The Canna Saga

Having previously posted on the forthcoming project to get rid of the rat population on Canna, certain reported facts struck me as being a little on the large side. Leaving aside the six figure budget for a moment, the amount of poison to be used in relation to the estimated rat population was exceedingly generous. I thought it worthwhile to see what other online news sources had to say in case this generosity was no more than a typo in the Scotsman article that I had first read.
The Daily Telegraph article reports that the rat population is 100,000 while the WMI, the company taking on the rat poisoning side of the project, are quoted as receiving £250,000.
According to The Times, the rat population is back down to 10,000 though it does agree with the Telegraph's figure of £250,000 for the rat catchers.
The apparent discrepancy between the costs may be simply a breakdown of the overall cost of £500,000 into it's component parts: £250,000 to WMI for their efforts and the remaining £250,000 for the remainder of the project's activities which includes the temporary removal of the wood mice.
I can find no information directly relating to this project on the SNH website while the National Trust for Scotland are no better with their website. So I am none the clearer on the salient points of the project: The size of the estimated rat population & the overall project cost.
It is not that I am against this project in principle, merely curious as to how what is a fairly substantial project can be reported in a variety of ways which results in an unclear picture as to the exact objectives and costs. These all have a bearing on the judgment of whether or not the project satisfies the "value for money" criterion given that the money comes from the public purse.
It looks as if direct contact with SNH & the NTS is going to be the only way to clear the confusion up.

The Canna Rats - continued

I just found this on another blog via Technorati and was posted some 37 days ago (keep up at the back there Inchbrakie!). Interesting to note that the earlier reported cost was a mere £250,000. I wonder what happened in the intervening time to double this? Maybe the scientists involved thought that 1.25 tonnes of poisoned bait per rat wasn't quite enough.....

The trees win again, this time in South Africa

First it was Glen Feshie. Then it was the Mar Lodge Estate. Now it seems that 10,000 South African mammals are having to play second fiddle to some grass based flora that has ideas apparently much above it's station.
In the case of the South African elephants it is worth noting that annual culls used to take place up until 1994 when a public outcry led to their being halted "to see what would happen". Surprise surprise, in the intervening years the population has doubled and now the likes of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a leading group in the "animal rights" industry are declaring that the cull is unnecessary. Presumably they would prefer to see the situation continue until the elephant population increases to such a point that the local habitat collapses under the strain and a famine ensues?
I find the idea of a mass culls on this scale obscene but it seems sadly necessary for the elephants' continued presence in the park. If it had not been for the sort of hysteria that IFAW and others rely on to generate their incomes then the yearly culls would not have been cancelled. The blame for this sorry situation lies directly with the animal rights industry. I doubt that it bothers them too much as they will expect to profit quite handsomely from the donations of an outraged & upset general public once the first TV pictures of the cull make it into their living rooms.

Super-rats on Canna.

The National Trust for Scotland has announced plans to cull the rat population on Canna which is endangering the local seabird population, especially the Manx Shearwater. This seems a laudible plan of action for a body entrusted with the care of much of Scotland's natural & cultural heritage. However, the price tag of £500,000 to deal with an estimated population of 10,000 rats would indicate that budget conservation is someone else's concern! There is no doubt that such a project is going to cost money and the job should be done properly if it is done at all. Yet I find it hard to believe that it is going to cost on average £50 per rat to deal with. The fact that the contract for the rat cull has gone to a New Zealand company may have some bearing on this, as does the fact that the local population of wood-mice must first be trapped and removed temporarily from the island while the cull is carried out using 25,000 tonnes of poisoned bait. Yes, that is 2.5 tonnes of poison per rat; the rats will presumably die of obesity if they prove to be immune to the poison.

Global warming, Martian style

We earthlings are not alone in undergoing climatic change according to NASA scientists as reported in a BBC article. The polar caps of frozen carbon dioxide have shrunk for the third summer in a row. Whether or not there is a link between evidence of climatic change on Earth & Mars, it goes some way in demonstrating that it is not necessary to have mankind (or martian-kind) as the prime cause (albeit indirectly) of "global warming".
That the global climate is changing is evident, but the exact sensitivity of this change to human industrial endeavours and the resulting pollution seems to be much less clear.

If the deep fried Mars Bars don't get you, the natives will.

