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Wednesday 20th 23-26F, -5-3C, almost still, hoar frost. I was woken in the middle of the night by an "ear splitting" whistle in my left ear. The one which has been deaf for months despite having it rinsed of wax by the doctor. It never recovered normal hearing after that. Which suggests, to me, that the tinnitus is a response to boredom from a lack of audio stimulus. After taking smaller doses of painkillers my back does seem to be less painful. I couldn't get to the chemists to collect my prescription because I wasn't allowed to cycle. Getting in an out of the car was, and probably still is, agony. There is a ruckus in the Danish media over a political decision to force feed pig meat to school children. Being a "traditional" Danish food, though now heavily laced with antibiotics leading to multi-resistant bacteria, it is apparently considered healthy by the politic-ooze. Let's leave the morality of mass torture and frequent mistreatment of an intelligent animal aside. Not to mention driving the pigs for hundreds of miles to Germany to be slaughtered, just to save a penny or two. It is a strange signal to be giving impressionable kids. Particularly when their parents were made unemployed when all the Danish slaughterhouses were closed to increase the global meat distributor's bottom line.
Then there is the matter of abusing immigrants and agricultural students as cheap, underpaid labour, in the industrialized, pig prison camps. Plus the constant stench in the Danish countryside from the spreading of raw pig sewage directly on the land. Now add in the illegal clearance of virgin rain forests to grow the pig food on the other side of the world and then transport it all the way to Denmark. Many farmers are already bankrupt from the cost of imported pig feed and will never be able to pay off their debts. Leaving many small, Danish banks extremely vulnerable to indebtedness to farming in already difficult times.Let's not even get started on reducing the global CO2 burden which Denmark consistently fails to achieve. I know, let's force feed kids with "healthy" pig meat in school dinners to make everything right again! Interestingly [?] they might just have a case to answer in the Danish courts when the hundreds of thousands of new and existing, immigrant children refuse to eat the stuff on religious grounds. This could make the fuss over Halal slaughter look like a storm in a Danish beer can. As for myself, I'll be glad when I have something more contextual to talk about. An update: Children who may not eat pig meat for religious reasons are not given pig meat. So that's all right then. When in Rome. ;)
Did my usual walk up through the woods though at a more modest pace than usual. My hip was hurting on the descent so I have obviously overdone it again. A large, white bird of prey was sitting in a dark group of conifers and could be seen for miles. Just a short ride for 7 miles. I'm glad I didn't decide to go any further as I had to sit up on the tops to reduce the pain.
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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