h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello, Wazungu and Bran! I have already been talking to Sal a bit, but this is the first time I find you two again. How are things?

Evening all

I haven't put in a bid for that domain name Waz, coz I was hoping nobody would notice. I have on of those greetings card upstairs with 2 cows chatting on it. One's saying to the other "what do you think of the mad cow situation then?" and the other (which is wearing one of those little hats with a propeller on it) replies "I don't know - it doesn't affect me anyway. I'm a helicopter."

It's not fair Bran. We envied you going into your spring and summer when we were going into our miserable wet winter with all the flooding. Now you're going into what sounds like a very nice winter and we're going into a summer of foot and mouth restrictions. Phah!

Nice to see you Case.

Sal

Evening, and hello again Case. Sorry to leave your post so long before replying but I just haven't had much time to be here lately - between work and getting ready to go off to France again. How are your trees?

No it isn't fair Bran, we're are just hoping winter is finished with us. At least for a few months. Spring is here, daffodils, damson blossom, grass growing faster than I can cut it, hail storms, a snow shower. Yes, definitely spring. My house martins came back this morning so it has to be spring. Enjoy your winter. Is the July job something you plan to do for some time or just until the credit card is paid off?

Hey Sal, nearly missed your post - they've "re-opened" a few places around here but not footpaths generally. I hope we've seen the worst of it here but the cases around Welshpool just over the border keep growing. It seems it could easily spread again from there. The Welsh Office didn't follow the same culling tactics. But then again Welshpool market being so heavily involved from the start could be the reason they have so many outbreaks.

I hadn't seen that card with the cows .
Did I mention my house martins are back?
*leaps up, punches the air, and yells YESSSSS*
*actually doesn't do anything of the kind but feels like doing it ( and has done ever since seeing them this morning)*
Waz

Nothing is ever fair, is it? And everything in Tasmania is upside-down from the way it is in Britain anyways, didn't you know?

My dad's blaming the mad cow disease for the fact that his favourite rugby team is playing like heck. Which team? The blue bulls of course.

Birdies are nice. Me like pretty little birdies.

Forgive me folks I have had an exceptionally weird day.

Hi there,
As long as its not the effect of mad cows Case! Just came on to say I'll be missing for a couple of weeks. Unless there's a convenient internet cafe in France.

The birds believe its spring - I can hear them singing outside the window. Definitely a blackbird, the martins, a collar dove and greenfinches. And some sparrowlike twittering.
Til later, unfortunately quite a bit later,
Waz.

Have a wonderful holiday Waz!

Sal

Hi All

No doubt you have all heard the news .... a sad time for all of us on the Guide. Poor Douglas, and poor world for not having him around in it any more.

Requiescat in pace.

Cheerio
Bran the Sad and Gloomy

I hadn't realised until I read your post Bran. Its very sad news. The Hitch-Hikers Guide is one of the few books that ever made me laugh out loud and it still does 20 years later. Douglas Adams could conjour up unique images. I wonder how h2g2 will do without his vision behind it. Maybe having the BBC behind it will be a good thing after all - they did contribute to its creation in giving Hitch-Hikers its original radio show airing. At least that's how I understand it. I think the books, and everything else, followed that.

Sal, I did have a good holiday, we travelled 2,000 miles through France, staying a week in the Pyrenees (high mountains in every direction, snow, gentians, eagles, shepherds putting up posters saying "Non ou Ours", sheep and cows with bells of all different sizes and notes) then east to the Carmargue (completely flat as far as the eye can see, marshes, paddy fields, gypsies, black bulls, white horses and flamingoes) then back to Calais and Dover where we had an exciting (?) time while they tried to dock the ferry in high winds. We experimented with all sorts of food from the French markets and some local wines.

Now I'm working full time for a couple of weeks to catch up at work. Time off the month before the auditors come was stretching it a bit.
'til later, Waz

What a coincidence. I haven't been in for about 5 or 6 days with my usual prob. I thought I'd better see if I needed to apologise to anyone for ignoring them.

