Medical Update. I am a Bachelor for the Coming Week. The ‘Greenies’ Now Have Added Sheep to Their Hate List. Rozanne is Detained.
I thought I would give you a very short update on my medical situation. As many of you know, I started the blog due to ill health, which at the time gave me time to reflect on my life. Good and bad. For a large portion last month, August, including ten straight days of little or no pain, the least pain in nine months. I thought, or rather hoped, perhaps my stomach was sorting itself out, only to be once again proven wrong. Last Tuesday night it returned with a vengeance, peaking on Saturday night. Luckily after the NZ vs SA rugby. It was rather disappointing to say the least. On a more positive note on the most recent visitation to my eye specialist, Professor Silva, he informs me that my left eye has stabilised and now for nearly a year, I have not required a jab in my eye. Some of you may remember the first private clinic I went to, where they misdiagnosed the problem and after about six injections said it was beyond repair, blindness was irrevocable in that eye and signed me off. Luckily, my optician when having my driving licence renewal eye test a year later suggested I see Professor Silva as he was one of the best eye specialists in the country and worked in Coimbra. I duly did and he informed me that I had a mis-diagnosis, and feeling he could at least stop the deterioration of my eye and introduced me to a new treatment, also an injection but a different medication. So here I am four years later still able to see out of the eye, sort of admittedly, but much improved, and certainly good enough to continue to drive. The other good news is this. I find when you visit medical staff here in Portugal it is easy to build a rapport and discuss other matters other than the problem at hand. He has been following my cancer treatments with interest and on telling him the people, multiple specialists and long list of scans and tests still could not identify my stomach/intestine problem he suggested one of his partners at another clinic who is an excellent gastroenterologist and who also worked at the University Hospital in Coimbra suggesting I see her. She is seemingly very good at her job and importantly very tenacious about resolving patients' stomach problems. I agreed and he phoned her there and then and although she answered the phone, she was still on holiday. August is a holiday month for the Portuguese. However, she said on her return she would contact me with a date to see her and so she has, and I meet her next week. As she works at the University hospital she will have access to all my medical reports and records of surgery while I have all the work carried out on me in private clinics to hand which hopefully will give her a start. No guarantees that she will solve the problem but glad she is happy to give it a go.
“Persevere in Hope.” - My old Keil School motto.
Meanwhile I am a bachelor for this week as Rozanne is off to see her mother, Shirley Cary, in Zimbabwe. She is getting older, as we all are, and while Rozanne’s sister Lorraine has just returned from there Rozanne feels she must visit her mum who has opted to stay in Zimbabwe rather than move to Europe. As none of her children live in that country it is both difficult, no less so because of my health in Rozanne’s case, and expensive to visit her in Zimbabwe. I think the siblings generally agree she should be moving into a smaller space, maybe even a single room and receive better care and attention but Shirley is strong minded and I am not confident Rozanne will succeed in convincing her of any move, which would be to her betterment and the siblings peace of mind. It's tough on Rozanne, as she has her mother to worry about and me. I am only about eight years younger than her mother, but think I am more manageable. I wonder which of us is the most amiable. I will not ask for an opinion on this, as the answers may not suit me. It will not be a holiday for Rozanne, but the news of Rozanne’s visit to Zimbabwe has spread by bush telegraph, and there is now a long list of requests from old friends for some time with her. She will do what she can, but her first priority will be her mum.
I do not know why I get pissed off about things I cannot do anything about. I have a priority list of my most upsetting subjects that routinely appear in the news or affect my life. I have no priority, as the list, while not extensive in my view, is substantive in affecting my mood.
In daily life, there are direct and indirect events, people, or people's actions or views that reduce the joy of living to some extent. In doing so, while annoying it at least gives you something to think about and, with me, often a reason to research further. A strange incentive to do something, but rather than being a waste of time it often broadens my own knowledge of the person or subject.
