http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p007dvhr/The_Interview_07_05_10_Michael_Lewis/

I am not going to say anything, just listen to this interview.

Mainly from American movies I have the implanted notion that rivers in America, particularly in the West, run wide, clean and have deep pools. When Big Gordon and I fished wee Scottish streams a 2 pound trout was a whopper, and rarely seen or caught, I often used to harbour a notion that fishing the wild undisturbed American rivers for trout would be so natural, wild fish, in wilderness, you, a fly rod, a camp fire, fresh fish. It would have been like fishing Scotland’s streams in the 17th century, only the catch would be comparable to catching a good sized salmon. I had no notion of cougars or bears disturbing this idyll.

What did disturb this idyll, was the BBC world service, I heard a report about mercury in all of America’s rivers, turns out 291 rivers had fish that had mercury and of these 1 in 4 exceeded EPA guidelines. Gees I said in an America accent this is new, not so, papers were being produced in 2003 (and perhaps earlier) to recommend reductions in mercury emissions from coal fired power stations. I knew about gold mines and mercury and the infamous Cisso corporations poisoning of Minamata bay in Japan in the 50s and 60s, but coal fired power stations?  It is true, it’s what the world service reported and of course I have googled it since.

So that pristine wild west environment of childhood movies is a pricked balloon, I am surprised by the Americans though, where there’s a problem the solution can often make money. I am guessing the power companies were not made to clean up and or the capture of mercury in hot gasses is difficult ie expensive in a limited market.

So when in America eat steak, it’s only full of steroids and antibiotics !!

Does Chinese coal contain mercury? perhaps the poor will inherit the earth !

http://gregpytel.blogspot.com/

try this blog spot for a very interesting view of the financial crisis (don’t think it’s over) and bankers behaviour.

I obviously would never make a banker as I cannot see how a bonus can be paid until the taxpayers money is paid back. But we are shareholders so the money will not appear as a debt, but if we are the major share holders then surely we can veto these payments when management meetings are held, I understand major shareholders are present at some of these.

It is apparent that bonuses will be paid, with the banks paying the extra tax, well done Mr Darling, our money going round in circles!!

If you haven’t heard Billy Bragg’s stance visit;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7012775/Billy-Bragg-in-protest-against-bankers.html

It’s

decorative, particularly on trees

land smoothing, blanketing

mouldable, a plaything

represents Christmas to those of us in the north

is like breaking a spell when you are the first to walk on it

Cornices, don’t be the first !

Is easy to shovel

puts superior smiles on 4 x 4 drivers

brings neighbours together, in mutual car shoving, complaining and snow moving

increases wellie sales

Increases bird numbers and variety to your feeding table

makes it very important to feed and water the birds

makes driving “interesting”

bonus time for gritter drivers

nice for a couple of days…….

add your own snow feelings in comments

Well how were 192 countries ever going to agree?  the developing world had their hand out and the developed world need to look after their economies, this, that puts money in the hand of the developing world. I never liked the stance of the G77’s  Sudanese chairman, I heard a long interview with him on the BBC’s world service, and he was clearly educated, erudite, and entrenched in his views. Anyway he doesn’t matter, as he represents the nations with the hand out, those of you who have read most of my posts will remember the “golden rule” he who has the gold rules.  Nowt changes.  So Mr Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping I would be very interested to hear what you say to those 77 countries you chaired what you achieved for them.

China’s people and the politicians know they are polluting the rivers and their air, and I believe they will react to this, in a market place way, they amongst  the polluting regions can react very fast to generating new non polluting technologies, they are communist and a dictatorship. The clumsy democracies will react much more slowly, unless and I suspect (hope) this will happen,  a “clean power” race, develops in the market place between China and America. Europe has the lead on this but the market place is Europe it needs to be America, China and India. Russia the worlds third largest polluter is difficult for me to understand, I am not sure anyone can predict it’s stance?

