I see that the moronic Extinction Rebellion crowd have been acting up again, this time protesting the new (and very-much-needed) new runway at London’s Heathrow Airport. Which makes me want to suggest to BritPM Boris Johnson my perennial solution:
Punch:
Counter-punch:
Tell me you wouldn’t buy tickets to watch that from the bleachers…
Update: And another one. With this lot, I’d leave them glued to those blocks, then toss them all off London Bridge into the Thames.
The word “nativism” is often used as a pejorative term, referring to people who are chauvinistic and want to restrict their country’s inhabitants to its “native” peoples, or likewise want to preserve the country’s original culture (whatever that is).
There’s another kind of nativism that has nothing at all to do with the people of the country, but of its flora and fauna. Ignoring the animals (fauna) for a moment, let’s look at the flora (foliage, plants and trees). An example of this is (of course) South Africa, where there has been a great push to restrict and even destroy what are called “foreign” plants — even if said plants were imported more than a century earlier and are now as “native” as any other plant. Thus the jacaranda trees, which are so popular and so widespread that the nation’s capital Pretoria is known as the “Jacaranda City”, and the northern suburbs of Johannesburg are likewise full of these trees with their gorgeous purple flowers. Here’s an aerial view of Joburg’s northern suburbs:
…and what it looks like at street level:
But to the Seffrican government, because the trees originally came from South America (back in the 1880s), they are “foreign”, may no longer be planted or even maintained, and in fact can be chopped down for firewood without penalty. Sic semper Africanis.
But that’s not the full purpose of this rant. This is.
Let’s say that you own an area of great natural beauty, but a bunch of the fauna in the area are not native to the area. So you partner with an organization which concerns itself with the “national heritage”, agree with them to restore the area to its original state, and set about removing various shrubs, flowers and bushes. Then the following happens:
Scottish Natural Heritage had agreed a tree management plan for ‘selective felling’ of non-native trees on the island in 2013 but did not tell landowner Luss Estates of the change to the plan for the widespread killing of more than 300 trees.
…
David Maclennan, SNH area manager for Argyll and the Outer Hebrides, said: ‘Although Luss Estates was party to the original management agreement in 2013, which posited the removal of rhododendron and, by selective felling, of ‘non-native species’ over a five year period, Scottish Natural Heritage accepts that the subsequent amendment, which proposed to kill all the beech trees on Inchtavannach in a single operation by chemical injection of glyphosate was not shared with Luss Estates Company.
‘SNH apologise for what was, with hindsight, an error on our part.
‘We should have ensured that Luss Estates Company was informed of and consented to the proposed operations.’
He added: ‘The speed, scale, and visual impact of the operation was much greater than anticipated and we recognise that this has caused considerable detriment and upset to Luss Estates Company and to Sir Malcolm Colquhoun personally. For this we unreservedly apologise.
‘There remains a need to undertake works to remove fallen timber from agreed areas – and we have offered to do this through a new agreement.’
Here’s a pic:
All those dead trees were poisoned by the SNH. And forgive me, but a little “oopsie” apology wouldn’t cut it with me.
Were I Sir Malcolm Colquhoun (the owner of the estate), the “new agreement” would insist that the poxy SNH not only pay for the removal of the dead beech trees but also take on the cost of planting new fully-grown trees as replacements (look up how much it costs to replant a single fully-grown pine or oak tree, then multiply it by 300). Then I would include in the agreement a demand for the hanging of the SNH manager who signed off on the poisoning action, and a public flogging of all the minions who actually performed the filthy deed. (“Ve voss chust obeyink orders!” is indefensible.)
My ire in all this is not caused by the damage to the estate — at least, not much — but by the sheer fucking arrogance of an organization which thinks it can just ignore the property’s owner and do whatever they want.
And yes, I know that non-native species can cause damage to the indigenous fauna — witness the kudzu overgrowth in the Southern states of America — but beech trees are native to Britain (just maybe not in that area of poxy Scotland), so that was never a concern. As far as I’m concerned, this is all of a part of the stupid Scottish Nationalist movement, where anything not Scottish is awful and needs to be removed or destroyed.
If I were His Lordship, once the dead trees are replaced I would order my groundskeepers to shoot these SNH pricks on site, but no doubt someone would have a problem with this.
Although the mindset of the South Africans and the Scots is identical, I can somewhat excuse the South African government’s war on the jacaranda because they’re stupid fucking Africans; but the SNH weasels? Strap them all to large rocks and toss them into Loch Lomond, the tartan fuckers.
…and ended up with a bunch of Yalies beclowning themselves. Read the whole thing; it’s wonderful. Needless to say, Scott Adams was involved:
…. and it gets worse from there.
As the “climate change” foolishness grows apace, we find bullshit like this increasing at a similar rate:
Shoppers have been left furious as Sainsbury’s has doubled the cost of its plastic bags to 20p in a move dubbed ‘day light robbery’ and ‘profiting from forgetfulness’.
The supermarket’s bosses have said it is part of a strategy to reduce the stores plastic footprint by ‘encouraging customers to develop a re-use mindset’.
There is an incentive to cut plastic use by more than 50 per cent in five years, with the profits going to good causes, Sainsbury’s claimed.
Of course they will. Actually, what this is really all about is Sainsbury’s doing a little “virtue signaling” (as I believe it’s called nowadays).
