Lee Swords Fishing

I have been distracted from my fishing lately by the vexing nature and apparent  lack of morals, brains, social conscience and forward planning shown by my fellow man.

Yep, that’s right I have been spending too long in the land of “local politics” recently and I have to admit that the sheer magnitude of the blind dogma and ignorance shown by my local politicians and other political bodies such as SYFR ( South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue)  has sickened me to the core, in fact has affected my yin and yang to the point where I cannot even be bothered to look for any new celebrity sex-tapes, seriously it is that bad!

If you have read my previous blogs you will be  aware that I along with numerous other Sheffield locals are fighting a battle to save a piece of “stolen greenbelt” from being developed and turned into a new fire station, it is a long hard uphill battle and it has not been helped by the complete lack of interest being shown by the vast majority of people in my neighborhood.

No, strike that, complete lack of interest shown by people full stop, this website is after-all on the “World Wide Web” and open to anyone that wants to visit, like I said in my last blog ” I will fight for your green space if you fight for mine”, it seems very few people like to fight a cause as much as I do…Many people talk the talk but I actually “do” care about my environment and what legacy I will be leaving for my child and hopefully my grandchildren in years to come.

Most others it seems are too lethargic to bother, even when given the means to protest the application of a project that will wipe out a feeding and breeding site used by at least 30% of Britain’s butterfly species the people still do nothing. The general public are probably too busy sat in front of their 98 inch plasma surround sound home cinema watching Coronation Street or Eastender’s so that they get some kind of false reading on how shit their lives really are to worry about something that is actually real. 

Our green areas now mean so little to the majority of people  that they will not fight for them because they are oblivious that they even exist, successive generations of people have been inoculated  by the “computer virus and television bug”  that they are now completely disconnected from nature and urbanised to the point were they fear what little there is left of the wild and care not one iota what happens to our countryside and urban wildlife zones just so long as it stays outside whilst they Tweet and watch Jezza Kyle, this was proven recently when a common Garden Spider was mistaken as a False Widow Spider and caused panic and mayhem  in Sheffield, anyone would think that the world had been invaded with parasitic nine foot aliens that fed on warm brains. It really was quite pathetic.

Are we so far up our own arse that we feel that we are the sole occupants of this planet we live on and everything else is simply there as a means to fund our greed?

I cannot believe that the planning application for the destruction of Bowden Houstead Field has attracted only 30 signatures. Click the link and check them out, read what they have to say.

http://publicaccess.sheffield.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=MRZU4KNYFY000

What they have to say is this ” No, we do not wish to see our green spaces disappear , we do not wish to see our flora and fauna razed to oblivion in the name of progress”

I salute each person that signed, they took the time to say ” No, not in my name” but 30 isn’t enough, 300 probably wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a start, it would be enough to make Sheffield City Councils Planning Department stop and think, instead of rubber stamping South Yorkshires Fire and Rescues application to build an “eco-friendly” fire-station without even blinking.

How exactly a fire-station can be eco-friendly when it plans to build on top of the best flower meadow this side of Sheffield is beyond me, I don’t see that a green roof will make up for the  razing of a whole meadow…But what the fuck do I know about environmental issues?

I am just a pleb.

A pleb, that would be better off keeping his mouth shut and his head down, letting those that are in power get on with running the country, yep, that would be the easy option, that is what they would like me to do.

Excepting one thing, this pleb still remembers what this country used to look like, it was greener and I liked it like that, now it is ever expanding stretches of concrete that squeeze what little green space we have left into smaller and smaller packages, fracturing our countryside into smaller and smaller parcels.

And it isn’t just BHF that is a concern to me, I read recently that Ed Milliband intends to build three new cities, THREE whole cities just outside London to alleviate the housing bubble and house the ever growing population and still the concrete pours! Concrete covering hundreds of square miles in hard grey slabs till not one single blade of grass is left. It is insanity.

I expect that these new cities will also be touted as eco-friendly cities, that are as close to carbon neutral as possible but they will still need water, abstraction will still need to take place to provide it, bore holes and wells will have to be sunk and rivers will be drunk dry and even when all the water is gone and the people are drinking treated effluent, these cities will still need power  and the population will still need feeding but our agricultural land will be gone and so we will have to import all our food onto this little rock we call home…but what the hell, that’s progress for you!

Back to Sheffield and the here and now, I expect my local Councillors are sick of hearing from me by now and I hope they are, I just wish there were more people making complete nuisances of themselves , if that were the case I do not think Sheffield or England for that matter would be in the state it is in.

After-all it is said “We get the representation that we deserve”

We do nothing…We get nothing.