The recent report from the United Nations that states Scotland is the most violent country in the developed world will not be going away in a hurry. However the story and ensuing debate appears to have made not even the slightest impact on the Guardian while The Herald too appears to have little to say on the matter. The BBC have somehow managed to hide the Scottish Executive's response away in a corner on the Scottish Politics page. Even taking into account the argument regarding the statistics used, I would have expected much more to be made of this.
This blog entry "Cause of Death: Welfare State, cont - Part II: Scotland gets Sailered" is a flavour of the sort of commentary I would expect to see.
So why the silence from the media?

"Flagrant behaviour", and from a (Prime) Minister!

According to Lance Price, a former Deputy Communications Adviser (i.e. "spin doctor") to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair uses the odd Anglo-Saxon vernacular from time to time. However mixed as it was with an supposedly ethnic grouping (in this case the Welsh), does this not create a rather more sensitive situation for the Prime Minister? Now, it was only a few days ago that a football fan was found guilty of comitting a racially aggravated breach of the peace by calling the then Celtic striker Craig Bellamy "a Welsh bastard". Given that Tony Blair reputedly insulted an entire nation/Principality whereas the football fan insulted a single person (who it seems did not even hear the insult) then what sort of punishment would be fitting for Mr Blair?

Citizen Kane to become Prisoner Kane?

Rosie Kane of the Scottish Socialist Party is upset because she hasn't been sent to jail.
Other reports quote the ever delightful Miss Kane as having said that while not in a hurry to go to prison, she had been keen to see the matter resolved as quickly as possible.
In that case why not just pay the fine in the first place? Or does she need a brief stint in the jail to validate her self-proclaimed virtue as a true Socialist martyr?
Perhaps a gagging order of some sort might be more appropriate? Given the verbal skitters (an evocative Scots term for diarrohea in case you didn't know) that she and her blethering Trotsky-ite chums suffer from so acutely, this would also give us a certain amount of peace & quiet. More importantly, it would also prevent the Scottish Prison Service (and ultimately the tax payer) becoming part of the SSP's quite reckless thirst for publicity.

Bosom buddies

The National Trust for Scotland is to receive a £3 million grant from SNH according to an article in Friday's Scotsman:

John Markland, chairman of SNH, said: "I'm delighted to offer this grant to the NTS, which has demonstrated a very high standard of countryside management for some of Scotland's most valuable landscapes, habitats and species."

Presumably this includes the sort of habitat & species 'management' that led to the large scale cull on Mar Lodge Estate?
Meanwhile on the letters page, SNH are asked to concentrate on preserving the endangered wildlife species that we are lucky enough to still have rather than chasing pipe-dreams in the form of the European Beaver. That this call comes from the Scottish Countryside Alliance will probably be sufficient for the SNH high priests to dismiss the call as "politically motivated". This is undoubtedly the case but such motivation has no bearing whatsover on the truth of the matter as outlined in the letter.

Still catching up.

Another in the series of articles that have caught my attention and have so far been noted on odd bits of paper, this comes from the robust pen of David Aaronovitch in his column for the Grauniad back in February of this year.

Harking back

I'm not a farmer but having grown up in rural Perthshire I have seen the agricultural make-up of the area go through some striking transformations in quite a short time. This letter although printed a while back (31st March 2004) in the sterling Dundee Courier is a real gem and is no less informative on a subject that seems to be wildly misunderstood, sometimes deliberately so. Dealing as it does in grand themes it does not bore the general reader to a standstill arguing on some seemingly irrelevant minutiae of EU agricultural policy.
More recently (28th June 2005)Mr Henderson delivered another informative missive, this time responding to an Editorial piece in the same paper.

The Tyranny of the Blank Page

After mulling about what to put on this blog and in what structure ( for fear of appearing in some way disorganised) I have decided to administer to it in an entirely ad hoc manner.
As a brief introduction I ought to credit Freedom & Whisky with not only getting me thinking about blogging (albeit a good while ago) but also promoting two things that I value greatly and are all too often taken for granted in today's society.
So much for inspiration. For much of the gritty electron mechanics that go into producing these creations then I can suggest that the blog special report at the much maligned Grauniad is as good a place as any that I have found for the neophyte to make a start.

Errr, hello? Anyone out there?

This is the first post in what shall no doubt turn out to be a somewhat occasional blog. Expect posts to appear in intermittent flurries followed by days of nothing that stretch into weeks of inactivity.
I have every expectation that this blog may well fall on it's arse at some point but hey ho.