Not sweet, fitting or right

I received an e-mail from my daughter yesterday inviting me to take part in the annual Brighid in the Blogosphere Poetry Slam. This is an attempt to get as many bloggers as possible to post their favourite poems today (February 2nd).

I have many favourites but this one seems particularly appropriate for my blog and carries a message as meaningful today as when it was written over 90 years ago.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori*.

*How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country

Charity tackles UK’s obscene waste of food

FareShare is a UK charity set up to tackle two of the modern world’s most disgraceful and avoidable problems – food waste and hunger (usually as a result of poverty).

It is estimated that around 370,000 tonnes of perfectly edible food is thrown away each year in the UK. Much of this comes from supermarkets which are acting within the often unrealistic strictures of food labelling (’sell by’, ‘best before’, ‘use by’, etc, etc) but are also more than willing to do so rather than see such food come onto the market cheaply and thus affect their ever burgeoning profits.

Despite now having major retailers like Sainsbury’s and Nestle on board (greenwash? guilty conscience? good marketing ploy? Shame on you for being so suspicious of these fine upstanding companies and their heart-felt commitment to corporate social responsibility…) FareShare point out that little is being done to look at less wasteful and more constructive disposal methods compared with the huge amount major manufacturers and retailers spend on the ‘front’ end’ of the supply chain.

One of the problems in getting more companies to work with FareShare seems to be that many of them – including big names like Aldi and Lidl - don’t think they produce significant waste (or don’t want to admit to it…). This was brought into focus in a recent article on FareShare in The Big Issue, when a major drinks company was quoted as saying that their waste was only 0.04% of their production but it was found that this actually equated to 1.2m servings. This shows the yawning gap between an analysis of figures on a balance sheet and the harsh realities of poverty in modern Britain.

Of course, there will always be some genuinely unavoidable waste but FareShare say they can distribute five times more than they are currently receiving from the food industry… but they are just not getting it.

It’s very difficult to work out whether this is because food companies don’t realise that FareShare exists, whether they don’t want to acknowledge their levels of waste or whether they are simply obeying the laws of supply and demand and preventing this free food from getting onto the market in order to maintain their profit margins.

I have my own theory…

Plenty of smoke… but where’s the fire?

Following the UK Government’s recent decision to raise the terrorism alert level to ’severe’, Newark MP Patrick Mercer has said that the public should be given more explicit information on what they should do and what the change in alert level actually means.

Mr Mercer, the chairman of the Government’s Sub-Committee on Counter-Terrorism, said this would make it more difficult for potential terrorists to operate but he added that the Government was not being clear enough on how members of the public could help. He said: “It is a bit like saying there is a huge risk of fire – that is fine but where are the fire extinguishers?

I agree in principle with Mr Mercer’s comments, in that I think the public should be told the truth about why this change has come about but I think our views as to why are very different.

Since the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the world (most notably the US and the UK) has been gripped with a paranoia out of all proportion to the threat posed by terrorists. Anyone over 40 will probably remember the potential threat in the 70’s and 80’s from the Red Brigades, the PLO, the Baader-Meinhof gang and, of course, the IRA, yet there never seemed to be the constant undercurrent of threat and insecurity that now exists, started by George Bush, assisted and supported by Tony Blair and continued by Gordon Brown and Barack Obama.

Of course, maintaining such a level of perceived threat allows governments to curtail and abuse the rights and freedoms of their citizens (and those of other countries, as amply demonstrated by the continued existence of the obscenity of Guantanamo Bay) without the sort of protest that should accompany such moves (and perhaps would if they hadn’t frightened us all to death with the prospect of impending death at the hands of the Pakistani guy who runs the corner shop).

Perhaps this explains why the UK threat level has been raised without any of us having a clue as to why or what it actually means to our everyday lives.

Talking turkey

This Christmas 10 million turkeys will be killed and eaten in the UK. Added to the 45 million that have just met the same fate in the US for Thanksgiving, this represents one of the largest death tolls in such a short time period for any creature.

According to animal welfare charity Viva!, turkeys have a zest for living and, treated with respect, they become very friendly. Wild turkeys live in North and Central America and, apparently, Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the national bird of the US instead of the Bald Eagle. They are striking and handsome, graceful and intelligent. They roost in trees and roam in woodlands, eating vegetation and insects. They live in harems – the mothers being very protective of their young. An adult bird can fly up to 50mph.

How sad then that they have become the food of choice for what is supposedly a Christian festival.

