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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 2.12.04

I had intended to write this week about the Conservation and Wildlife issues raised by the Hunting Act of Atrocity. NuLab has, so to speak, ‘shot my fox’. It has done this by speaking the truth for once in its sordid career. Out of its foul mouth, it has confessed that the ‘Hunting Act’ has nothing to do with preserving or comforting wildlife. Indeed this Act will cause the virtual extermination of the wild red fox in the countryside. Hunting is the most natural form of fox control, in that it takes out the weak, the maim and the old foxes, leaving the best physical specimens to survive and breed. This is Nature’s way. This happy state will maintain no more. Foxes will be shot, poisoned and trapped indiscriminately. In a surprisingly short time, the rural fox will become a scarce and endangered species. The best and most healthy fox populations are always to be found in the territories of well conducted hunts, where the fox is not regarded merely as vermin, but as a popular and well respected part of the local community. The fox supplies sport which hunting people enjoy unashamedly, and also a social cohesion that no other country activity supplies. It would be very easy to exterminate the rural foxes. Their breeding places are well known to a lot of people and , when they are no longer protected by those nasty hunting people, it will be all too easy to kill the vixens and let the cubs starve. As this will usually happen out of sight and mind, there will be no distressing scenes to upset what Lenin used to refer to as ‘useful fools’. Rural foxes will be poisoned and trapped – both hellish ways to die. Foxes will also be shot. Halleluiah! The bunny-huggers will shout – a nice, quick, clean, end – well, mebbe. It is here that we meet that fabled friend of the anti hunters – ‘The-marksman-with-the-high-powered-rifle’. A well placed high velocity round does indeed provide instant quietus. But I have to tell you that there are many more high velocity rifles about than there are true marksmen to use them. A fox is not an easy target. Most fox shooting takes place at night with lamps. With the demise of hunting the demand for rifles for ‘control of vermin’ is bound to increase. The problem with ‘lamping’ is that you cannot see what lies in the darkness beyond the lamplight. One of the first rules of using a rifle is that you do not discharge it unless there is a proper back-stop beyond the target to stop the round. There may be a hillside, but there may be an old gadgy taking his evening stroll on the hillside. A high velocity round can kill a human at up to 2 miles. What an irony if your man missed his fox and totalled an ambulant innocent instead.

In Scotland where hounds are now used to drive foxes to waiting shot gunners, the annual fox kill has doubled, but not all these foxes have been killed outright – many have been shot at and wounded. The lucky ones were subsequently put out of their suffering by the hounds. The unlucky ones crawled away to die slow and painful deaths. I wonder how many bunny-huggers have seen a fox that is dieing of gangrene.

Saving animals from suffering was never the true purpose of the Hunting Bill. So what was it all about? What was the purpose of wasting all those hours of Parliamentary time and those millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money if not to save the lives of a few cuddly looking furry animals with big brown eyes? That is a very good question and at last we have had an honest answer. Now I must be careful here, because there are two bright shiny young NuLab MPs – one is called Bradley and the other Bradshaw and like all NuLab clones you can’t tell t’other from which. Anyway some species of Brad blurted out the truth in one of the Sunday Papers. He admitted that the Act had nothing to do with animal welfare – that was just the fancy wrapping – the Act had everything to do with power, no, POWER. It was to demonstrate to farmers, landowners and rural scum generally, that they might still own the countryside on paper, but they no longer had any POWER over it. Some of you may be old enough to remember 1945 and the first Labour Government. There was a Bevin and a Bevan and I cannot remember which was which. This was the Welsh one anyway and he made a speech saying – “We are the masters now”. That is what ‘Brad’ is saying and that is what the Hunting Act is all about.

The advent of NuLab was supposed to mark the end of the Class War. I am afraid that that was just another of Mr Blair’s lies.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 9.12.04

A love or lust affair is, or should be, a private matter. In most European countries it is generally accepted that married persons (having done their procreational duties and established a firm family structure) may take a lover. The only stricture to this arrangement is that it should in no way be allowed to disrupt the established family. This applies to government ministers just as much as it does to ordinary citizens. It has to be said that the English with their bred-in streak of Puritanism are somewhat more ambivalent in their approach to extra-marital relationships. Mr Blunket is a divorced private citizen and a proven sire as well as being a government minister. There are those, in these days of free and easy morals, who might feel that his having a bit on the side is no great sin. His sin has been that, in his fevered efforts to advertise his virility; he is threatening the stability of another family. This shows an almost vicious lack of self control and a personal selfishness that is not only unwholesome, but is also dangerous to the Great British Public. After all, this is a man who has great political power. He has made it very plain that he intends to use this power to change the lives and rights of the GBP. His zeal for claiming the paternity of a living child and, it seems, for one as yet unborn is an indication of instability of character that may prove to be a dangerous liability to the nation. He has shown that he is just too flaky to be allowed to remain in high office. Ask yourself if you would be happy to entrust the intimate details of your life to this man. I beg leave to doubt it and yet this is exactly what will happen when we all have identity cards thrust upon. We shall all have a personal data base that will be built up on some government computer. Government computer systems do not have a happy reputation for reliability and with an unreliable man in over-all charge of the system the possibilities for cock-ups concerning our personal details are endless and very threatening for all of us. Remember the computer operator’s maxim of RIRO – ‘Rubbish In Rubbish Out’. I suspect that the waste generated by the ID system is potentially very toxic indeed.

