I’ve tried to work out a way in which the banks could be taught that they are merely part of a process & not the process itself but they’ve done a hell of a job of disguising this. Other firms need to produce an actual product whereas a bank just has to take someone elses’ money & then lend it out until a lot more comes back. That’s it, oh you can dress the whole thing up in fancy but that’s really all banks do aside from a bit of gambling on the stock market, they have a use but mainly a bank exists to make money for the bank which makes customers inconvenient. All banks adopt the habit of pretending that they care, this is sensible but since everyone knows that they don’t it’s odd that they continue the habit, there was a time when banks had to drum up trade but now that they’ve managed to take over payments since hardly anyone gets pain in cash anymore no-one has a choice but to have one. Add that to the murky world of direct debits & you might be fooled into thinking that the banks are being helpful, they’re not though, that guarantee is worth more to the banks & the companies concerned than it is to you. It also means that since they don’t have to worry about getting paid they can also drop any pretence about delivering a service, this is why we get a lot less for our money these days.

Admittedly I often get annoyed with the banks & not just because they almost ruined everything for everyone, it’s their whole ethos that banks are somehow more important than other institutions, it’s been many years since I’ve had to open an account but I watched the other day & it’s mental. Put it this way, you’d better know someone who banks where you want to bank or you are in all kinds of trouble, I’d have thought that proof of identity & proof of address would have been enough but not for the banks, that’s only good enough anywhere else. They wanted a letter of introduction, God only knows who from & since the applicant was only 16 & it isn’t 1893 anymore God presumably knows where to get them from, I’m only amazed that they didn’t demand a full family tree & a card from the local Squire. Now I’m not saying that banks don’t have to be careful about who opens an account with them, I aren’t even saying that they shouldn’t check people out, I am however saying though that the people they’re worried about are the ones with perfect paperwork & affadavits from all. Putting kids through extreme smugness ought to be frowned upon especially in public & even more so when carried out by those who consider banking a profession rather than a job, Lloyds-TSB has a lot to learn but if what I saw was normal then elevenses will come with port. This is meant to be the twenty-first century, we’re meant to have broken out of all the archaic nonesense our parents took for granted, banking isn’t a mystery these days & wasn’t back then, it doesn’t need an aura of magic or a need for unearned respect, what it needs is transparency. That & for the people who work in banks to understand that it’s only a job & that the most important people who work there are the ones who fill up the cash machines, I’ll not hold my breath.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

From the point of view of the kids though the loft may as well be Narnia, it’s a dark & dusty world full of mystery & magic & the mere fact that it’s out of bounds at all times makes it an irresistible draw on a dull day. What makes it even better is that after a few years no-one really remembers what is in the loft, this adds yet another layer of suspense to the danger of falling through the plasterboard, it’s not a game for everyone but it can be memorable. Of course if you’re lucky enough to have moved into a brand new house then you can’t play this game for at least five years, loft insulation doesn’t count even if it does reduce your heating bills, new lofts are dull, old lofts are dull as well but offer the hope that they aren’t which is the only reason this game exists. Loft fishing is a great way to get covered in fibre-glass while spooking the kids out & if you’re really lucky, getting spooked out yourself, if you’ve got a good loft, one that’s had a few years to have proper trash thrown in it then there’s no guessing what may be there. Okay, there’ll be a few Christmas trees, there always is, & generally a lot of old newspapers but this is standard fare & of no interest to the keener roof anglers, what you’re looking for is those things that are either useful or better still, funny. It’s amazing to think that just moving stuff up through a ceiling can make it vanish from peoples’ minds as quickly as it vanished from view but it’s true, no-one ever really knows what’s up in the loft & when the time comes to move on most people don’t even check what they’ve thrown up there. Your kids will love crawling through someone elses’ life via the crap they didn’t want & even if you’ve found nothing you’ll have had an adventure.

