Scots Warriors: The Black Douglas, by JD

Image: The Scotsman newspaper

Herewith the tale of 'Guid' Sir James...  a tale from Scottish history with a surprising legacy:

It is the story of Sir James Douglas (c. 1286 – 25 August 1330) also known as Guid Sir James in Scotland and the Black Douglas in England. He was one of the chief commanders during the wars of Scottish Independence and indirectly was the inspiration for the song Flower of Scotland - "and stood against him, proud Edward's army and sent him homeward to think again" Following the Battle of Bannockburn it was Douglas and a party of knights who pursued Edward's army, a task carried out with such relentless vigour that the fugitives, according to Barbour, "had not even leisure to make water" Eventually Edward took refuge in Dunbar Castle which is approximately 70 miles from Stirling. That was a long chase!

(John Barbour (1320-1395) was a Scottish poet whose principal work was the historical verse romance, The Brus (The Bruce) which included the story of the Battle of Bannockburn.)

Upon his death (7th June 1329) King Robert Bruce assembled his captains and tasked Douglas to bear his heart on crusade to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, possibly as posthumous repentance for Bruce’s murder of his rival for the crown, John Comyn, at the High Kirk in Dumfries in 1306 and the suffering he inflicted on his own people with his ‘scorched earth’ tactics. When Bruce was dead, his heart was cut from his body and placed in a silver and enamelled casket which Sir James placed around his neck.

Around this time, King Alfonso XI of Spain was engaged in La Reconquista to drive the Moors out of Spain. The word was sent to Christian Nobles and Knights throughout Europe to assemble at Alfonso’s headquarters in Cordoba. Sir James Douglas as history shows was one such Knight who responded to the call. Jean de Bel in his Chronicles tells that Bruce wanted his heart taken to the Holy Land and presented to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while the poet John Barbour says that Bruce wished his heart be carried into battle against God’s foes. 

Whatever the true specific request, the call to arms by King Alfonso fitted in with Sir James Douglas’ mission. In the Spring of 1330 Sir James Douglas armed with ‘a safe conduct’ from Edward III of England and ‘a letter of recommendation’ to King Alfonso, left Berwick to sail for Sluys in Flanders. Jean de Bel said that Douglas was accompanied by one Knight Banneret, six ordinary Knights and twenty Esquires. Douglas and his party remained in Sluys for 12 days and then departed by ship for Spain, finally embarking at Seville. There he presented his credentials to King Alfonso.

Sir James and his fellow Scottish knights joined Alfonso's army as they set out to reclaim the Moorish stronghold of the Castle of the Star (Castilla de la Estrella) which is near the village of Teba in what is now the province of Malaga.

There are several conflicting accounts of the Battle of Teba which is not surprising because this was 690 years ago and stories come down to us now through translation and with added 'colour' such as the tale of how Douglas, after attempting to rescue another comrade who had become separated, was surrounded by a rallying cluster of Moors. He tossed the silver casket and heart into the thick of the battle and shouted: ‘Now pass thou onward before us, as thou wast wont, and I will follow thee or die.’ The story of the thrown heart is a literary invention from C15th that evolved through various stages till the one shaped by Sr Walter Scott and published in 'Tales of A Grandfather' in 1827.

Sir James died in the battle as did his fellow knights Sir William de St.Clair and the brothers Sir Robert Logan and Sir Walter Logan. All of the accounts tell how the bodies were recovered from the field and were later returned along with Bruce's heart to Scotland. The bones of Sir James now rest in St. Bride's church in Douglas, Lothian and Bruce's heart is preserved in Melrose Abbey.

And so we come to the aforementioned surprising legacy. Several years ago a historian at Malaga University was researching the expulsion of the Moors and uncovered papers which shed some light on the battle. The story as handed down tells of how the Moors did not recognise the colours carried by the Scottish knights and were unaware of their high status. The Moors had been familiar with the colours worn by English or French knights but had thought the Scots were of lesser rank.

This is how la Cronica de Alfonso XI desribes the death of Sir James -

"Douglas, y casi todos sus hombres resultaron muertos en la batalla, incluyendo a William St. Clair de Rosslyn y Robert Logan de Restalrig. Su cuerpo y el relicario conteniendo el corazón embalsamado de Bruce se encontraron juntos en el campo y cuando Muhammed IV supo que pertenecía al rey escocés, envió los cuerpos de Douglas y sus hombres a Alfonso XI con una guardia de honor. Fueron llevados a Escocia por los escoceses supervivientes, William Keith de Galston, y Simon Lockhart."
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Teba#La_muerte_de_Sir_James_Douglas

The Moors under the command of Uthman ibn Abi al-ula knew whom they had slain in the battle and so the bodies were gathered up and taken, flanked by a guard of honour, to the camp of Alfonso. Chivalry is not exclusive to the European ideal of knightly gallantry, it is a universal code among the warrior caste throughout the world.

In the spring of 1988, Douglas Mackintosh who is a direct descendant of Sir James, arrived in Teba with a one ton slab of sand stone sculpted by Hew Lorimer.

Diario SUR published a piece entitled "The descendants of a Scottish national hero will erect a monument to his memory in Teba." The text, signed by the journalist Mabel Moya, explains how the residents of Teba had ignored their relationship with the figure of the knight until recently. They were unaware of the relevance and admiration that this historical figure arouses among the Scottish people, and received with amazement the visit of a family from the United Kingdom, direct descendants of Sir James Douglas.

On this visit, they brought with them "a slab, weighing about one tonne," which "succinctly tells the story of Douglas," designed by sculptor Hew Lorimer and sourced from Creetown in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. “Its price is estimated at about 8,000 pounds (around 1,680,000 pesetas) and its anchoring in the ground will amount to about 3,000 pounds (630,000 pesetas), an amount that is being paid with donations from people interested in making this project a reality.

The stone slab was kept in a warehouse until its location was decided, the Plaza de España. On August 25, 1989 , a grand opening ceremony was held attended by the mayor of Teba and George Nigel Douglas-Hamilton, Count Selkirk.

During the ceremony there was "an Anglican-Catholic ecumenical religious service", carried out by the priest of the Parish of Teba and the Vicar of the Anglican Church of San Jorge de Málaga, in addition to a military offering with the notes of the hymns of Andalusia and Scotland of the music band and bagpipes in the background.

Both Count Selkirk and the then mayor of Teba, Francisco González, made two speeches in which they expressed the desire to carry out a true twinning from which "exchanges of young people, schoolchildren, the elderly, sports, folkloric events, language learning and practice, integration of immigrants, commercial relationships, exchange of experiences in municipal management and administration ”, as recorded in the archive of the Teba City Council.

The stone itself is inscribed in English on one side and in Spanish on the other.

The Spanish love their fiestas and many town and villages have an annual Fiesta de Cristinos y Moros in celebration of La Reconquista. Teba City Council, now with the memorial stone in place decided that they too would have their own Cristianos y Moros but with a Scottish flavour. Every year on Aug. 25, the village celebrates the day of El Douglas. A pipe band from Scotland performs and there is a ceremony between the Teba mayor and other grandees and the visitors from Scotland. The square is also known as the Plaza Douglas.

======================================

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Douglas,_Lord_of_Douglas
• https://castlehunter.scot/blog/james-the-black-douglas-the-most-feared-knight-in-scottish-history/
• https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-true-chronicles-of-jean-le-bel-1290-1360.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Teba
• https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/day-1330-black-douglas-died-while-carrying-robert-bruces-heart-jerusalem-1468700
• https://www.douglasdaysteba.com/pag-noticias
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Douglas,_Lord_of_Douglas
• http://www.douglashistory.co.uk/history/Battles/teba.htm#.X2tpMmhKjtQ

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: A tale of excess, by Wiggia

All of us of a certain age have got involved in conversations about what we had as kids as opposed to today, the usual hard luck stories would emerge and then people would make jokes that reduced their own level of receiving to something like, and at the time I thought it funny, “all I got for Christmas was a quire of old newspapers and a packet of crayons” - the fact that 'quire' was in the sentence dates it but you get the drift.