Anyway the science stood resolute, no well read sensible person  can say the climate is not changing, some flat earth people say it’s just a normal cycle, Mr Milankovitch, I think they refer to, tell that to the people whose houses are built on Tundra, ask the people in Cumbria, ask the sub-Saharan people in Kenya, ask the Italian border patrols who now have to move the border poles ever year as the glacier they are in moves.

Copenhagen worked in certain ways, It  recognised, and put front stage,  that the climate is changing and for most people this  is a very serious concern. For the business aware there is a huge market place for less polluting energy methods from recognising that the concerned people of the planet will change their behaviours given a market place alternative. The politicians need to act to encourage this behavioural change.

Also a climate change event in America that is country wide, and not in California, would be very appropriate. Something like a large blanket of snow, needs to be the worst on record sweeping down the East coast,

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2009/12/20/blizzard-hell-as-america-is-struck-by-worst-snowstorms-for-six-years-86908-21911055/

only six years ! let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

try this connection too

www.avaaz.org/en/after_copenhagen/?cl=419385382%26v=5072

and here is a truly encouraging tale, imagine this industrialised, what you don’t have to imagine is human ingenuity. Like green power it just has to be politically harnessed.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/05/malawi.wind.boy/index.html

Pictures today of Gordon Brown kitted up with all the protective gear in Afghanistan, well why not give him a taste of what the troops have to endure by sending him out in less than the best vehicles that they have, to Helmand province. Be more than his defect eye that would be half shut and shut. And the great perpetrator of our entry into the illegal war in Iraq, Mr Middle East peace maker, Mr Tony Blair, is making blaa blaa about WMD’s I would have found another reason to invade, he declares, this dictator (Saddam) bombed and gassed his own people, he espoused. Yeh well what about China and Tibet? how about Burma? How about Russia? How about Zimbabwe?

Seems like when you get to the top, as an earner and or politically, you become bullet proof as the establishment gathers round and protects you. How many times has Fred the shreds house windows been panned in? well just the once I’ll warrant, there are probably web cams on his street paid for by you know who.

So if GB is bullet proof why was he wearing all that gear? Oh yes, real bullets from the real world !!

Can you believe the absolute brass neck of these egregious bankers? going to resign as they can’t represent the whole of the shareholders to their benefit. Well they blooming well should have resigned when they were representing the whole of the shareholders when the share price was 20p. Was that to their benefit? Call their bluff Mr Darling, on behalf of the majority shareholders, us! How can they say this top talent needs rewarding, this is the top talent that brought the bank to it’s nadir.

Take the one point something Billion quid and give it to the retail side of the bank and to the RBS people made redundant, if Charles Dickens were alive today I feel a novel would result given the iniquity of the behaviour of the board of the RBS.

I bet this all ends in a political fudge, well that might just be the last straw for many Labour voters.

Below is an excerpt from the internet, adding to my sparse folklore knowledge of the magpie, this by a chance remark from a colleague who stated his wife saluted a lone magpie and issued a greeting. Well we knew he was / is dithering on a delicate edge of sanity but his wife also?

Seems not, she is following an age old superstition that I and her still borderline husband were not aware of !!

Magpie Superstitions

There is an age old rhyme regarding magpie superstitions, brought to the fore in the 1970’s, by the children’s programme named after the birds, which implies that if you see these birds in numbers you will have varying degrees of fortune. The magpie superstitions rhyme goes: “One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret never to be told. ” Never been quite sure what to expect if I ever saw eight or more!