One good bit of news in the countryside, and God knows it needs some, is the proposed lifting of the 30 month rule. In case you are a bit hazy about this rule, it was brought in as an anti BSE protection. It was thought that only cattle over the age of 30 months were likely to develop BSE and infect the GBP. It is good to say that the threatened epidemic of BSE, which was going to spread like the Plague, has never happened. I am not even within spitting distance of being a scientist, but with the small amount of common sense that had been issued to me, I have never trusted scientists. Most scientists are at least part human and have all the weaknesses and frailties that we lesser beings are subject to. Scientists all have an eye for the main chance and if they happen on some matter of doubt that can be spun into a health scare, they sniff the air and on the breeze comes the heady smell of research grants, the establishment of new facilities – in other words – money and enhanced reputations. You never know - there might even be a gong at the end of it. Some of us remember the extremely dodgy science that was produced by a certain scientist over the study of the Red Deer. His conclusions did great damage and finished up being torn to shreds by his scientific peers. You might think that he would have been condemned to black disgrace and the waste bin of failure, instead of which he now has a seat in the House of Lords. Some of you may think that this amounts to the same thing.

But back to the 30 month rule – this will be good news for some of our native breeds, which require more time to mature naturally, to bring them to their full potential of carcase quality and flavour. This will allow the good butchers, who understand the proper hanging and presentation of meat and of whom there are still a good showing in Northumberland, to offer the discerning public beef as beef should be. It is sad that there are many people now, who know nothing except the bland and tasteless products to be found in the supermarkets, which is beef as it should not be.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 16.12.04

This is an excerpt from an Email from my son. He took it from a website, which is totally unknown to me:

“I am afraid it has come to this. Forget the war against terrorism. It is time to declare war on Scotland. First of all they ban hunting with hounds, secondly the hunts follow the new law and commit vulpicide in front of hounds and now ‘Blank-Whose-Name-Will-Be-Omitted-For-Legal-Reasons’ hasn’t got the balls to allow the NOFLR hunt to go over his land and commit vulpicide, let alone pursue the sport that is rightfully theirs.

There is no alternative. We must take back what is rightfully ours and install Willy Poole as governor for North Britain.

Bring me ‘Blank’s’ head on a stick”.

For obvious reasons I do not feel able to comment on this, but I wonder if the Newcastle Journal might like to take up the cause. I feel that it might certainly stir a bit of reader interest

Drive through almost any village in rural Northumberland and you will find that the old smithy is now a ‘picture gallery’ and the erstwhile village shop has become a ‘craft centre’. In most cases my advice would be to keep on driving. Although I wish the sad proprietors of these sad places good fortune, it has to be said that most of the pictures and crafts on display are pretty dismal. However, there is one place that you should not ignore. Take the Bellingham road from West Woodburn and follow the signs to Mary Ann Roger’s gallery. I first met Mary Ann out hunting with the Border Hounds. She wishes to make it plain that she does not hunt for pleasure (perish the thought) but only to get ideas and inspiration for her paintings – she does wonderful pictures of hounds and of the Border countryside. Her pictures have a great feeling of action and movement, which I would compare to the late, great, Tom Carr – although he was an unashamed hunting artist. Carr was a pitman who was discovered by that great man, Duke (10th, I think) Hughie, who became his patron. Carr died far too young and his pictures are collectors’ items that now fetch a small fortune.

Mary Ann taught herself to draw. She describes herself as being – ‘infatuated with animals, trees, birds and the hills and skies of Northumberland’. She paints in watercolour with ‘big, big, brushes and a certain amount of recklessness which come from using paint in a way that is completely untaught and probably unteachable’. Go, see and wonder is my advice. Then buy – I would if I could afford to, but her pictures are already being collected and the prices are way beyond my battered piggy bank.

