COPD Feedback Needed…

For those of you coming to this blog for COPD information - and I know there are a lot of you - I’d appreciate a little feedback, please.

A couple of months ago my CFC-containing Beclometasone (a.k.a Becloforte), inhaler was replaced with the CFC-free Clenil Modulite. This contains the same drug, so my response to it should be the same, but it’s not.

The first problem is that it’s horribly sweet, for some reason (and that seems worse when using a spacer), but for me the bigger - and unacceptable - problem is a dramatic increase in sputum production, to the extent that, first thing in the morning, I feel as if I’m drowning. Other possible causes, like infection, have been ruled out/eliminated, as have environmental factors.

This may be due to the natural progression of my COPD (there is no cure for COPD - it only runs one way). I’ve NEVER smoked, so that’s not a factor.

I’m inclined to the view that Clenil Modulite is the culprit, and that’s where you come in - I’d like to hear from anyone with a similar experience of this delivery system, or any other problems arising from its use. Thanks. You can post a comment or email me at ron@ronsrealm.me.uk

Olympic Hubris?

While it’s gratifying to see Team GB securing a record bag of golds at the Olympics, and standing third in the gold medal rankings, the British media do seem to be guilty of overweening hubris, especially with almost a week still to go.

The media are jubilant that we have more golds (2 more as I write this), than Australia while, on the other side of the world, the Australian press is almost universally furious, with the Sydney Herald lapsing into the banal and childish abuse that, down under, passes for intellectual commentary - about as sophisticated as a meat pie floater…

The problem is, of course, that the Aussies have every prospect of overhauling us, as there are several sports, for the finals of which we failed to qualify. In addition, we didn’t send any basketball, softball, water polo or table tennis players to Beijing - Australia did.

So yes, we actually can be justifiably proud of our achievements, but crowing, so soon, about beating Australia is also childish, and extremely premature. I have no doubt that we’ll come to rue it.

By the way, what’s with this Team GB crap, which excludes Northern Ireland? Why not the more inclusive Team UK?

New virus attack?

The following bizarre email clunked into my Inbox this morning:-

Good afternoon,

Thank you for using our new service “Buy flight ticket Online” on our website.

Your account has been created:

Your login: ron@ronsrealm.me.uk

Your password: passXUQ1

Your credit card has been charged for $612.53.

We would like to remind you that whenever you order tickets on our website you get a discount of 10%!

Attached to this message is the purchase Invoice and the airplane ticket.

To use your ticket, simply print it on a color printed, and you are set to take off for the journey!

Kind regards,

Hawaiian Airlines

m

Clearly this isn’t a conventional phishing scam, as there’s no request for me to confirm my details - there’s not even a link to a spurious website - so I’m assuming that the email may have contained a virus (it wasn’t opened, but consigned to oblivion), even though my a-v app didn’t flag it.

The email originated in Australia (not at Hawaiian Airlines, needless to say), other than that I’m baffled. I’ve searched Google, but there’s no info regarding a virus linked to HA. I’ve looked at their website and there’s no indication there either. What I haven’t done is logged in using the above password - well, there’s no point in tempting providence! (Would the password trigger a virus? I can’t see how.)

I’m not worried about it being a fraudulent transaction, as my card’s allready maxed out and it would have bounced.

No phishing, no virus, no card fraud, so what’s the point? Whatever’s this is about, it’s clearly not legitimate as, to the best of my knowledge you simply can’t print out your own airline tickets and head off into the wide blue yonder - the capacity for fraud would be huge. It appears to be totally harmless but, nevertheless I recommend doing what I did and binning it unopened.

Ghoulies, ghosties and gullibility…

I’d like, if I may, to offer you three examples of how humans can believe pretty much anything if they really put their minds to it. Hell, just look how many of them believe an invisible being runs the universe!

What I’d like you to do is look at the images on this page http://www.ghoststudy.com/para/pages/111.htm then come back here as, unfortunately, copyright constraints prevent me posting the pictures here.

Ignore the first pic - we’re not concerned with that one (It’s admittedly - and obviously - a joke). I recommend that you download the other pics and view them in Windows Picture and Fax viewer so you can zoom in - that’s not breech of copyright in any meaningful way, as long as you don’t make use of them, as in publishing them online yourself.

