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BACK
TO MENU What do I mistrust most in the world? The answer is ‘isms’ and in particular any form of fundamentalism – be it Christian, Moslem, Socialist or ‘the-Green-Eye-of-the- Little-Yellow-Godism’. Pause and look around you and all our troubles seem to come from humans using poor old God as an excuse for doing totally inhuman things. I admit that this is nothing new. Over the centuries millions of ordinary people have been slaughtered, raped and tortured at the whim of man, but in the name of God. Bush and Blair both invoke Holy Writ as an excuse for turning Iraq from an unpleasant, but functioning, state into a charnel house (a whiff of oil may have influenced their thinking). So let us consider Holy Writ. Does anyone really believe that it originated as a Fax Message from God? It is unfortunate for us poor political pawns that some of our leaders are nutty enough to actually believe this and to feel the ‘hand of God’ upon them. Perhaps we should look at the historical facts. The Old Testament, so beloved of Bush and the Baptist vote, is an interesting collection of Jewish folklore – no more, no less. As for the New Testament, it is no more the Word of God than is the Communist Manifesto. Both came into being as means of political control. The Roman Emperor Constantine (c.300 AD) was faced with a political split between the growing power of the Christian Church and the traditional pagan religions, so he took a political punt on Christianity and made it the official and obligatory religion of the Empire. Mind you, he remained a pagan. This allowed him to continue doing jolly things like murdering his mother, lots of mass slaughter and torment. He hedged his bets by converting on his death bed, so that he could obtain absolution for his nasty pagan habits. He also skated round the bumpy bits, by including all the major pagan festivals and tacking Christian names on them. What about the Gospels, then? It is thought that there were, at that time, something like 80 versions to choose from. He simply told the Church to narrow them down to 4 and bin the rest. Holy Writ is, in fact, Political Writ and about as ‘holy’ as Swiss cheese. How many wars have been fought over Swiss cheese? And as for political leaders who claim to get their orders direct from God – all barking, My Dears, and all the more dangerous for it. I am minded of the story of that sad creature Anne Widdecombe, who told Lord Henley, one of the junior ministers in the Home Office at the time that she talked directly to God – nothing wrong with that, so do I, but I do not have a responsibility to the Public. “God calls me Anne” she said – “ what does God call you, Oliver?” Lord Henley is a grave young man. He thought about it: “In the unlikely event of my meeting God, I would hope that he would address me as Lord Henley.” I know that this is true because I sat next to the man at lunch once and he confirmed it. I think that that man had a very sensible approach to religion and politics.
People keep asking me where I get my fully sprung herding boots from? I know where I got them from, but wouldn’t have a clue where to go now. My boots must be 20 years old. They are splendid boots and have walked me many, many miles. Unlike saughty modern boots, they are made of fine firm leather that totally supports the foot on steep climbs and traverses. They were hand made by Harrison and Goudy of Maybole, Ayrshire. I have a pair of their shoes as well. I remember ringing the firm up and asking if I could speak to Mr Harrison or Mr Goudie? “Well,” said the lady who answered – “Ye canna speak to Goudie – he’s deid, but Harrison’s aroond yet.” Sad to say it was not for much longer. Mr Harrison also popped his clogs a year or two later. So the answer to the question is that I have no idea where you might find a good pair of hill boots now. By the time I have to answer that question for myself, I may be past asking it. I will tell you what I have come across though – a firm called ‘The Macgaiter Co.’ (01387 811850). I always used to wear gaiters in the past. Ms Macdonald has come up with an update. They are made of neoprene and are warm, dry and silent. They are also easy to put on, being fixed with heavy duty Velcro. People laugh at mine and then ask me where to get them. Like all the best ideas, they are so simple that you cannot understand why you did not think of them first.
NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 23.9.04 I almost made the mistake of feeling sorry for Alun Michael. I had watched several times on the TV the moment when the rude boys in T-shirts invaded the Commons. Mr Michael made a brave attempt to crawl under the Dispatch Box, but even a little squirt like him could not make it and he had to sit back, clutching the edge of the bench, his knuckles white. Then he had to suffer the humiliation of being done out of his nice ramble, in case more rude boys shouted at him. Of course we all know that the countryside has not become a ‘no go area’ for Ministers – we welcome them and the chance to shout at them – I just wonder how many will want to come and play with us? I almost felt sorry for the humiliation of little Mr Michael until I remembered his weasel words and slimy insincerity. I met the wee fellow at a meeting at Twice Brewed and thought little of him. I remember talking to the admirable Peter Atkinson, MP, afterwards and him saying that the only way we would win the battle over hunting would be to make Mr Blair more frightened of country people than he might be of his own backbenchers and I prophesy that if he is not, he will be. It will be an interesting election campaign. Bring it on I say, bring it on. No doubt some of you may be wondering if I managed to get back from London with my skull unbrayed by the Met. I did not go, being under a three-line whip from the surgeon to live quietly for the time – my condition is greatly ameliorated - thank you for asking. I did watch all the excitement on the telly and subsequently discussed it with a senior serving polis and a senior retired officer. They both agreed with me that the merry men of the Met totally lost it – braying people ower the heid is a total ‘no-no’. Many years ago I was involved with military training in IS (internal Security) drill which included ‘Aid to the Civil Power’. In these situations, the key words are ‘training’ and ‘discipline’ to prevent the ‘red mist’ clogging up the brain. You do not require training to watch those pictures and understand that that particular bunch of coppers were ill trained and poorly disciplined. Ask your friendly local polis about the Met and he will suck his teeth and pull a face. I have great respect and liking for Sir John Stevens and I do not think that he will be best suited by the behaviour of his merry men. You may say that it was all the fault of the country people, but I would not agree with you. Country people have been lied to, bullied and politically misused. They have had enough. I remember a French saying: “This animal
is dangerous – we attacked it and it defended itself.”
NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 16.9.04 I suppose you will expect me to comment on the Hunting Bill. I also expect that some of you will expect me to be weeping into my mug of Earl Grey about the projected demise of Hunting. It ain’t dead yet and I would remind you of the only truthful remark made by the late Harold Wilson – he was the worst Prime Minister of the C.20th until Mr Blair came along. He said that – ‘a week is a long time in politics’ – how very true. It might be helpful to recall how Mr Blair got himself into this undoubted mess. The late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was one of young Mr Blair’s mentors. It is a matter of record that he advised the young man never to stick his hand into the wasps’ nest of Field Sports – very good advice. The received opinion is that Blair has no convictions about hunting, but his wife is dead against it as are the Class Warriors in the Labour Party – the fact that none of them know the first thing about it counts for nothing - ‘I have made up my mind, do not confuse me with facts,’ is, or so I am told, a fine example of ‘dialectical materialism.’ You may remember that Blair got himself into this because of the Irish. He had returned from solving the ‘Irish Question’. He was exhausted and emotional, as many people are when they have been amongst the Irish, and, at some meeting or other, someone slipped in a question about banning hunting – Blair engaged his mouth, whilst his mind was in neutral. Some years ago, I was in a pub in Connemara, on Ireland’s west coast where Irish Gaelic is the first language. There I picked up a most useful saying – ‘ Is minic a bhris beal duine a shron’ (there should be some accents, but my computer does not do Gaelic) this translates roughly as – ‘It’s often a fella’s mouth broke his nose,’ and that, figuratively speaking, is what Mr Blair’s mouth did. Now the Class Warriors have him backed into a corner – not to mention Mrs Blair, which I will not - that is one very scary woman. What happens in the immediate future is a given – the Bill will go through the Commons like the proverbial hot knife and will go to the Lords. What happens then is not a given and the whole thing could become a right political, constitutional and legal flough, the outcome of which only a brave and very foolish man might care to predict. Now did I hear someone mention the Parliament Act? Not quite as straightforward as some might like to think – as I understand it (not very much) the 1949 Act was based on the 1911 Act, which was based on very boggy legal ground, in as much as Parliament AS A WHOLE never ratified the 1911 Act. This would make the Act open to a legal challenge, which has not yet been made. This time it is likely to happen. Then there is the question of Europe. Were a hunting ban to become law, then Human Rights would be called into question and the ban would be referred to the court of Human Rights or whatever it is called. The thing to remember about this court (as I understand it…) is that the judges are all political appointees and do not necessarily