Hare Today

For some reason, hares have always seemed to me to be a cut above rabbits. I did not resent at all a visit this morning.

But is there any reason for this? If so, I have no real idea what it might be.

There are those who would get out a rifle, and bang!  But I have no interest in killing them, notwithstanding that they are regarded locally as

Four Legs Running

Mrs Perdita Shrimpton loves beaches. And particularly running on them. When I take her to a beach she runs all the way to one end. And then turns around and runs all the way to the other end. This morning, at Maslin Beach, she took off as usual, and it was 1/2 hour before I next saw her, charging back and past me in the other direction.

She used to run for about 45 minutes before she was ready to be put on the lead and taken back to the car. Today, it was

The Diet of COPs – Can 40,000 delegates be all wrong?

So, there is an agreement, of sorts, which has come out of COP21. I thought I would have a quick look to see what it says (see below for the text).

Unsurprisingly, it is away with the fairies. For example, we get this on the first page:

Recognizing that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet…

Now there are a number of problems here, not least

To Play the King (with no King)

Television reception being so poor here (I am trying to sort out a decent aerial) I have been binge watching House of Cards on Netflix. First the more recent American adaptation, which I had previously only watched bits of, and then the original UK adaptation from the 1990s.

The American version is much longer, and obviously, far more money has been spent on a very polished production. By comparison, when one starts watching the UK version, it seems small and dowdy: stuffy characters in stuffy rooms wearing suits that have not spent nearly enough time at the dry cleaners.

But then, in the middle part of the trilogy, the UK version introduces the brilliant Michael Kitchen as the King, and the whole thing comes alive.

The Americans, of course, were careless enough to mislay

Proof that even a total camera spaz can learn to take good photos… a pictorial round-up of Africa

Source: Proof that even a total camera spaz can learn to take good photos… a pictorial round-up of Africa

Corbynistaism – Time to come out of the Closet?

I rather like Jeremy Corbyn. In many respects, of course, he is barking mad. The notion that the appropriate immediate response to a terrorist who is busy murdering as many people as he can possible manage in an English High Street with his automatic weapon and an armful of ammunition is to reach out in a non-violent way is, of course, totally potty, and a fundamental abnegation of the responsibilities that attach to high office.

Given the reins of power, he would very probably reduce the financial state of the country to something approaching the parlous fate of Greece in short order. So that is a negative for him.

And noone in the public should wear such frightfully naff clothes. Crumpled would be fine. A bit worn out would be fine. But these garments should never have seen the light of day in the first place.

But he is courteous, and appears to be a pleasant chap, in a Quakerish sort of a way. And I have a feeling that he is not all wrong. Despite the fine oratory of Hilary Benn, hurling more bombs at the Middle East is not smart, so he is probably right about that issue.

And now it turns out that he might well be a climate change sceptic, which would put him in a highly honourable

COP21/7

Depending on quite how you count, there were about 7 crusades from 1096 to 1254. They were all based on the same essentially potty notion of the Western Powers, that it would be a good idea to go and invade the Middle East. As dumb an idea then as it is now. There are few interesting things to note about the whole deal:

• It was driven by religious dogma. It was not OK at all to deny the conventional wisdom.
• The support for the Crusades spread across almost of all the European nations. Sure, they were being whipped along by the Pope. But it is remarkable that all of these nations, led by cynical, self-serving pragmatists, were on board.
• They kept on doing it for some 250 years. That is a long time to be doing something that did not work, and served no useful purpose.

Which brings me to COP21, the equally daft junket in Paris this week. There are some parallels with the older Crusades. The global warming/climate change scare is essentially