OK, then, let’s look at the first image. In the top window of the house, in the close up, you may see what you expected to see, having been primed by being told the house is haunted - a vaguely demonic, green, figure - face, left arm and left hip in view. Why do you think it’s a green figure? Go back to the long shot and look at how tightly the house is surrounded by trees, and how they reflect in the other windows, and ask yourself if what you’re seeing isn’t simply a reflection of leafy branches, and nothing more except, maybe, some flaws in the window glass, or bird crap. Have any of you been walking alone in the woods, and been startled to see a sinister figure watching you through the trees, only to blink and have it resolve into its component twigs, branches and leaves? That’s what we have here - nothing more.

On to the next image. Look closely at the man claimed to have horns. He’s sweaty, very sweaty, and balding. Look, too, at the angle of the sun, shining from his right, the right “horn” being brighter than the left. Look at his remaining hair - it’s wavy and grey. What we’re seeing is a sweaty, balding guy, with the sun brightening two greasy, glossy waves of probably white hair above his temples. That’s all. Or maybe, as it’s Louisiana, possibly a festival of some kind is in progress, maybe even Mardi Gras (check out the beer), so  maybe he really does have horns - fake ones! As for steam issuing from the “circle thing on the ground” (a manhole cover, not a “pot hole”) - what does the poster of this pic think she’s seeing, the entrance to Hell? Give me a break! In US cities, drains often carry steam lines (not to mention power and telephone lines, and all manner of stuff you might not normally expect here in the UK), so manhole covers emitting steam are not exactly unusual. An American would surely know this, so presumably the poster of the photo is a European. Or just not paying attention.

Finally, we come to the chupacabra, the mythical goat-sucker vampire-beast of Central America. As images of the chupacabra go, this one is quite restrained (check Google), but the guy who submitted it thinks it may be genuine because he can’t see any evidence that it’s a fake - the sort of artefacts you’d get if the image had been digitally altered, for example, are absent. Good point, you can’t. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t digitally altered, though, then printed, and then scanned at a very low resolution (as you can see, it’s a really lo-res pic), which would have the effect of hiding the artefacts, especially if the faker was skilled in Photoshop/PSP. To me, however, it looks as if it may well be a drawing or painting, or a combination, drawn/painted directly onto a photo of tree branches and background foliage. What it sure as hell isn’t is a chupacabra, the proof of existence for which is zero. It doesn’t stop many thousands of people across the Americas believing in it it, though, which takes me back to my original point.

Based on personal experience, I do have some belief in the paranormal (except for the invisible guy running things; I mean, come on, there are limits!), but as evidence of paranormal activity, these pictures are, sadly, proof of nothing more than wilful self-delusion or fakery.

More photography stuff…

As I have observed here before, some digital photographers are ever a disappointment to me, being remarkably inept. The exceptions seem to be those who, like me, grew up with film, and came to digital photography because it’s ultimately cheaper and more convenient than film. Why? Because we actually know how to take photographs (that is, the mechanics of the process, not just the aesthetics).

The mechanics are very much Terra Incognita to the digital generation, who think that holding a camera at arm’s length is a sensible way to take a photograph, and that a camera should, mysteriously, know how to take a photograph. Things like depth of field, differential focusing, pressing the shutter release, not stabbing at it, and holding the camera in such a way that it’s kept still (or tweaking the shutter speed/ISO setting to compensate), are a total mystery (and I mean digital SLRs here - most of these features aren’t usually available on compacts). Why people don’t learn the basics - they can read, presumably - before spending hundreds of pounds, sometimes thousands, on a D-SLR outfit is quite beyond me. It’s the equivalent of buying a Honda Fireblade when you can’t even ride a push-bike.

One thing that irritates me, more than it really should, probably, is the increasing use of in-camera image stabilisation. Why? Have we bred a generation of people who don’t know how to hold a camera properly? It appears so, because photography has got through its almost 200-year history without it (yes, I know, it’s progress, but is it essential?).

There are, as far as I can see, two main problems. Firstly, holding the bloody thing out at arm’s length (inexcusable with anything other than the most basic compact), instead of using the viewfinder. That’s stupid. You use the viewfinder, with the camera supported by the left hand under the body/lens, while the other operates the shutter (in the past the left hand operated the aperture ring, focus ring and zoom - these days the most it has to contend with is zooming), with the elbows braced against the body, and your feet a shoulder-width apart, the left somewhat forward of the right (or vice-versa if that’s more comfortable). That will give you a rock-steady stance in all but the most extreme conditions.