 And it is true we certainly never got the items today's kids do or adults come to that. What did we get? Well, virtually nothing other than on birthdays or Christmas. I was quite fortunate in getting a Hornby train set one Christmas and how I cherished it, it really meant something and was played with for years; other notables were some nice Dinky toys and a wonderful large scale clockwork Foden truck that I kept well into my late teens and simply lost track of it - where it went I do not know, quite valuable today.

 In general, though, apart from a couple of pennies to go and get some flying saucers or a giant gobstopper that changed colour over hours and your tongue with it, all presents or gifts were reserved for the two occasions above. I was unfortunate in this regard as my birthday is three days after Christmas so I got combined presents, hmmmm!

 Why have I come up with this? Well, it was something that I could not help notice in recent weeks whilst house hunting (yes we COULD finally be moving after the longest running saga since the Forsyte one.)

 It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen sights like this before; it was seeing so many and so much. Almost every family house we viewed with children had rooms absolutely stuffed with soft toys, games, toy soldiers, expensive electric items and all in the case of the girls in very pink rooms and in the boys autographed footballers prints on the wall and the child's name emblazoned above the bed – “Thabita” said one, no Mary or Ann these days. 

Thabita had a lot more than this, I saw it all.

But it didn’t stop there. In the last house we viewed, not the one we hope to move to, the garden was an obstacle course of children's apparatus: the now obligatory caged trampoline, a climbing frame, a full sized slide, two different sized paddling pools (one in the shape of an alligator – no, me neither) and numerous other objects I could not put a handle to. It was like the children's play area in the local park; why so much? 

The worst case of excess I have seen was with a client of mine whom I worked for on and off over eighteen years with his four acre garden, very nice people and he a very successful business man for a world-wide company. They only had one child, a boy, who I saw grow up over those years. What was lavished on him had to be seen to be believed: as a kid he had every single piece of Action Man and would be given every new piece as it became available, he had three different battery powered kiddy cars, when he started to kick a football he was kitted with dozens of shirts, some obtained from the company’s foreign offices where the CEO would send for instance a Brazilian official team shirt signed by Zico or someone, and the same with Inter Milan and many others now forgotten. He even had his own small fridge in the playroom he had, stuffed full of his favourite ice lollies he could help himself to at any time.

Whether all this as a child had an effect I don’t really know but he grew up to be an obnoxious teen who at private school despite having private coaching and a bowling machine installed on the family tennis court still could not make the first team. There was a lot more I saw over the years but you get the drift: every day was Christmas.

This was more like it…

Now few parents have the wherewithal to give on that scale, yet what I have observed in these last few weeks means they all think the same but on a different scale of expense. The sentiment is the same: to give on demand, or not even wait for that request.

There is nothing wrong with parents wanting to help their children or give what they can to their kids but the scale is obscene in many cases and not that small a percentage if what I saw is to go by.

So yes, things have changed since my child hood. Obviously my parents did not have the resources to shower me with toys after the war, nor did the majority of parents. Given the living standard of today would they have replicated the excesses I have observed? We will never know of course but I doubt many would, it was a different mindset then and the parenting was very different as well, the ‘do what they like’ approach had not yet started. It is indeed a very different world.

And yes, I have seen more than one like this

Running parallel to what the kids have was the the stuffed garage. It seems few use a garage any more for keeping a car in, so many I viewed were stuffed to the gunwales with dead gym equipment, bicycles, more electronic equipment, an amazing amount of discarded musical instruments like electric pianos, drum kits, various outdoor cooking ranges and barbecues, boxes full of clothes, boxes full of toys, boxes full of you name it, a wonderful example of the consumerist society we now are.

Now we all have too much stuff but I can get in my garage and park the car there and I think I have too much stuff; obviously not. I must make a bid on that exercise bike I saw on eBay, I am sure it is the missing piece in the jigsaw of my life.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Cathars, by JD

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ( "Kill 'em all, God will know his own.")
- Arnaud Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux.

