Photo: Brian Garman
Our Vigils continue in Barnstaple High Street on Wednesdays at 5pm. I hugely admire all those who have turned out weekly since October 2023 - people from all age groups and backgrounds. Sometimes I share thoughts or a poem but usually I stay silent. On my mind this week is yet another atrocity by the ill-named Israeli Defense Force. They killed yet another journalist in Lebanon - Amal Khalil: a deliberate, targeted murder. It featured on BBCR4’s The World At One on Thursday. After damning evidence from a friend of the murdered woman and a journalists’ organisation, the presenter interviewed an Israeli government spokesman. These people all seem to have American accents, short tempers and a fanatical belief in mantras like ‘the IDF is the most moral army in in the world’. It is pointless interviewing them. It reminds me of the BBC’s insistence, some years ago, of bringing climate change deniers on air in the interests of ‘balance’. They should not be attempting to achieve ‘balance’ when the facts are clear. They should instead be grilling our cabinet ministers on why our government is not responding to these endless outrages with the severest sanctions possible. I salute the brave people, including writers and musicians, who are standing up to the government on free speech - the link is here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/apr/24/scholars-writers-artists-defy-ban-palestine-action-letter-judges
How quaint that the idiot Twerp is achieving such unexpected success in driving the world away from the fossil fuels on which he is fixated. A world expert revealed as much in a fine Guardian piece on Friday. He also advised the UK to continue its policy of not opening up new oil fields in the North Sea: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/24/global-oil-crisis-changed-fossil-fuel-industry-for-ever-iea-chief-fatih-birol
This splendid formulation reminds me of the world upside down portrayed by John Gay, a famous son of Barnstaple, in The Beggar’s Opera (1728). It was the first ever musical, but I won’t hold that against Gay. His satire is superb - in the vein of his friend Jonathan Swift - and very much on the lines of the quote above. I’m glad I’ve now read Gay’s masterpiece for the first time. I had known it via the Brecht/Weill adaptation, The Threepenny Opera (1928) and, like many others I’m sure, from the Louis Armstrong version of Mack the Knife.
North Devon Council passed a motion on Wednesday evening on the need to place solar panel arrays on buildings rather than on agricultural land. It will go to the relevant committees for discussion. Of course, I have to keep an open mind on these things as I am a member of a planning committee that will be considering a large solar farm in the coming months. Everything, for and against, must be weighed up and we have to follow the National Planning Policy Framework. It was rather ironic that the motion was discussed so soon after fresh scientific evidence emerged that suggests that the Gulf Stream might collapse far quicker than the often predicted 2100. This was reported, a friend tells me, in an early morning segment on the Today programme - but the topic had disappeared by the time I switched on at 8am. I found it in the Guardian. Previous modelling has not taken account of meltwater from Greenland’s glaciers. If the Gulf Stream - aka AMOC (the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) - collapses then our agriculture will come to a stop: the summers will be too short and hot, the winters too long and cold. Monbiot covered this in his article: ‘A catastrophic climate event is upon us. Here is why you’ve heard so little about it’.
On Tuesday morning I joined members of the North Devon branch of the Devon Wildlife Trust on a visit to a closed reserve. It is between the Pottington Industrial Estate and the Ashford sewage treatment plant. It was created to mitigate the loss of reed beds when the Taw Bridge was constructed a generation ago. As we walked to the reed beds created in the reserve, we heard alarm calls from a group of Starlings. Sure enough, a Sparrowhawk had arrived on the scene. I was fascinated to learn that birds have different alarm calls for hawks and falcons. We listened to Sedge Warblers and Reed Warblers. The former has a more ‘scratchy’ song. What a privilege to be with these super-knowledgeable birders. It was also great to hear the renowned ecologist Mary Breeds, who spoke on Monday at the Taw Torridge Estuary Forum. She thinks the White Cross Wind farm onshore cables would be a good thing for our very special Braunton Burrows, which need less scrub and more dune mobility.
Now we have, as mentioned last week, nine bee hives, I was stung a couple of times when I was quite a way from them. I now don protective clothing when I pass close by the hives on the RideOn mower. Our neighbours’ sheep are a delight. The lambs are wonderfully mischievous and playful. Thank you for reading.
Another reading coming up:
