Garden in Need of TLC

I hope you've all had a good week. Work is busy as always   and plenty happening to interest the brain. On a night time my interests have kept me busy with a psychic circle on Tuesday which I ran on behalf of my tutor who was visiting relatives and had a lovely annual dinner on Thursday for the East Riding County FA of which I am one of their directors (of marketing and communication.)

Now my poor garden has been in disarray all week. The longest fence which abuts the road was just about knackered.   It consisted of wooden panelling, most of which has been there at least 20 years and although I've replaced a couple of panels, the wooden posts were becoming rotten and it was only the extensive ivy that was keeping it up. We employed a local man and his two worker to rip the old out and replace the new with concrete posts and tanalised wooden planks. They worked very hard indeed all week in very cold conditions.

The new fence has a ten year guarantee and next spring, I'll be able to paint it with wood preservative before I pick plants to trail along it. Perhaps some roses, clematis and other climbers - any suggestions (no ivy allowed)?

Now this isn't particularly a subject for a light hearted ordinary man's blog but I have been witnessing, along with the rest of the world, an endless showing of the bloody body of Muammar Gaddafi being towed around Libya. Now between you and I, I have had the dubious role of having seen and witnessed some of the most unpleasant things mankind could imagine over the last 36 years in my former life in public service. Most people wouldn't see it once in a lifetime.

However there is need for debate over the graphic and gratuitous showing of these distressing images. For example, my son was at work eating his lunch when the images were broadcast at lunchtime. He found them distressing and highly unpleasant. He's 24. How many children and other sensitive vulnerable people will have witnessed these images which, in truth, could have been shown (if it were necessary) with great discretion and only very late at night to an adult audience. 

The ordinary Joe doesn't need to see graphic photo of a mutilated and bloody body to a) prove Gaddafi is dead - because the Libyan NTC have said so b) to understand the message that dictators will end up summarily executed as he clearly was and c)  to underpin the joy of most (but not all) Libyans at the news.

I'm just pleased they can start to rebuild and hope that tribal differences don't get in the way of what will be a difficult few years for Libya.

Times move on - I know. But we, the public, have always relied on the media to be self censors. In my former life as a press officer, I was never worried about the media taking photographs of bodies being recovered or scenes of carnage or road accidents where there were still people trapped or the like because I had faith that no news editor of any pedigree would ever show them to the public - they never did on my watch. It's insensitive, undignified and unnecessary and the public would rail against it. It satisfies of course morbid curiosity and a minority who revel in seeing such images, but they are the tiny minority in truth.

I had written a little more on the subject but I've deleted it because it is too deep politically and this is not the forum. Suffice to say that the west should now be happy that as Libya produces 2% of all the worlds oil output, the capacity is rising now to a quarter of former production levels and the oil industry infrastructure there is barely damaged by the troubles.

Plenty on this weekend - shopping, lunch with an old friend and garden restoration and winter preparation for the rest of it. Enjoy yours whatever you are doing.

Chat soon

Ta-ra