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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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It's not often you find an environmentalist talking down-to-earth good sense, so when one does it seems only fair to acknowledge the fact.
 
So three cheers for BBC wildlife expert Chis Packham who has said publicly that pandas are a useless species and should be allowed to die out. Needless to say, his views haven't met with universal approval from the tree-huggers of the world.
 
The television presenter said that the species was not strong enough to survive on its own and that the millions spent preserving them could be better spent elsewhere. He also argued that breeding the animals in captivity for later release was pointless because there is not enough habitat left to sustain them.
 
He said: “Here’s a species that of its own accord has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac. It’s not a strong species. Unfortunately, it’s big and cute and it’s a symbol of the World Wildlife Fund – and we pour millions of pounds into panda conservation. I reckon we should pull the plug. Let them go with a degree of dignity.”
 
Giant pandas have been dying out because of the destruction of their natural habitat and are only found in about 20 patches of forest in a densely populated region of China. There are around 1,600 in the wild with around 180 more being reared in captivity.
 

The panda - useless, boring and suicidal

 
Fellow wildlife expert David Bellamy lent his support to Mr Packham. “I agree completely,” he said. “When I was a WWF trustee I begged them to buy big chunks of the land in which these animals live, not just go on spending millions on rearing pandas in captivity. You can’t release them back into the wild if there is no wild left and we shouldn’t rear animals just to put them into cages. Even the WWF admitted there is no longer enough land for them to live on.”
 
However, Dr Mark Wright, a conservation science adviser for WWF described Mr Packham’s comments as “daft” and “irresponsible”. He said: “Pandas have adapted to where they live. They live in the mountains where there is plenty of the bamboo they want to eat. It’s like saying the blue whale is in an evolutional cul-de-sac because it lives in the ocean.” Dr Wright added that pandas face extinction due to poaching and humans moving into their habitat, and that if left alone they would not be under threat. Other wildlife enthusiasts went further, calling Packham "the Pol Pot of wildlife preservation".
 
Dr.Wright's comments are, typically, emotive and not entirely accurate. It's true enough that pandas have adapted to where they live - but that statement doesn't go far enough. They have over-adapted to the extent that because of their exclusive diet they aren't capable of adapting to anything else. It's no accident that the most successful species are almost always those that have broad dietary requirements and can adapt to new situations and food sources - rats, for instance, grizzly bears, and sharks. And of course the prime example is ourselves.
 
Let's face it, the panda is a useless creature. It may look cuddly and unusual, but you'd be a fool to try and actually cuddle one because of their uncertain tempers. It's almost as if they have a death-wish: they are shy and reclusive, so dim they can't even manage to breed properly most of the time, and serve no useful purpose whatever except possibly to help control the fast-growing bamboo plantations. However, the Chinese are clever and industrious little buggers and I think they can manage to keep on top of the bamboo by themselves.
 
It's not clear that pandas fill a functional niche in the ecology of the region either. I suppose there may be some species of small pond-life that eats nothing but panda poo, but if so ... well, who gives a toss?
 
And if anyone is tempted to relapse squidgily into the "ooh, ah, sweet ickle panda-wanda" mentality, let me remind them that there are loads and loads of ooh ah sweet ickle Chinese baby-wabies who need to grow up to jobs, and schools, and houses. Sentiment is lovely if you have the time and space for it, but sometimes rational pragmatism has to take precedence.
 
Which is more important, one of nature's least successful by-blows, a miserable creature that has retreated and retreated from the world and all it has to offer until it can hardly stomach its own existence? Or real people, people who have the power to shape the world, people who can laugh and dance and write symphonies or poetry, people who can study the stars or master brain surgery?
 
For more penetrating comment on wild-life issues, click here.
 

 
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