This is poet Benjamin Zephaniah’s plea for this cruelly abused and much maligned bird:

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys just wanna play reggae
Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
‘I cannot wait for de chop’,
Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey called…Turkey
He said “Benji explain to me please,
Who put de turkey in christmas
An what happens to christmas trees?”,
I said “I am not too sure turkey
But it’s nothing to do wid Christ Mass
Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
An business men mek loadsa cash’.

Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
In a plate of organic grown beans,
Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
An spare dem de cut of de knife,
Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.

Increased profits from alcohol and drugs

An article in Saturday’s Guardian newspaper offers a sad reflection on 21st Century values.

Looking at what assets rose the most in value during the first nine years of the century (the ‘noughties’), they discovered that the big winners were fine wine and cigarettes.

A case of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 which would have cost you £2,613 at the beginning of 2000 (already a disturbingly large amount of money for 12 bottles of wine), sold at the end of October this year for £25,500, an increase of 876%.

And shares in British American Tobacco, whose brands include Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike and Pall mall rose over the decade by 454% with Imperial Tobacco – makers of West, Gauloises and Rizla - not far behind with an increase of 400%.

Although this was the decade that saw smoking outlawed in public places in the UK such as cafes, bars and workplaces, these two made their vast profits partly by exploiting lucrative new markets such as Nigeria and Pakistan.

So it seems that producing wine for the obscenely rich or peddling a proven cancer-producing drug to poor people in developing countries is the best way to increase your wealth.

How very, very sad.

HFC’s – a threat to the planet, not a football club

Want to know the truth about HFC’s?

What? Exactly… who knows what HFC’s are apart from a few scientists and Greenpeace?

Well, you should; it’s important… so take a look at this video (in which a guy takes his clothes off to convince you to take some action!)

Animal welfare in the frame

The University of Nottingham website reports on the 40th anniversary of the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME).

FRAME was established to carry out research to find ways to reduce, and eventually phase out completely, the use of animals in medical experiments. Their long-term aim is the total elimination of the need for any laboratory animal procedures, through the development, validation and acceptance of replacement alternative methods. The charity has had a laboratory at the University for 25 years.

On 19th November, speakers from the US Food and Drug Administration, the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool, Imperial and Nottingham gathered at the Royal Society for a symposium marking this important milestone in the charity’s history.

Speaking about the latest developments in the search for alternatives to using animals, Professor Dave Kendall, of the University’s School of Biomedical Sciences said: “These developments have highlighted the sometimes subtle, but often crucial, differences between human and animal responses to pharmacological intervention, and make the requirement for drug testing based on human systems an increasing necessity.”

Apart from the fact that these new techniques offer the chance of better results in the development of new drugs and medical techniques, they will also reduce the number of animals that suffer and die in the cause of medical research – currently around three million every year in the UK. In a world that is increasingly hostile to animals (with global meat consumption rising and many species on the edge of extinction), it should be a source of some pride for Nottingham that one of its universities is supporting such a worthwhile and forward-looking charity.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste…

Desiderata (Max Ehrmann c.1920) may evoke memories of the flower power and optimism of the 60’s for many but, amidst the cynicism and pessimism of the 21st Century, it now seems more relevant than ever.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Plea for peace in Africa

The World March for Peace and Non-violence reached Mozambique at the beginning of November…

Heroes or villains?

The allegation by a former British army corporal, that he witnessed an officer abuse prisoners and that most of his colleagues hit or kicked Iraqis during the six years that UK forces operated in Iraq, contrasts sharply with the general mood of the British people following a spate of recent deaths of soldiers on active service in Afghanistan.

Despite public opinion turning against the ‘war’, the troops are generally characterised as heroes, regardless of their conduct or military record in Afghanistan and the bodies of those killed there have arrived back in the UK to eulogies from media, government and families that portray each and every one of them as examples of the highest standards of the British army and as defenders of the weak and innocent.

But the testimony today of the only soldier convicted in connection with the death of Iraqi Baha Mousa suggests a very different attitude amongst soldiers in Iraq (and, by implication, those in Afghanistan). Casual violence against civilians, abuse of basic rights and actions verging on torture seem to have been common occurrences during a brutal campaign to subdue the Iraqi insurgency.

Coming so soon after new allegations against British troops of abusing Iraqi civilians (which UK Armed Forces Minister, Bill Rammell, says do not warrant a public enquiry), these revelations are sure to anger many in the Middle East and to raise questions again about the credibility of the claim by allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are there to protect the civilian population and that they represent a coalition of countries that value democracy, accountability and human rights.