Couple who kept animals crammed in filthy cellar face jail

A couple are facing jail after admitting keeping 11 dogs, nine geese, a pony, two goats and a cat in the dark, filthy cellar of their south Wales home. RSPCA inspectors said they had never previously come across the sort of stench and dirt they found at Eric and Doreen Buckley's home in High Street, Gilfach Goch, Pontypridd. When asked why he was keeping so many animals in such terrible conditions, Mr Buckley said: "Why not?"



The couple had already been banned for life from keeping animals in 1993 for earlier breaches of welfare regulations. Speaking after a brief hearing at Pontypridd magistrates court, RSPCA inspector Nicola Johnston said: "I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Even before going inside the house, you could sniff the air outside and realise something was wrong.



"Inside, it was beyond anything I have ever seen, or hope ever to see again." She said the cellar was unlit and covered in a thick layer of animal waste. "You stood there in complete blackness, squishing and squashing underfoot as you walked," she said. "To think that somebody thought it was a fit place to keep animals was incredible."



The couple, aged 56 and 46, both admitted seven charges – two for breaching previously imposed banning orders and five for causing unnecessary suffering and failing to meet welfare needs of the animals. District judge Jill Watkins said: "You should understand that I believe that this case merits a custodial sentence." The couple will be sentenced next month.

School bans hugs and handshakes

A secondary school in south London has banned students from all physical contact with each other, including hugging, high-fives and handshakes. The Quest Academy in South Croydon has enforced the new policy since September last year.

The school's principal, Andy Croft, said the rules helped combat bullying. He said: "Physical contact between students is not allowed at the academy because it is often associated with poor behaviour or bullying and can lead to fighting."



Anita Chong, whose 15-year-old daughter was given a detention for hugging a friend, called the rules "crazy". Ms Chong said the school had taken its rules too far.

"We live in a society where we use touch and we use terms of endearment," she said. "My daughter is one of those that is having exams and she is being taken out of lessons for something so trivial. I find it diabolical really."

With news video.

Praying To The Government

There's a bigger point here, but I just wanted to share a link, an excerpt and a video with you and suggest that the Greeks have passed back into the world of mythology, only this time the gods they worship are politicians.

Indignant Protests

The mass rallies by the “Indignant” that were held on Wednesday and Thursday night in almost every major Greek city represent a new parameter in political developments. This is a new phenomenon, which in form mimics the initiative by Spain’s youth, but in essence is stoked by the impending local economic crash. The movement is spontaneous, ideologically multicolored and politically astray. Its demographics and the symbols used to represent it represent a great departure from the usual stuff seen in protests. Here we don’t see a configuration of many small, tight-knit groups -- or blocs -- and the “professional” protesters of the left; you see people who are novices at protests. Instead of banners and red flags, you see Greek flags and hear the national anthem. Moreover, there is no fire missing from the chanted slogans, which sweep aside political correctness in favor of a morally accusatory tone.

Protest Video

General Odds and Ends

Here, I'm using Chesterton's definition of mythology - mysticism without philosophy or logic. That is, the crowd can't tell you how anything is supposed to happen, only that they want something to occur. In essence, they're praying to Zeus and Hermes. There's no end point here, no evidence that their gods have any power at all. They are simply crying out for mercy.

THE GIRL IN THE POLKA-DOT DRESS

Beryl Bainbridge,
Little,Brown - NZ $39.99

This from The Guardian:

"It is a pleasure to record that The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress ranks among the finest of Bainbridge's fine works of fiction. The narrative is by turns sombre, terrifying and hilarious." Paul Bailey in the Independent argued that Beryl Bainbridge's posthumously published "road novel", set on the freeways of America in 1968, "reads like a summation" of her art: "It is carefully constructed, as always, but there is a sense in which the author is returning to her roots." For AN Wilson in the Spectator, the novel is "very gripping, very funny and deeply mysterious. She has abandoned the oblique historical miniatures with which her last decade had been occupied . . . and she has returned to that vein of comedy in which a self-projection becomes caught up in a series of grotesque, fantastical events . . . Beryl Bainbridge is an immortal." Derwent May in the Times agreed the "atmosphere of Bainbridge's early books returns in this last novel. What conclusion did Beryl intend? . . . We are left with a fascinating book that is like a new Mystery of Edwin Drood – and will no doubt offer as much work to imaginative scholars as Dickens's unfinished novel has done."

Footnote:

This is my current fiction read, I should finish it today, and I must say I find it a remarkable piece of writing.

The book contains the following statement:

Beryl Bainbridge was in the process of finishing The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress when she died on 2 July 2010. Her long-time friend and editor, Brendan King, prepared the text for publication from her working manuscript, taking into account suggestions Beryl had made at the end of her life. No additional material has been included.

A Bigger Digger

Story by Brett Avison, Illustrated by Craig Smith

First time author scores international book deal!

Aucklander Brett Avison has always been able to tell a good story, but had never considered turning his talents into a book. Until one day, while watching his 3-year-old great-nephew Bryn playing with his digger 'the words just started to flow'. By the end of the day Brett had written a story- about Bryn, his dog Oscar, and what they found in the back yard. Unsure whether it was any good he turned to someone in the know - his wife Lorain Day, who at the time was publishing manager at HarperCollins Publishers NZ. 

'I was nervous about reading it' remembers Lorain, ' in case I had to break the news to him it was unpublishable'. But she was very pleasantly surprised. Brett's talent for words had turned Bryn's fascination for diggers into a colourful, unputdownable adventure for boys.

The story was offered to international publisher Five Mile who realised it was pitched to exactly the market that has been missing out over the last few years - young boys. They offered Brett a two book-deal, with A Bigger Digger being published in Australia and New Zealand from April/May this year, and the next book, Stuck in the Mud, being published in time for Christmas.The book is also to be published in the UK.

File Mile paired up Brett's words with Australian children's book illustrator Craig Smith's sensational drawings, and the result is a book tailor-made for boys and their love of diggers, dogs - and tall stories.

Since 1983, Craig Smith's witty artwork has been enormously popular with children. His wonderful sense of the absurd and terrific eye for detail has brought this delightful story of two little adventurers and what they find in the backyard to life, with a parade of diggers and a big surprise at the end.