There are risks involved in all sports & loft fishing is no exception, the obvious gravity related issues aside it’s probably best for the adult to do most of the actual searching, there are some things that you don’t want the kids to find first & yes, that stuff finds the loft eventually too, there’s only so much education you want in one day. That said it can be fascinating to discover who was here before us & unlike Time Team this stuff is almost always in one piece & recognisable, it’s usually crap as well but we’re not looking for treasure here, just finding out that the previous tenants were vegetarian leaf mould experts is quite enough. It could be that items of value are hidden just awaiting discovery in your loft right now but the odds are against it, what ends up in lofts is the stuff that’s too good to just throw away but not good enough to be used. What it means is that folk spent money & can’t bear to think that the tip is the best place for it, this is great news because your kids can break stuff & it’s never going to matter & more importantly you’ve taken them to another dimension, one that they will have wondered about. After just one game of loft fishing you’ll have cheered them up, got covered in dust, found a load of rubbish & made sure that your kids wont be falling through the ceilings, happy hunting.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

It would be nice to treat the government like a private person & just call it bankrupt but this would probably turn out to be not worth the amusement we’d get out of it, the rules don’t apply the same way. As it is the choice is simple, cut deep all over & grit our teeth for a few years or cut more gently but extend the pain, there is an argument that cutting too deeply now will wreck our growth prospects but whilst it’s probably true it will be ignored. From a personal perspective it’s clear that when politicians speak about pain & sacrifice they never actually mean their pain or their sacrifice. The vast majority of side effects caused by these cuts are going to be felt by the population as a whole, for those with a load of money in a now fully functioning bank it’s not even going to show up. It must be almost impossible these days to end up with a few poor politicians who’ve got any influence at all but we could use them.

So if the rich guys aren’t paying is it the poor that’ll be hammered? Well, no, not really, they’ll have to put up with a poorer health service & rubbish services but on the whole they’ll be protected by the fact that they’ve got very little money. It may sound daft but it works, you really can’t take what people haven’t got & whilst there may be some fiddling with the Welfare State there’s only so much even the Tories dare take away. Frankly if anyone’s going to pay it’s going to be the poor sods who aren’t poor enough to be on benefits & the ones who’ve managed to get ahead but not far enough ahead to be cushioned enough against the impact. At some point you see those interest rates are going to have to go back up & it wont only be the VAT rate that wanders up with them, we might not appreciate a rapacious government but we might as well because we’ve got one coming. The trick to paying off the deficit is to suck money out of the economy at a rate that makes a difference but doesn’t take so much that the economy stops creating a surplus to be milked off. It’s a good trick when it works but it’s bloody hard to do & I’ve little faith that it’ll be done well this time, it’s okay for Cameron, after Brown anyone would look good for a bit but the whole tough Tory line was done to death in the Eighties & no-one liked it then. We may need to deal with the national debt but only in a sensible way, if the cuts are to work then any savings must be used on the deficit & there has to be an open promise that government borrowing has to stay within prescribed limits. If we have to stop spending when we’re broke then so should they, a pay cut for politicians is a nice gesture but let’s not pretend that it means anything in the real world, now if we could make them all ride bikes……………………..

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

This can be especially important for the kids, it’s one thing to be friends with your boss online but parents? This is one area where I do think FaceBook can do a little more to help, none of us grew up hanging out with Mum & Dad in the way we hung out with our peers & nothing’s changed that much that now kids can, no matter how cool your folks are do you really need them in there? If they have to be there then you can restrict what they can see just like you can with anyone else, where FaceBook goes wrong though is that you can tell that things are being blocked from you & this just tells people that they’re being restricted. I’ve tried it on my own account & had people view it through theirs, if you look on my profile it’ll tell you the correct number of photos & videos that I have, if you click on them though then the number that comes up is only those that you’re allowed to see. Not only does this show that items are being blocked but also exactly just what’s private, how many & what they are, for a teen with paranoid parents this isn’t going to help, everyone needs privacy but you shouldn’t have to list what is.