First a potted history of the Papal Crusade, followed by some music:

• http://www.cathar.info/cathar_whoswho.htm#arnaud
• https://warontherocks.com/2016/01/provences-bloody-past-six-lessons-from-a-forgotten-crusade/
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1902203.The_Great_Heresy
• http://www.cathar.info/

 

There is a painting by Velazquez of Pope Innocent X in the Prado and he has a face of pure evil and yet he told Velazquez he was more than pleased with the representation. You have to stand in front of the painting to see and feel the malevolence of the man; chilling.

That Pope was about 400 years after Innocent III who ordered the Crusade against the Cathars. The only depictions of the latter are stylised being before the Renaissance invention of perspective so it is impossible to tell what he may have been like but his deeds speak volumes. 

Why were medieval Popes so bloodthirsty? Not very Christian, were they!

Biden and Pelosi: butt out of Northern Ireland!

Interesting that Joe Biden should echo https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu/biden-warns-uk-on-brexit-no-trade-deal-unless-you-respect-northern-irish-peace-deal-idINKBN2680R8  Nancy Pelosi’s dogwhistle references to the threat of reigniting Irish terrorism https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/politics/nancy-pelosi-brexit-congress-uk-gbr-intl/index.html  mere days after Americans commemorated 9/11; clearly, unlike for Tony Stark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man , irony is not his strong suit. Unless it was a joke: I guess he’s a riot in the right company - though he has been a little slow to dissociate himself from the wrong company https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-awakens-to-the-threat-of-urban-riots-11598894969 .

Or maybe it was the memory thing; for a month after the Twin Towers bombing, Joe was ruffling feathers https://edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/10/24/ret.hastert.biden/index.html  with his remarks about Afghanistan and the Muslim world’s perception of America as a ‘bully’ that thinks ‘we can do whatever we want to do’. Subsequent events showed that the US does often behave like a man looking for a gas leak with a lit match, and this latest attempt to interfere in our internal affairs continues the pattern; perhaps Joe’s new enthusiasm for interventionism is a bending with the wind.

On the other hand, Pelosi is consistent: she was making the same minatory noises in her address to the Dublin Parliament last year, and lamenting ‘our late friend, the extraordinary Martin McGuinness.’ https://theintercept.com/2019/04/17/nancy-pelosi-brexit-ireland/ Only the coronavirus cancelled the annual green-dyeing of the Chicago River https://www.chicagostpatricksdayparade.org/ - American political paddywackery is still fertile ground for American audiences, catering to illusions about ‘a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain#European_policy

For the rest of us, the porter-beer-and-Noraid sentimentality is dangerous. I remember (anyone got the videoclip?) Gerry Adams on Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show in Dublin on RTÉ in 1994, where an audience member called Adams a ‘murderer’ and received a lethally restrained lecture from him on politeness; marginally a better reaction, I suppose, than GA telling Peter Hitchens he should be ‘decommissioned’ https://en.brinkwire.com/news/peter-hitchens-im-growing-a-new-beard-because-i-havent-felt-so-rebellious-since-the-1960s/ . Still, as long as the bangs are far away from New York and Oklahoma, Washington is happy to light the fuses.

For what, though? 1997 excluded the moderates to get a deal like that between Chicago gangster fiefdoms. The successors of the ‘Chuckle Brothers’ https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/how-martin-mcguinness-and-ian-paisley-forged-an-unlikely-friendship-35550640.html are unlikely to throw it all up for the sake of cross-border management that is much more technically doable now than when Ireland and the UK entered the EU simultaneously in 1973 to circumvent the practical difficulties.

Is it just to save money on the phone bill? Supposedly, Henry Kissinger asked (not so, according to the FT https://www.ft.com/content/c4c1e0cd-f34a-3b49-985f-e708b247eb55 ) ‘Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?’; the answer in 2009 was Cathy ‘gosh’ https://m.azh.kz/en/news/view/3368 Ashton. Now, the US Secretary of State will have to replace the handset and redial +44-(0)71… for a second discussion. How inconvenient.

