a ‘conservation’ job does it! Well what we were doing was weeding the Community Tree Nursery; this is an area of the park specifically given over to the raising of trees. We try to make sure we collect enough seeds in Seed Gathering week (September) to grow lots of trees both for planting out in the park during tree planting (October/November) and for donating to local good causes. You can also buy trees from us as well for a small donation (sorry had to get the plug in).
Just to explain the need for a nursery; a tree seed isn’t ready for planting out in the woodland 2 months after it was planted – that would be too easy! the reason for a tree nursery is that some trees take a very long time to germinate and get to a height at which they can “look after themselves”, the tree nursery attempts to protect them when they are at their most vulnerable.
Not all tree seeds survive, fairly obvious if you think about it, an oak might have a 100,000 acorns but it doesn’t spawn a 100,000 trees every year, and a tree has lots of predators in the park, from tiny bugs who might infect the tree and reduce the number of seeds it produces, to birds who eat the seeds (there are some trees that take advantage of that and use the birds to spread their seeds), to squirrels rabbits, and munt jac; of all of these Squirrels are probably the most prolific, the cute little grey bundles of fluff that all many of us try to feed peanuts to in the park are, as far as the tree is concerned, the equivalent of a hurricane mixed with a tsunami and a touch of firestorm! Squirrels eat the seeds, (although they will also bury some and forget where to put them) fairly indiscriminately, and as they are a relatively new species to the UK nothing has really evolved a defence to them. so again if we take our example of the oak with a 100,000 acorns, a couple of squirrels could pretty much eat through those in a season.
Rabbits are also tree killers, they’ll eat saplings as they grow – this is useful in the sense that the park would be full of sycamore if it wasn’t for voracious little bunnies, but they aren’t selective, and pretty much from the moment a tree first sticks it’s head above ground it’s rabbit fodder! and once a tree has survived the first onslaught of the bunny menace and it’s got a nice covering of bark it’s not safe because in the winter when the abundance of sweet soft grass and other materials has dwindled the rabbits will eat tree bark! it must be their equivalent of jerky! the problem with this is rabbits can’t climb, if they could they might only strip the bark from one part of the tree, but as they can’t climb they eat around the bottom of the tree in a circle, “ring barking” it. They don’t just it the bark of course, they also eat the cambium layer, which is the trees blood supply, it’s the layer just under the bark that the tree uses to transport nutrients from the roots up into the crown. it’s quite a thin layer and very near the surface so it makes a tasty treat for the bunny monster, and once they have eaten their way round the bottom of the tree through the bark and the cambium layer you have without doubt a dead tree, a tree that is no more, no longer living, shuffled orf this mortal coil…. sorry very bad python moment then.
Munt Jac are also effective tree killers, and whilst no where near as prolific, they can be just as devastating, basically they browse the tops of young saplings, not too much of a problem you may think – you’ll just end up with lots of tree shrubs as they bush out, which is true to a point, but when food is a little scarce (this winter for example) they’ll just eat and eat and eat, and remember at this point most of our 100,000 acorns haven’t survived so in terms of percentage population they’ve probably done as much damage as any other wildlife.
Anyway enough about why we have a tree nursery and more about what we did in it. A weed is a plant in the wrong place, no other definition required I think, in fact it’s fair to say that it is a totally man made idea, in nature plants grow where they grow, the strong ones survive the weaker ones die off. But in the tree nursery we are trying to grow specific types of tree, generally the rule is it must be native to the UK and preferably native to the local region. The definition of native is set by the park management and currently means “Any tree that was in existence in the UK at the end of the Ice Age” (there are certain political parties that would just love that, but I won’t start that rant here). This covers all of the usual subjects, Oak, Lime, Beech, Birch, Hazel, Willow etc but doesn’t include some surprising ones Sycamore (which isn’t a bad thing – see the definition of weed above), Sweet Chestnut and Walnut to name but a few.
