Photograph from The Times
from here
Tuesday, 23rd December 2008
Santa may not be coming this year. He had enough trouble in 2007, with the Scottish executive demanding all fur be registered as per Regulation (EC) 338/97 restrictions on importation. Then Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer broke methane emissions regulations over Ulster, Santa left carbon footprints on a hearth in Wales and he was deeply offensive to women in England when he said "Ho Ho Ho". Back in Lapland, his elves had to contend with the working time directive, the ongoing argument about whether they have human rights and, of course, with elf and safety. Santa also has his multiple identities to account for as Claus, Saint Nicholas and Papa Noël, and why he's living in Finnish Lapland when he was born in Turkey.
The new problem, however, is far more serious. It's to do with Rudolf, and I don't mean his disability discrimination case against the other reindeer for laughing and calling him names. Rudolf his wild reindeer buddies are dying out in Finland courtesy of the EU. Soon Santa will have no one to pull his sleigh.
Rudolf is on the run because the EU decided wolves are an endangered species. It has banned wolf hunting. In Italy the 500 remaining wolves remind the misty-eyed population of the capital city of former greatness (i.e. before AD451). In Spain and Portugal, the combined population of 2,400 wolves rarely visit Marbella or the Algarve. Even in Swedish Lapland the ban is not a problem unless you are a reindeer herdsman wanting to supply the supermarket rather than feed the wolves.
Finnish Lapland is another matter. It has a border with Russia and Russia's wolf population is such a problem that bounty hunters were called in. Wolves are clever and they had no trouble digging tunnels under Finland's "patchy" border fence. They now benefit from EU endangered species status while they hunt down another endangered species, Finnish wild reindeer.
The EU has issued only six wolf hunting licences in the problem areas. The bureaucrats compare road kills of reindeer (2,500 animals in 2002) to 200-300 officially killed by wolves in 2002. However, in a rugged country like Finland dead reindeer on the road are a lot easier to count than chewed bones scattered in the woods. It's also a lot easier to jump inside a car than hug your way up a tree when wolves arrive.
Oddly enough, no vegetarian carrot-leather shod EU ecologist has been sensible enough to suggest that a clampdown on Finnish drink driving would actually be of more use to the reindeer than endangered species status – which has effectively done what is says on the label and, well... endangered them.
Whatever the true figures, the Russo-Finnish wolf population has had six years to expand since 2002. In Finnish border towns parents heading for the shops have found wolf tracks following their kids' footprints to school. A mother found paw prints leading to her baby's pram left on the porch. Nothing, though, can be done to change the EU rules until there is real evidence of a problem – and the last "real evidence" is church records from the severe winter of 1823, when wolves took 23 Finnish children.
Once again it is the EU's obsession with having a one-size-fits-all policy is at fault. Finland is not like Italy or Spain or even Sweden. Controlling the local and migrant wolf population, and protecting wild reindeer, should be a Finnish matter.
Spare a thought for Finnish parents watching over their children at play, with a shotgun to hand, this Christmas.
RALPH ATKINSON
and fill your van up by before four in the afternoon.
Another speaker of broken English working hard.
Get your arse into gear and hurry to the scene when the airport alarm sounds! Put on your riot helmet, grab your special ecofuckwit fighting tools, and zip off to the rescue in your fire truck. Side doors open for riot equipment storage, fire hose unwinds to drench the fuckers with icy water!
"Pork from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland should not be eaten due to contamination fears, the Food Standards Agency has said.
The advice follows the Irish government's recall of pork products made in the Republic since September.
Dioxins were found in pigs thought to have eaten contaminated feed on 56 farms - nine in Northern Ireland.
The UK's Food Standards Agency said it did not believe at this stage that UK consumers faced any "significant risk"."  A health hazard? |
A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer.
The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.
This amount of cooking was found to release 12-22 nannograms of dioxins into the atmosphere.
The researchers also found that the average concentrations of dioxins in the vicinity of the barbecue ranged from 0.6 to 0.7 nannograms per cubic metre - up to seven times higher than the level authorised for public incinerators at the point of discharge from the chimney.
So, there we have it. Burning stuff produces dioxins.... these can, and do, get into the food chain. That apparently is bad. So make sure the pig is fed no dioxins and panic the average moron on the street that he will die if he as much as sniffs a sausage.
Dioxin free meat can then be bought, chucked onto a barbecue or cooked under a grill to produce dioxins.... which you eat.
Am I missing something here ?
Another point to ponder.
Cancer kills bar staff, so stop smoking in pubs, so pub trade goes down... start barbecue evenings to drum up trade.... feed them/make them breathe dioxins.... which cause cancer.
as I said, Am I missing something here ?
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