Friday 21 October 2011

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

10 comments:

  1. Interesting, the Times prefaced its picture of the body by saying something along the lines of 'we don't usually print images of this kind but think it is important in this instance' - although why they thought it important they didn't say.
    I can't say I can whip up sympathy for the way he was treated when almost every family in Libya has lost someone to his cruelty over the years - but I do agree that we didn't need to see it all - it was just gratuitous.

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  2. not seen any pictures and don't want to.

    plants - honeysuckle, or maybe russian vine aka 'mile a minute' ;-)

    weekend - visiting my son, some sewing and a lazy sunday.

    Josie x

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  3. I'm with you. I understand the need to get rid of these ruthless dictators, but I certainly don't think we need to revel in the brutality of it. I also understand those who have suffered from his brutality and their joy at his demise, but there is something dehumanizing and demeaning about getting down to the level of animals even it is treating him like he treated them. Revenge in that form is a destructive emotion. Judgement is a whole different story.

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  4. Two years ago we disconnected from regualr TV and now only watch DVD's we choose. We hear the news on the radio but only if we want to. We can visualize what we want on the internet but rarely do look at news items, getting it instead from the "blind" radio.

    Its a decision we have never regretted in these two years

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  5. Hello,

    This garden is so beautiful ...

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  6. Hi Weaver
    Thanks for the comment, I think most people would wholly agree with you.
    XX

    Hi Josie
    Good plan and I don't blame you. Thanks for the suggestions - I forgot huneysuckle, one of my favourite plants
    XX

    Hi ChrisJ
    Some good points, thanks for the comment.
    XX

    Hi Donna
    We have a couple of friends, well into their seventies who have never had a television other than a screen for videos (and now DVDs)in latter years. We have a television licence system here to pay for public broadcasting and the authorities don't like people not having a licence even if they don't use a television set for watching TV.
    XX

    Hi Euromillions
    Thanks

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  7. I know. Commenter-come-lately.

    Since I'm a news freak, it upset my ladies. BBC censored it. Sky didn't.

    In fact, Sky went further in the earlier hours of the morning showing his remains being available to their locals in a so called 'morgue'. How can you preserve remains with people queuing to look at him?

    Worse, he's going to be autopsied.

    Under Islamic tradition he should be buried within 24 hrs.

    I think whatever he believed he was, whatever the circumstances, his body, should have been respected.

    Some things aren't right. Please forgive me me, but I don't care how big a bugger this bloke was. I saw an older man abused and assassinated.

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  9. Hi Wheelie
    I wouldn't disagree with anything you said at all. Human kind is the strangest of all earths beasts.
    X

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