Robbing Public Libraries to fund the Destruction of Buzzards

(And the latest good news 30.05.12. : Tweet from RSPB - "Defra have dropped their plans for buzzards. We are delighted. And all of you that stepped up should be massively proud - WELL DONE Pls RT"


ORIGINAL BLOG POST -


This has made me really mad. It is not just the threat to Buzzards, which is bad enough, but the sub-text. The pleasure of the many is to be sacrificed for the pleasure of the few. Defra's £400K feels just like another banker's bonus.

In an argument there is more than one side, which is why, although I oppose a cull of Badgers in the interest of controlling bovine TB, I can see that farmers have a legitimate concern in that there is a threat to their livelihoods. Buzzards or any other bird of prey don't pose the same kind of threat to the pheasant shooting business.

The proposal is daft on many counts and the RSPB have put the case more eloquently than I can.  Above all else the proposal is immoral and brings with it more than a whiff of sleaze.

I don't often write to my MP, but here is what I have sent. Feel free to copy it if you want. Do something. Be articulate and make your voice heard through non-violent means.

Dear Mr Carmichael


As one of your constituents I am appalled by DEFRA's proposal to allocate nearly £400k to a trial programme to control Buzzards on behalf of pheasant shoots.


Buzzards are one of the British conservation success stories and any attempt to imprison them, destroy their nests, or relocate them is irresponsible and unnecessary. It sends entirely the wrong message to the next generation about wildlife conservation.


And of course it will have little effect. I quote Martin Harper of the RSPB:


"So how many pheasants do buzzards eat?  An independent report for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) found that on average only 1-2% of pheasant poults were taken by birds of prey. This is tiny compared to the numbers which die from other causes, like disease or being run over on the road (which accounts for about 3 million pheasants a year). 

Even if predation levels are higher in a few instances, there are plenty of legal, non-contentious techniques for reducing predation, which don’t involve destroying nests or confining wild birds to a life spent in captivity. Scaring devices, visual deterrents, more vegetation and diversionary feeding of buzzards could all make a difference, if done well. A few years ago we endorsed a BASC produced guidance note advising gamekeepers on how to reduce bird of prey predation using some of these techniques.


And is capturing buzzards likely to work? If you swat a wasp, but leave a pot of sticky honey open to the air, it won't be long before another wasp takes its place. The same is true of buzzards. Two gamekeepers previously employed on the Kempton estate in Shropshire were convicted of, amongst other things, illegally killing buzzards in 2007. They had killed over 100 buzzards in less than six months in one small part of Shropshire. As soon as one buzzard was removed, another (ill-fated) buzzard took its place. "


I hope you will pass on my comments to Mr Benyon MP, the minister responsible.


Yours sincerely


Giles Diggle

Forensics: Getting to the Truth of the Story

Forensic has popped into my head this morning. Slow, methodical, painstaking work to analyse what has happened. What exactly is the truth of the story I have written? As another person, I have to go back to the scene and find out what really occurred there. What is still to be discovered?

I have begun re-writing, The Key to Finlac, opening the book with an entirely new episode involving a character I knew little about before. And as I'm discovering, I had not properly explored and explained the world she inhabits. I have been looking for clues - trace evidence - and putting a credible scenario together to present to the reader.

It is delicate work, tricky in that I have to tread carefully so as not to destroy or contaminate that which needs to be preserved.

Without all the pieces, those already logged and those freshly seen, the story cannot be rightly told.

Agony & Avocets: what birds tell us about story-telling

What could possibly take me a way from me desk when I should be writing? I write in the morning I go birding in the afternoon, not necessarily the best time. Compromise.

Yesterday I broke my habit.  Avocets had hatched three chicks at WWT Slimbridge the day before. This is the first time Avocets have bred on the reserve, or anywhere in Gloucestershire. I felt an urgency to see them - history in the making -  and via Twitter @slimbridge_wild I had an inkling that the parents were about to move them. I left home at 7.30 a.m. I wanted to capture the moment on video.

I succeeded. You can watch it happening here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1HX72-jtmo. Magical. The birds performed right on time, boldly leading the chicks across the water to a fringe of weeds on the other side. A meagre shelter. This just fifteen minutes before I was due to go back to Stroud.

Jubilant, I went home and uploaded my video, then went into town for coffee.

In the afternoon, comes another Tweet. The Avocet family had gone missing. Predated? Or in a place of safety? The wardens can't find them so the first seems most likely. Agony. Uncertainty. My video somehow has taken on the aura of CCTV images. Last known sighting.

Life is more dramatic than art. Art distills its intensity and fixes it in the collective memory. The Avocets is a story in the making: a struggle against the odds creates a unique and thrilling event, then a mystery that we hope shall have a resolution.

