Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
Saint Patrick has some dodgy environmental credentials although his walking stick grew into a living ash tree and he used the shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity. But driving the snakes from Ireland – what was that all about?
Could he please come back and rid Britain of Muntjac Deer, Canada Geese and Grey Squirrels? Please? All would require either magic or divine intervention to be lost from the UK these days, I think.
As a radical (I believe that is what I am), I am often struck by the thought that it seems far easier to change the world for the worse than it does to change it for the better. Conservationists seem to spend a lot of our lives trying to stop things from going wrong – bad change.
Much better not to introduce non-native species into the UK than to have to sort out the problems they cause once they are well-established.
Much more sensible to protect native species from loss than to have to reintroduce them at a later date.
Much better to protect ancient woodlands than to offset the losses.
Much better not to introduce a biofuels obligation than to have to fight to remove it.
I wonder whether we spend enough of out time trying to make the world a better place – good change.
I was quite touched by the programme about the late Tony Benn which was presented by one of his friends, but political opponents, David Davis, last week. Benn was my MP for a while as I grew up in Bristol, long before I had a vote or any interest in politics. I bought a copy of his Arguments for Socialism when it first came out and have dipped into it many times since (although I can’t put my hand on it right now – it’s here somewhere). Benn was a radical and the only thing I have in common with him, perhaps, is that his politics moved further to the Left as he aged (too). Benn was an inspiration – but perhaps he didn’t achieve many of his political aims.
There is the story of the traveller in Ireland who asks the way to Dublin and is told by a local that ‘If it’s Dublin you are wanting, then I wouldn’t have been starting here’. It’s rather the same with the path to a sustainable lifestyle and a rich environment – we shouldn’t, perhaps, be starting here. But this life, starting here, is the only life we have and the only chance we have, so let’s get started. We will need the help of many people, many Benn-like inspirers and perhaps the odd saint to make a difference. But it’ll be such fun trying.
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Fun? Or dire necessity?
Could he rid us of non native jungle fowl as well?
Nowt wrong with chickens
Yes, I am also a bit confused by this comment. Unless the name ‘jungle fowl’ is being erroneously applied to Phasianus colchicus?
Tony Benn talked a lot of common sense on many subjects – I agreed with him more often than disagreed!
As to where the world or country go; that is a far deeper question. Politicians almost always look short term, but the planet goes on regardless. It’ll change a lot in the next few years. My grand-daughter, born a month ago, will see massive changes. I am ashamed to say we have not left her a better place than we had 60 years ago when I was born.
You ask where we start – and I’m tempted to say that it’s far too late. We always seem to want to change – well some of us – but then carry on regardless.
Perhaps a total rethink of who governs, and how, and what or who for!
I’m a pessamist; I admit it……… I wish you, or maybe our children, better luck!
I probably agreed and disagreed with Tony Benn in equal measure, but he always had my utmost respect for his devotion to the principles of democracy, accountability and the courage of his convictions. He would never be diverted by the cheap populist view or the instructions of his party whip and whilst I refuse to buy into the dreary view that he was the last of the conviction politicians, I do sadly concede that, at this point in time, they do appear to be in an ever decreasing minority.
Yes he was hopelessly wrong about Europe, but he was oh so right about the Iraq war and I think history will perhaps prove that to be the second most important issue of his time. Climate change being the first.
On a personal note some years ago as a callow youth on a visit to Westminster with my late Grandfather (former mp and by then a Liberal Peer) I was introduced to Tony Benn over tea.
I was very nervous and became quite tongue-tied but I do recall how he went out of his way to put me at ease and genuinely seemed interested in what I had to say (which can’t have been at all interesting) and my future aspirations. I once read a quote that said you should never meet your heroes. That may be true, but not in the case of Tony Benn.
In the 70s he appeared in rather too many discussion progs on the wireless, where he was a proponent of the unpleasant technique of smear and move swiftly on. I never paid any heed to anything he said after that.
filbert – have you just smeared Tony Benn and moved quickly on? Or did you mean St Patrick?
I would have liked to have heard St Patrick on the wireless
I agreed with almost everything he said in the last 30 years
There are way too many Tony Blairs in conservation – and politics – and not enough Tony Benns.
Way back when I lived in Birmingham in the seventies I met Tony Benn twice and heard him speak several other times too. I always thought a great man of conviction and a deep thinker, yes wrong on Europe ( none of us are perfect).
For those off us on the left its been a very bad week with the loss not only of Tony Benn but also Bob Crowe, oh that he led my union.
On the other hand not a great fan of St Patrick or indeed christian mythology in general. The reason that he allegedly “drove the serpents out of Ireland ” was because the Druids were apparently covered in snake tattoos, the snake being their symbol of wisdom. Thus it was not snakes he drove out but the old religion, given all the things that have happened since in Ireland in the name of the church perhaps he was not saintly at all in this.