Rabbits! We’ve grown used to hearing about problems with wolves, bears, wild boar and other such relatively large and fierce creatures causing havoc in and around farms, and even towns, in parts of Europe. But now it seems that vine growers in Catalonia are having trouble with rabbits.
Well, really they’re having trouble with continued drought but the rabbits are contributing to the problem. During the pandemic people weren’t going out hunting and so the rabbit population was not kept under control. As I understand it, Spain was a lot stricter than here about people having to stay indoors. Here in the UK you could probably have gone out and popped a few rabbits as part of your daily exercise. And rabbits, especially when left to themselves, breed like … well, like rabbits!
And because last summer was very hot and this winter very dry there is less grass around for rabbits to eat and so they are feasting on young vines. (Rabbits will gnaw through almost anything; we had one, a very tame one who roamed around the kitchen, who once chewed through the cable for the lights on the Christmas tree. How he wasn’t electrocuted goodness only knows.) As regards the drought, one vine grower commented that they’re learning to adapt their farming methods to suit the changing climate conditions: “We’ve noticed that if we leave ground cover around the vines they are better equipped to survive drought because the morning dew doesn’t just settle on the leaves but on the grass, too,” she says. That makes sense. We need to adapt.
There has been a fair amount of stuff recently about Manchester’s connections to slavery. There’s always been a lot of textile industry around here and so the region was dependent on cotton, grown and picked by slaves, coming here. Now it seems that the city and its two football clubs are coming under fire for having a three-masted ship in full sail, a positive galleon, on the city’s coat of arms and on the football clubs badges.
Some think the ship is there because of the Manchester ship canal, which has some logic behind it, but now it seems it’s more to do with the salve trade. Other places seem to have realised the possible connection earlier than we have around here: “Few English football clubs feature ships or boats on their badges. Those that do have an obvious explanation: Tranmere’s warship signifies the town’s shipbuilding heritage; fishing town Grimsby has a trawler; and Plymouth’s Mayflower commemorates the Pilgrims’ ship that set sail for the new world. The football clubs of port cities directly implicated in the slave trade – Bristol, London and Liverpool – steer clear of ships as motifs in their badges (although the Bristol Rovers flag features a pirate).”
And here’s an article I read today about people whose families made money out of the slave trade (when slavery was abolished such families received compensation to the tune of millions of pounds in today’s money!) feeling the need to put things right, often by donating money educational projects and pressuring the government to apologise and make amends. I wonder if they can persuade the king to join their association. Historical cleansing is taking place!
Meanwhile Diane Abbott seems to be the latest to fall foul of Labour’s cleansing policy. She’s had the whip suspended for expressing her views about racism and prejudice. She is someone who should know what she is talking about. And that difference between out and out racism and prejudice, both of them hurtful and dangerous, is the sort of thing that we should be able to discuss without the instigator being “punished” for even mentioning it.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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