Going Bats

At this time of year Mrs Weggis and I often sit out on the rear patio at dusk to watch the bats swooping across our back garden from next doors foliage and feasting upon the flying insects above our own small piece of well tended nature. But since next doors foliage has been severely cut back, see previous post, I though it was about time that I put up the Bat Box that Miss Weggis bought me for Christmas three years ago.

Back To Front

Next door's back Garden........
....is now in the front garden.

Wild Horses

It's a bit old [1997] but my local FoE peeps sent me this and I found it rather spookey.



Now I have to say that we've been chopping down oak trees long before we had the motor car. In those days we were using the oak to build ships - sailing galleons and other stuff like furniture and coffins. But in those days we replanted so there would be another Oak to use when the beams in the roof needed replacing.

So, what I would like to know is what happened to those oaks? There is a big difference in attitude when cutting down a tree to use it, and cutting down a tree when it is "in the way". It's called respect. And when you don't have respect useful stuff just gets thrown away or burnt.

Sakineh

Last month, June, a protest march was brought to my attention. I don’t do this sort of “activist” stuff but by coincidence I was there, in a sort of roundabout way.

The protest march was on 20th June and organised by a body called “One Law for All” which is, I find out later, a body campaigning against Sharia and religious laws.

As it happened I had been under strict instructions from my children to keep this date clear for their mother’s 60th birthday. In the morning a stretch limo turned up to whisk us all off to the Kensington Roof Gardens for Sunday Lunch. This is what they look like inside.Funny thing is that it was also Father’s day so everybody thought it was me who was the subject of attention and indeed it was on this day that I learnt of this – although Mrs Weggis had already read the runes and knew, but didn’t tell me. That’s witches for you.

Anyhow, on the way home we passed along Kensington Road where there were demonstrators opposite some Iranian government building. Lots of banners and a gallows complete with noose. Further on we encountered a march coming from Whitehall to meet up with the other lot.

Thing is I didn’t realise the full gravity of the protest until I received a couple of emails from Avaaz. It seems that an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, has been saved by global protests from being stoned to death. But she may still be hanged. Her alleged crime – adultery, watch out John Terry, don’t see any transfer for him to the middle east if his agent is on the ball – otherwise he might loose both of them!

Stoning is where the victim is buried up to their necks in the ground and then large rocks are thrown at their heads until their craniums crack and their brains spill out onto the ground.

I do not claim to keep up with this sort of thing, but those who do, ie. the Left, Green Left and the Green Party, of which I am a member, have been strangely quiet on this. Not a bloody peep as far as I can see. These are the people who espouse fundamental human rights and social justice. Where the fuck are they? Too busy demonising Israel, [admittedly no angels] supporting anarchy in the dubious form of “non-violent direct action” and sucking up to Hamas and Jew-hating clerics with whom they share platforms, no doubt?

Silence can be deafening. You just have to listen for it.

The Message

I have often wondered whether or not advertising works. What is clear is that it does, to a degree, with its intended audience. Witness Hello magazine! It’s not gonna grab everyone but if it gets through to the target…. But what fascinates me is the extent of backfire. As I’ve mentioned before I have not and never will buy any JVC product simply because the unmentionables had that label on their shirts back in the 1970s when football clubs first went in for sponsorship. I think it’s called “lock out” in the trade but I may be mistaken.

But there’s another aspect to advertising which has attracted my attention recently. That is anti-advertising of the specific variety. It’s where activists who don’t like the advert deface billboards with the anti-message. Some of these are usually quite funny, mostly the political kind. But I’m not sure that that these people actually think too deeply about the message they are trying to convey and the impact that their intervention will have upon their target audience. Below is a prime example.This is from Indymedia where “pro-Palestinians” have defaced advertisements for the Israeli tourist trade. But how is Jo Soap going to interpret that splodge of red paint? Given the media that those activists complain about I would guess it may well conjure up images of blood from “suicide bombers” or doodlebugs suggesting that Israel is not exactly a “safe” place to visit.

I doubt that this is exactly the “message” that those activists want to get across but hey, if it keeps Israel off your itinerary what the heck?

Reason to Care

Can you see the resemblance?

Gaza Campaigners?

Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

The Guardian reports that a rather smug looking Brighton MP declares support for acquitted “Gaza Campaigners”. They continue:

Green Party's Caroline Lucas 'delighted' over activists cleared of damaging arms factory in protest against Israeli war crimes

Now, I’m going to leave aside the legal aspects of the case and whether or not criminal damage can be justified for the greater good. That can be debated somewhere else. But I am intrigued as to how criminal damage can be described as “non-violent direct action”. Anyway onto the more serious point – why are they referred to as "Gaza Campaigners"?

I don’t know but I would hazard a guess that Israel is not the only customer of the factory that was vandalised and that those customers are also using those weapons for killing people. So, why are they not mentioned? I also suspect that there are other factories in the UK selling arms to undesirable regimes. Why have they escaped? Why is it that Caroline Lucas applauds this action directed at one single and specific case and not the general principle? Why did she not take the opportunity, as our “Leader”, to highlight Green Party Policy? Which is:

"End all export subsidies and increase controls on UK arms sales, especially to goverments who violate human rights."

i.e. ALL governments who violate human rights and not just Israel.

Is the singling out of one naughty and wayward child, while ignoring the other equally naughty ones, for special treatment and condemnation really what we would accept in our schools? Would the Green Party approve with it’s high minded principles of equality and justice? I suspect not.

Isca Stieglitz is worried. So am I, and so is Greens Engage.

Dear Peter

Over on Comment is Free, the arch queer [his word] argues "After 40 years of gains on homophobic law repeal, is there any more need for a separate identity?"

He rounds off the piece with the words "Forty years after a trailblazing freedom agenda was launched, I am still celebrating LGBT pride. But my eye is firmly fixed on the real prize: a world beyond gay and straight."

Me too. Just one question. Can the rest of us have the word "Gay" back now please?

OK It would have to be LHBT, but hey! Unless you want LQBT?