I know, I know; I'm like a stuck record- but even that's an old fashioned expression now. Perhaps one should now say... like a frozen memory stick. See, I told you; old, senile and losing it (though some would say; lost it!), but I have just seen on the news that ITV have been fined by the Australian RSPCA for showing the killing of a rat on ‘I'm a celebrity, get me out of here...!’. It took 90 seconds to die. ‘So?’ I hear some of you saying... ‘It’s only a rat’. BUT it’s the principle. We now have more TV channels than ever before and how many times do we all flick through them and moan that there's nothing to watch; it’s either old, boring or rubbish. TV is going the same way as the whole world; we have habitat destruction, possible climate change, economic melt down and now rubbish television. Where oh where has the INTEGRITY gone (was there ever any?). Whoops, I feel a tangent coming on...

Resolve- and that's not the type that dissolves in a glass of water! I only wish it said that the over-the-counter remedy did indeed work for mental resolve, rather than just the aftermath of a little self-induced over-indulgence.

Well folks its that time of year - well it is in in the UK at least -  in the words of the well known song
 
' Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love..
 
well at least in January foxes 'do it'.......
 

This time of year always gets me thinking. As I reflect on the past year I wonder whether I am any closer to making a difference for the cause that I believe in.

I have lost count of the number of meetings I have attended this year with politicians, journalists, potential sponsors etc. The state of our environment is most certainly an issue that most people I speak to readily agree needs addressing. Most seem to ‘care’ about what is happening to the world and want things to change, but that change never seems to come. Why?

If the Conservatives win the next General Election, they are planning to give Members of Parliament a free vote (i.e. not subject to the party whip) on repealing the Hunting Act. MPs voting to allow foxhunting to start again would make them incredibly unpopular – and rightly so.

There’s no doubt in my mind that zoos are not an appropriate means of educating children about wildlife. Aside from all the issues about taking animals from the wild or breeding in captivity, the animals that we see in zoos – even in the best-run ones like London Zoo, which undoubtedly have high standards of animal welfare – are not acting normally and are not in their natural environment.( But if children are taken to such attractions at a young age then they will see it as an OK thing and they will think that this is how animals behave and that the animals are in an acceptable habitat, which clearly not the case – how would you like to spend your entire life in a glass cage and your EVERY action being watched !! ) so it is not a genuine experience of wildlife.

Wildlife Aid is all about redressing the balance between Man and Nature. The last time I blogged it was about ‘Conservation Credits’. Another policy I’ve been pushing for a while is the need for much tougher financial penalties for wildlife crime. I’ll give you just one example. If, say, a developer (sorry to pick on developers for the second week running, but hey, why not?!) destroys a badger sett in order to make way for a housing estate, it’s obviously pointless to slap them on the wrist and fine them a few thousand quid for killing a protected species.

One of my hobby horses that I’ve been banging away about for years now is the idea that a developer taking land for, say, a new housing estate, should compensate for the loss of countryside and wildlife habitat by paying into a fund that secures an alternative site as a permanently protected area.

Gggrrrrrr….. I get so mad.

Just had a lady on the phone who is now in a total dilemma – she took in a very young fox cub ( a few weeks old ), which had some sort of bone problem . Whereas she did nurse it and get it better it is now totally imprinted !!!!! .

Well I’m back from Oz.  Blimey, it’s a hard life…! You may well be forgiven for thinking it’s just one big holiday for the Wildlife SOS team, but, in all seriousness, I can say with hand on heart that it was “all go” for the duration of our stay down under. For three weeks we were busy, busy, busy every minute of every day. Despite temperatures that reached the high forties – phew – we didn’t even get a chance for a dip in the sea (not that I’m sure I would have risked a swim, as I kept hearing about shark attacks!). I did, however, try to persuade Jim to go in, as we had him hugely insured on a “key man” policy, and I reckon I could’ve retired on the payout if he’d been eaten! Jason and I weren’t so highly insured so there was no point in us having a splash!

OK, I’m back again, well nearly… I have the most severe ‘man flu’ – i.e. a slight cold! – I’m bunged up and feeling lousy. On top of which I’ve done absolutely nothing about Christmas – no cards, no prezzies.. zilch. Methinks I won’t be too popular with some come the yuletide morn! I reckon I can just about get away with not sending any cards by pointing out that it’s the environmentally responsible thing to do – but justifying the absence of presents to my nearest and dearest might just need a little more imagination!

What a week! The ‘credit crunch’ has morphed into the ‘global economic crisis’ and the government has waved its magic wand and conjured up five hundred billion pounds to bail out the banks. Europe-wide the sums involved run into the trillions. If this isn’t ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ I don’t know what is.

We received a very upsetting letter from a member of the public recently, which included a newspaper clipping detailing the events he went on to describe in his heartfelt account.

Ex-police dog handler, Mr Thompson, was devoted owner of 3-year-old flatcoat retriever “Yala”, up until her recent tragic and untimely death.