The majority of magpie superstitions however, revolve around the lone magpie. There are some curious customs associated with this. It is the most common of the magpie superstitions, and throughout the British Isles it is believed that it is unlucky to look upon a lone magpie and there are some interesting regional beliefs about what you should do to ward off any bad luck. For example: In Scotland and Northern Ireland one should salute the lone magpie; whereas in some parts of England one should wave or doff your hat! Magpie superstitions in Yorkshire suggests that the bird is associated with witchcraft and therefore an ill omen – one should make a sign of a cross or take off your hat in respect to ward off any evil. Another from remote parts of the White Rose County, suggests that an individual should imitate the lone magpie’s missing partner – and loudly; although I‘m not sure I can recall what noise one makes! Apparently the magpie has significance overseas as well – in Korea, one of the more popular magpie superstitions, has folk believing that the magpie is a bird of inspirational instinct, which can foretell people that they will have visitors or house guests in the near future.

http://www.superstitious-minds.info/Magpie-Superstitions.html

Poem? I found

Magpie #1

Magpies are the
Park bench drunks
of the bird kingdom;
They hang about all day,
Screech at each other
And everyone else.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere else to go.

They feed from rubbish bins;
The mangled remains of Saturday’s
Discarded donner
Is their idea of a Sunday roast.

They steal
For the sake of it;
A piece of foil,
A priceless diamond,
They’re not really bothered,
So long as it sparkles.
Their nests must be
Boudoirs of bling.

From listening to various radio programmes it is apparent that large investment banks particularly Goldman Sachs, are investing in super computers. principally in America, seemingly these computers can monitor all selling and buying of shares and have algorithms that cause the super computer to act ahead of  the normal system that has alerted the super computer through the normal system to a deal on which to act. I don’t pretend to understand stocks and shares and the dealing that goes around them. But the principal of share holding is surely to help companies that you favour with your money to assist them to further prosper and employ people, make profits and you receive a dividend and increased share price from when you purchased the stock you favoured. Or you lose money, win some, lose some.

These high frequency traders are, in America, 2% of the traders but account for 73% of transactions. Trillions of daily transactions buying shares and selling them at 1p or 2p difference to their benefit.

who does this benefit?

got it?

just those banks and their shareholders, who are now mainly the tax payers. So that’s great we will profit?  no it will end up in that treasury vault, that institution that can afford to sponsor wars but not decrease poverty.

The banks are at it already, using capitalism to kill capitalism. This is not happening just in America, from memory a super computer room is being built in England as I type, in Guildford?

have a read

http://advancedtrading.com/algorithms/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218401501#undefined

I don’t read newspapers, I get my news through the radio, I have a great little DAB radio that is first into my suitcase, when travelling. The business programme on Radio Scotland on Sunday got my ears fully tuned in. It was the prosaically named James Smith, Chairman of Shell, Shell UK I guess as I may have missed this point, however the reason I was listening with attention was, he was espousing the same doctrines for planet salvation as Tom Friedman in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The guy is no dumb red neck Texan, this Brit is fully switched on, he talked about Shell investing in sustainable biofuels, the opposite of what the Bush admin did and world grain prices shot up, increasing poverty and political instability. Shell are investing in the future, in carbon capture, carbon capping and echoing Friedman’s book terms for trade for energy. In other words use the market place and cost the environmental damage of carbon release and let the techies, scientists and capitalists sort it out. He did not actually use the words smart electrons but it was heavily inferred that IT can greatly assist in delivering electricity at the cheapest cost by balancing supply to demand with smart meters etc. I swear he has read, understood and taken on the solutions outlined in Hot, flat, and Crowded. I don’t care how he got there, I am mightily impressed he has.

Gives a person hope, gives the planet hope.

The news by my radio brought information that two girls had jumped of Erskine bridge, and died, if you do that mid span it is a long drop. A certain death plunge. As my mind contemplated this tragedy, and I wondered, what did they think, contemplate, discuss on that hours walk from their care home to the bridge?

Did these young vulnerable kids discuss the prospect of a hereafter? did their minds baulk at what if I can’t do it? did they think of the thoughts of those connected to them and left behind? and was it “told you so” or what? I have so many questions from this news item, nae tragedy that I am left in bewilderment , determined to die, what were those last hours like as they walked to the bridge?

