I’m sitting in my quiet studio, the rain is pattering on the roof and I can hear the frogs outside. Courting has begun an full two weeks earlier than last year.
Looking back at my photos from last year, we had snow quite late in February. Things do seem to be coming out a lot earlier this year.
I’m sure that Mark Harper, the MP for the Forest of Dean Constituency must be struggling with his conscience at the moment, as he appears to be working against everything he promised those who sent him to Westminster. As he wrestles with the choice of personal advancement or service to his constituents, I’d like to offer here a prayer that may help calm his mind. His constituents may wish to repeat this prayer aloud themselves to help Mark influence the Coalition and Parliament towards a sensible decision for the future of the Forest of Dean free, from private interests.
At this time of deep peril for the constituency that has chosen you to to be their representative in Parliament, may your God guide you down the paths of truth and righteousness and help you in your work to protect the realm and commonwealth and in particular the great and ancient Forest of Dean that is both the beating heart of your constituency and the crowning Jewel of England.
I’ve only recently begun to understand banking, or rather the concept of Fractional Reserve Banking.
If I put say, ten pounds into a bank, I assume that I have assets of ten pounds. But this is not the case. The Bank now has assets of ten pounds. On the strength of my ten pounds the bank is now able to lend, not just my money, but invisible money that it invents that is backed by my money. It can lend maybe a hundred pounds on the strength of having my ten pounds in their vault. They can then collect interest on a hundred pounds and pay me, if I’m lucky, interest on my ten pounds as thanks.
Get it? If I tried to do that I’d be arrested for fraud.
This proves that money is not real and is only a concept. When Fractional Reserve Banking is working and everyone believes it is for real, it is fantastic. This is how roads and hospitals get built.
When it goes wrong and bankers get too creative and start selling stuff that has absolutely no fractional reserve wealth, like subprime mortgages, then everything goes wrong.
That’s when we, through our Government, knowing that we can’t allow the banks to fail, get stuck with the bill to bail them out. Then we have to find the money that should have been in the banks vaults all along as their reserve, but somehow wasn’t.
Are you with me still? Banking is all smoke and mirrors. It is designed to confuse you. As long as everything seems to be okay and the guys who are on hefty commissions tell you that it’s a great deal, it all seems fine.
So now the Government has to find cash to pay the bankers for the mess they got into. “A ha!” they say. “Let’s sell off a bit of land! The Forest of Dean doesn’t do much. We can get rid of that!”
So who do you think will buy the Forest of Dean? Why, the Bankers of course! They are the only ones with any money – because we’ve just given them every last penny we had to make sure they don’t crash!
So, for the privilege of saving the bankers skins we now have to give up our birthright, so the banks can rape the Forest of Dean of its assets, history and culture and make even more money, in the process using the forest as a fractional reserve to lend against.
At the moment I’m writing a series about ancient Olympia. When I visited the site of the ancient Olympic Games eighteen months ago, I became aware of just how proud the Greeks are of their heritage and culture. We package ours up into visitor centres and ask you not to touch or go too close to the objects. We sell our history. The Greeks live with it.
But what really amazed me was how the ancient town of Olympia based it’s whole economy on sport. Sport was the raison d’être of the town and surrounding area. Every four years, everyone would agree to stop wars and go home for four months, to allow athletes to travel to Olympia in peace!
You can choose to base your economy on whatever you like. Sea shells worked just fine before gold, which worked just fine before subprime mortgages. You can also choose to decide that something as precious as the Forest of Dean is not a basic asset to be sold. It is part of our heritage, a haven for wildlife and biodiversity.
Government is not there to support the banking system. It ultimately has a higher role, to serve and protect the country and it’s people. By selling the country off to the banks, piece by piece without a fight, I would suggest that Government is close to treason.
If the Government needs cash for their banker friends, I suggest they sell off the the banks, as we already own them by having already bought them out. If banks are such a good thing, I’m sure they can dream up some more imaginary money to buy back what they’ve already bedazzled out of us.
Meantime, hands off the Forest of Dean!
Well I’m having a lovely time in Guernsey. The sun is shining again today and got a break down by the seaside. I remember as a child reading Enid Blyton stories that always seemed to be set on the cliff-tops
She used to describe the grass as being, “springy turf.” Today, that’s just what I was walking on. She also wrote about pinks flattering on the cliff-tops and sure enough there were a few pinks still in flower today. Real Enid Blyton adventure country.
I had a wonderful time this morning. St James’ Junior School, Gloucester asked me to come and open their new Eco Classroom – a beautiful, circular den, made from reclaimed materials in which they can give outside lessons, even if it’s raining. The next phase is to develop the green area around it with vegetable and wild-flower gardens and trees. This is fab idea in the middle of Gloucester. It will give the children a connection to the Earth and I hope they will come back to see how their class trees are doing long after they’ve left the school.
I then read the children some stories and had a grand old time, so thank you for having me! I’ve not got any photos. Send me some and I’ll post them or link to them.
I went for a walk with my son and daughter yesterday, down along the banks of the River Wye. There is a wonderful old Willow tree that must have been hit by lightning or something. Two sides have split apart, leaving the centre of the tree with a burned out hollow that you could climb through if you were small enough.
My daughter Dorothy, a great fan of Narnia and all things alter Univers-ey and Lord of the Rings, was dared to climb through, and so she did.
She has been though the heart of a willow and reports that nothing has changed in the universe on the other side except maybe coffee tastes different with the new kettle!
The ferns are really busting out in the Forest now. I always marvel at how they explode out of the ground and uncurl. They are masterpieces of fractal design, imperceptibly growing in un-noticeable stages. Each new stage of growth looks so like the last one, you can’t see the joins or how it got as big as it did. When it’s grown it looks like it must have always been like that.
I’ve picked up a few ferns for my garden over the years. They are all slightly different, but they all have that wonderful uncurling system.
I had a fabulous walk along the River Wye this afternoon. Shortly after diving into the hole in the hedge that denotes the start of the footpath in Lydbrook, we came across a mole scuttling about on the path. He was moving so fast and in such a wriggly fashion, it was hard to get a good picture of him. These pictures are the best I could do!
We may have been under attack by planes from Scotland this afternoon.
I wasn’t aware of any major flight activity, but when I looked up in the sky, a massive Scottish Saltire or Cross of St Andrew, had been painted across the sky!
Very dramatic!
Summer is finally here, but I looked out of the window of my studio and it seemed to be snowing!
Looking again, I realised it if the fluffy seeds from the willow tree above the studio that are drifting across the garden. I suppose the first really warm day is a trigger for the tree to release all those little fluffy down seeds to drift in the warm calm, tranquil air. They are not really built for floating in howling gales.
