Tally-ho, Tony Blair

Tony Blair has just gone up in my estimation, admittedly from a very low starting base. The DT informs us that in 2004 he made  a bet with the Prince of Wales that there would still be fox-hunting ten years later. He won, of course. He had no sympathy with the antis and ensured that the Bill was so drafted as to make the Act largely unworkable.

 

And so it has proved. More people ae hunting than ever and the crowds who turn out to the traditional Boxing Day meet are huge.

 

As it should be.

 

There is no logic in banning hunting with hounds; the motivation is entirely sentimental. Public support for it has dropped to around 50%

 

The plain fact is that not only is hunting with hounds the best conservation practice. It is just about the only one that is at all effective.

 

Hunting only takes place outside the breeding season, so no young are left behind to suffer and starve as happens when the animal is shot at any time. The animal is always killed instantly, again unlike shooting when a wounded animal may linger in agony for days.

 

But there are equally important conservation considerations.

 

Deer are becoming an increasing menace to traffic and to farmers. They have no natural predators in England so provided there is plenty of grazing they can multiply almost without limit. When they invade cattle farms they infect the beasts with the diseases that they are carrying, to which cattle will often have little natural immunity.

 

They do massive damage to growing crops. Farmers would tolerate this in return for the enjoyment of hunting. Since the ban, they have no stake in their preservation, but have every incentive to shoot them out.

 

Hunting with hounds removes the old, the sick and the starving, leaving only the fit behind. Some time ago there was a furore over the shooting of the so-called Monarch of the Glen, a magnificent stag which had ruled over it herd for countless years. But the sound conservation reason is that a dominant stag has to be taken out from time to time otherwise there is inbreeding which weakens the stock generally and makes it more susceptible to disease.

 

Foxes are classified as vermin. They may seem cute and cuddly to the urban idiots who feed them, but not to the poultry farmer who finds that a fox in the henhouse has killed the entire flock. They also have no predators except man, so they will breed unchecked if there is food. This increasingly means garbage dumps and land-fill sites. A bite from an animal feeding off filth can have nasty consequences and yet people whose babies have been bitten are told by the animal rights stasi that they ae not allowed to kill the fox!

 

The urban fox is becoming an increasing menace as they out-breed their rural hunting areas. Well-meaning fools catch them and return them to the countryside where they will starve because they have no hunting skills.

 

And, of course, it is a class-thing. There is a widespread belief that people who ride to hounds are rich, idle toffs. Those I knew were a tea trader, a used-car dealer, a scrap merchant, a food manufacturer in a small way of business, and working farmers.

 

The harsh truth that the antis cannot bring themselves to recognise is that the hunting ban is cruel, causes unnecessary suffering to the very animals it was intended to protect, and serves only to help the urban middle-classes ‘feel good’ factor.

 

 

All aboard the Green Gravy Train.................

‘2014 the hottest year on record’, fanfared the recent headlines. They say that it was the hottest year since records began in 1880. The Daily Mail said it was definite proof that the earth was warming ‘very quickly’. The BBC went one better, saying that 18^th Century data shows that it was the hottest year in about the last 250. And another press report said that nine of the hottest years have occurred in the last 10, which is probably true if you only start in 2004. Never mind that the report was about world climate change in which Britain is an insignificant player.

 

And the short riposte to this is in the spherical plural.

 

The snag with this claim is that global temperatures  can only be measured by satellite. Not too many of those around in Victoria’s days. And satellite records show that there has been no warming for the past 18 years. Scientists can take a much-longer term view by studying ice core records, and these show that earth’s temperature is ranked in the lowest 3% since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. We know from historical records that Europe was much warmer in the Middle Ages (when wine was produced in Yorkshire, of all places) and in  Roman times.

 

And we have been emerging from a mini-Ice Age for the last 150 years, so it is blindingly obvious that temperatures were on average lower at the start of the period than at the end

 

According to NASA the hottest year on record for the USA was 1934. Even this is questionable because global temperature changes are measured  in hundredths of degrees, and there is no thermometer, which was the only instrument available until very recent times,  able to produce information remotely capable of this. The warmists say that this is ‘insubstantial’ because the US only occupies 2% of the earth’s land mass - and at the same time prophesying doom because of melting icecaps when the Arctic only covers 3% of the world’s land mass. The changes are measured in two-hundredths of a degree; that’s right – 2/100!

 

All this ’warmist’ stuff is beginning to look like scientists deciding on a conclusion and then massaging the facts to meet it. They continue to use thermometer records because they suit the case, not because they are accurate. Even this fails to make a case when closely examined. The records  show that temperatures in the early 20^th Century were higher than  stated. Whether this is due to tinkering with the raw data is unclear. But it looks possible that the trend has been cooler, not warmer.

 

The most realistic conclusion is that in the past 100 years there has been no appreciable climate change that matters.

 

And that is not something to be welcomed by the institutions and assorted freeloaders aboard the Great Green Gravy Train.

Diagnosing the NHS.........

The polls say that the future  of the NHS is the number one concern for voters, so inevitably all the parties trumpet their solutions – which are all the same. Chuck more money at it!

 

None go to the root of the real problems.  There are two.

 

The first is the management structure built into the NHS at its inception.