I have two digital cameras, a Fuji S602 zoom bridge camera (a bridge camera is D-SLR-shaped, and about the same size, but with a wide-range zoom instead of interchangeable lenses), and an Olympus E-500 D-SLR. The former has an LCD screen, which I would never dream of using as a viewfinder without a tripod, plus an electronic viewfinder, which I do use, and the latter doesn’t use it’s LCD screen for that purpose anyway, only for reviewing what you’ve taken, and if it did I wouldn’t use it as it has an excellent optical viewfinder, like a 35mm SLR (some reviews have criticised the finder, to the extent that Olympus where pretty much pushed into producing a supplementary lens for it; personally, I find it fine as it is).

The other problem is the size of the zoom lenses for D-SLRs. Realistically, you can’t hope to hand-hold anything over 210mm focal length, yet people routinely try to hand-hold lenses up to 500-600mm, and that’s just plain dumb. They also forget that the marked focal length isn’t the actual focal length, in 35mm terms. I have a 55-200mm zoom lens, and in theory, that’s perfectly fine hand-held - but it’s not, as in real-world, 35mm terms it’s really a 110-400mm lens, and optically it performs like one, and holding it steady at 400mm is a bitch.

Your subject is, say, half a mile away, and you’re trying to photograph it, hand held, at 400mm (or even 600mm), and you can’t get a steady image, so consider this. Think of it as looking down a conveniently weightless, half-mile long broom tube - could you hold that steady? No, of course not, yet that’s exactly what you’re trying to do. You need a tripod, or at least a monopod (or a bean-bag and a convenient rock). Or zoom out to, say, 250mm and crop the resulting image; use RAW mode to avoid the loss of resolution inevitable with the Jpeg format, until the pic is as you want it, then it’s Jpeg time, at maximum resolution).

I often take bird photos at 400mm, but they’re maybe 50 yards away. A shorter “tube”, which is more like a cone at this focal length (you’re at the narrow end), but still hard to hold perfectly steady (the more so as I have an intention tremor), so I increase the ISO to 350, use aperture-priority mode to give me decent depth of field at, say, f8, and let the camera select a fast shutter speed to compensate for the inevitable, if tiny, camera movements. Result, sharp photos without needing any form of image stabilisation. NB - trying this in Auto mode won’t work; learn to use your camera’s controls.

The best way to do this is to buy an old 35mm photo guide (the main thing that’s changed is that a sensor now sits where the film used to be). The essential camera controls, aperture, shutter speed and focus - the ones that you need to learn both individually and as they interact with each other - haven’t changed since the beginning. OK, some digital cameras don’t actually have a shutter, as such, but they behave as if they do, and that’s what matters.

Finally, someone submitted a post to the online photography group I subscribe to, entitled “Hummers”. I can’t begin to tell you what a disappointment is was to find out it was about humming birds…

Here we go again…

Born at the end of WWII, I grew up during the Cold War, when for an entire generation, the very real threat of being nuked was ever-present. That’s not to say that most people were constantly pre-occupied with that possibility - that way lies paranoia - but, as with my peers, it was always at the back of my mind, no more so than during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, when JFK faced down the Russians who were beavering away building and supplying missile bases in Cuba (for those of you too young to have been there, Wikipedia has a decent, if boring, entry on the subject, and this one is rather more readable).

For those of us who were there - I was 18 at the time - the vague fears of the Cold War suddenly took on a terrifying reality. In October 1962, the world was closer to nuclear conflagration than at any time before or since, and only the fact that the fears of MAD prevailed, ensured that the world was not plunged into a nuclear holocaust from which it may never have recovered.

MAD, by the way, meant Mutually Assured Destruction. The principal was simple - if Russia carried out even a single nuclear missile strike against the US or its allies, the US/allies would respond with devastating nuclear force to annihilate Russia. Russia, then, detecting the missile launches, would respond in kind. Result - almost everybody dies and the world is plunged into nuclear winter (there were enough nukes in the world at that time to destroy everybody several times over - there probably still is). MAD indeed, but in this instance common sense eventually prevailed, and Russia backed down, picked up its lethal toys, and went home. It wasn’t as one-sided a victory as it appears, as the US agreed to a no invasion agreement (of Cuba), and to a secret removal of the Jupiter and Thor missiles based in Turkey. Doubtless, though, that affair still rankles in the Kremlin.

Trust me, anyone who says “If you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there!”, is talking complete bollocks - the events of those two weeks in ‘62 are branded indelibly on the memories of everyone. If you really don’t remember, you must have been stoned beyond all hope of redemption!