With all the Apps demanding access to our data & FaceBooks’ own quest to tailor all advertising individually in order to make a few quid there’s bound to be slip-ups & in all likelihood it’ll be us causing them. We don’t take enough time & trouble to see if what we’re doing is anything but fun but with employers routinely checking the Net before interviews & with anyone with access to a PC able to be as curious as they want it’s about time that we were. Just because it doesn’t matter right now doesn’t mean that this will always be the case, stalkers no longer have to camp outside your house & whilst you can always cross your fingers & hope that you’ll never have a bitter Ex it’s not really a plan. The Net may run on servers & be fed by PCs but it’s really only about people, the plugs & wires may make it look impersonal but it’s anything but & just like the real world, not everyone on there has your best interests at heart. No-one wants to be forced to define all access to our data on a person by person basis although if you want to I suppose you could, having a couple of defined areas to pop people into is sensible though. If you have to let them know they’re being kept out of stuff though it’s only going to cause resentment & curiosity, FaceBook would be better off tailoring profiles so that only the data that can be accessed is mentioned anywhere. It wouldn’t be lying to anyone, it would be keeping the peace more than anything, they’ve done well so far with the privacy issues but this one step further would help. We wouldn’t want anyone to read our private diaries after all so why would we tell people that we had one?

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

I mean for thousands of years man has dreamt of flying as free as the birds & has got precisely nowhere, it’s not helping that the feathery sods used to be dinosaurs who got bored one day & set about some DIY, if you can change a bloody great dinosaur into a magpie then I’m damn sure a human flying squirrel shouldn’t be beyond reach. Before anyone starts I want to make it quite clear that Mankind has & can do some pretty cool stuff, space travel, music, art etc plus all the technology that makes life worth living, it’s not good enough though. We may have come a long way from the caves but we do seem to have hit the wall when it comes to our potential, the psychics aren’t psychic enough, the strong guys aren’t strong enough & whilst I’ll accept that there are those who we can consider ” super ” they’re definitely not ” Super “. I’ve checked out the comics & within the imaginations of the population of Earth there exists myriad amazing individuals, this contrasts greatly with the real world where we have one nutter with a jetpack & a few balloon nuts. How is it that we can genetically engineer a carrot but we can’t whip up a bloke with wings or gills? What’s the bloody point of experiments if we can’t have a laugh & help out Law & Order into the bargain? I’m not asking for invisibility or Hercules, just one run of the mill Super-hero with awesome powers & just one critical weakness, if he could fly about fixing aerials at the same time this would be a bonus but I’m not insisting.

I believe in Evolution as a process but how can you tell when it’s stopped bothering? Just look at the statistics, millions of people have been bitten by spiders but we have no Spiderman, plenty of people enjoy swimming as a hobby yet the generations have yet to produce a Man from Atlantis, Norfolk doesn’t count, it’s just like that down there. We’ve had any amount of chances & we now face a terrible choice, either we accept that we’re never going to get a proper Super-hero or else we find out why we haven’t got any here & now, sod the economy, this is important & needs sorting. Okay so we’ll probably end up with Yoghurtman or Lagerboy but it would be a start & we’d get better with practice, the costumes would be fun as well, maybe it is playing God but we do that anyway, let’s have a bash at doing it properly. We could have a proper monster in Loch Ness, real Yetis on every mountain & a few Trolls for the important bridges, are you actually telling me that we can roam Space almost at will but we can’t build a big fish with an attitude problem? I may have grown up expecting that by now we’d have real futuristic stuff but I’m over it now, if we can’t go forward then let’s head back to Marvel & try again, everything except the Incredible Hulk, I’ve met her & it didn’t go well.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

Not exactly with the technology, that obviously works even if it still involves daft glasses, more with the presentation against the expectations & much much more to do with the films themselves. Yes it’s a novel cinematic experience & worth doing but there’s a big difference between making a film in 3D which uses it properly & just chucking in a few sticky out bits, the simple fact is that Toy Story 3D is a nice kids film & would be just as good in 2D, the technology was there but it didn’t add anything. In all honesty though this wasn’t the films’ fault, if I had to blame anyone then I’d blame the cinema itself for all the hype & Sky in particular for their adverts for 3D TV which preceded the film for forty bloody minutes. You see you can tell who’s got all the money straight away & adverts need to impact on a large scale within only a few seconds, the Sky advert in 3D is good, the kids were entranced as the screen came alive & then went beyond live by joining the audience. It was a brilliant introduction & if their 3D TV is anything like it when it comes out I’ll be bloody amazed, the trouble was though that after the indoctrination by Sky & the repeats of their great advert it was that kind of experience the audience were expecting & weren’t ever going to get.

