Self Serving….

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Guthlac

So that was an interesting few hours or was it a few days? I’m not sure at the moment but last night saw the collapse of the supposed radical change to European football: The European Super League. I don’t intend to go into all of the ins and outs of this other than to say I don’t believe for one moment that fan pressure made much of a difference. No for me it was the obvious oversight that Britain is no longer part of the European Union and so can set its own immigration policy as far as immigrant work permits.

If you are president of Real Madrid then you can’t be stopped from hiring anyone who is an EU citizen and so such considerations don’t enter into your thinking. This is not the case in Britain where anyone who is not a British citizen needs some form of visa (This is a gross oversimplification but the point is still valid) and so an opportunist Prime Minister wouldn’t actually have to do anything to stop any English club employing the latest greatest footballer from say Italy or Spain – the new immigration system will do it for him. No wonder Boris Johnson was all over this trying to be the people’s tribune. When it became apparent that this might be the case then, in my view, the 6 English clubs realised that short of moving the clubs to another jurisdiction they were screwed. (By the way I wouldn’t have put it past the American owners have thinking about this as they have form for doing just that in US pro sports) So maybe ‘the fans’ did force this collapse but not in the way that is being put about.

Whilst we are on the subject I don’t believe the craven claims of ‘senior people’ at the 6 English clubs who claim to have known nothing about this. Everytime I heard an excited Sky Sports journalist open his (they are are all male) mouth about their senior sources at the clubs claiming they knew nothing about this I kept thinking:

“… success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan …”

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On a Lighter Note….

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Guthlac

Having commented on the possible cronyism and sleaze at Westminster it is a great relief to get back to much more interesting things – the avian dinosaurs in and around my house. This was an especially interesting few days as I was able to bag a Twite (although it has to be noted that my bird identification skills are not the best but it does match the description in my Collins’ Bird Guide book – so I’m claiming it!)

The Twite…

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Sniff Test….

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Guthlac

One of the more ludicrous aspects of British politics at the moment is the charge that the Labour Party and Sir Kier Starmer is not up the job. It seams that each day brings new opinion editorials decrying Keir Starmer’s lack of purpose. Now under normal circumstances there may well be some truth in this but, and I am surprised I have to reiterate this, things are not normal: People are still getting and ill and some of those are dying from Covid 19. To think that anything other the government’s actions are going to make any headway is farcical. However, things might be about to change. Tory Sleeze is once more a thing.

The Cameron/Greenshill debacle is just the start of something which is going to unravel slowly over the next 6/12 months into a full blown crisis which may end up with the head of the Health Secretary for England and who knows who else? The billions thrown at dodgy PPE providers is one thing and may start the charge but it is the waste of money within the track and trace system that will probably be where the big snouts have been feeding. At the last time I looked we had spent £37 BILLION on this for what? This whole spending black hole is run by Matt Hancock and his best friend Baroness Harding – if this does turn nasty then they are clearly the first ones against the wall to save Boris’s neck.

So if something really smelly does start to emerge then perhaps the stories will change from Labour ineffectiveness to Tory Sleaze. If this does happen then, along with the inevitable disappointment with Boris Johnson who will not be able to deliver on his ‘leveling up agenda’ (This is a generational task not one parliamentary term – so disappointment is all but guaranteed), perhaps we might finally have a real political fight and maybe, just maybe, some real political change.

So the point of all this is that the Starmer stories are a product of a chattering Westminster class that will be forgotten by the next election. This is even more likely to be the case if Tory Sleaze really takes hold.

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Nothing to Say….

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Guthlac

‘…If you have nothing to say then say nothing…better still have something to say and say it…’

Possibly Sir Humphrey Appleby

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Covid Bird Watching….

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Guthlac

I really don’t know whether it is Covid or just getting old but the thought of going out and capturing bird images is a little bit off of the radar at the moment. Instead I have been trying to capture the best images I can whilst in and around my own garden.

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We didn’t start the fire…

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Guthlac

In a time when it seems standards in public life haven’t reached any significant height of propriety in so very long is it any wonder that our former Prime Minister but one has been caught with this snout well and truly in the trough. Of course this isn’t a party political statement as I’m old enough to remember when a former Labour minister faked his own death to get out of a financial pickle – it failed and he ended up in prison – oh if only history would repeat itself!

As the great welsh bard sang…it’s history repeating itself….

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Nobody’s Watching

Posted on April 11, 2021 by Guthlac

In this over connected world full of people crying out to be looked at there appears to be one eternal truth. Nobody is Watching. Of course there are the exceptions but they are so few and far between that from a statistical point of view they really don’t count. We all shout into the ether and nobody answers back. I, for one, am glad about that.

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Having a Cuppa….

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Guthlac

What better than sitting in the garden and having a cup of tea when some friends decided to pop round.

No covid regulations were broken in the making of these images.

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Tubular Bells…

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Guthlac

After all the excitement of being allowed out, and it really did feel like a release, it was time just to take stock and makes some art – it also helped that the unseasonal summer weather we’ve enjoyed has been replaced by weather more in keeping with this time of year.

Whilst doing this I decided to show my age and enjoyed Tubular Bells …for the unknown time.

‘….spanish guitar and introducing acoustic guitar….’

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Not going out….

Posted on March 26, 2021 by Guthlac

The days are getting longer and I can now start to sit outside in my garden and watch the world go bye whilst drinking my afternoon tea. That may well be the most cliched english thing I do but I am what I am. With the joys of lockdown still inplace my opportunities for travel are next to zero – over the past 7 weeks I have driven my car for only 200 miles – great for the bank balance, covid and the environment but less so if you want to capture the world coming out of the winter gloom. Still there is nothing I can do about things at the moment so I am stuck with trying to make photographs in and around my garden and local parks – not the world’s worst hardship!

Strangely enough there are more opportunities sitting in my garden than walking through the park. I live in a modest post 2nd world war house that was built overlooking the River Soar. Over the years all the gardens backing onto one another have slowly formed a long thin copse that is around about 20 metres wide and over 500 metres long. On top of this there are numerous trees of all kinds in the gardens that I back onto. In short we live in a condensed urban woodland setting which attracts the wildlife.

Whilst this woodland setting offers great opportunities for nature it also means that the small birds also have to be on the lookout all the time for predators. The most successful/dangerous one is the local cat population who instinctively take many birds but then don’t really know what to do with them. However, there are other predators that really know what to do with their kills – they too have chicks to feed. The top of these predators is the Sparrowhawk which I was able to briefly capture as it zipped through the gap between the houses.

They will take birds upto the size of a wood pigeon although they usually take smaller prey – hence the name. The small birds also have to be on the watch out for the local corvid population as they won’t miss an opportunity to take eggs as well as chicks from the nest. We have a resident copuple who are nesting in another house’s chimney pot.

Away from this urban idle(?) modern life is starting to reassert itself. We live under the main UK, Europe, USA flight path and it has been noticeable there has been a slow but steady increase in the aircraft flying overhead.

I guess FedEx has got to get all those parcels from the USA to Europe!

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