This story is delicious :))

‘Educated’ wild boar in Gloucestershire stealing food and breaking into pig farms to mate with sows


Read more at:  My kind of wild boar roaming...

Not so sure about digging up cricket pitches, though - that seems a bit excessive.

But it reminds me of once playing golf in France, in the late 1980s. I played at Hardelot les Pins, a beautiful course that winds through quiet, dense pine forest and sand dunes.

It was very early in the morning, as the young golf professional (who was my partner) suggested that if we teed off at 6 am, we would not be held up by the notoriously slow play of the locals. However, we were held up on the first hole, because - as we approached the green - we saw that a large area of fairway had been dug up. 

"Perhaps they are building a new bunker," suggested my partner, but it was not so.

The damage was done by wild boar, rarely seen this far north in France.

When we returned after finishing our round, the golf course manager was on the phone to another golf course in the Czech Republic, where invasion by wild boar was not uncommon. The answer was to surround the forest late at night with cars on full headlights and men with guns and torches to flush out the poor creatures and shoot them.
"Better in the pot than on the golf course," they told me...

Clarice Lispector

Everything in the world began with a yes...

Politics or pushing buttons?

It is September 2015 and we are in the middle of a post-election silly season, after the frenzy of a bitterly fought General Election in May. The UK population has been enjoying the summer, some (who can afford it) travelling overseas on holiday or, perhaps even more expensive, trying to holiday in the UK.
Meanwhile, the defeated Labour Party is trying to elect a new leader, to replace the failed Ed Miliband.
This leadership election ought to be about leadership qualities, credible policies and a recognisable route to a GE victory in 2020. Sadly, it is nothing of the sort.
For the media (and perhaps some Labour voters), it has become a beauty contest, where personalities pluck ideas out of thin air and toss them to their electorate like confetti. These are not so much policies as marketing ploys, such as we see ubiquitously in our daily lives. Occasionally, coherent policies survive the blast of media attention, but they are little different from those we might have seen last year. Although, in itself, this is no bad thing: good policies are still good policies, even if they have been rejected in the past. The argument still has to be made, the reasoning spelled out and the policies must be well communicated and then delivered, not merely repackaged for a new hoped-for generation of voters.
Nothing difficult about that, you might think - and you're right - but thinking it so does not make it so.
What makes a good policy?
You might think that a political strategy built primarily around social justice would be easily transmitted and understood... You might think that an argument built around a healthy society, one in which opportunity exists for all, and not just the wealthy or the fortunate, would be well received...
You might think that a public sector designed to deliver effective solutions for all our needs - in health, education, social welfare and security - would be a sure winner...
But these are the policies of Labour and they are not getting through.
Partly, this is because most Conservatives simply don't get the idea of social justice. That's right, they  don't get it.
For Conservatives, who like to think of themselves as "compassionate Conservatives", the only proper social agenda is one where the market rules, laisser faire is the dominant Zeitgeist, and each individual makes as much money as possible, and - after feathering their own nest - wisely invests their profits to accrue more capital. If business and commerce are successful, the economy will boom, and plenty of cash will trickle down, yea, even unto the poorest in the land, and all shall be well.
Capital is everything, and the benefits will cascade: A simple message for simple folk.
Sometimes the market malfunctions and the state has to step in and rescue essential services.
You might think that 'essential services' means hospitals, schools, care homes, police stations, and suchlike; but no - it means banks. And the market malfunction is always someone else's fault, not the fault of the market itself. In the UK, the convenient narrative was that Labour caused the crash, Labour mismanaged the economy, Labour de-regulated banks and the financial system... The Conservatives, knowing no other way, simply repeated this ad nauseam, until all the other animals repeated it as a given: "Two legs good, four legs bad...".
It was as though they could press a button and everybody, with most of the right wing media as cheerleaders, would act in accordance.
We must fear for the Labour Party, and for Britain. The next five years will see a triumphalist Tory Party, high on hubris, sailing on with a punitive, austere approach to government. No one believes that such a strategy will repair the ravages of a free-market economy, any more than it has in the past, but it will protect the interests of the rich in British society, and that is what matters most - if you are a Conservative.
The puzzling thing is that the middle classes - diligent readers of the Daily Mail, the Sun, or the Times - still believe such government is in their best interests, too. They hear the Tory tune, echoing pleasingly in their morning paper, and never think to scratch beneath the surface.
They do not know that their children will suffer, because there are no houses for them to rent, unless from rapacious, unregulated landlords, let alone houses to buy; they do not know that doctors and nurses are leaving the country in droves, escaping from a low pay, low esteem culture, while the NHS is sold off, piece by piece, to chums of the Chancellor, George Osborne - likely to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
They do not know because they do not care to know. And because Labour has no one to shock them out of their Conservative catatonia, able to expose the true nature of the Nasty Party and the options for better, more fair, more just government.
And, even after this leadership election, will Labour have the leader who can fight off the bullies in the media, challenge the assured performances of Cameron at the despatch box, and haul back the lemmings from the brink of extinction?