Imagine my dismay today, then, after a week of Russian aggression in the Caucuses, not to mention Russian lies and denials of what everyone with a TV or an Internet connection knows the truth of - pretty much all-out war against Georgia - when I saw today’s headlines “Moscow warns it could strike Poland over US missile shield.”

In response to Poland’s signing of a treaty with the US to host 10 interceptor rockets said to be intended to destroy any eventual ballistic missile attacks from Iran, in return for which Poland is to receive a battery of US Patriot missiles for its air defences and has won a mutual security pact with Washington.

In response, Russian Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn has warned that “By deploying, Poland is exposing itself to a strike - 100%.” He also pointed out that Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.” This is rhetoric (if, indeed, that’s all it is), worthy of Russia’s most rabid Cold War military psychopaths (with which it seemed liberally supplied), who would break into a deranged anti-US rant if a soldier on sentry duty in Berlin so much as broke wind. The problem is, though, as Russia grows increasingly paranoid, aggressive and seemingly expansionist, I doubt it can be dismissed as mere rhetoric.

Russia’s puppet president, Medvedev (how can he talk out of his arse with Putin’s arm up it?), said claims that the shield was aimed at Iran were “fairy tales”. He went of to say, probably only pausing to wipe the froth from his lips, that “This clearly demonstrates that the deployment of new anti-missile forces in Europe has as its aim the Russian Federation. The moment has been well chosen.”

Suppose, though, that the symbiotic Medvedev/Putin beast is right - and I suspect they are - how can they be surprised? Iran quite clearly is a potential nuclear threat, but Russia represents a clear and present danger to Western peace and security, and the West can’t sit idly by indefinitely (though it’s doing a pretty good job so far, what with Angela Merkel’s pathetic rebuke of Russia, “Some of Russia’s actions were not proportionate”. Yep, that’ll have them quaking in their boots alright - what’s next on her agenda, a blow-job for MedvePutin?

And, please, don’t draw any comparisons between Cuba and Poland - Cuba is a mere 90 miles away from the US, between Russia and Poland are Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia. They are not immediate neighbours as the US and Cuba are. Note - Senior officers also announced that it was likely that Russia could deploy Iskander short-range missiles in Belarus, a claim that has not been denied by the Kremlin.

Russia has also bitched and whined about being “squeezed” by Europe/NATO. Since Russia occupies over 30% of the European land mass, it’s beyond me how a country that size could be squeezed in any meaningful way. Paranoia? Possibly. Laying the groundwork to justify its expansionism (Lebensraum, anybody?)? Probably.

I had thought, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent fragmentation of the fringes of the old USSR (a.k.a. Russia), that tensions would end between East and West and, indeed, they did ease for a while. Now, though, given Russia’s current expansionist tendencies, demonstrated so clearly in Georgia (which they appear to be getting away with), it may well turn its attention to repossessing its former dominions, especially Ukraine, which would give it a land corridor into the heart of Europe (as Hungary discovered, to its cost, in 1956). And as Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, Russia could invade with relative impunity. And yet, demonstrating all the cynicism and hypocrisy that has been a feature of Russian politics since the Revolution, Russia claims to be mortified by the proposed siting of anti-missile missiles in Poland. Of course, they choose to overlook the fact that the missile shield is primarily defensive, in an attempt to seize the initiative and intimidate Poland (yes, yes, I know, any missile can be used offensively - give me a break!), yet they cannot legitimately claim to be threatened unless they actually have designs on Poland, as in the past.

In the Nineties, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty set targets to eliminate heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS) and all other multiple-warhead ICBMS. It also aimed to reduce the total number of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by both countries (the US and USSR), by two-thirds below pre-START (i.e., pre 1991), levels.

We can be pretty sure the US complied with the terms of START, and pretty publicly, but did the Russians, I wonder? Let’s face it, it’s a huge county now, but it was even larger then, with ample wilderness space to squirrel away thousands of ICBMs and shorter-range nukes, safe from the gaze of spy satellites.

If Russia’s apparent expansionist tendencies escalate, then the West will, sooner or later, be forced to respond militarily, and Bush won’t hesitate to jump in with both feet, if he’s still in office, dragging the UK into the mess. Even if he’s gone by then, McCain is just as bad, and Obama is an idiot who, not too long ago, advocated the bombing of Pakistan (before someone took him off to one side and explained that they were on the same side!). If Russia’s rhetoric turns out not to be, and they really are prepared to deploy nuclear missiles as a first choice, then the next 6 months or so could very well make Cuba look like a church garden party by comparison, and I sincerely doubt that the outcome will be as favourable. . .

