GULLSHITTING – THE RISE OF EGO IN BIRDING.

There have always been those in birding who command the respect of their peers by means of knowledge; erudition; skills and general gravitas. People the like of the extremely knowledgeable, but self–effacing P. J. Grant and Peter Hayman; men who’s articles on identification and distribution made a massive and meaningful contribution to the library of ornithological data. To read a publication like British Birds was to feel enlightened and that a key piece of identification had been unearthed; these people knew what they were talking about. A whole generation looked up to these writers and birders.

Then came the boom in the popularity of birding. Suddenly, Experts abounding, filling all available space. People with very little experience could be heard fulminating on subjects like the primary pattern of Oriental Plover or some other esoteric and almost mythical species, even though most of them had never heard of them three weeks earlier, never mind seen them in the field. These included The Gullshitter. A generic term; not confined to gull identification – they could just as well be Warblershitters or Wadershitters. Any small fact (or fantasy) they could propound upon to raise their profile. They have a Blog and a Vlog. They give talks on their local patch to people who have difficulty with Dunnock and want that definitive shot of Kingfisher. They lead tours around small nature reserves and tell all that will listen on social media how brilliantly it went. They always describe themselves on the social media as ‘ornithologist’; 'writer'; 'birding expert' or ‘tour leader, The Gullshitter… pronouncing at length on the identification of subspecies of gulls/warblers etc; using splitting techniques that would cast several races of humans into different species.

You can hear them at a rarity; loudly exhorting the surrounding throngs where it is; what it is doing; the fact that it is calling; what the field marks are, sometimes unfortunately on the wrong bird. Their Facebook account is full of constant self-aggrandisement. You long for the days before the internet, when an ‘experts’ reputation was built on respect; fieldcraft and production, rather than ego and who can shout the loudest.

Thank fuck I am not an "expert".

Rant over

Just a thought.

Has public opinion of our police ever been so low. They don't attend burglaries; you can walk into any shop in the UK and take what you want. Response time to ordinary 'crime' is non-existent. In fact I imagine most people think that the only time most of the idle fat bastards get out of their cars, is to go into KFC for a monster bucket.

Of course; do 32mph in a 30 zone and bam, you're fucked.

Where are the plod when the arsehole is wheelieing down your street as your kids cross the road?

Where is Plod when there is a gang of yobboes swearing and throwing stuff around outside your house ant midnight?

Where are the 'Boys in Blue' when some ratboy is forcing your door at two in the morning?

Wonder what Plod is doing when your Mam daren't go to the shop after 4 o'clock?

I'll tell you: they are sitting in their big (foreign built) cars; talking about who's wife they shagged last week and how they are going shooting on the estate that shot the Golden Eagles last week (fucking vermin those eagles...)

Plod is a laughingstock in modern Britain. As it says on the sign on the A17 - 'Speeding motorists caught this year 2,578' Sprayed underneath: 'Burglars caught NONE'.

It is an old chestnut, but these people need to get back into the communities they are supposed to protect.

PAPERS

In 1900 everyone in the world bought a newspaper, sometimes more than one. Admittedly, there weren’t as many folk about in those days but there were about one and a half billion people. Allowing for the folk buying several newspapers, we’ll call it two billion. These newspapers didn’t have any pictures, apart from a few cartoons of the Prince of Wales and his ilk. The words were very small and had ‘f’ instead of ‘s’. Still, the plebs lapped them up and the rulers seethed at constantly being portrayed as fat scrounging arseholes. Now, in the 21^st century, the world population in seven billion plus and newspaper circulation in the UK, is in the low millions. Of these, 97% of papers sold are The Sun and The Mail. These right wing and reactionary rags sell to the Great Unwashed because they feature: tits; celebrities; football and what bastards immigrants are.

                The average Sun reader will get up in the afternoon; have a fag; watch Jeremy Kyle and then amble down to the newsagents, or ‘Paki Shop’, as they like to term it. They will take their staffie, also known as the Guide Dog for the Thick, so it can have a shit on someone’s lawn and also scare any old person they may meet.  After buying their rag they will tell Mt Singh (who is a Sikh and comes from India) that ‘You fuckin’ Pakis and Polacks are taking our fuckin’ jobs. He will then amble back in time for Celebrity Antiques Roadtrip, allowing adequate time for Ripper to shit in someone’s drive.

