Coastalblog

It's hard to recall a political race less edifying than the current run for the Republican leadership. As Ted Cruz and Donald Trump each try to out-offensive each other in a race to the very, very bottom it's easy to have a good old laugh at it. Those Americans eh? What'll they come up with next? Thanks for providing us with a quality chuckle. be it The candidates having a whose got the hottest wife contest. Terump lauding the size of his penis, Cruz suggesting that Muslim neighbourhoods in the US should "patrolled and secured" by polic. Trump's walll, Cruz's suggestion of carpet bombing ISIS (at which the Pentagon coughed and said well no, because that would be illegal), Trumps misogyny, Cruz's religious bigotry, take your pick. But, unfortunately, whilst it is kind of funny, the depressing reality is that this is the best the American right wing can come up with. What Matt, I hear you cry, dpressed about the quality of right wingers? But you'...

I have been thining about wood pigeons (and why not). I've often suspected that ubiquitous birds are under appreciated (see also starlings, most corvids), and I fear that the woodie has sufered from being tarred with the brush of the humdrum. But they do hold a special place in my heart. Living as I do on the edge of a town, close to farmland, woodies are a common sight to me. The farmlansd's the key point there, their success over the last couple of hundred years is tied to the expansion of arable agriculture, as an exclusively vegetetarian bird, increases in farming are verymuch to the wood pigeon's liking (if not the farmers). Indeed, two centuries ago they were considerably more scarce than today, if not exactly rare (the wide variety of old names for them implies a familiarity and a ubiquity: Dow, Stoggy, Culver, Culshat). The reason for my fondness is the implication of home, I work in the middle of the town, where there are feral pigeons aplenty, but not a woodie...

Oh it's a hoot, isn't it? what an hilarious attempt at "politics" the whole Donald Trump farrago is. Hawhaw, couldn't happen here. So on, so forth. Ah, the colonials, we chuckle, shaking our heads wisely and sadly over our breakfast kedgeree, sat as we are in the sceptred glory of misty blighty, with its politicians capable of talking in complete sentences. Fwawfwawfwaw, more pheasant please, Vicar. Thus proving the old adage that there's no bell-end like a smug bell-end, which I think is one of Alexander Pope's. Possibly the only thing less edifying than the Donald's rise to actual honest to godness contender has been the laughing at it. Yes, he's a horror. Yes, he's a racist. Yes, he's a grade-a moron who re-tweeted Mussolini. All these things are true. It is also true that if he'd simply put his fortune in a savings account he'd be a lot richer than he is now, so yes, he' s a failure as a businessman. Also true. But the rep...