For whatever they discussed it was no deterrent.

Just a chance remark on the opinion that the poor will lose due to climate change, brought a response from a colleague that it might be the case but it is evolution. It might be evolution but it is not nature’s evolution, it is enhanced fast track evolution that has no predicable outcome. That’s the point, what if the climate change moves the gulf stream south? It has happened in the past, perhaps we will be joining the poor of the planet like in Bangladesh, in India waiting for a monsoon that comes irregularly and with more force, in sub-Sahara Africa drought after drought in some places like Sudan followed by floods.

Here is an excerpt from the UN’s World meteorological Organisation on unprecedented weather extremes in 2007

Four monsoon depressions, double the the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh…. England and Wales have experienced their wettest May to July period since record-keeping started in 1766. In late July, swollen rivers threatened to burst their banks…..Late last month in Sudan, floods and heavy rain caused 23,000 mud brick homes to collapse, killing at least 62 people. (were they killed by evolution? my words) The rainfall was abnormally heavy and early for this time of year…….In May, swell waves up to 15 feet high swept into 68 islands in the Maldives, causing severe flooding and damage…. Also in May, a heatwave swept across Russia…… Southeastern Europe did not escape the unusual weather . The area suffered from record-breaking heat in June and July…..An unusual cold southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as minus 22 Celsius in Argentina and minus 18 degress Celsius in Chile in July. In June, South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, almost 10 inches fell in some parts of the country.

Excerpt from the book  Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L Friedman a book I was reading (and still am) on my holidays as was Barack Obama.

Buy the book, even if you read chapter four on Petropolitics it will inform you, as it did for me reading the book the seven sisters  in the 70’s.

Capitalism rules, have you seen the latest RBS advert with the fisherman extolling the virtues of a mobile bank? that really gets me fired up ” we’re here for you ” aye right”!

“We’re owned by you” would be more appropriate cause we blew it. Have they no remorse?

And to my colleague, how do the poor evolve?

They can’t, and thats his point, because they are poor they are vulerable and the weak will not survive and that’s evolution.

[View with PicLens]

Well whatever wasps have nice for eating have attracted yet another dig em up raider. this is about 35 m away from the one I posted about earlier, the earlier one, despite me thinking it was being abandoned, is still on the go as well. So why not dig into that one  again? the job is half done. And because it is half done it surely cannot be a honey buzzard? Daft dozey badgers probably, or as I like to think of them, big scratchy weasels.

One country item I have learned is that a wasps nest is / would be hard to find but for a dig em up diddy doppy brock. This latest one has an original entrance that looks like a mouse hole and this entrance is 300mm away from the one one excavated and in the photo, that could be a rather large wasps nest.

Anyway I postulate as i do not know for sure what creature is responsible for digging out wasps nests just to the point of exposure.

[View with PicLens]

While walking towards a small wood, a fox was walking up the side of it 200m away. I stopped he/she did not, but spotted me within a few fox steps and it half barked and disappeared into the wood. After about two hours I was climbing a gate at the other side of the same wood when a movement on a path about 5m away caught my eye, knowing there was a fox around (there usually is) I stood on the spars on the gate exactly at the point when I had seen the movement. A game of patience ensued as I did not move and the fox came into view, but my camera was in my pocket. Anyway I did get it out and took a few snaps, most of them useless as the camera focused on the herbage not the fox, it was on spot focus and spot exposure as well!  One of the three here is not bad. I would say in the face of springwatch and other programs, that, foxes have much more of the AHH factor than badgers, to me a badger is a big scratchy weasel. I don’t get the cute factor at all. Mind you if I kept chickens or ducks Mr fox would have a much reduced cute factor!!

What is this?

My brother, sent me this pic, could have done with a close up as well. however for you botanistists out there, it is an orchid? of some type, at Peel park near East Kilbride. Suggestion (from my brother) is early purple orchid?