                On his sofa, he will read, in words of five letters or less, roughly what he told Mr Singh; look at the football scores (he supports Man Utd even though he lives 300 miles away) and toss the rag onto the floor-bin, with the soiled nappies and the dogshit. He will then request that his light of love bring him some ‘fuckin’ beer’; tell her to shut the fuckin’ kid up and fall asleep, whereupon, Ripper will piss on his leg, thus securing his trip to the dog rescue centre, where he will be put down. Some Sun readers however, read the ‘paper’ while driving their white vans at 90 mph through town, while texting, egged on by a spotty youth on an ‘apprenticeship’.

                Readers of the ‘Quality’ papers such as the Guardian and the Times, don’t actually buy any newspapers. Their readership read the paper online, where the adblocker removes any unwanted distractions. In the case of the Times and the Telegraph (which is the Mail with bigger words), no one reads online either, as you have to pay. What has brought newspaper readership into such decline. One factor is that the papers are full of shite. There is no news in the redtops and biased and or government directed bullshit in the ‘qualities’. Why is this?

                Well, once, long ago the way to the top of the newspaper industry went like this:

                You got a job as an apprentice printer, where you spent your life up to the bollocks in ink, sorting out the mess that had developed when Cedric, the Head Printer had tipped all the lowercase B’s into the D into the same box and getting a crust of bread for your lunch.  Then, through dint of hard work, you progressed to being a printer. Then after you had spent six years at technical college (remember those?) you penned a letter to the Editor who was impressed and set you on as a junior reporter, where you started at the bottom again, writing accounts of how many times Prince Teddy farted at the annual Review of the Navy. Eventually you become Editor and after that owner of the paper, whereupon you spent most of your time getting pissed with Winston Churchill and buying up Somerset.

                These days, to become a newspaper magnate, you either: get your Daddy to buy you a paper; accumulate wads of cash by slightly dodgy means and buy one as a hobby or have one given to you, because it is fucked and  because you once raised the profit of a chain of shops by half a percent, before robbing it blind and stealing the pension fund, people think you can help. You are surrounded by sycophants and then the reason dawns on you – these papers aren’t making any money because NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING.

                There are two main reasons for this. One is that a lot of the people employed got their jobs because of what school/college they went to and not because they knew anything. These people are irrelevant, because they don’t actually do anything except get pissed at five hour lunches and screw the secretaries/each other. The main reason however, and this is the pisser, are the vast amounts of people who have arrived at the job, because they have a degree. Not just any degree, but a degree in Media Studies. This is a meaningless and useless qualification (equivalent to the PPE degree that qualifies you to be PM, or at least towel-folder to an MP, while you become PM). It has no relevance to the world of journalism. It is the reason that the papers are so badly misspelled, even in headlines. It is the reason that the papers are full of drivel and it is the reason, when these drones are promoted that the papers are fucked. These people don’t know shit from chocolate; they have no idea how to run a paper, it wasn’t in Journalism 1; nobody told them about stuff like this. So, they just fill the papers with: tits; celebrities; football and what bastards immigrants are, thinking, that this is what the public wants. Add this to the drop in literacy and you have a hiding to nowhere.

               

                

It's All Around us...

It's all around us; it's everywhere; it pervades and insinuates into our very being. What is it? Is it love? Is it humanity? Is it art? Is it poetry? Is it Family?

No - it is dogshit.

(Apologies now to responsible dog owners who do clean up properly.)

Dogshit is ubiquitous and all-surrounding. It is in the parks; on the paths; on the nature reserves; on the roads; in other peoples gardens and on their shoes.  You walk down into town and step through a mountain of dogshit.

Across from me is a playing field. Every morning and evening, up to thirty people take their dogs on the field and let them shit - WHERE THEIR CHILDREN PLAY. They are quite blatant with it and seemingly don't give a toss. People roll up in cars; let three dogs out that shit on the grass and get back in the car - that's your problem, now, not mine and off they drive back to the shit-free zone they inhabit.

What is done about it? I'll tell you - fuck all. I know we live in Mexborough and that DOncaster Council have forgotten about us and that all the dog wardens are in Wheatley Hills, making it a dogshit free zone for the Councillor's kids, while we have to walk in squalor.

Some people do pick their dogshit up in plastic bags and then, in a place like Adwick RSPB - throw it into the bushes, where it hangs, in winter,  like the Devil's wassail cups. You'd be better off leaving it on the path you morons.

You can't blame the dogs. Dogs don't give a fuck where they do it, it is their nature; it is the owners who are at fault.

All dogs should be chipped and a dog license should be £200 per year. This would rule out the morons responsible for the 150 staffies a day that are put down because the morons can't look after them. It would make the real dog-lovers at a premium and rule out the idiots who don't know how to look after and monitor their dogs.