NB. I’ve used “Russia” throughout, rather than the more correct USSR in the earlier paragraphs, for consistency and because youngsters, today, may not have heard of the USSR - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Spam scam…

Today’s batch of Spam contained a novelty - a request to verify my email address, in return for which I’d get 4 annual passes to Alton Towers. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t imagine a “reward” more purgatorial than passes to Alton Towers, this is clearly a scam.

You should NEVER respond to a request like this (why would they need you to confirm your email address, when they clearly know it?), as all replying to it will get you is far more Spam. If you reply, it’ll confirm your address as valid, and you’ll be deluged with even more useless crap.

For the same reason, you should never bounce Spam either. Apart from being dumb, and adding to the burden of garbage already clogging the Internet, bouncing also confirms that your address is valid, with the same result.

And it goes without saying - or, at least, it should - that you NEVER open Spam, not unless it’s the edible variety…

If you’re plagued by Spam, invest in Spam filtering software. I’ve used Mailwasher for years, it’s simple, effective and and affordable (it used to be free, but no longer), Get it here.

There are free Spam filters available, but not having used them, I can’t vouch for their efficacy, or whether they are free of ad-or-spyware.

Veggie update…

On June 27 I mentioned my return to vegetarianism, mainly on economic grounds. So far, this has worked out well, even though it’s been complicated by the fact that I have no appetite and I’m dieting to lose weight.

The first few weeks have been fairly expensive, as I find a veggie diet needs a more comprehensively-stocked store cupboard than a meat-based one. Today, however, I achieved my aim of reducing my food bill to a sensible level - a whisker over £8 which, apart from some fresh veg, will see me through the week.

There are some other bonuses from my whole-food veggie diet, in that I have far more energy, less stomach trouble and, on the whole, I’m sleeping better. Yes, I know this style of vegetarianism has fallen from favour in recent years, but I like it and it seems to suit me and, unlike the lighter and more modern veggie diets, getting adequate protein is very easy, without over-reliance on cheese or eggs. To see what I mean, compare the Cranks style of vegetarianism (remorselessly whole-food based), with that of, say, Yotam Ottolenghi, whose leafy, lightweight, recipes can have an absurd number of ingredients and still come up lacking in essential nutrients, like protein (or even, in my case, fail to be anything I’d actually like to eat!). I’m intrigued - Ottolenghi writes a vegetarian column for The Guardian, and I’ve just had a look at his restaurant page, assuming the place would be a hotbed of modern vegetarian cooking. It’s nothing of the sort - the place is as omnivorous/carnivorous as any other, which strikes me as very odd.

{Update: There’s also a hugely beneficial side-effect. Quite a few of my drugs cause constipation (mainly my anti-inflammatories and analgesics), which has been a big problem for years, and prevents me from getting as much pain relief as I need. It’s also one reason I drink as much beer as I do (it helps). However, my whole-food veggie diet is high in fibre, which has had a dramatically beneficial effect on my constipation and this, alone, makes it all worthwhile.}

When I feel up to it - I’m often not able to cook - I’d planned to make red onion and mushroom burgers (Tesco allegedly sell these, but they’re always out of stock), but I’ve decided to make these in the form of “rock cakes”, and bake them instead. To the red onions and chestnut mushrooms I’ll add chopped nuts, cooked brown Basmati rice and a rather nice extra-mature Cheddar - just a touch, I don’t want the result to be essentially cheese-and-onion - and spiked with garlic, a little Cayenne pepper, and a good dollop of Small-chunks Branston Pickle (tastes way better than it sounds - trust me!), the whole bound with oatmeal, cooked with a little water, stirring well, until sticky, and a rare-breed egg. Looks pretty damn’ good to me, and has the advantage that it can be put together over two days, maybe even three, should it be necessary.

And tonight, for rather more instant gratification I’m going to bake some beer-mat sized Portobello mushrooms (which are just  large chestnut mushrooms), with butter, garlic, pesto, plenty of the above cheese and a little olive oil infused with Cayenne. I’ll serve them on discs of wholemeal toast, so that none of the buttery juices escape. Cayenne, by the way, is lethally hot, and and mixing just a little with oil makes it easier to add a small amount just where you want it (if you don’t like olive oil, you can beat a little into some softened butter - it’ll keep well in the fridge.