Let me put my most recent ‘pissing off’ subjects in bullet points. I should mention some are not recent but long-standing:
Those farmers farming on our land in Zimbabwe without permission nor offering the rightful owner any payment to do so. Even a token amount would help many.
The ‘Green’ lobby and those of similar ilk who want to remove livestock from the land, stop hunting, shooting, fishing and if they had their way all cropping. They claim they know more about the environment sitting in their luxury flats or studios in the city than those that live and work in the countryside, and who have done so for centuries. Most of Portugal probably know by now that Chris Pakham’s name being mentioned instantly raises my ire. Maybe I should have given him his own dedicated bullet point.
The socialists, specifically the Labour Government, and how they have treated the UK farmers and treat welfare as a social right at the expense of the productive sectors. Although over the past few years I found it hard to discern between Labour and the Conservatives due to their similar socialist agendas and immigration policies over the past fifteen years, Labour and the Greens are my target parties here.
Bureaucrats. Every time I sort of relax, something will turn up, once again lifting my ire. It seems they always demand more than they give in service.
An example of the latter is that I recently had to confirm someone's parents, which I was more than happy to do. But for what purpose, I wondered on receiving the electronic questionnaire form with all the required information being readily available online for anybody to find? Why bother? They have the birth certificates; surely that is proof enough of a person's parentage? That is, of course, unless it says father or mother unknown, the latter being very unlikely. Not good enough; let's get someone to take responsibility from us in doing our job and inconvenience the applicant and some of their friends.
The latter was mild this week, but it just reminded me of the futility of much of what we are required to do nowadays. Meanwhile, in return, it is impossible to get an answer to your e-mails, let alone someone to pick up the phone to assist in a simple query.
This week the one at the top of my list of ‘piss-me-offs’ is the ‘Greenies.’ I am a faithful reader of the Spectator Magazine; not everyone's cup of tea, but give them their due despite it being claimed that it is a right wing magazine, they do allow others to voice their point of view. This week it was Ben Goldsmith, yes a recipient of the silver spoon who wrote an article on why sheep should be removed from the hills and moors. He is from a wealthy English family and is a financier of the Green Party, along with funding a number of weird things such as the ‘Beaver Trust’ and other wilding projects, most detrimental, I would say to landowners, their land and crop husbandry not to mention what they think they are protecting, the eco-system. He also worked in DEFRA as a director to introduce the 2020 Agricultural Act to replace the EUs Common Agricultural Police and the introduction of the Environmental Land Management Scheme where subsidies were moved from productive agriculture to subsidising environmental projects. That is paying to turn your land back to being non-productive, grass leys or more likely weed patches as pesticides and herbicides are a no-no. He also does not like GM crops. Now he is saying sheep are not good for the hills and moorlands, and in fact damage them. His prognosis, I fear, is built on little or no research and weird assumptions to suit it. One of them is that sheeps’ sharp hooves compact the soil. Yes, sharp hooves compact the soil.
"No surprise that Godsmith does not seem to know that direct subsidies for hill sheep were dropped in Scotland in 1999/2000 and in 2010 in England. So any sheep found on the hills are self funding through income generation, not subsidy. Like many 'Green' experts' his opinions are only suppositions not supported by fact."-Peter McSporran
He should have been around during the Highland clearances when the wealthy landlords such as he removed over 50% of the Highlands and Islands population, some 150,000 people to be replaced by sheep. That was some three hundred years ago, it certainly has taken them a long time to decide they had made the wrong decision. His main argument for them being unsuitable on the hills and moors is there are millions of them lame, they destroy the environment, their fleeces are worth nothing, not saying the reason for this is that it has been replaced with the bye-products of fossil fuel, and they only are kept because of high subsidies. He fails to tell us that reverting back to non-cultivation and rewilding programs can only happen with subsidies, not partial but 100% as that will be the only income from the set aside land. Nobody wants to buy thistles, buttercups or dandelions.
