Wednesday 26 January 2011

Been slacking in my duties!

Oh help, I've been so absorbed in our house that I've ignored issues in the big wide world! I feel I'm only just able to worry about the rest of the planet again.

Let me start at the top: we have no telly as yet cos the aerial isn't up, but I've been watching Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Big Fish Fight and I've just watched the last one. It's disgusting what we are doing to our fish stocks. I feel really incensed. We throw away tonnes of cod and other good fish because we use purse seine nets ( had to Google that one!) which just catch everything and then they're all dead by the time they throw them back because they aren't allowed to catch them because of fishing quotas. Why can't they just go out fishing less and keep the whole catch?
Also, we feed good fish to feed farmed salmon. He was saying why can't we eat the good fish in the first place instead of the ubiquitous cod.
And then there's fish and chip shops. Why can't they sell mackerel baps instead of it all being cod and haddock?
We are really going to have to act on this one..come on, folks. Sign up!

And then there's our tree in town. We heard the other night that the Town Council were planning to cut down the beautiful plane tree because the roots were coming up through the tarmac and there was a danger someone might trip over. We raced up to the Town Council meeting and asked them to think again. It's a nonsense that just because they have put tarmac down instead of paving slabs that could be taken up, sand put down and the roots accommodated, that we have to lose this beautiful tree. Thousands of urban trees are being taken down because of health and safety or lack of water because of too much tarmac. Trees make our streets special. They make them human. We suggested there should be a seat put round the tree so that people can sit under it. We hope they were listening.

You can see I've emerged from house building!

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