It’s easy to get the Wow effect over a few minutes, trying to achieve that over an hour & forty minutes just can’t be done & so the end result was one of denied opportunity, if we’d seen the film first we’d doubtless have been impressed but since we went in knowing what was possible it was inevitable that we’d feel short changed. 3D has definitely got a future in the cinema but we’re all going to have to get used to it first, as a novelty it’s a winner but the films have to be ones that can exploit it properly & it has to add something to the film itself, otherwise 2D is just as good & cheaper with it. I’m not sure if just reissuing films originally done in 2D as 3D is anything other than a second bite but again, it depends how it’s done & to a greater extent whether or not Star Wars is about to make a comeback, the temptation to redo the blockbusters of yesterday is going to be tough to resist. As it stands 3D is okay but hardly worth a trip out unless the film involved gains something from it, otherwise it’s just a gimmick & whilst it’s a fun one it’s still only a gimmick, we’ve seen what Sky can do you see & that’s what we want, it’s a tough old world & we’re greedy people.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

Even judging the estates on their crime levels doesn’t present a proper picture, there’s certainly crime but a lot of it is stupid crime simply because poor people aren’t worth stealing from or else it’s anti-social behaviour which is a big problem that no-one seems equipped to deal with. The major problem with estate life is the lack of ambition amongst the people living on them & the constant belief that there’s nothing to do but accept your lot. Actually living on an estate is the same as living anywhere else, if you’ve got good neighbours & aren’t intent on making anyones’ life a misery then it’s ok, if you’re unlucky with your neighbours then it’s awful but not because you’re on an estate, bad neighbours suck. There are problems with problem families, first of all caused by the families themselves & secondly by the councils’ habit of shifting them from estate to estate instead of dealing with them, all this does is ruin the lives of other people & has no effect whatsoever on those responsible. I’m certain that there’s an unofficial council policy that picks out one estate or another as the designated area for problem families, it’s the only explanation for the rise & fall of the estates, everytime one of them appears to be on the verge of success they send in the trash to spoil it. Sadly it only takes one family to destroy a street or in some cases an entire area & it’s not as if those responsible for moving folk aren’t aware of what they’re doing, that said they have a hard enough time fighting the waiting lists as it is & there’s probably no option but to put these people somewhere.

On a personal note I don’t mind the estates, aside from fostering a few tribal like divisions between one estate or another they aren’t the hell on earth they’re portrayed as, there’s violence to be sure but in the main those involved are all violent & don’t insist that anyone else joins in, there’s crime but if you take care then so long as it’s an effort they’ll leave you be. Aside from that there’s the usual infidelities & family feuds that go on possibly in a more public way but not in anywhere a more unusual way than anywhere else, it all comes down to people & for some reason really small motorbikes ridden by really big men. What is true though is that the reaction of those who don’t live on the estates to those who do is distinctly odd & reinforces the perception that to occupy a house on a council estate is to admit to failure, maybe the world needs someone to look down on & maybe it’s easy to pick us but does that mean we have to pick us too? I hope not, personally I think you’ll find as much poverty on the private estates as people struggle with their mortgages, as much misery in the executive developments & frankly merely less stupid crime everywhere else, whether that makes the estates more or less honest I don’t know, what I do know is that wherever you are it always comes down to people & pride, get that right & it’s all okay, we’re not there yet but we’re working on it.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

Data protection may be a huge subject now but it’s going to be an even bigger one in the future, the fact is that the vast majority of people aren’t looking after their personal data anywhere near carefully enough & that it doesn’t take much snooping to turn it up. It’s hardly fair to scream about an invasion of privacy if people can just google your Email address & browse to their hearts’ content, when it comes to their personal PCs it’s generally even worse, yeah you can set yourself a user password on Windows but so what? If you haven’t bothered to set an Admin password then good luck with that, & this is even if anyone’s bothered to set up a password at all, too many people don’t even bother with that. The unique problem with Blackberry though is that as well as all the private individuals who have them an awful lot of corporate structures use them as well, it may upset a few people to think that our communications are being watched but in the world of big business such an overview is unthinkable. In a world where a rumour can quash a deal in seconds or a leak can ruin a product what these guys need is privacy that really is private, Rim may be under a little pressure from a few governments but the real pressure will always come from its’ business users & they will win out overall.

