Never mind the claimants – use lie detectors on the politicians
[Tony Blair’s] WORK and Pensions Minister John Hutton said yesterday that lie detectors will be used to help root out benefit cheats in job centres later this year.
Once again the Labour government is setting out to criminalise a big section of the working class.
This is for the sole purpose of cutting the amount paid out in benefits by giving minor civil servants the power to terrorise and condemn people to hunger by refusing a benefit claim because they think that they have detected something unusual in the tone of a person’s voice.
The millions that will be saved by framing up large numbers of claimants as liars will no doubt be transferred to the rich as is the Labour government’s policy, through tax breaks and tax cuts.
The hypocrisy of ministers like Hutton knows no bounds. They oppress the poor in order to fatten the rich.
If they were serious about the unmasking of liars and cheats they would make lie detector tests mandatory every time a government minister opened his mouth.
Spoonbills (Platalea lecorodia), Little Egrets ((Egretta garzetta) and Black-headed Gulls (Larus ridibundus) foraging in the Quackgors, Hellevoetsluis. 11 june 2008
Today, on my way to the nature reserve, the white storks still on their nest.
On the meadow, east of the reserve: 84 Egyptian geese.
Mute swans; coots.
Northern lapwings.
Wood pigeons.
And a spoonbill; which I know also from Starrevaart.
Six hares running after each other like real “March hares“, though it is April by now.
Grey lag geese.
Mallards.
A great cormorant.
Shelducks.
In the castle pond: moorhen, and a couple of great crested grebes.
Endangered shark under attack from Cornish fishermen
It’s a beautiful, benign - and endangered - relative of the great white. So why isn’t more being done to stop fishermen going after the porbeagle?
By Peter Marren
Published: 05 April 2007
Three years ago a Cornish fisherman had a rare stroke of luck.
Off the coast of the county, on his 40-foot fishing boat The Prevail, he encountered a large shoal of sharks.
Their streamlined, spindle-shaped bodies and characteristic pointed noses told him this was the porbeagle, an ocean-going, cold-water relative of the great white shark.
This was lucky for three reasons. Firstly, large aggregations of porbeagle are increasingly unusual.
Secondly, the porbeagle is the most valuable shark in the ocean, worth around £2 per kilo or up to £500 per shark to the fisherman.
It is worth a lot more by the time it ends up on a plate in top restaurants as “veau de mer”. This is not a fish you can buy in a chip shop.
And, thirdly, because, despite scientific recommendations in 2005 and 2006 to close the North-east Atlantic fishery completely, porbeagle fishing is unregulated.
Any fisherman lucky enough to come across large numbers of porbeagle - or for that matter any other shark except the basking shark or the great white - can catch as many as he likes.
Three species of endangered kokopu (native trout) have been returned to Maungatautari after an approximate 60 year absence.
It is the world’s first release of banded kokopu back to the wild, made possible with expert assistance from Waikato trout farmers Jan and Charles Mitchell and funding from the Waikato Catchment Ecological Enhancement Trust.
On 5 April approximately 10 shortjaw, 40 giant and 200 banded kokopu were transferred from Charles and Jan Mitchells’ aquaculture farm at Raglan into waterways within Maungatautari’s Xcluder pest proof fenced enclosures.
Maungatautari Trust chief executive Jim Mylchreest said the return of the kokopu was an important link in recreating, as close as possible, the ecosystem that once existed on Maungatautari.
March 2007 -In just four days in February, participants in the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC, the US version og the Big Garden Birdwatch) tallied more than 11 million birds across the United States and Canada.
Together, they recorded 616 species and submitted more than 80,000 checklists, 33% more than the previous high of 61,000 checklists in 2000.
Click here to see the UK Big Garden Birdwatch results.
‘There has never been a more detailed snapshot of continental bird distribution in history,’ said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
‘It used to take scientists years to gather large-scale information about bird population and distribution, and the GBBC does it in just four days each year, thanks to a continent wide community of birders reporting their counts online.’
American Robins topped the list as the most numerous species counted, with more than two million robins reported from 60 states and provinces.
Participant Lorraine Margeson counted a flock of 750,000 robins roosting in a mangrove forest in St. Petersburg, Florida.
‘In the morning, the robins just pour out of there,’ she observed.
‘It’s spectacular with the sunrise on their red bellies. When you see it, you think this is what makes life worth living.’
This year’s rare birds included five Lesser Prairie-Chickens in Oklahoma and two Pink-footed Geese in Rhode Island, first records for the GBBC.
Prairie Chickens nearly disappeared from the Minnesota landscape as prairie habitat became farmland, but the birds are making a comeback on the Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge near Crookston: here.
Rebecca Aldworth with The Humane Society of the United States takes you on a breathtaking and heartbreaking tour of the harp seals nursery off Canada’s East Coast just weeks before Canadian fishermen begin the annual seal hunt. Visit protectseals.org to learn more.
Thousands of seal pups are believed to have perished before the hunt began, with global warming melting the ice needed for seals to give birth and nurse their pups successfully.
Despite this, the Canadian government gave the go-ahead for this year’s hunt with a catch limit of 270,000 seals.
IFAW’s observers are used to seeing thousands of young seal pups in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence at this time of year, but with extremely poor ice conditions, they have so far seen only a few isolated pups struggling in the slushy water.
However, the Canadian government ignored calls to abandon this year’s hunt, despite predicted high pup mortality due to global warming, and set a total allowable catch limit of 270,000 seals.
The federal government on Friday will significantly expand the critical habitat for endangered Hawaiian monk seals to include beaches and waters of the main Hawaiian Islands, officials said: here.
Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”: Fifty years later and in its own time
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of American poet Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century.
Very few poems sell over a million copies and get translated into virtually every language in the world.
Where a generation could repeat from memory that two roads “diverged in a yellowed wood” that may at other times be “lovely, dark, and deep” though there be miles to go before you sleep, so the laconic opening line of “Howl,” “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” is widely known.
‘Howl’ Too Hot To Hear: 50 Years After Poem Ruled Not Obscene, [US] Radio Fears To Air It: here.
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