Volunteering in Conversation Rant

This one is a bit personal. 

So I suppose we need to actually talk about me.


I'm not just unemployed. I have aspirations. I have plans. I even have dreams (see my rather unrealistic to do list...). And - as much as I may joke about the impossibility of it - the core of it is that I sat through genetics lectures in order to get enough credits to keep learning a bit more about conservation. Because I love wildlife, and I love nature, and would really like to conserve it.


Then we get to the part with my s***ty dissertation. It was poor topic, more than regulation hours of lab work, and far too small a sample for there to be more than a fractional chance that anything of interest would be found. This didn't put me off, until my statistics showed me that actually I'd found something quite useful, but that unhelpful voice reassured me that nothing would ever come of an undergraduate dissertation. So I had a low patch and effectively self-sabotaged, turned in an atrociously under-written dissertation and as a result missed a good grade by 1.2%.


The result of this is that - in order to progress any further in academia, I really have to have some practical experience (not to mention money). Apparently self-directed practical experience from 22 years analysing the differences between the degraded UK environment and the rapidly degrading central african environment doesn't count. The best thing to do, or so I'm told, is volunteer.

And here lies the point which I want to discuss.

The UK's version of conservation sucks. Yes, their protective laws are groundbreaking, and their capacity for enforcement of laws is brilliant, but they seem to have forgotten that nature exists. It doesn't help that a lot of conservation organisations - home and away - are actually run by hunters who want to conserve nature in such a way that makes it easier to shoot (bluntly), but environments are overmanaged.

It is a garden state and many "pro-conservation" people firmly believe that maintaining the patchwork of farmland is important because the countryside has to be in use. They also can't seem to grasp that a healthy ecosystem is self regulating and, by controlling any native organism, you are reducing the food of its natural predator and thereby causing yourself to need to keep controlling.

Heathlands - which are a species rich but transitional habitat - are over-maintained. Naturally it would appear when woodland burns, and disappear once soil recovered and a bad season limited grazer numbers enough for trees to recover. But grouse are easier to shoot on open ground, so charities maintain vast areas of open moorland and heathland because the landowners have had centuries to instill in us that trees will destory the habitat.

Broadleaf forest - which naturally covers more-or-less all of the dry land in the country and thus regulates rainfall - is all but gone. Where it's not gone, the forestry commision has "dangerous" trees removed - that is to say, old trees which are becoming hollow and thus perfect for woodpeckers, bats and countless beetles. Dead wood is gathered up, and all our decomposers are disappearing as a result - or moving on to live plants (slugs being a notable example of an animal that, in the absence of its primary food source, become a major pest).

Waterways have been straightened and cleared, and I have actually seen parks noting their good work in clearing trees along banks where they were outshading other vegetation. Because, you know, that won't reduce soil stability and increase runoff and stifle the life within the pond/lake at all. Straighter waterways are maintained because it "reduces flooding risk" - my arse. It creates a flood/drought cycle instead: water runs fast down hills, creating flash-floods on the flats which, not dampened by bends, can become dangerous. On a small island, it gets to the sea quite quickly, and heads off into the channel leaving us parched for the rest of the year.

Britain is also the only country I know of where the vast majority of nature reserves are actually in use as grazing land.

Because "that's what the ecosystem needs".

Many of our ecosystems, such as heathland and some areas of downland, do benefit from low-intensity grazing. You can tell low intensity grazing because the grass isn't clipped right down to the earth in such a way that one good day of rainfall washes everything away. High intensity grazing creates a disturbed habitat which is about as species-rich as astroturf, and only slightly more natural.

And everyone says "you should get involved".

As an entry level volunteer, you don't really have any opportunities to innovate, change and sent things in a less ridiculously counter-productive direction. As an entry level volunteer in UK conservation, the best you can hope for is that your contribution doesn't do much extra damage.


Okay, rant over. Point is, I'm going to volunteer at a charity shop instead until I can get paid work at a zoo because frankly, they encourage wildlife a shedload better than british nature reserves do.

Olympic Closing Ceremony review... from BBC HD coverage.

It sucked.

The sound technician should be beaten with sticks for completely failing to do anything remotely resembling his job. 

In no particular order, these bits were the bits that, on their own, would have got marks slightly more than 3/10.

1) Boris Johnson waving a large piece of flammable material close to an open flame and potentially sparking an international conflict: 8/10 (Boris just gets voted in as mayor so that we can rely on free standup at the end of any major event). 

