|
|
Cave February 2005
THIRTEEN MAYBE UNLUCKY for some but it never has been for me. Nor was it this 13 January, when, after the interminable rain and floods, we were at last blessed with a bright, shining and sunny day. I was in a friend’s garden over at Moness that morning and on looking up, espied a large female sparrowhawk flapping her way above Aberfeldy. She then began to circle upward, sometimes flapping her wings, sometimes catching a bit of thermal uplift, round and around, up and up until she was a mere sparrow-sized hawk against the blue sky.
What bliss it must be to be able to do that, especially on the first bonny day after a long spell dreich yins! Perhaps the bird was thinking along the same lines, for suddenly she three-quarter closed her wings and dropped like a bomb for what must have been a good thousand feet, at an angle that took her to woods away west of the town and out of my view. It was a sight to lift the spirit and bring joy to the soul. For me, the delights of watching wildlife has restorative powers. Much needed at the moment when it is not just a spell of glum weather that has tended to depress. |
|
|
* * * * *
ONCE UPON A TIME people in this country, by which I mean Great Britain and not just Scotland, enjoyed the right to lead their lives pretty much as they wished, within the parameters of what was, largely, a sensible corpus of laws. No longer. With increasing rapidity we are all being turned into felons.
It may not have been the panic reaction to the horror of Dunblane that started it, but it was after that that I began to notice it myself. Doubtless with the best of intentions, there was an outcry against guns that rapidly became a crescendo, resulting in what is virtually a total ban on legal ownership of handguns. Owning a shotgun at one time, not so long ago, did not even require a certificate, though it is a requirement now. Owning a rifle always did. I gave both mine up twenty years ago when I decided that the hassle and expense of reapplying for these, for weapons I no longer used, plus the necessity of ensuring their security, was not worth my while.
On my firearms certificate was a Smith & Wesson 6.35mm automatic that “may not be used or carried” and for which I was not allowed to have any ammunition. It had been given to my father by the police, at some point during the war! I suppose I would not have been allowed to have it at all, after Dunblane. Yet I am quite sure that if I was prepared to pay sufficient money and knew where to go in Glasgow or Manchester or London – or was prepared to risk smuggling one in from the Continent – I could obtain a pistol tomorrow. Gun-crime, it has just been officially reported, went up by 5% in England and Wales last year. Almost none of it, I imagine, was committed with licensed weapons.
Another measure that seeks to criminalise us, again with good intentions, is that for Child Protection. The ‘enhanced disclosure’ form that anyone working with people under the age of 18 must complete is, on the surface, nothing much. And who would not want to do all in their power to prevent paedophiles from gaining access to vulnerable youth? Yet there can be information stored on it that you are never allowed to see! This could be because someone had made an accusation about you that was thought important enough to record, even if no action was taken at the time. What is more, you might not even know about it being there. I would have a lot more confidence in this measure if it were not for the fact that I keep reading about paedophiles who have been active for years before they were caught. The latest had, The latest had, I believe I am right in saying, committed over 1200 offences.
Then there are knives. I always used to carry a sheath-knife when walking or camping. It was useful. However I would be committing an offence if I carried some I have owned today, because their blades were over 3½ inches long. I believe there are now moves afoot to make even pen-knives illegal. This is madness. If I intend to stab someone, I shall select a fine Sabatier kitchen-knife and do it with that. I don’t of course, intend to stab anyone but if I did that is what I might use.
Towards the end of this month, tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people whose current recreational activity is legal will become criminals if they continue to pursue it. No, not football hooligans or even animal so-called ‘rights’ activists. Fox hunters. The fact that foxes will now be gassed, snared and shot, in much greater numbers and arguably with greater cruelty than by a bite to the spine at the back of the neck by a large dog, is seemingly irrelevant.
The argument against ID cards has been mentioned before and may have to be mentioned again but meantime remember it used to be the criminals and not the innocent whose fingerprints were taken. But now we have the Big One. If you are suspected of something – anything really, that the government doesn’t like but cannot prove you did – you can be subjected to House Arrest! Or indeed, Cave Arrest! No telephoning or e-mailing either and as you cannot go to the library, you will assuredly die of boredom! Unless of course you have an infinite capacity for watching television programmes of immense inanity.
My point is simply this. We are supinely allowing this government to divest us layer by layer of our civil liberties and human rights. It not only has to be stopped, it must be stopped. We are becoming a police state by the back door, whatever the spinners may like to tell us.
Excuse me, I think I hear someone knocking….. yes, there it is again… it’s two gentlemen in black leather coats and a policeman! I’d better quickly send this off before I pull back the hanging at the front of the cave and let them in….
|
