TFI Britain

TFI Britain = This Friday In Britain, a new post I’ll aim to make each week to join in with Joy’s British Isles Friday event. Sometimes I might have something different to add, but I’m mostly housebound and so my best photo opportunties tend to be similar viewpoints of nearby skies from my home and if you want to see those on or around Friday I post my (British) skywatching photos at coleebeatsabout.blogspot.com . I’m late there this week, but there’s a nice sky pic from slightly further afield in the lower portion of this post.

I’ll have to remember and plan these posts better as arriving by twenty-five to midnight with nothing ready isn’t really in good time enough. Anyway, on with my show and tell … it’s turned out much less short than I imagined it would be.

My go to news site is still bbc.co.uk/news, even though I’m very dissatisfied that (a) their website writers sometimes publish articles with American spellings instead of English and (b) so much news is video only and they offer no transcript or text of video-only content and a TV license is needed to play and view such news items. As a non-television user for almost all of the last nine or ten years, previously in my lifetime more often listening to the telly rather than watching it, I object to deprivation of national news access to British online audience. BBC Radio news broadcasts often seem barely eligible to be called ‘news’ if the Trade Descriptions Act were applied. I often wonder these days if such legal standard exists anymore.

There’s much in the news about the young royals of course. The safe arrival of William and Kate’s third child was welcomed last week. To distract attention away from the newest member of the Royal Family to be known as HRH Prince Louis of Cambridge, poor chap, the limelight has been directed to news about the forthcoming wedding of Harry and Meghan… celebrity news items don’t float my boat however, so moving along to items I deem more newsworthy…

I hope this next story has nothing to do with baby food (or weddings!!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44006480  Fifty crocodiles were seized at Heathrow airport earlier today. They’d arrived in cramped conditions destined for a Cambridge farm intending to breed them for meat. They’re apparently being rehomed – hopefully not as handbags, shoes nor interior design trimmings! While the Head of the Border Force CITES team at Heathrow has been quoted as saying “… this should serve as a warning to those thinking about transporting wildlife in such conditions” this news consumer wonders how the business owners/farm occupants responsible for importing these poor creatures appear to be getting away without prosecution and penalty! How does the seizure and rehoming of illegally imported animals serve as any kind of warning? The people responsible haven’t even been name and shamed. Why is this measure considered warning enough? The photo credit is the Home Office. Does that signify an embarassing sensitive issue? They should cut the crap and dish the rap! Meaning the doing-Time not the cooing-Rhyme, but that should be obvious. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the Law and nor should wealth or high social status be – and lets face it, farm owning occupants around the country these days clearly aren’t the traditional agricultural types of old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43997872 Local Authority elections were held in some parts of Britain yesterday and voting results and how they’re reported and represented are always interesting to ponder over aren’t they? Nottingham, where I live, didn’t have a Local Authority election as ours are due next year. Election results post-Brexit will be even more interesting, no doubt.

“Pollen and blossoms fill the sneezy, windy Brussels air these lovely spring days but pessimism, too, hangs very heavy.”

Katya Adler, BBC’s Europe Editor, in the opening at her article headlined

EU wonders if Theresa May has run out of ‘Brexit fudge’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43992845

This news consumer wonders if reporting that ‘A European diplomat spoke to [Katya Alder] wistfully of his wish for the prime minister to “act like a statesman”.’ will be picked up on social media as an example of sexism – and lets hope the confidential contact isn’t poor Boris Johnson, a quite regular victim recently of trolling missions in the guise of equality campaigns. Wouldn’t a diplomat be minded to use a term such as ‘statesperson’ – although really why should so much be nit-picked about being human and how we use our English language? Encouraging pernickety hyper-sensitivity and demanding automaton standards of pre-programmed oppressive perceptions of perfection will lead us to becoming hupersons sounding more like cheap as chips supermarket venues than warm-blooded mammals and losing more of our humanity every minute of all our days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44007312 Confused old man President Trump appears to be justifying US gun ownership rights by commenting on London’s rise in knife crime ahead of his planned visit to the UK in July this year. The BBC shares London Mayor, Sadiq Khan’s tweet from last week: “If he comes to London, President Trump will experience an open and diverse city that has always chosen unity over division and hope over fear. He will also no doubt see that Londoners hold their liberal values of freedom of speech very dear.” The British people in general hold their rights to freedom of speech very dear, it isn’t unique to London. If he visits London, Mr Trump is likely to be in a city with a more diverse public than simply Londoners. Much of London’s populace commute from farther afield and the capital city is usually buzzing with tourists from all around the world, including of course, tourists from other parts of Britain.