 

During WW2 the Government controlled everything, from what we ate to what we read. Belief in centralisation was paramount. ‘The gentleman from Whitehall really does know best!’ This continued to be the prevailing philosophy for the next 30 years. When the NHS was set up in 1946, it was given top-down control with a hierarchy of regional and local boards, all appointed by Whitehall.

 

This was virtually identical to the regime for nationalised industries and had the same defects – remoteness of decision-making;  lack of local accountability; a top-heavy bureaucracy. Mistakes could be expensive because they infected the entire service and took a long time to correct.

 

Aneurin Bevan famously said that ‘if a hospital bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor in Tredegar, the reverberations should echo around Whitehall!’

 

‘Best practice’ in modern management prefers the ‘bottom-up’  approach in which every decision and action is taken at the lowest appropriate level. Despite numberless and apparently fruitless attempts to reorganise the NHS, little appears to have changed fundamentally. Indeed, it is difficult for the layman to comprehend just what those changes have been.

 

The second is the British Medical Association.

 

As a trade union for doctors the BMA, with its ‘closed shop’, restrictive practices, and ruthless self-protection, makes UNITE look like the epitome of moderation.

 

In 1946 it voted to boycott the NHS altogether, forcing Bevan to compromise, and to abandon what now seems highly desirable, primary care centres with salaried staff. These local clinics would have provided initial patient contact in place of surgeries. Instead the new system was based on the large hospitals dominated by the consultants who to this day are independent private contractors.

 

Amidst all the political waffle about ‘the NHS is safe in our hands’, no party has grasped that the underlying fault in the NHS is structural. 

 

They are lacking something fundamental.

 

That elusive ‘vision’ thing.

Prairie politics..........

The domestic and international scenes continue their downward spiral. It is hard to imagine that things could be much worse. Folks here on the prairie remain unencumbered by these events and thereby gain a modicum of happiness and contentment in their ignorance.

 

Their prevailing mantra is for Obama's reign to experience a quick conclusion and for anyone to the right of Louis XIV to sit in his place. Texas' own Ted Cruz would do just fine as would Rand Paul or even Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin. The moderate Republicans like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie don't make the grade from the good ol’ boys perspective.

 

We won't have Mitt Romney to kick around anymore. He pulled his hat from the ring this week pleading the need for new Republican blood to pick up the mantle of leadership.

 

The real reason is twofold.

 

He found himself unable to attract donors and he was a bit gun shy from the beating he took from fellow-Republicans who debated him in the last round of primaries. I believe his wife and family were also lobbying Mitt to not run. Evidently, the last campaign was also very hard on them emotionally and physically. Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas has also decided not to run. That was also wise as he had no chance.

 

Our undaunted former Governor Rick Perry should also quit the race, but he won't. He is currently facing a weak, but real, felony charge for abuse of power that, along with numerous skeletons in his political closet, will tear him apart when the going gets tough. Even the good ol’ boys find him an embarrassment.

 

Meanwhile, Hillary is looking good for the uncontested leadership of the Democratic Party. Yes, there are some wannabes, but she is clearly in the lead. This means she will not have to endure the slings and arrows from her own party as the Republicans will have to do in their struggle up the greasy pole for party leadership.

 

Clearly, the most ravishing debates in living memory were those of the Republicans in their bid for leadership in the campaign of 2011. There were almost a dozen candidates and most of them indulged in some degree of negative campaigning. The end result was enough dirt on the leading candidates, including Romney, to fill a small book. Nobody could be proud of themselves after such subjugation to ad hominem attacks about their personal, financial and political life. Often, statements candidates made in the past were taken out of context, given a new spin, and pounded back down their throats with extreme prejudice.

 

It is my understanding that a set of new rules has just been released that are designed to protect candidates from each other. We shall see.

 

A colourful issue............

I am somewhat bemused by the recent ruckus over some thespian wimp referring to whom Dame Edna would call ‘our little tinted friends’ as ‘coloured’ , and then publishing a grovelling and completely ott  apology.

 

The word itself it completely inappropriate, of course, because it is largely meaningless except to indicate, probably  accurately, that the person is not Caucasian.

 

Perhaps the largely (I guess) white female members of the PC classes will tell us exactly what word (or words) are appropriate to describe the such. And whilst they are at it, they might actually ask advice from a non-Caucasian in the unlikely event that they ae on conversational terms with any, although I suspect that they will get funny answers.

 

I have spent most of my working life in multi-racial countries, and each has its own vocabulary.

 

An African would be referred to as – guess what – an African. Say ‘coloured’ and you might be en route to intensive care because that is the term for person of mixed race.

 

Asians tended to be ‘Indians’ since their African settlement preceded Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan, although Goans were usually called ‘Portuguese’ because that’s what they were until India seized Goa.

 

I notice that black people tend to refer to themselves as such as in the ‘Black Police Federation’.

 

Now it gets complicated. What do we call people of other races?

 

In Jamaica Chinese were always referred to as Mr Chin; no offence intended, it was simply a stylistic convenience.

 

Americans are past masters at the art of obfuscation. ‘Afro-Americans’. ‘ Native Americans’ whereas the subjects properly call themselves ‘Indians’ on account of the fact that it’s where they came from before ‘America’ was even thought of, let alone misnamed.

 

Come to think of it why do we bother? Why not just ‘Japanese’, ‘West Indian’ etc.

 

No, it won’t catch on. It would remove the whole raison d’etre from those who  prefer a grievance to a remedy.