2) Eric Idle and his completely random dancers: 6/10 - it made no sense, but it was colourful and I may have laughed a little.

3) The Spice Girls (I'm so ashamed) - 8/10. Much as I hate to put crappy celebrities up there with the Boris, they were - unusually - making less about themselves and just playing their (awful) music as though they had a good sense of humour. Infinitely more enjoyable than expected, but that might have been because all the stars that people wanted to see were... not there.

4) Jessie J and "Queen" with... I can't even remember. Because it was less of a let-down than realising that neither David Bowie nor Kate Bush would actually be present, but instead some wierd people would do something symbolic yet completely irrelevant while their music played. 5/10 
[(also entertaining because it ran at the same time as my discovery that: a) My sister did not know who John Lennon was; b) She thought he died recently; and c) she didn't know that Freddie Mercury was dead (and yet has every Queen song ever on her computer)]

5) The bit at the beginning where there was an interesting set which was on screen for what, three minutes? Meanwhile a reliant robin was exploded by an amusing but tired Italian Job quote and Stomp was being entertaining (but seemed as though they were lid-synching). 6/10



And now, because the thing that we Brits do best (apart from the rest of the olympics) is moan, these were the very worst bits of the ceremony...

1) Beady Eye being so awful that for a moment I thought they were actually a cheesy cover band of Oasis. 1/10 (mark for showing up at all)


2) The sound technician being so bad at his job that you couldn't even hear half the acts. (Annie Lennox, Emili Sandé and the Who all seemed to be singing without a real microphone. Kaiser Chiefs were also difficult to hear, not sure if that's a bad thing, though). 0/10 for mucking up so many other things that could have been at least half decent otherwise.

3) The moment when you realised that the tap-dancing sound wasn't actually coming from Renato Sorriso's feet, but canned on the speakers. 2/10 for having such great choreography but faking it (the rest of the Brazil stuff gets a 5 or a 6, I'm not sure)

4) Fatboy Slim DJing when the octopus was infinitely more interesting and, frankly, a bit of Mighty Boosh, David Bowie or perhaps Yoko Ono's severed head would have been a more appropriate centrepiece to it. 3/10 because at least the sound was working and the octopus had so very much potential. 

5) George Michael being on stage at the beginning and by his turning up assuring us that it could only get better when it didn't, really. 0/10 because he seemed to think that it was all about him and it never seemed to end...

6) The exploding tightrope dummy. Just.... made no sense... why??? 2 points for randomness, -1 for lack of closure = 1/10.


One good thing about the awful ceremony was that the dull Belgian man (Jacques Rogge) who seems to turn up at all these ceremonies and talk into amusingly shaped microphones for too long seemed interesting by comparison. 

And the final thing that I am very pleased with is that I said during the ceremony that it seemed an appropriate transition from the public-spirity goodness of the Olympics, focusing on all those people acheiving greatness through hard work, to the typical UK grimy, cheesy, unimpressive celebrity culture, underwhelming events and mind-numbing dullness. Today, quite a few reviewers seem to agree. Not least the awesome Lynne Truss.

I have considered the possibility that the off-the-mark feel of the closing ceremony was an intentional but tongue in cheek reference to public expectations for the olympics, but I doubt it. 




It isn't really worth lynching Kim Gavin over, and Yoko Ono's hugely irrelevant Lennonface (ungraded) is not worth decapitating her for (and the piece could have been hilarious if it was a massive Lennonface-palm instead). But after the sheer awesomeness of the rest of the Olympics, it felt like it had been rushed together with no real thought, and as though Mr Bean had been asked to handle the artistic direction and forgotten to hire a choreographer.

Why Smivel?

Smivel = Swivel and Smite.

It's a minimeme. The universal sign for "Swivel"/"Sit on this"/"Spin on it" (raised middle finger) is added to the universal sign for "Smite you"/"If I could, I would throw a lightning bolt at you" (raised thumb), and waved around a bit, effectively telling the recipient that they should sit on something painful AND be struck by lightning from any randomly selected deity at the same time.

And here it is, demonstrated by the Smite Canard:











The Smite Canard, also known as Smivel Canardson, recently gave his film debut in the animated short "That Merde Song", which can be found in three basic ways:

1) by clicking this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFgH_5bdlk4

2) by searching for "Capillosiccophobia" (fear of dry hair) in google.

3) by searching for "That Merde song" on YouTube.


Now go forth and smivel wisely.