While it’s no surprise that social mobility appears to have been in decline in recent years, given the severe hardships of the 1970s it’s shocking to read that ‘People in England and Wales were much more likely to move home in the 1970s than in the first decade of the 2000s’ (and is ‘education’ really the appropriate news category for this story?)  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43992782 

It’s a Bank Holiday weekend here now although the actual day of the Bank Holiday is Monday. It’s usually known as May Day Bank Holiday, but this Monday being 7th and six days away from May Day on 1st May, so it’s referred to as ‘early May Bank Holiday’. That’s kind of depriving us of May Day observance, as unless the first of May falls on a Monday, marking the holiday is traditionally now deferred to the day of the Bank Holiday (and/or the weekend days). The final Monday in May is another Bank Holiday known as Spring Bank Holiday, unless they’re calling it ‘late…’. For a number of years there have been calls for and resistance against removal of the May Day Bank Holiday while introducing another day for a Bank Holiday to not have two occurring so close together in the same month. This might at least return the tradition of actually observing May Day traditions on the day of May 1st but would probably continue to utilise the closest weekend for reasons of practicality and tourism.

Anyway, usually there’s a high probability of rain and awful weather for any such occasion as a Bank Holiday weekend, but this weekend is forecast to be the warmest early May Bank Holiday weather since Britain introduced them in 1978. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44000590

We had a mini heatwave briefly during April with highest temperatures on record for that time of year since 1949. Hopefully it won’t be a water shortage drought-ridden summer, although such problems are increasing around the world as a whole. I remember the severe drought of 1973 while I was a small child. I’ve never known drought circumstances quite like it in my lifetime since and wonder we’re bound to encounter another one sometime. We don’t take action enough to preserve and prolong water availability, even if we’re not particularly wasteful with our water, we could always use less. We take so much for granted. It’s only human, I suppose.

In personal news, I finally managed to get myself further than my front yard gate (that’s me along my way, yesterday, pictured above), so I can show you an image of true European air, albeit the Brox and not Brussels, but similarly ‘Pollen and blossoms… pessimism, too…’

European air, the outskirts of Nottingham City, (UK), 3rd May 2018, toward noon.

N.B. I meant no disrespect for the Royal Family in this post and I’m fairly certain they would have nothing whatsoever to do with the crocodile case. I would hope my references to ‘celebrity’ status not to cause offense, and simply prefer not to over-indulge with available insights to private and family lives. Obviously I don’t know them and using first-name terms in the real world is not respectful of any stranger.

Any interpreted inference or implication regarding the creative expressions and personal opinions contained in this post, any representation or stated intrigue of reported fact  and any meaning deduced thereof is wholly the responsibility of the reader over whom the originating writer (being me) has no control and no obligatory responsibility toward, as per traditional British multi-cultural norms of free speech and freedoms of creative expression.

Do you feel ‘Brexit’ impacts the continental belonging of Britain with Europe and the British sense of identity as Europeans? This question is complicated as I’m not sure if or how British people of Asian, African and/or Carribbean heritage might or might not identify with European-ness as British people. (Addendum in Afterthought: I suppose it’s also complicated by the extreme minority Dual Nationality American British/British American but I know very little about that other than it has things to do with warmongering however many generations ago if not still now.)

How is our majority European British cultural identity portrayed in your part of the world? Are we believed to identify more with American and Australian societies for similarities of so-called ‘white’ skin colour and language uses derived of (and differing from) Original English languages rather than close cultural identification with our Norse and European neighbours from where we may have descended?

(Brexit = Britain withdrawing from the European Union for trade and political independence from the European Parliament. As such British citizens’ freedom of movement rights within the European Union are impacted. However at the time of the referendum British people’s continuing access to the European Court of Human Rights was assured – perhaps because the wider world can see very clearly what a total bastard the Tory government is for the British population at large and how many Nasty recurrences have been whirring away behind the gentleman’s clubs smoke-screens for quite a few years now. That’s why comedic things that twats of judges might rule as offensive in the wider world remain hilariously funny if also ooch-worthy to British cultured multi-cultural audience sense of humour. In an ideal world, any failure to assure rights of access to the ECHR within Brexit negotiations should be protested as rending the referendum void. Anyone out there ever experiencing an ideal world?

Maybe you’re British and don’t feel a close connection with European identity and maybe conversations about cultural identity are unimportant and should be left entirely private. Growing up near the coast definitely made me culturally foreign to city slickers when I moved to Nottingham (UK) and even after thirty years of residence I might sometimes feel I experience impacts of the Cornwall effect spreading as if I were a foreign refugee because ‘you’re not from round these parts are ya?’  (I didn’t grow up in the Southern Counties by the way, I’m East-Anglich…).

Any thoughts?