have any legal background. The judges are always looking over their shoulders at the voters back home. It follows that a judge from a European country where ‘La Chasse’ is embedded in the National psyche and that is most of them, is not likely to vote for a hunting ban that might upset his domestic punters. Many people are wondering why a Bill, a Bill that is so urgent that other Bills (pensions, children, etc) are going to be trampled in the stampede, is to be given a delayed implementation of two years. Strange to say, that is roughly the amount of time it might take to send a Bill to Europe. Could it be that Mr Blair wants to have his cake and eat it? Does he actually want the Euros to intervene? By bringing in a ban in the run up to the next election, he hopes to keep his own fractious party onside and fraternal. Was Europe subsequently to slap his wrist, he could put up his hands in front of the Class Warriors and say – ‘Look Lads, I did my best, honest I did, but I can’t go against Europe’. Also, by playing it this way, he hopes to avoid piles of slaughtered hounds outside Downing Street before the election and protests by rough, rude, rurals. Oh he’s a sharp one is that Mr Blair – so sharp, that he might fall and cut himself – oh calamity!
NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 7.9.04 I have before me a report on the annual report of the Forestry Commission. On the basis of the report (on the report) you might think that the FC is foundered – if it were a private, commercial, body it certainly would be. According to the figures in front of me, the 635,000 acres of public forest in England were losing £206 per acre per year. There are 1.76 million devolved acres of public forest in Scotland, which were costing £113 per acre per year. In this same year the public forests in England, Scotland and Wales received £116 million in grants from the Taxpayer. The director general (now I think retired) is quoted as saying that there have been ‘very real changes for the better for the Commission and for forestry in Britain.’ Yes, well, I wonder if many private foresters would echo those sentiments. The Forestry Commission and I have dealt with each other for over 30 years. On the whole our dealings have been harmonious and I have made some good friends from within the Commission. I have never quite understood the difference between the FC and Forest Enterprise – no doubt it was considered a useful bureaucratic dichotomy, but bureaucracy is seldom useful when looked at from the receiving end. The period of our association means that, in the beginning, I dealt with Forest Officers of the old school. These men (I have never come across a female FO) were trained to plant and think in rectangles with sharp edges. It was very easy to bark your shins on these sharp edges, if you did not tread delicately, like the unfortunate Agag (chap in the Bible who trod delicately) and there were times when, like Agag, treading delicately availed you nothing (I think he got his head chopped off). To be fair, as I always am, the newer breed of Foresters are more enlightened and, on the whole, easier to deal with, as long as they have the necessary paper work to cover their backsides with. But, nice though these people may be, there is still a simple question to be asked – what is the FC for? As I remember it, the FC was founded after the First World War to make Britain self-sufficient in timber. To this end the FC took over, usually by paying well over market price, hundreds of thousands of acres of upland sheep pasture. In fairness, a lot of this land was of poor quality and provided very little financial return for the landowners concerned. They were only too pleased to take the cash and run. Poor quality hill land is just that – it is never going to produce high quality timber. So instead of taking the long view and buying good land that would eventually produce high quality timber (look to the French and their magnificent oak forests), the FC trapped itself into having to find trees that would grow on acid upland soils. The egregious Sitka Spruce was the tree of choice. This is the tree that produces the dark green monocultural blanket that smothers much of our uplands. A forester once told me that you might as well think of growing pineapples on the Cheviots as to try to grow oaks. This seems to beg the question as to the wisdom of planting the Cheviots in the first place. The next question is what use is Sitka Spruce, anyway? The original answer to that was – ‘pit props’ for the essential coalmining industry. So we are left with millions of trees for which the rationale has faded somewhat. At least we taxpayers have all those trees to sell for… for what? Apart from match sticks and pulp, there is, as I understand it, no profitable end use for Sitka, or, at least it has not yet been discovered – in fact, the logs burn quite well. On top of that, the costs of growing, felling and transporting soft woods in this country are such that it is cheaper to import the stuff from Eastern Europe than to grow it here. The question to be considered is as to whether the FC is, any longer, primarily concerned with timber production. The ethos seems to have changed since Nu-Lab came into government. It seems to have been quietly accepted that the FC is there and is never likely to wipe its financial face, so what is it for? That is an easy one – put a ministerial pen through ‘timber production’ and insert ‘public amenity’. The FC is now officially part of the tourist industry. So I would strongly advise you to tramp all the ‘nature trails’ and to gawp at all the ‘woodland sculptures’ that you can – after all they are yours – you have paid for them (probably several times) so you might as well get your money’s worth.
NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 2.9.04 What a hellish harvest this is turning out to be. All over the country it is the same – fields of corn either flattened and full of rooks or turning black. Many fields are as wet as they might be in January and have become impassable – machinery just sinks. I saw a first the other day – a combined harvester with caterpillar tracks on – now that is a real sign of desperation. I wonder if there is any part of Britain where there has been a successful harvest. Even if there is anywhere, where ‘all is safely gathered in’ the grain will be so wet that it requires extensive, and expensive, drying. It looks like a black and ruined time for many arable farmers. It is fortunate that quite a lot of the wheat in this area is not yet ready, at least, I hope it will be fortunate – it will all depend on us getting a good back end – as the tup said to the gimmer. My wife has just looked in to the office to say that she had met an old man in Wooler, who reckoned we would get a good September. What Wooler says today, the world hears tomorrow. There is a good prayer in the Cranmer Prayer Book that I recommend to you – it is for ‘fair Weather’: “…We humbly beseech thee, that although we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true repentance thou wilt send us such weather, as that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season…” I do not think that Cranmer had global warming in mind. In his day, a failed harvest could mean food shortages and hunger. This is no longer the case, so if your supermarket puts its bread prices up and, wringing its collective hands, tells you that it is because of the poor harvest do not believe it. In fact in the cut-throat world of supermarkets they will be reluctant to upset their customers. Any nastiness will be passed back down the line and be dumped on the poor old farmer – again. May God protect us from the iniquities of supermarkets. To Alnwick for ‘Hounds to Towns’ – this is a national PR exercise by the Countryside Alliance to demonstrate that Hunting and Hounds are with us yet. We had some hounds from the College Valley and some from the Percy. I was interested to hear that the Percy no longer meets in Alnwick because the Alnwick District Council has forbidden drinking in the street. A meet of hounds without a dram, or even a Percy Special, would be a somewhat cheerless affair. I suppose that it is all to do with PC, but knowing, as I do, the personal habits of some of the elected Councillors, I detect the rising stench of cant. I suppose they feel that they must go with the PC flow. I do hope that the PC flood does not carry them away, when they come up for re-election – just a little ‘word to the wise’ We were supposed to be in the market square, but as it was tipping down with rain, just for a change, we retreated into the colonnade thingy. A lot of people came to admire the hounds – especially as there is bugger all else to do in Alnwick when it rains, or at any other time come to that. We handed out informative leaflets to the grown-ups and Countryside Alliance balloons to the bairns. We got through a whole box of balloons – I know this because I had to blow most of them up and cut the string for them with my shepherding knife. Blowing up massed balloons is very droughty work – a fact that I pointed out to the nice MFH of the College Valley, who was organising the do. He is only recently come to the CVH and I think that having a Master who is nice has been rather a culture shock to the followers of the Hunt. He is a man who can take a hint too. He went striding off and came back with whisky, water and glasses. This is when I was told about drinking in the street. I pointed out that, strictly speaking, we were not in the street and anyway a whisky that size hardly counted as drinking… the nice Master took that hint too and hastily topped me up. There were a lot of holidaymakers amongst our visitors and I only heard of one who was negative about hunting. Most of the reactions that I heard were variations on the theme of – ‘Well, I don’t hunt myself, but I would not want to see it banned.’ Outwith the balloons we got rid of all the leaflets. All in all it was a very worthwhile exercise and I reckoned that I had certainly earned the bacon butty, which was definitely outwith my diet
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