As to the fears that terrorists & other undesirables may be using Blackberry phones there’s just nothing you can do about that, one presumes that Rim themselves can have a look if they really had to although based again on the business side of things maybe not. Besides, I thought the terrorists used cheap PAYG phones anyway? Was there a meeting? Fear is always good for new rules & new ways of doing things but hardly anyone seems to check whether these new ways are any good or just new, & it always turns out that they have uses other than the ones they were created to deal with. We may need a more rugged approach to security but abandoning all sense of ourselves & our right to decide what information we share is going too far, governments have a difficult job to do but they have some pretty powerful weapons to do it with, all we have are our choices & this should be taken into account. This new row with Rim wont change any of that, at the end of the day they want to sell their phones & not giving in will reassure their current & future customers that they’re the people to buy phones from, the governments will just have to do things the old fashioned way or else start googling Facebook. It’s as good a way as any & will at least save them from trawling through the vast morass of crap people mostly text & Email each other with, we never said it wasn’t crap though, just that it was private, & hopefully staying that way.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

It was early afternoon before the deer organized a meeting of the Spangly Woods folk, as well as Monty stoat several rabbits had been killed as well as a grass snake & nearly everyone else had had narrow escapes or bumps & bruises. The foxes had even agreed a general amnesty for the day as they were by now completely stuffed & could hardly move anyway let alone hunt. Toby the weasel started the meeting off, ” The bloody birds are bloody mental” he said proudly then sat down, ” Are we sure it’s the birds? ” asked Bryan who’d been rudely awakened only a short while before & was feeling ratty, ” Give it a rest Bryan ” said Ratty, ” Sorry mate ” said Bryan. ” Of course it’s the bloody birds Bryan ” said Tommy squirrel, ” stones don’t fly on their own you know? “, it was a fair point thought Bryan but that wasn’t quite what he’d meant, ” I mean is it all of the birds or just some of them?” he asked. ” Who cares? ” said a mole with a bandaged head, ” I’m damned if I can’t stick my head out without becoming a blasted brick magnet “, ” They’re hardly bricks mole ” said one of the deer, ” They are when you’re my size you great dick ” said the mole. The deer paused to consider this, ” Right ” he said, ” squirrel? Go find us a bird to talk to “, his orders given he turned to address the collected brethren of the woods stopping only to mercilessly crush the life from the mole who’d called him a dick. The other animals nodded approvingly, free speech was all very well but without consequences it would hardly be worth having. The stag cleared his throat noisily & then spoke, ” Bryan ” he said, ” we know this is going to be TV related don’t we?”, Bryan was thinking furiously, ” I can’t see how?” he said, ” only the ravens have got a TV after all”. An otter stuck a short arm in the air, ” Kestrels have got a telly ” she said, ” No they haven’t ” said a raven flying down to land beside the squirrels, ” silly buggers think it’s a telly but I know fine well it’s a sat-nav “. There was much amusement at this in the furry faces of the assembled crowd before the animals realised that there was a bird in their midst. The raven noticed the drop in the atmosphere & shuffled nervously, ” Hey, I’ve never dropped rocks on no-one today ” he said, ” or yesterday either ” he chipped in as he foresaw a foreshortened future. ” So raven ” said the stag, ” why are the birds dropping stones on their fellow woodland dwellers then?”, the raven looked around for support or sympathy & then gave up, ” Well ” he said, ” who here’s heard of Easter?”.