Truth and treacle

David Frost — ‘If you have half a mind to go into politics that's all you need.’

Just because the government reports that the economy is improving, it does not follow that the economy is actually improving. Rising house prices, low interest rates, excessive personal indebtedness and a spending boom fuelled by bank PPI pay-outs... these are not the foundation stones of economic recovery.

Just because the government says that unemployment is falling, it does not follow that there are more jobs or that more people are in full-time work. Offering people zero hours contracts or occasional, part-time jobs is not an indicator of falling unemployment, but a short-term measure designed to disguise the reality and comfort government supporters. The coalition has enough political nous to manipulate figures and statistics, but not enough understanding of basic economics to realise the medium- and long-term consequences of their actions. Or, if they do understand, they are brutally uncaring. Cosmetic adjustments are not structural improvements.

People out of work are unemployed. They may receive the JSA, but the government has found a number of spurious excuses to deny jobseekers the allowance, and to remove them from the unemployment register. As people become poorer and more desperate, unable to find work or keep up payments on their homes, they lose hope.

The hopeless people are not the people that Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith describe as ‘hard working people’. Therefore, they must be shirkers and worthless benefit claimants. They are not Conservative voters. In fact, they are increasingly unlikely to vote at all. They are effectively unrepresented. The government knows this. Their strategy is clear: to target their voters and to marginalise the non-voters. In the words of the American writer David Korten:
‘Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.’

The government focus has been to reduce the cost of unemployment and cut taxes for higher earners, with the crude assumption that this will lead to greater investment and growth. But it is a fallacy that, if the rich have their taxes cut, money will ‘trickle down’. So says Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest.

And how did we get into this predicament? What was the crash? By 2007, the West had reached the very high noon of unfettered resurgent capitalism. Deregulation created an epidemic of greed which, according to capitalism, was acceptable. Most recently, Boris Johnson repeated the assertion that avarice was what motivated people. It may be that is all he knows.

Beyond that cycle of greed and expansion, there was criminal behaviour by many bankers. Eventually, private debt incurred by the banks was passed to the public sector through a bailout — and is now being passed back to families. But let us not forget the Deficit Myth, peddled by Conservatives, which is that Labour created a global crash out of their profligacy — all caused by tax credits and soft-soaping the ‘skivers’ and ‘shirkers’.

Of course, it was all Labour’s fault that we had uninterrupted economic growth from 1997 to 2008 and the longest period of sustained low inflation since the 1960s.

The OECD says the income of the richest 10% of people in the UK is 12 times that of the lowest 10%. In Germany, Denmark and Sweden, that figure is 6 times.
‘How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics’ — Aneurin Bevan

In a social democracy, the role of any government is to collect taxes and spend them fairly, for the benefit of the greatest possible number: the many, not the few. Chief items of expenditure are health, education, welfare and security. In each of these areas, the government is resorting to market force theory and privatisation as the means to reduce the debt.

So, selling off the NHS, dismantling local education authorities, denying welfare payments, privatising police and military functions are all short-term measures designed to reduce national debt as fast as possible — and to ensue victory in the next election. After that, it will be each man for himself, each woman and child for themselves. Sink or swim. A grim prospect if you are young, old, poor, sick or simply unfortunate. This is the politics of social destruction. But, as the Africans say, if you are ugly, learn how to dance.

When EU officials castigate the government because its unemployment benefits and welfare payments are inadequate and drive families into poverty, what happens? The government uses the criticism as evidence of the unwelcome interference of Eurocrats, as though it were an improper assault on a sovereign nation. No matter that the Eurocrats are right and that welfare payments are about half what they need to be to sustain family life.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 4.7 million Britons are in deep poverty — in other words, they have ‘inadequate incomes’... http://www.cleardebt.co.uk/news/britons-struggling-due-to_27138.php?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twt&utm_campaign=britons-struggling-due-to

What do you believe – truth or treacle?

‘A lie told often enough becomes truth’ — Joseph Goebbels

Wild in Woburn

ARTBEAT is on at Woburn again. The shops display works of art, sculpture, paintings, jewellery, and so on. The Bedford Street Gallery, next door to the Black Horse pub, contains details and most of the artwork.

Then, in the gardens of Woburn Abbey, there are dozens of sculptures in natural settings.

This wild boar is one I really liked, for obvious reasons!

The Musings of Mister Williams: BAD TEACHERS

The Musings of Mister Williams: BAD TEACHERS

Captain's Day

Back from Porthcawl and played in Captain's Day at Buckingham. Somehow, my game has deteriorated since Wales, but I managed to pick up a prize for nearest the pin at the 4th (see picture). It was a well struck 5-iron, with slight draw and it curled up to about 3 feet. Birdie - a rare birdie!