Yes it's very sad about poor Douglas - only 49!

Glad you had a good holiday Waz. Sounds wonderful ... though I don't envy you the ferry docking. I get sea sick unless I keep very still when the sea's rough.

Hope you manage to shift the backlog before the auditors descend.

Sal

I kept still Sal! Do you think it works or is it just some sort of instinct to not want to move when feeling slightly queasy? Thankfully the boat was sheltered a bit while circling outside Dover for two & half hours while the "Dover Authorities" gave priority to P & O over SeaFrance. Or that's what we were told was happening. The wind was content with trying to slam the ferry sideways onto the dock wall by that time.

Are they reopening the footpaths down your way yet - our local nature reserve / SSSI has reopened & the paper has long lists of paths to be opened "within the next few days". Over in France we saw very little coverage of F&M at all. Maybe they had lost interest by then. They did have some interest in a certain punchup however! But then they've always had a liking for throwing produce around over there.

49 is no age at all.
Waz

Keeping still definitely works for me Waz. I remember coming back from France with a bunch of friends on a very crowded ferry some years ago in a force 7 and I think I may have been the only person not throwing up. There was vomit sloshing up and down the isles, vomit flying past the portholes, it was splattered over the walls and you couldn't get into the loo for people heaving their hearts out. It was like hell - but I kept my stuff down.

Nothing's reopening round here. Did you see they've got a serious new outbreak in Yorkshire? Perhaps it's better to wait while the horror continues. I haven't posted over at the goooverflow for a few days but Metal Chicken and Plaguesville have - for which I'm grateful. I meant to post the news of that rotten NFU leader, Ben Gill, blaming the outbreak on "eco terrorists" - whoever they might be. In any case, he stated this nonsense without a single shred of evidence. I must say, I've lost all respect for the man.

You must have been relieved to be away from it for a little while. I won't say anything about JP and his egg encounter or this might get moderated

Sal

Don't want to get moderate Sal - way too dull ! I'm glad to say that all I saw flying past portholes last week was spray. Sea spray.

Ben Gill? Unbelievable - I hadn't seen that. I remember Clarissa of the Two Fat Ladies said something like that. The only place that has reopened around here that I've heard anything about is apparently all under water. So perfectly safe to allow walking there. Would it be Ben Gill paranoia to wonder if this applies to all the reopened fps listed in last week's paper?
Waz

Can you guys tell me a little more about how foot and mouth has affected the regular folks and the countryside? I only get 'matter of fact' type of reports of it over here! There's probably something about it somewhere else on h2g2 but so far I haven't seen much!

Hi there Case, I think I'll leave it to Sal to answer properly, she can point you to lots of information!

I'll just answer from my personal experience and say that it didn't affect me much directly as there has been no burning of carcasses locally, I'm not in a business that has been overly affected, I don't use footpaths much and hadn't been watching TV so didn't see the awful pictures they showed. But I talked to a friend who runs a farm with her brothers. Her bed and breakfast business which she relies on to repair the house has come to a stand still as they don't want visitors and there aren't many anyway. Her brother is deeply attached to some of his milk cows and was living in fear of the disease for more than business reasons. The way she said her brother was feeling brought home the effects of foot and mouth to me. She also said they were all avoiding going off the farm as much as possible, seeing people only by appointment and changing clothes if they had to go into town.

Our village play area has been closed as have all footpaths etc, leaving people with only the roads to walk on and to walk dogs on.

We had a diary in our local paper by a farmer which illustrated very well the isolation and stress he was living with. And the frustration with delays and inconsistencies of vets, rules and regulations. The entry that moved me the most was when he reported the slaughter of a prize pedigree bull which he had bred and sold to a rival farmer who got fed up losing to him and decided to buy the competition. He had stories of this animal as a calf and how he'd heard tales of what he got up to in Cumbria. He said he couldn't help seeing the image of him being hauled upside down by a crane onto a pyre.

