14 April 2020 (Tuesday) - Easter's Over


As I scoffed my Sainsbury’s muesli I watched the first episode of “Tiger King: Murder Mayhem and Madness” on Netflix. You must have seen the memes about “Carol Baskin” all over the Internet?
As I watched it I remembered the politics of animal activism from my snake-keeping days…
When I kept snakes (about twenty years ago) I found it harder and harder to do so because the RSPCA was slowly but surely closing down all the local pet shops so I could not get any dead rats to feed the snakes. You might wonder why the RSPCA would be against pet shops… I won’t say that they were barking mad, but when we moved to Folkestone in 1984 our landlord’s partner was one of the hippy-trippy happy-clappy left-wing extreme-animal-rights crackpots who were rife back then. She would spout all sorts of frankly ridiculous nonsense and seriously believe that because she had said something was enough to make it a self-evident truth. She and a gang of like-minded loonies were involved in all sorts of extreme animal rights groups, and at the time she told me that her groups would never be respected like the RSPCA, so they would infiltrate it and use its good name.
And that is what happened. The extremists took over the RSPCA and other similar mainstream animal welfare organisations. An example of my own experience was that at the turn of the century the National Canine Defence League would have collecting tins in a tattoo studio, but would refuse to allow one in a pet shop.
In the early 2000s the RSPCA had a policy of trying to close down every pet shop that sold animals. To them, a pet shop (subject to all sorts of legal controls) was a bad thing, but an unlicensed individual breeding and selling animals (doing their own thing with no control whatsoever) was perfectly acceptable to them. Go figure!
I’m looking forward to seeing the next episodes of this show.

I sparked up my lap-top and told the world about today’s album choice. My eighth album is the soundtrack to the 1980s movie “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” by the Sex Pistols. It has to be said that the Sex Pistol weren’t very good. In fact they were rather crap. But much of the album was by produced by others, most notably Tenpole Tudor and Malcom McLaren. And it evokes a different era… when I used to be someone else.

I walked up to Torrington Road to find my car only to realise I'd actually walked past it. I'd left in in Whitfeld Road which runs parallel. I seem to be making hard work of finding where I've been leaving my car lately. I wonder what that's all about?
As I drove to work the pundits on the radio were talking about coronageddon (as if they talk about anything else at all right now). Today they were broadcasting a recent interview with Donald Trump which was rather embarrassing. Far from wanting to talk about the global pandemic, the chap wanted to dribble on about what a great fellow he is, and how mean the media are for daring to insinuate that he's anything less than utter perfection. In many ways he reminds me of the more simple-minded eight-year-olds who we used to have in the cub scouts. Utterly oblivious to the world around them, they would be totally self- obsessed in worlds of their own devising.
You have to ask how this chap every got into a position of power.

There was also talk of how the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham went from an exhibition centre to a hospital in only nine days.
It is particularly impressive when you consider how long the NHS traditionally takes to do things. I can remember back in the day when I was a manager I was deliberately slowed down. When building a new department (which took about eighteen months longer than it needed to do), the last thing the management wanted was to actually have the new department. Once it was built there would be no need for endless meetings.
This pandemic has certainly lit a fire under some people...

I got to work and made a start on the early shift.  As early shifts go, it wasn't bad. Half-way through the day the hospital's top boss came round dishing out free Easter eggs to all and sundry. I certainly had one!!

An early start made for an early finish. I came home, and "er indoors TM" and I took the dogs out to the park and back home via the Memorial Gardens. Apart from nearly tripping "er indoors TM" flat on her face the walk went better than most.

I wonder what’s for dinner?

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