Next week I’m making a mixed bean stew, loaded with fried peppers, red onions, garlic and extra-virgin olive oil - basic, but easy and tasty…

What a con…

Browsing the booze section of a supermarket website, I noticed an information box to the bottom left of the screen, listing alcoholic products that are:-

Organic, Suitable for vegetarians, Nut free, Egg free, Milk free, Soya free, Suitable for coeliacs, Suitable for vegans.

By a remarkable coincidence, if you click them they all link to the supermarket’s own-brand booze and this is, by any measure, dishonest marketing. After all, very few drinks contain egg, or milk products, and how many drinks do you know that contain nuts or soya, or are unsuitable for coeliacs? OK, vegans can have a hard time finding suitable booze, as can some veggies (as a veggie, I’m not at all fussy - any animal products involved in the production of alcoholic beverages are long gone by the time they’re bottled), but the reason I say this is dishonest is that, by implication, ALL the booze NOT listed here DOES contain these products, or is unsuitable for vegans,veggies and coeliacs - over 700 products from dozens of producers. What other interpretation could there possibly be?

I’m not able to name the offending supermarket chain, as this may put me in breach of WordPress’s T&C. It shouldn’t, as every word here is true, but if I am considered to be in breach of their T&C they’ll remove my entire blog, not just the allegedly offending page, without notice or appeal, and I can’t risk that.

Honey crunch…

One in three British honey bee hives did not survive the winter and spring this year, and honey bees are the principal pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops and, of course, they produce honey.

While it’s true to say that this will not be a major disaster this year, it’s certainly a disaster in waiting, yet no-one appears to be overly bothered, except bee-keepers and honey producers.

The earliest casualty of bee deaths is likely to be the honey industry and, while this is damaging to the economy, and catastrophic to those directly involved in honey production, the knock-on effect will be minimal - no-one actually needs honey. And as a bonus, it will trash the production of fake remedies for almost everything that are based on bee by-products, like royal jelly - great for baby bees, does bugger-all for humans. I mean, the bloody stuff is even in shampoo - what the hell’s that about?

However, if this years losses are repeated (and bee losses on a similar scale are happening in the US and Europe, due to a condition called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has not yet been officially confirmed here, though it seems pretty damned obvious it’s arrived), then we really will be in trouble. OK, we won’t starve without fruit (but remember, tomatoes are fruit, and they get everywhere), but the world would be a much bleaker place, and many vital vegetables are dependent on pollination by insects, primarily honey bees. Legumes, for example - peas and beans of all kinds are insect-pollinated. I’m not sure if the stupendously huge, world-wide, crop of soya beans is bee-dependent, but if so, and this bee problem spreads to the soya-growing areas, we’re in trouble, but I suspect GM soya may be self-pollinating, given the size of the world crop. And don’t forget - a lot of bee-dependent crops go for animal feed, too.

Of course, some plants are self-pollinating, but they need the right conditions of humidity and almost still air for this to work properly (ask any gardener who grows tomatoes in a greenhouse). Presumably, though, the GM giants, like Monsanto, could come up with self-pollinating hybrids of food plants, if they can get past their current obsession is with the monoculture of Monsanto GM crops tailor-made to interact only with Monsanto chemicals, and which don’t set seed (or, where the seed is the crop, they’re sterile), so the farmers have to buy seed every season, instead of saving part of the crop as is traditional, but surely it’s possible?

Given the potential for global disaster if this bee problem spreads world-wide, you’d think governments would be throwing hige amounts of money at the problem, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. The UK government, in the form of DEFRA (Dept. of Food and Rural Affairs), is spending a mere £200,000 this year on bee-related research, with a further £90,000 for dedicated research into bee colony losses. Pretty inadequate, of course, and if this parsimony is reflected across Europe and the US, a cause, never mind a solution, may never be found. All governments need to put far more money and resources into seeking a resolution to this problem before it gets out of hand, because if they don’t, we’re all screwed - we simply can’t, as things stand, get by without bees.

Farming minister, Lord Rooker, has forecast the demise of the honeybee within a decade. Last November, he told parliament: “We do not deny that honeybee health is at risk. Frankly, if nothing is done about it, the honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years.” Why is it, then, almost a year on, what we actually are doing is tantamount to bugger all? Hell, the clowns at DEFRA can’t even acknowledge that CCD is with us and is thriving.

According to DEFRA, “Significant public funds are already provided to support this area of work but to ensure this intervention is effective, it it vital that work is driven by a well thought out strategy agreed by all relevant parties.” Just one tiny snag there - what strategy?