It’s been a while since I looked at the numbers, but I believe that plastic supermaket bags carry a F.O.B. price of something less than a penny per bag, so that’s quite a profit margin to pass on to the so-called “good causes”.
I think I use canvas bags about 50% of the time, mostly because I either forget to pack them in the car before going shopping, or I do some impulse (i.e. unplanned) shopping on the way home. When I remember, I keep the canvas bags in the car, but it’s not a big deal in my life, because I reuse all supermarket plastic bags at least once, as bathroom trash bags or similar.
Here’s a word of warning about canvas (or any reusable) bags: you have to wash them frequently (errr involving electricity, hot water and detergents, oh dear) as over time they will become portable petri dishes of bacteria, especially if you carry raw meat or fish home in them.
When I travel in Britishland and Euroland, I carry a little polyester bag (folded, it’s about the same size as a handkerchief) in my coat pocket just so that I don’t get caught without one and have to pay for the bags — and in some Euro stores, they don’t offer any bags at all.
If this pisses you off (and it does me), then your revenge should be to pack your groceries away yourself before paying. It slows down the transaction, and cashiers are measured on a simple “time/#items scanned” efficiency metric. Take your time, for added pleasure.
Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite writers (among so many) at the estimable City Journal, has described the “watermelon” (Green outside, Red inside) mindset perfectly:
Climate Stalinism
The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty. Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda. They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream. “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”
And right there, in that last quote, is the whole game given away. As Kotkin observes, most people outside the wealthy and academia are hugely skeptical of the whole “global warming / -cooling / climate change” movement because they have correctly deduced that regardless of all those laudable intentions to “save the planet”, the final costs of doing so would be catastrophic for their own livelihoods and prosperity, e.g.:
Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania; in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost. Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.
Confronted with the abject failure of Communism everywhere it’s been put into practice, all that’s left for these would-be Stalinists is to try to bypass democracy and enforce their control over the population by diktat — the very definition of Stalinism — using climate change as the fig-leaf.
I’ve written about this topic so often I’m starting to bore myself; in Maskirovka (2017) and Proper Analysis (2019), to list but two of the more comprehensive posts, I outlined the eco-freaks’ mindset and the (failed) accounting behind the move to curb “greenhouse gases” respectively. And of course, on any number of occasions I’ve debunked the junk statistics (which Kotkin derisively calls “scientism”) that these Marxists are using to try to give their loony theories some form of respectability.
Make no mistake: these control freaks and their lickspittle fellow-travelers in the mainstream media are not going to quit. We’ve already seen how has-been President Urkel’s EPA passed regulations which furthered the goals of the watermelons, stopping or delaying fracking, construction of new pipelines and so on. Expect the same, or worse, from future Administrations run by Communists of the Warren / Sanders / [insert socialist candidate here] ilk — which is why these bastards need to be implacably opposed at every turn, whether in local / state government, Congress or the White House.
Now, more than ever, is the time when we need to deny them ever getting their hands on the levers of power because once they do, it won’t just be your guns they come after: it’ll be your cars, your jobs and your money.
And after they get into power via the much-maligned democratic system, don’t expect them allow themselves to be voted out of office too easily, either.
Under the Communists, the First Amendment will increasingly come under attack (“hate speech”), ballot boxes will get stuffed (by illegal immigrants), and regulations will be promulgated which bypass the legal system. And if that little shit Beta O’Rourke did nothing else, he announced with absolute clarity these would-be Stalinists’ intentions towards the fourth box.
I can’t put it any clearer than that.
In the past, I’ve treated Nov 19 (National Ammo Day) and April 15 (Buy A Gun Day) as two separate entities. That time, I think, has passed.
Not that my Readers would need any reminders or encouragement, of course…
You know, if an Alpine mountain community lived in constant fear of avalanches, one could feel a certain sympathy if said avalanches caused severe damage to the place each year and some loss of life among its inhabitants.
I suspect, however, that one would feel somewhat less sympathetic if the community refused to deploy snowplows and rescue helicopters purely because of the emissions from those vehicles. Indeed, one might even get unworthy feelings of smug satisfaction and even Schadenfreude from the annual, tearful news reports of death and destruction.
How then, are we expected to feel when California gets plunged into darkness and suffers loss of property and life through the regular occurrence of wildfires?
Fire conditions statewide made California “a tinderbox,” said Jonathan Cox, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Of the state’s 58 counties, 43 were under red flag warnings for high fire danger Sunday.
And just so we know exactly why these conditions have reached the point to where they have: despite the fact that hot Santa Ana winds create an annual risk of deadly wildfires, California continues to ban the clear-cutting and controlled burning of deadwood and -brush in wilderness areas as well as in areas close to suburban development because of supposed-ecological concerns. That’s the “tinderbox” referred to above.
Moreover, it’s hard for the rest of us to feel pity for Californians when it’s clearly the fault of their own elected officials and legislature who continue to force their wrongheaded Gaia-worship on the Golden Shower State, with consequences that have become not only annual, but predictably horrible. (And which some, equally-predictably, somehow manage to escape.)
I should feel guilty about my Schadenfreude, but I really don’t — just as I don’t feel sorry for Californians who complain about high taxes, iniquitous government interference in their lives, high real-estate prices and the whole dreadful litany of self-inflicted ills, all without exception imposed on them by, once again, their stupid, venal and self-serving elected politicians.
Let ’em burn. Maybe at some point they may even be forced to try and get some change enacted through the ballot box, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Update: unusually, I seem to have understated California’s problems.