” Oh bum ” thought Bryan, he’d seen the little messages on some of the TV worlds & had wondered about it but he knew that only the ravens had a TV & ravens were bright weren’t they? The stag was looking gravely at the raven who was by now regretting landing at all, ” What is Easter then?” he demanded, ” & why is it causing so much trouble?”. The raven went back to shuffling his claws nervously, ” It was only meant to be a joke ” he said, the assembled animals focused all of their attention on the raven now & began to think like a mob, ” A joke?” said a stoat with a bruised tail, ” a joke?, it’d better have been a bloody good one!”. It had been at first thought the raven, ” It’s like this ” he said, ” the pigeons had been getting on our nerves for weeks messing about with their nests & cooing all hours of the day & night, we’d had enough & nothing stopped them being so bloody happy”. The animals nodded at this, it was a well known fact that anyone who was permanently happy was a right pain & Spring brought it all to the fore. Spangly Woods went through many variations throughout the year but Spring could be firmly viewed as a cascade of erections humping their way across the woodland in the hope of finding somewhere or someone to stick it in. The deer may have reserved Autumn & the rabbits frankly never stopped but for almost everyone else Spring was the time to get some, even Bryan had to lay off the porn for a bit. ” Anyway ” the raven went on, ” we dragged some pigeons in & showed them the Easter thingy that the people are doing now & that shut them right up, served ‘em right as well ” he sniffed, ” but then they told the ducks who told the wrens who told everyone else “. The deer was still not quite with it, ” But what did they tell them?” he asked, the raven shuffled his claws again, ” Easter see ” he said, ” Yes?” encouraged the deer, ” Well ” said the raven, ” Easter is mainly an egg thing really & erm, it being Spring & all”. The head deer got it, “Ah” he said, ” what you’re saying is that it’s all a bit of a mess & that the birds are worried about their eggs?”, he liked it when things finally made sense.

” Worried? ” yelled a cuckoo landing like a thrown turd, ” they’re not worried, they’re sodding mental! “, she was missing feathers in chunks & had blood running down her beak, the animals just looked at her & not even the raven spoke. ” Oh ” said the cuckoo, ” like that is it? “, she pushed a few stumps of feather back into place, ” it’s alright to be upset if you’re one of those namby pamby raise your own kids species but not if you’re me? ” she said glaring at her silent audience. ” You do chuck their eggs out though ” said a weasel thoughtfully although not admitting that this was how he got most of his eggs. ” So? ” demanded the cuckoo, ” we can’t help how we’re made, I can’t be having with all that nesting malarky, I’ve got a life “, it was clearly an uphill battle she was fighting & it was almost a relief when the skies darkened & a hail of pebbles began. Most of the animals made it to the dubious safety of the bushes, the cuckoo unfortunately hadn’t moved quickly enough & was now the victim of an instant funeral, ” Do you want to say a few words? ” asked the head deer gently, ” Yes ” said a weasel, ” can someone help me move these rocks? I’m starving “. The head deer located the raven where he was shelteringbeneath a hawthorn branch, ” I want this sorted ” he said, ” & properly as well “, the raven nodded glumly, Bryan felt it was a bit unfair to blame it all on the one raven & said so. ” Shall I help? ” he asked the head deer, ” How can you help? ” asked the stag, ” Well ” said Bryan, ” I could tell the birds that Easter is only about chocolate eggs “, there was almost instantly a silence which suggested that Bryan had got everyones’ attention, he went over what he’d just said in his head, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. ” There’s chocolate eggs? ” said a stoat wondrously, ” Wow ” said an otter, ” My my ” said a rabbit, ” Oh bugger ” said Bryan.

A long, long time ago, before TV & almost before Bryan some people had passed through Spangly Woods & had left a great deal of food behind, one of the things they’d left had been a huge brown bar of loveliness that afterwards had been found to have been chocolate. It’s presence within the woods had become the stuff of legends & now, all about him, Bryan could hear the saliva dripping from the mouths of all, it sounded like rain. ” Tell me Bryan ” asked the head deer conversationally, ” how much more help could you have been? “, Bryan stared at the ground, ” I think I’ve stopped now ” he said mournfully, ” Thank the trees for that ” said the head deer, he turned to put the assembled animals straight, ” Oh dear ” he said, they were quite alone.

