Run for the hills: They came from the East

Thursday 1 May 2008

They came from the East

The TPLF - Tweetie Pie Liberation Front. These reckless vandals claim that the urbanisation initiative is a global colonialist conspiracy to enslave the so called free birds to capitalism. They liken our offerings of dried crusts to the actions of a drug dealer giving free fixes to entice innocent songbirds into a life of prostitution and crime.

How ludicrous! We love our feathered friends. But they struggle - scraping a meagre subsistence life from this barren land. With our help they could enjoy the fruits of a consumerist society - we want to build nest boxes, hang strings of lardy stuff embedded with peanuts. This would make them happy.

The TPLF are radical fundamentalists, their views hark back to the dark ages. Primitive misguided fools.

Is it a coincidence that we heard a cuckoo the day before this wanton destruction? I fear not. The cuckoo is the ring leader and we will seek him out and bring him to justice. We cannot allow this fanatic to brainwash our young innocents.

We have received intelligence reports that the cuckoo is intending to infiltrate the nests of other birds and destroy the chicks of any who do not subscribe to their primitive idealogies. We take these shocking reports seriously. This abhorrent terrorism must be stopped.

The tweetie pie urbanisation intiative will continue. We will rebuild the bird table, bigger and better than before. We will introduce ID cards and strive to ensure that all birds are ringed so that we can track their movements and identify co-conspirators. And we shall not rest until the cuckoo is ousted from its hide-outs - in hills woods and whins the cuckoo will be silenced.

Or maybe it was a bit windy last night.

2 comments:

Jussi said...: I'm concerned with the bad press you're giving to cuckoos. I wonder what's at the heart of this. Could it be the poor cutsy wutsy chickies that the big fat cuckoo chicks tend to displace?

I know cuckoos are c*@% parents, but they do tell us loud and clear that Spring is here!

I saw my first swallow yesterday too!; 1 May 2008 at 10:22
The Speaking Goat said...: GULP! (ha - joke)

I sense a fifth columnist. Whatever that is.; 1 May 2008 at 10:25

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Where I"m coming from - !CAUTION! a bit of a polemic

Firstly, there is nothing more important than me and my family. The most precious thing I can give them (including me) is time. In my job, with all it's pressures, I singularly failed to do this. So we run for the hills and try to redress the balance.

Secondly, climate change is happening. It's a cataclysm, the scope of which is beyond our comprehension. This is why we are doing so little to stop it - we just cant imagine the scale of the upheavals to come, and we can't imagine how we, as individuals, can stop it.

Everything is stacked against effective action. Our economy is driven by consumerism and it is consumerism that is driving climate change. Our political leaders are paralysed - to curb consumerism would cripple the economic engine. We increasingly define ourselves by our economic position and the things we buy. We are what we buy. What politician dare restrict our ability to buy, our ability to define ourselves? It would attack our very self and would be political suicide.

And anyway, the real power lies with money - and the people with money want us to consume and they spend millions every second of the day persuading us to consume more. What hope do we have against such power? And everything we buy pumps a little more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Thirdly, I am no saint. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to change my life for the benefit of myself, and, I hope, the planet. Ultimately my reasons for doing this are selfish, and although I'll do what I can to keep my carbon footprint low, I'll make many choices that are not so good for the planet. Like anyone, I can only voluntarily make changes to my life at the speed I can. I don't intend to beat myself up over this - I do intend to change faster than most.

Fourthly, there is hope. Our lust to consume is a very recent phenomena. Not so long ago we principally defined ourselves by our relationships with friends and family and place and we defined ourselves by our usefulness to society. I believe that climate change will force us out of consumerism, and in its place we will find those core values, and rediscover a sense of wellbeing that is so missing from our current fractured existence.

There are lots of examples where this is starting to happen. The transition town movement is one - people getting together and learning to appreciate the things and people around them. I played a small part in helping Sustaining Dunbar get off the ground. (http://edubuzz.org/blogs/sustainingdunbar/about-us) What I found there were people striving to build a positive and resilient future and there are transition towns popping up all over the place - a really positive movement. (find out more about transition towns)

Fifthly, At the end of the day it's all bollocks. So let's all go off and have some fun - it's the most important thing we can do - but let's just try to do it without killing the planet in the process.

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Run for the hills

Thursday 1 May 2008

They came from the East

2 comments:

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