“Don’t be greedy” parents insist when little sticky fingers dive into the chocolate cake yet again. “There is only one cake. You have to share it.” This is the way the vast majority of parents bring up their children. These are the children that grow up to be the decent hard working adults that take their share, or less, of the income ‘cake’. Continue reading Ryeview – November 2006
The newsreader announced that pensioners would get a nice surprise in April 2007. This struck me as a strange way to keep a secret – announce it on the ten o’clock news. Maybe all pensioners are tucked up in bed by that time. Before writing this Ryeview, I decided to check the numbers. They were nowhere to be found in the National Press or even the Department of Work and Pensions. It really is to be kept quiet. Well, for those pensioners who haven’t heard, I will let you into the ‘secret’. Continue reading Ryeview – October 2006
Why don’t people want a mobile phone mast near them? Up goes the cry that they are not safe. OK, if they are not safe, why are they on schools and in villages? The vast majority of a village in Ryedale are pleading for a mast to be moved. Why is it still there? Continue reading Ryeview – September 2006
I’ve got Van Gogh’s ear for music. My knowledge and understanding of classical music is limited. At school, the choir improved when I was politely removed. Despite this, music for me like millions of others is an important strand to life. Continue reading Ryeview – August 2006
Ryedale, the public and consumers have all said no to GM. The market, agribusiness, Biotech Companies, the NFU and the government do not listen. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, is now consulting over GM. Not how to stop GM but on how to limit contamination between farm crops. It is not consulting on how to give the public a GM free choice. It is consulting on how to compensate farmers. It completely ignores the Environment, the long term safety of eating GM and the wishes of the public. Continue reading Ryeview – August 2006
‘Words mean whatever you want them to mean’. The pair of words that have taken Alice’s view to the extreme are Sustainable and Development. The Oxford English Dictionary has 12 meanings for Sustainable and 10 meanings for Development. As if that was not enough, the Government, Think Tanks and others have added their meanings. Sustainable Development has become meaningless. Continue reading Ryeview – July 2006
Unloved, unwanted and ignored. These must be the emotions of many of the employees of Ryedale District Council. Some of us thought that in 1997 the millions on the dole, workers thought of as just numbers and peoples emotions trampled on were behind us. No, Thatcherism is alive and well and living in Ryedale. Continue reading Ryeview – June 2006
The supply goes up and the price goes down. The demand goes up and the price follows. This is the Law of Supply and Demand – worshipped by Mrs Thatcher and the Tories as the ‘Market’. Continue reading Ryeview – May 2006
“Well ’tis nine o’ clock, ’tis time to ring curfew” (1608). 400 years later things haven’t changed much. Pickering is to have its own curfew. Probably not a bell but all the control and repression of a curfew. Continue reading Ryeview – April 2006
The only thing we learn from History is that we don’t learn from History. In the 1960’s, Britain suffered from a Foot and Mouth Epidemic. If there was one lesson needed to be learned it was: ‘stop all animal movements’. Continue reading Ryeview – March 2006