It became known as the Summer of no birds, the low lying nests went first & although the smaller birds may have been able to lay more eggs all too often the search for chocolate descended into a feeding frenzy & the birds themselves descended into the stomachs of stoat & weasel. Even the ducks & grebes struggled to cope, they retreated to the islands but found that otter children all over the banks had been raised on the legend of chocolate, the herons were tough enough to stand their ground but faced with a sweet crazy ball of raging otter the ducks took to the skies in search of saner waters. By the second day even the sparrowhawks & kestrels were finding it hard to nest even though they were well equipped to deter the attacks, the weasels lusted after owl eggs & became pathetic skeletal heaps for their trouble & even hedgehogs were found starving to death in the branches of bushes. Only the corvids could afford to watch the madness without risk, in their high treetop retreats only the squirrels could reach them & it took only a few hours to convince them that they were better off with nuts. Bryan was suffering from an acute attack of guilt as he saw the littered waste of hundreds of eggs along with the broken remains of unfortunate hunters, he was also being roundly crapped on by every bird that spotted him so although he was still black & white it was flecked with green & smelled terrible, Tom otter wouldn’t have him in his holt for all the chocolate in the world. Everywhere he went he saw the remnants of nests & heard the forlorn cries of the avian world, it wouldn’t have been so bad but he was partial to the odd egg & he’d not had a sniff of one.

Out of all the animals only the deer & the foxes were totally unaffected by the Easter riot, the deer because they were herbivores & in any case above all that & the foxes because they had other things on their minds, baby foxes that is, eggs were all very well but rabbits were better & when sex turned up in the equation then even the rabbits could get stuffed. Deep beneath the bracken a tired & disgruntled Bryan gave up worrying about things, tomorrow was another day, carefully rubbing as much of the bird crap off as he could he switched on the TV, found the animal channel & along with the foxes settled down to think about sex.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.

I’m not claiming that things went anywhere near well in the Gulf, I make no defence for the huge environmental disaster or for the implications for the future or even that the stupendous sums of money promised as compensation should sort it all out to everyones’ satisfaction. I’m not even going to claim that BP handled any of this particularly well at any point or that their PR didn’t prove to be a farce from start to finish, all I’m claiming is that the people complaining the most shouldn’t be complaining at all. You see it’s all very well for the Europeans to loathe oil companies & resent the hell out of their success, we’ve hardly got any oil & what there is of that is running out pretty swiftly, America however has loads of oil, just not enough for America, & that’s the thing. America is the one place on Earth where they’re always keen to discover more oil, they need more oil than just about any other country, okay so China may use a bit more overall but per individual? Not a chance, & it’s not as if BP failed to find oil, they found loads & were probably as surprised as anyone else to find out how rubbish they were at containing it, nope, as oil exploration goes it was an unqualified success right up to the point where oil became involved.

The Americans though are complaining too much, they’re the ones so bloody keen on oil & if they were naive enough to think that out of all the exploration going on there wasn’t going to be a few cock-ups then that’s hardly anyones’ fault but their own. I’m not saying that it’s a bonus to have your beaches covered in crude or a mass of wildlife coated in filth & dying but that’s progress for you & so long as we’re looking for oil it’s going to happen again. I’m all for those people who’ve had their livelihoods ruined to bitch the loudest & demand their pockets filling but aside from that all the politics has been pants & I expected better from them, no-one needs to treat an oil company with compassion but Salems’ over guys & that should count. As for all that blow about it being because BP is a British company they can keep it, none of these companies have any nationality to speak of, oh they may have originated in some country or other but after all the years of trade & share dealing they’re just cash machines for the markets. There are no American oil companies just as there are no French oil companies or any British oil companies, they’re just oil companies, period. Yes it was a disaster, yes the cap should have fit better, yes we’ve all been there, but please, if you don’t want them drilling all over for oil then just stop using so bloody much of it, or learn to understand that sometimes it isn’t always a good time to strike it rich. Americans complaining that someone discovered oil? I know, scary isn’t it?

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.