The Nursery isn’t huge, but does have about 12 beds of various sizes, including 8 raised beds, where the saplings are raised and four very long thin beds where the trees are planted out until they are ready to go to their final spot.
And this particular weekend it hadn’t been weeded since the start of the spring – it was a mess, the weather, which had that point has been a combination of rain and sun, had, after the late start encouraged everything to just charge out of the ground, including about a million (and I’m not exaggerating that much) sycamore saplings.
Now the problem with tree saplings, at least very small ones, is that they tend to all look exactly the same at least to the untrained eye, which I of course have in abundance, and the weed we had most of was sycamore. The policy is simple, if it’s not on the list of trees we keep it goes; if it is on the list but is quite prolific anyway, it goes (to make room for the harder species), otherwise it stays. simply said of course does not mean simply done. A Field Maple, for example, is of the same family as Sycamore, but is on the list of things to keep, even if it’s self set, and it’s almost impossible to tell the two apart until quite late on, which means that every so often Helen would ask us to “leave that one to grow a bit more” which roughly translates to “blimey I haven’t got a clue what that is and i need it to get older before I tell them to rip a perfectly good tree out of the ground”.
There were all the usual type of weeds – generally with shallow roots and relatively easy to remove, but the Sycamore seedlings are more problematic. They seem to be able to grip the soil like nothing else, not so bad when they are really tiny, but once they are about 3 inches high the hang on like limpets so the only way to safely remove them is to get a hold of them as close to the ground as possible and pull slowly but firmly, even then you’ll probably only be successful about 75% of the time, not a problem when your pulling up just a few, but remember we had thousands to get rid of. The raised beds were a little easier because the soil isn’t so compacted, so after much thought and deliberation I thought my expertise and knowledge was best served by concentrating on the raised bed (come you knew I wouldn’t go for the hard bit"!)
It was a very easy job, not least of which because apart from some oak and some willow there wasn’t anything else growing in the beds. This made weeding easy but it did bring home the serious point that this year we won’t have many trees to bring on into the Park (or anywhere else for that matter). The reason for this is that the last two years seed gathering events have been sorely under subscribed, and to be honest it’s a worry. So – and here’s the crux of the matter, this whole text has been not just another chance for me to talk about my self but the first part of a marketing campaign for 2010 Seed gathering week! it’ll take place in the autumn and we need everyone’s support. It’s easy to do – you just go for a walk round the park with a crib sheet showing you what trees we are looking for, and what the seeds look like and at the end of your walk you bring them back and they get planted, or prepared for germination. You don’t even have to do the walk in the park, we will be interested in seeds from where ever you can find them, just as long as they are on the list.
And in case you’re interested the weeding went really well, by the end of the day we had cleared the majority of the beds and the stack of weeds was starting to be turned into compost.
Time to catch up
I’m not very good at keeping this up at the moment.
The truth is I’ve just been too busy.
Summer seems to be a weird time as far as nature is concerned. What you think would be a time of sustained growth and active wildlife actually seems to be really quiet.
I’ve been bird watching a couple of times at summer leys, but nothing major to report there, apart from two coots that seem to be intent on building a floating at least I think it’s floating) nest, but haven’t laid any eggs. or at least they hadn’t when I last looked – of course they could have and I just couldn’t see them.
I haven’t spent much time over the park either, again summer is a strange month, there are lots of visitors – which means lots of litter picking and making sure that the maintenance of the paths etc is done but as far as conservation work is concerned, there isn’t much at all – mostly because we need to keep out of the way of the wildlife that’s nesting.
but we have been planting things in our garden and i have had the singular pleasure of watching food grow, I’ve also seen two families of sparrows fledge and a blackbird family grow up.
We’ve also been to Norfolk on a holiday which was brilliant, and had some pretty close up experiences with the wildlife.
