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Thursday 21st 54F, 12C, heavy overcast, calm, with light showers possible.
Fyn [the central island of Denmark's three land masses] has been voted the best cycling area in Denmark. Ironically the article showed the picturesque, winding causeway to a local peninsula which is routinely used as a racetrack by drivers in both directions. Riding bicycles two abreast, as shown in the article's illustration, would be completely suicidal! BTW: There is no cycle lane in either direction on the narrow causeway.
Danish MPs are raising questions about their own Prime Minister after his attempt to paint roller himself as a Green Messiah at the UN: His tenure has seen the abandonment of many long established "green" policies and the closure of important monitoring institutions and records. Not to mention completely freezing electric cars out of the Danish market with savage registration taxes. With his support [and theirs] farmers now enjoy far greater freedom to despoil the countryside and greatly increase the risk to coastal seas and waterways than ever before.
Meanwhile, Denmark's CO2 release increased in 2016 despite empty promises to curb CO2 to former/historical levels at important international conferences. That'll be all the dirty diesel cars they still encourage via taxation and fuel subsidies, the increase in legal road speeds and the coal fired power stations. The short-lived bout of massive subsidies to the middle classes, for solar panel installation, has ended. So there was never any 'trickle down' to the working classes. It's like hybrid cars. There are so few on the roads that it's all a tiny drop in the ocean of CO2 belching from "green" Denmark.
Meanwhile, Denmark's CO2 release increased in 2016 despite empty promises to curb CO2 to former/historical levels at important international conferences. That'll be all the dirty diesel cars they still encourage via taxation and fuel subsidies, the increase in legal road speeds and the coal fired power stations. The short-lived bout of massive subsidies to the middle classes, for solar panel installation, has ended. So there was never any 'trickle down' to the working classes. It's like hybrid cars. There are so few on the roads that it's all a tiny drop in the ocean of CO2 belching from "green" Denmark.
I was actually quite shocked to discover there is a Danish Minister of the Environment. I can't image he can find much to do each day. Though no doubt his office is truly palatial and impossible to heat efficiently. The Environment post is probably considered a "dirty" starter job for very junior politicians to get a first step onto the gravy train. With the promise of better things provided they don't attract too much negative publicity.
This week's negative publicity? Strangely "forgotten" [now highly illegal] farm toxins seeping down [untested!] into the deep wells which supply 99.6% of Denmark's drinking water. Now reaching levels several times the legal limit and now we are told, microplastics are found in Danish drinking water. Burp!
Another day of showers possible with the vague promise of better things later. Time for a walk. Wish me luck! A driver on his phone nearly hit me yesterday as he cut sharply across a blind corner with one hand on the wheel.
I turned and gave him my [now infamous] replace the handset sign but he waved dismissively as he glanced in his rear view mirror. Don't these chumps realise that hitting a pedestrian in a bright orange coat would delay their journey by several moments unless they used the familiar SMIDSY + hit and run tactic. Though that would require a lack of witnesses. So there is still a very slight risk of his being identified as the killer perp. Perhaps the orange "rag" flapping from his windscreen wiper would give him away? One can but hope. Posthumously of course. 😉
I didn't have to wait for the first blind corner today. Several cars were following a builder's van too closely. So that they missed that he had changed his course by about a foot to brush past me. There was no oncoming traffic but they all still clung to their track like the demented morons they really are. There is no passing place for three miles in the direction they were going. Solid double white lines until the next village and then 30, 25 and 20mph speed limits.
It seems my bright orange, secondhand, Helly Hansen jacket has become part of the scenery. So that I am now totally invisible. [And don't call me Harry Potter!] Particularly to those practicing Hollywood-style, presidential convoys. Only when I waved my arms frantically did they jerk away from me at the very last moment. May one use the term "retards" in the derogatory sense these days? Always the speeding brain surgeon, these commuters. Never the cleaner.
I left the road as soon as possible and headed for the woods along the soggy and muddy track. There I found neat stacks of logs and even more mud. I branched off uphill and cut through the woods to the boundary. Where I could walk freely across large fields of damp stubble.
Later on I paused to watch a Red kite through my binoculars. It was circling low in search of breakfast but seemed unperturbed by my presence. There was not enough wind for soaring. So there was quite a bit of flapping of its long, dark tipped, 'fingered' wings. Bird watchers, who live in Scotland, will just have to imagine these gorgeous birds. While they wait, for a millennium or two, until their billionaire absentee landlords stop poisoning birds of prey for a fatter profit from investment banker <cough> huntsmen with too much time and other people's losses on their hands.
A cat sitting just below the circling Kite bolted when it woke from hunting mode. They must go into such a concentrated state of mind that they miss contact with what is going on around them. Just like many drivers! Several deer moved along the field hedges. Or dived through them when they spotted me from hundreds of yards away. So my tatty sailing jacket is not a cheap, Harry Potter invisibility rip-off, after all.
I was allowed out, in the late afternoon, to fetch the shopping. Unnecessary CO2 leakage minimal. Only 7 miles.
I didn't have to wait for the first blind corner today. Several cars were following a builder's van too closely. So that they missed that he had changed his course by about a foot to brush past me. There was no oncoming traffic but they all still clung to their track like the demented morons they really are. There is no passing place for three miles in the direction they were going. Solid double white lines until the next village and then 30, 25 and 20mph speed limits.
It seems my bright orange, secondhand, Helly Hansen jacket has become part of the scenery. So that I am now totally invisible. [And don't call me Harry Potter!] Particularly to those practicing Hollywood-style, presidential convoys. Only when I waved my arms frantically did they jerk away from me at the very last moment. May one use the term "retards" in the derogatory sense these days? Always the speeding brain surgeon, these commuters. Never the cleaner.
I left the road as soon as possible and headed for the woods along the soggy and muddy track. There I found neat stacks of logs and even more mud. I branched off uphill and cut through the woods to the boundary. Where I could walk freely across large fields of damp stubble.Later on I paused to watch a Red kite through my binoculars. It was circling low in search of breakfast but seemed unperturbed by my presence. There was not enough wind for soaring. So there was quite a bit of flapping of its long, dark tipped, 'fingered' wings. Bird watchers, who live in Scotland, will just have to imagine these gorgeous birds. While they wait, for a millennium or two, until their billionaire absentee landlords stop poisoning birds of prey for a fatter profit from investment banker <cough> huntsmen with too much time and other people's losses on their hands.
A cat sitting just below the circling Kite bolted when it woke from hunting mode. They must go into such a concentrated state of mind that they miss contact with what is going on around them. Just like many drivers! Several deer moved along the field hedges. Or dived through them when they spotted me from hundreds of yards away. So my tatty sailing jacket is not a cheap, Harry Potter invisibility rip-off, after all.
I was allowed out, in the late afternoon, to fetch the shopping. Unnecessary CO2 leakage minimal. Only 7 miles.
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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