As you can probably tell: I have just walked in off the field with dogshit all over my shoes. Thank you morons.

DIGITAL - WE ARE LOSING OUR HERITAGE.

The descendents of John Law are sitting in the ruins of Mexborough High Street in 2287.  They are dressed in skins.  They are cooking in an old bin, over a fire.  One of them says: "Good job those folk in the 2000,s supped loads of tea and left us all these nice silver coasters".

I have got approximately 2,000,000 digital photos on my PC (or so it seems).  Some of them are quite nice. They are all imaginary. They only exist as a series of 1's and 0's in cyberspace.  When civilisation collapses, as it will, (some say it has already), all these images, along with everyone else's will vanish and we will be left with a load of plastic crap that no one will be able to fathom.

Same goes for all the music made after 1920 when records came along. Only the folk world is maintaining a record of any musical heritage.  All will be lost in the fires of our descent back into savagery.

Artists preserve some of todays world in paint or other media, so there will be something. Perhaps some sort of hard copy record of the world today should be made NOW before it's too late.

THIS ENGLAND.

I have just read a book that made me cry.  Not the first time either, as I have read it quite a few times over the years. It is "England Their England" by A G MacDonnell (Macmillan 1933).    I particularly recommend pages 226 - 243.  It is written by a Scotsman in London, not long after WW1, giving a view of the current state of England, from the point of view of a visitor.

It looks at the upper classes and their games; working class people; The League of Nations and more, but the most moving part is the conversation in a country pub, with the old gaffers, some of whose parents had seen Lord Nelson and the like. Lovely quotes such as:  'There is a list of 24 bowmen from the village who went to Agincourt in 1415, eighteen of the same names are on the village war memorial for the Great War'.  Thaey lament the changing state of the country, the change of sos follwing fathers into such trades as thatching, leaving to be mechanics etc.

Another telling quote: " But can you tell me sir, what national honour ever did for me?  I worked the land all my life and the least I earned was 4 and 6 a week and the most 29 shillings.  In 1914 a man came down and gave a speech about 'National Honour', Mind you Sir I was getting 24 shillings a week for 72 hours, but i had to give three sons and eight grandsons to fight for the National honour. Eleven of them, three were killed and two lost legs and what good did that do to them or me, or Mr Davis, or Mr Darley here. We can't afford our beer or our tobacco and the grandsons that weren't killed can't get work."

There is an equally telling piece about the local landowner worrying about his tenants and others about distinct regionalism and accent,  fading away.

What would Cameron, the narrator, say of today's homogenised blend of Briton, where it is almost illegal to be English and the kids talk in a mid-Atlantic argot, punctuated by squeals and shouts of AWESOME from the girls and monosyllabic grunting from the boys.  A land where free speech is more or less forbidden and holding an opinion that is not blessed by the PC Nazis is tantamount to a crime?

Nostalgia for a lost past is a commonplace facet of all society. The lost past involved ricketts and TB; workhouses and illiteracy. It gave us Fascism and world wars. It gave us slavery and discrimination, not only of race, but class as well.  All societies change, but has ours changed for the better?  In some ways: healthcare; technology (like it or not); integration, but hatred is something that brings England into disrepute. The fairness and tolerance of the Englishman is lauded in the book, but I look around and I see the mindless hatred of the Muslim for the Christian and the hatred of the Fascist EDL and BNP for Islam and I despair for our future.

WHO TO VOTE FOR???

I have voted Labour all my life. I am from a mining background in the Labour heartland of South Yorkshire. The Labour party that brought us the NHS, the jewel in the UK's crown,  and the feeling that even Labour politicians, were in touch with the working class however, has gone. They are indistinguishable from the Tories and the LapDogs.
What we have is a bunch of characterless political beasts. whose CV is mainly full of towels folded and arses licked.  Milliband is a buffoon, with no personality, who was made leader to keep his somewhat more charismatic brother out: no personalities in New Labour thank you, may remind us of the conman Blair.  Balls is eponymous. The odious Harperson and the PC brigade have done much to make Labour a laughingstock in the eyes of the voters.
But; who to vote for?
The Tories, who have shown themselves to be in complete harness to their corporate paymasters and have blatantly favoured the rich at the expense of the poor and needy?  The LapDogs, finished as a political force, after selling themselves and their ideals for a sniff of ersatz power? The joke UKIP?

When will the UK see politicians with ideals and a sense of purpose and fair play for ALL?
As Rich Hall said in his Texas programme the other night: 'Politics, from the greek word 'poli' - many and 'ticks', blood-sucking leeches...