I watch a farming podcast known as ‘Harry’s Farm’ presented by a very practical farmer, Harry Metcalfe, who is happy to reveal his costs, successes and disasters. He started from scratch, just leasing a bit of ground, and is now farming some 800 hectares in Oxfordshire. This week he took us through the income from his cereal crops and compared them to the income from his 100% subsidised lay-bye land under various environmental schemes thought up by bureaucratic committees. Not surprisingly he gets more from the land put down to the environmental scheme and says while it is nice for him does ask the question how sustainable is that? It cannot be. Not at all if the subsidy is removed. Goldsmith forgets to mention his environmental schemes like the sheep require subsidies, but unlike the sheep the environmental subsidies are much greater and further do not contribute anything in feeding the nation which the sheep do. Thistles and dandelions might look pretty to the layman but do not feed people nor do the butterflies, mice and rabbits that live there.
Another scary fact that came out this week is that Britain now only produces 60% of its nutritional needs. Little wonder with crop and livestock products prices being kept below break-even, let alone offering a profit.
“We always said of Africa, a country is never truly independent unless it is able to feed itself. It seems in Britain, politicians have forgotten the lessons of WWII and once again depend on others to feed it at the expense of its own farmers.” - Peter McSporran
This is to the benefit of the consumer and supermarkets who, as pointed out in Harry’s latest podcast, get a much larger portion in the selling margin of agricultural products than the farmer does for his commodity, let alone a margin. I do not know why all this pisses me off; I can do nothing about it.
Still, in 2003, a lot happened. When Rozanne’s property business could not get off the ground, she decided to start a buying service, which she called Agricultural Procurement Zambia (APZ) and set up from home. It was highly successful. In the first year, using letters of credit, she imported over a million dollars' worth of fertilizer on behalf of farmers for the 2003/4 growing season, which upset many local suppliers, as did many other product lines. She was allowed to do this from home as her work permit still did not allow her to do anything formal such as working for a 3rd party although her residence permit was in the pipeline. One day she came into our new office in the industrial sites; I think it was just after Chris Thorne had left us and Paul Cartwright, who I will tell you about next week, had joined us. Anyway, she sat behind my desk to make a phone call, something she never did normally, and in less than ten minutes a delegation from the Immigration Department entered and promptly arrested her, claiming she was working without a permit. How did they know she was even in the office, let alone behind my desk? It was obvious they had been tipped off and must have been in the company offices next door, as their entry was swift and unseen. The lessee of the premises next door, coincidentally, was a fertilizer company headquartered in Malawi. I thought it was probably the management there, because her successful fertiliser scheme was eating into their market, while Rozanne argued more in favour of it being the female staff, whom she had complained about numerous times because of the state they left our common toilets in. Who knows, but it certainly wasn't spontaneous. She called me as I was not in the office at the time, but rather in a meeting, and I said she would be all right, as just sitting at a desk was not proof of working. This was in the morning, and shortly after calling me, she was asked, with a female officer in tow, to drive to the main Immigration office at the top end of Cairo Road, Lusaka. On arrival there, before getting out of the car she was told by the female officer that the problem could easily be resolved. This was the way bribes were asked for in Zambia: you have a problem, real or unreal, we can make it go away. Unfortunately, many do pay, but not Rozanne. After a few attempts, the officer said she would have to come into the building, and upon doing so, she was formally arrested. A few hours later, another call came, and I still thought it was them soliciting a bribe, so I tried to console her with words, until a very frantic Rozanne called me again at 5pm to inform me she was going to be incarcerated for the night and that I better do something. Zambian holding cells have much to be desired. I immediately headed to immigration, and on arrival, without being able to speak to Rozanne, I was taken aside by a senior immigration officer and asked to make a statement which would corroborate Rozanne's plea of innocence. Luckily, it did, and Rozanne was released. She never really thanked me but rather castigated me, and does to this day, for not acting sooner. Never mind; such things lead to a stronger marriage, do they not?
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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