I asked the Dragon Lady to pick me up some cherry brandy on one of her shopping forays to Alnwick and do you know what? There was not a bottle to be had in the Town. I found this rather shocking even by the dire standards of Alnwick. The reason for my wanting cherry brandy is that it is an essential ingredient of that wicked and seductive drink – the Percy Special. I want Percy Specials for my coming birthday meet of the Hounds. I use my birthday as a bit of pay back for all the hospitality I receive from other people through the hunting season. You don’t know what a Percy Special is? Well, good for you – you keep it that way. It is the nearest thing to a liquid grenade yet invented and it has a delayed action fuse. You can slurp them down like mother’s milk – a pleasant but harmless tipple you tell yourself on the third refill – but just you wait. About half an hour later, something will hit you behind the ear like a sock full of wet sand. If you go for the fourth refill, why Man, ye’ll be blootered and listen when I’m telling ye.

The invention of this lethal concoction is attributed to Duke Hughie (see above) as a form of weather proofing before hunting – that man was indeed the ‘King of Northumberland’.

So what is it? If ye’d just hauld yer blether, I’d tell ye – it’s part whisky and part cherry brandy (I believe His Grace always insisted on Cherry Heering, but that’s gey hard to find, now). But what parts? You may ask. I believe that the official mixture is 50/50, but that may be a bit sweet for some tastes, so I usually go for 60 (whisky) / 40 (cherry brandy) for starters. After the first jug – the hell with it, Man – whee’s counting. You just pour the stuff in until it looks good, it tastes good, and by Damn, it does you good.

Howway, Man, git it doon ye!

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 30.12.04

I do hope that you all had a very happy, pleasant and familial Christmas. Did you have the customary turkey with all the trimmings? I love turkey, not the pallid, water pumped, mass produced turkey purveyed by most supermarkets – they are not worth cooking, let alone eating. For years we have bought our festive birds from the Walton family of Roseden. Michael Walton knows his meat. I do not know from whence he sources his birds, but I do know that they are unfailingly excellent and actually taste of turkey. Of course, you are not forced to eat turkey at Christmas. I know people who prefer to go for a first class piece of beef or even pork. I insisted on a leg of pork for my birthday luncheon. It was delicious, because it came from a properly farmed Tamworth pig. I will not tell you where the Tamworth came from, because this place is so renowned for the excellence of its produce that the pork just flies out of the sty. Mass produced pork is a crime of husbandry and a culinary shame. Tamworths are close kin to the wild pig. They are not a rare breed within the meaning of the act, but they are excellent eating. To my mind, if you want really excellent pork, then take the time and trouble to select, your breed, your butcher and your farmer. The Prince of Porkers is the Gloucester Old Spot. This wonderful pig was developed to feed on the windfalls in the cider orchards of the West of England. This almost certainly helped the delicate flavour of the meat. It is a sad and melancholy thing that not only is the Old Spot a rare breed, but the very existence of the cider orchard is endangered by the crass ignorance of the EU. Under the incoming changes to the CAP, cider orchards will not qualify for subsidy and are likely to be grubbed out for bad and all. This will mean the disappearance of many rare and historic native breeds of apple, which were grown especially for the production of cider. When I lived and worked in the West Country, nearly every farm produced its own cider. The cider pressing was a great social occasion, with much song, story and ribaldry, and its end will mean the passing of yet another wedge of Old England. In those far off days it was my pleasant duty, as the local MFH, to visit many farms. The farmers felt duty bound to offer me a mug of cider and it was my, not always quite so pleasant, duty to accept the offer. The quality of the cider varied from the delicious to the ‘absolutely-bloody-awful’. There was one place I used to dread. I would be taken into the dark, cobwebbed, shed where the cider barrels lurked in threatening rows. Two cracked George V Coronation mugs would be taken down from a shelf. They would be given a cursory wipe, to remove the rat shit, with a handkerchief that had seen much of life and little of the washing machine. They would be filled to the brim and one would be passed to me with great ceremony. The liquid within was a pale green colour, in which trailed nameless strands of weed. It tasted exactly as it looked – or to paraphrase the words of a long disused beer commercial – ‘it looked bad, it tasted bad and, by golly, it did me bad’. It would not be long after leaving the farm, that I would be forced to stop, seek concealment and make use of the wisp of soft hay that experience had taught me to carry in my pocket.

How many worthy charities did you give to over Christmas? In my case the answer is ‘zilch’. I am deeply suspicious of all ‘super charities’ run by ‘designer dirty’ pop stars. For many years, I have made a point of donating a tithe of my earned income to charity, but I give to carefully chosen charities. I refuse to subscribe to anything that involves ‘celebrities’, red noses and ghastly saccharine songs. I came to this decision after the Ethiopian fiasco. We were all encouraged to give generously to save the starving peasantry of Ethiopia. Why were they starving? Quite simply because they had been driven from their little subsistence farms by a war being waged by a Marxist President in the name of greater Socialism. What we did not know then, but do now, is that all our pennies had to be handled by the Mengistu government. Mengistu simply skimmed off about 70% to buy more arms, the better to kill or dispossess more poor bloody peasants. We would have done better to send the humbugs direct.

 

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