The organisation I work for has had fundraising events cancelled because of f and m, as have a lot of charities. Its creating a real problem for some. The idea seems to be to avoid events where lots of people mix in one place. It was a bit ironic that one fund raising event that wasn't cancelled was the farmers auction on the old livestock market to raise funds to help farmers suffering from the effects of f and m.

On the other side of the coin there are local stories of a couple of instances of faking the disease in order to claim the compensation. I don't know the truth of these - a lot of politics is being played with the issue.

Hope something in that waffle was what you were looking for,
Waz

Hi Folks

Sorry for the long delay in posting ... I haven't had nuch time in the evenings for a while, when I usually do my H2G2 stuff. Alas, my lovely partner has wandered off to sunny Brisbane for two weeks, and so I am free (time-wise that is) in the evenings a bit more at the moment.

I have tried to get Walter to return to the Guide, but no luck so far. I am seeing him for coffee next week, so I shall press him further on his responsibilities. I think he is finding Latin much more onerous than he had thought it would be and this has led to him scaling down the rest of his life.

The f&m really does sound horrid. I have heard various radio shows here on our ABC about the devastation that some farmers are facing ... and not just loss of income and livelihood, but having to kill treasured and loved livestock. I would be heart-broken in that situation I confess and so I really feel for them. We don't see as much of it in the media lately. Has it really slowed down, or is that just the media moving on to other topics?

Loved the stories about your deputy PM and his left jab! Well ... who said politics was boring? And the Labour votes seem to have gone up?? I am trying to imagine our weak-chinned pollies doing something like that to boost their ratings at the moment (no pun intended). Our incumbent liberal (conservaive, that is) government is facing a loss this year if the polls are any indication (they gave us a GST which has not proved to be that popular). I wonder if they will resort to similar tactics?

Must off and make dinner - have to keep my strength up for The Tome (75,000 words last count).

All the best
Bran.

Hi Bran, good to hear from you. Did you ever read Asterix? I have this image of the Tome as Obelix's obelix.

I wish Walter well with his Latin. Rather him than me, learning languages is not one of my strong points. I remember enough school french to understand the basics but not to speak in anything other than what must sound like babytalk to the French.

We had another outbreak of f&m recently, potentially affecting large numbers of animals I believe, but the media has gone quiet on it here too. I suppose its no longer news and they were critised for overdoing the issue and decimating the tourist/holiday business at the beginning so its possibly political too.

I'm being dim Bran - what is a GST. I'm guessing T for Tax but haven't got the rest. I think our incumbents will be re-elected by default. There is an opinion here that the deputyPM did them a favour by keeping the manifesto off the front pages that day. A pretty good tactic.
Waz

Thanks for the info, Wazungu. The scale of the disease - how many farms and farmers are affected? Will the government help out any farmers who go bankrupt as a result of it?

Sorry to hit and run m'dears. Still can't sit. Thanks for your kind words over at my page Case. They definitely helped

In the meantime, you can access huge amounts of foot and mouth info here:
[URL Removed by Moderator]

Sal

Hi Folks

A quick reply at the moment as I am in PhD time ... a GST, Waz, is a "goods and services tax". Perhaps like your VAT (I too am unsure as to what this stands for)? Most of the population has turned out not to like it, and feels that they are worse off.

I have indeed read Asterix ... and one of Obelix's menhirs is a great image!! I must keep that in mind.

All the best from over here.
Bran

Well, I can hardly believe they removed that link. It was to another part of the BBC. I'm sure we're allowed to use links to BBC pages. Lets have another go. Here it is again. Foot and mouth info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/uk/2001/foot_and_mouth/default.stm

The page link can also be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A530263

It's not as though I have lots of spare sitting down time to waste trying to fight the ridiculous moderation. Anyway ... hiya Bran Nobody likes taxes do they? I wonder why not

Sal