Thursday 20 October 2011

Moles and holes

I have new front doors and needed to make a ventilation hole in the wood so I can light my stove safely. I used an old-fashioned hand-drill to make lots of holes so it looks like it was done with a machine-gun! You can see the one area I was able to reach with the coping saw. It was wobbly and hard work but also fun and satisfying to get it done. Once the section was taken out, I put a proper brass ventilation grill over both sides so you'd never guess the incompetent job underneath - unless you blog about it of course!


My second job of the day was to plant up some kale and cabbage plants but I needed soil for the planters and all is stony on this stretch of towpath. But overhearing some walkers talking about the 'eyesore' molehills on the playing field, I headed over there with my wheelbarrow and found the best soil for planters. It's topsoil, all finely sifted through mole claws! I hope gardeners will recognise how useful moles can be and stop treating them like pests.

Tasers

So, two protestors were tasered at close quarters at Dale Farm. Police fired from the other side of a fence so were not in fear of their lives, the only justification for using these guns. I knew there had been some deaths in relation to tasers but hadn't realised how lethal they are. Since 2001, there have been 507 deaths in the U.S, while in the U.K, there were 3 deaths within 8 days in August this year. Usingpotentially lethal tasers to simply facilitate an eviction looks like police state tactics to me.