The Slimbridge Avocets & Me says it all about our need to hear a tale well-told, and in children's books, the desire for a happy ending... whilst allowing for the fact that life is often not like that.


This morning the latest Tweets from @slimbridge_wild :

"We have found the male Avocet this morning feeding on the Top New Piece, but still no sign of the female and three young."


"We hope that the female Avocet is being a good mum & keeping a low profile with her family. Let us know if you see her from our hides today?"

To be continued....

The latest Tweets from @slimbridge_wild :

"Great news it looks like the Avocet family has made it to the Bottom New Piece (Kingfisher Hide) That's about 300M from the nest site."10.45. a.m.

Saturday 19 May 2012

"Fantastic news all three Avocet chicks are still with their parents on the Bottom New Piece (Kingfisher Hide) this morning #GlosBirds"

My Window, the Pencil Sharpener

It isn't the biggest window in the world, but it is possibly the biggest pencil sharpener... unless your study has a bigger, more distracting window with a better view. The sun is shining too. Maybe I should turn my desk around and face the other way.

I am big on BIG this morning too. Truly procrastinating. Back from holiday. Staring at the blue Adriatic last week, the task of finishing The Key to Finlac seemed a very simple one. I could see the light and shape of things. I would be ready to come home and start again.

So here I am, turning the smallest of pencils around and around in the big sharpener. Writing. A window on the world.

Bulldozing and Landscaping the Novel

The restructuring of The Key to Finlac continues:

• I have killed off a brother even before the story begins.
• I have abandoned a set of parents.
• I have demolished two houses, a factory, and a school.
• I have remodelled a significant landscape.
• I have scrapped a motley collection of old vehicles.
• I have put a property developer out of business.
• I have buried a pensioner-gardener
• I have removed one mystery and replaced it with another.
• I have added a new character and developed others.
• I have written a more engaging back story for my other main protagonist.
• I have done away with 500 years of history.
• I have mislaid a brew bin.

I shall begin writing again tomorrow, having rewritten history today.

Revising the Novel: to slash or burn?

Not so much slash and burn as letting light into the wood.  I have chopped and cut, cleared away the underbrush and stacked the timber. Sunshine is streaming through the new leaves. A Wood Warbler sings. The coppice is ready for new growth

By painstakingly listing the scenes in each chapter of the first 45,000 words of the book, I have found a way of losing at least 30,000 words, whilst retaining the heart of the story. It already looks better.

The remaining half of the plantation looks healthier, but it could still do with some more light and colour. I shall tackle that tomorrow.

Then the rewriting begins.

Why I have no appetite for The Hunger Games

Why does The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins vex me so much? Not because it is a huge commercial success or because it is just the first part of a best-selling trilogy. I admire anyone who can do the time and stick at their desk day after day to finish something. I support the work ethic.

But ethics is only one of the issues for me. The violence is comic book and described without attention to detail and nor is much attention paid to the emotional consequences of it. The pages are dotted with splats as if a succession of flies have been squashed. The only death that disturbed me was that of the twelve year old Rue. For two reasons: Apart from Katniss Everdeen, she was the only rounded character in the novel. Secondly her death smacks of exploitation, for shock value, rather than as emblematic of the brutality of the Capitol's regime.

There lies another problem. The dystopian setting of The Hunger Games is never credible. In the past I have said that the Harry Potter books are a triumph of concept, setting and character over content, but in all four of those areas they leave Suzanne Collins' work trailing behind. I believe in Hogwarts, I don't believe in Panem, the Capitol and the 13 Districts. Where is the rest of the world? Considering the Capitol's extermination of District 13, wouldn't you have thought that the people of a Chinese liberal democracy might have made some kind of military intervention? Absurd? Yes. But I think that if you are to write about dystopian worlds, they need a proper context; one which can be discussed, as in Robert C O'Brian's admirable Z for Zachariah.

And why have the twelve districts in servitude all with a separate economic function? Only for the purposes of the Reaping. Given what we learn about the Capitol's ability to terraform the arena and engineer genes to the extent that they can produce the laughable wolverine mutants from the corpses of the fallen Tributes at the end of the novel, clearly the Capitol could produce all the food and resources it requires.

It is the poor plotting (the sudden change of the rules to allow two people from the same district to win), cartoon characters (the stylists and people of the Capitol), lack of challenging themes and paucity of language that really offends me. The book reads like a poorly produced video game. I want to know how those cameras see everything, even in caves - come on explain the technology - how do those parachutes bearing gifts from the sponsors land so accurately?

And teenage romance?  Katniss & Peeta. Where is the intensity? Gale in the background. An interesting love triangle that could provide so much more in the book.

Burgers and fries. Children and young people deserve so much more.