There is a hide at Summer Leys that is about three quarters of the way round the track, and as such very rarely has anyone in it – as well as being not looking out on anything very interesting (certainly the few times I’ve been there), So why go I hear you cry! well there are two coots that are very close to the hide, the first time I saw them it was still in the “mating season” and as seems to be the way with me Nature just wanted to put on a show! it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say they were at it like rabbits – ok it would be an exaggeration but I’m going to say it anyway! and they’ve been there ever since, so i wanted to see what would happen. First of all they’ve built a massive nest, coots aren’t that big – about the size of a small duck – but this nest is is a least three times the size of one of the birds and made almost entirely of reeds, there was other stuff (tissues, waste paper etc) but I think that got there because even nature lovers who walk over Summer Leys can be a little thoughtless with litter), and whenever I’ve been there they take turns sitting on it as if they have eggs. I’m not sure how you tell a female from a male from plumage or anything but she seemed to be the one who was shouting whenever he hadn’t added more reed to the nest for 5 minutes or more! While I was there last she started to clap her beak together – not making any sound but the smack of her beak – at which point he just disappeared.
I was puzzled – which isn’t a particularly unusual state for me – I’m a man after all – but in this case it did seem a very strange behaviour and the clapping was loud, so I turned to technology and tweeted the bird watching magazine (@birdwatchingmag) and while I waited for an answer I left the hide to watch the butterflies in the conservation area; while I was sitting out (ok I was having a smoke) I looked up and saw what I thought was a Marsh Harrier, as I saw it the sound of clapping beak got even louder, at the same time I got a my reply – the clapping was a warning call, I suppose if I’d thought about it I could have worked it out.
While we were in Norfolk we visited Pensthorpe, the home of the BBC’s Springwatch, while we were there we saw lots and lots of baby birds (including coots), as well as the parents etc. but unfortunately I didn’t get to see Kate Humble which was horribly disappointed at.
Anyway that’s enough for now – more about Norfolk etc next time
Early Morning Wonders
The last three months have been pretty momentous with quite a few epiphanies, not least of which is the change in my pallet!
I’ve been out of the grime and smoke of London for so long I have actually started to taste food. I’m an ex-smoker so I’ve been through this before (or similar anyway) and giving up smoking has normally resulted in me choosing a milder curry, but this time it’s been fairly dramatic, I’ve started to actually like a whole new set of flavours, including Fruit (of all sorts) which up until now I have treated as the food of the Devil (It is you know, just check the story of Adam and Eve – it’s not an apple used to tempt her, it’s any fruit!) and Japanese rice cakes which I would have described as tasteless pieces of cardboard, but now they have flavour (still cardboard obviously)!
I can only give credit for this change to all those mornings walking around the country park hoping to see some rare and exotic wildlife, (normally being rewarded with a Robin and a Labrador). Most days I arrived at the Park before 7am so that I could soak up the atmosphere (figuratively and literally) before anyone arrived. The air at that time in the morning seemed somehow different, especially when snow was on the ground and there were few people in the park to see it.
There was one morning when it was so exceptionally cold and clear that I believe my breath was actually freezing as I exhaled. When I was breathing I could see glints in the early sunlight in the clouds of vapour, and I like to think that these were little crystals of ice forming from the moisture in my breath. And as the seasons started to change, slowly this year, being able to take time to study and view the first signs of spring was an absolute privilege.
Early mornings in the park can be magical whatever the time of year and this weekend there is an opportunity to experience one of the most ‘active’ times of the year, the Dawn Chorus. With every bird in the park vying for your attention it can sound a bit like an orchestra tuning up before a show, but when they all hit the beat and the symphony comes together it truly is a marvel to behold.
Of course to hear the Dawn Chorus you need to be at the park at Dawn, so starting at 5am, and going on until about 7:30am Paul Gosling, the celebrated local bird expert will be leading a group (including me) around the park, introducing the players, identifying,the characters and deciphering some of the sounds of this musical morning cacophony. You need to book and there is not much time, so get on the park at 01933 276866.