The Daily Express puts it succinctly: ‘Butt out, Pelosi!’ https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1334941/Nancy-Pelosi-Brexit-news-USA-election-war-on-terror-IRA-funding-Enniskillen and ‘Stay out of it, Joe!’ https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1336601/brexit-news-joe-biden-us-EU-trade-deal-withdrawal-agreement-internal-markets-bill .

My post now on 'The Conservative Woman' - "EU Withdrawal Agreement? It's a gas!"

Saturday's post on the UK's revison of the Northern Ireland protocol has been republished today on The Conservative Woman, only omitting my sideswipe at Nancy Pelosi and the US's selective approach to international law and peace*. Click the link to see the usual catfights in the comments:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-fact-to-deal-with-brexit-delirium/

*Which the Daily Express has done anyway, as I found out when I Googled 'Nancy Pelosi Noraid':
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1334941/Nancy-Pelosi-Brexit-news-USA-election-war-on-terror-IRA-funding-Enniskillen

And I have to put this up: George Galloway melting Senator Norm Coleman at the hearings of the U.S Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations relating to the Oil-for-Food Program. I know Galloway is a 'colourful' character but in this performance (May 2005) he is Cicero reborn. Magnificent. We need more such orators to check the corrupt power-seekers.

The 2016 Referendum was NOT 'advisory' - my letter to The Spectator

Sent today, in response to last week's letter from Tim Ambler at the Adam Smith Institute:

Sir

Notwithstanding post facto revisionism from some elements of the political and legal establishment, I beg to differ with Tim Ambler ('Referendum Risk', Letters, 12 September) when he says 'the Brexit referendum was advisory.'

I accept that it may have been conceived as such at the beginning of the campaign, but its nature changed when politicians of all stripes assured the voters orally that they would consider the result as final, and then the Government itself did so in writing, under its own imprimatur*: 'This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.' As part of what was effectively a contract between the Government and the people, that clarifying explanation formed part of the agreement and turned the vote into a binding plebiscite.

I leave aside consideration of whether we were ever legally part of a European Union into which we were led by falsehoods, subterfuge and legal ambiguities; but this decision was open and clear, and must stand.

_______________________________________

* https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/515068/why-the-government-believes-that-voting-to-remain-in-the-european-union-is-the-best-decision-for-the-uk.pdf

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: A Load Of Rubbish, by Wiggia

I mentioned in an earlier piece how despite all that was going on the climate fraud has continued to be promoted, this time on the back of the Coronavirus; it has become a tidal wave of statements, articles, tweets etc. from the ‘woke’ climate activists and all those celebrities that believe they know what is good for the rest of us.

We also have had the first results of the ‘Citizens' Assembly’ - 108 people from all walks of life selected to give their insight into how we should tackle climate change. It was said when they set this assembly up that it would represent us and the results prove it is just a seal of approval for what the ‘experts’ wanted in the first plac:, the only people who put themselves forward were the woke.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/10/uk-climate-assembly-economic-recovery-from-covid-must-tackle-global-heating

It comes in various forms, either collective - 'the world has to change', the clarion call of the Greens and XR (the latter have another agenda, though) - or individual initiatives, some well meaning, some naive and some downright stupid.

Yet all will agree with one another regardless of political undercurrents because it is the right thing to do and from this they never deviate in their pronouncements as to the way forward.

I have never disagreed with the obvious intentions about cleaning up the planet and our own back yard, that should be a given in anyone's book, but the zeal in which even our eating habits for example are attacked takes for me away any suggestion I could ever get behind any of the movements that wish to change our lifestyles simply because ‘they’ believe we should all follow their diktat.

I came across this little video the other day in which there is nothing said that is not true or you could sanely disagree with….



When you look around these days you conclude that anyone who claims they wish to save the planet should really get on with cleaning up our own back yard.

I remember when I first started to venture abroad in the mid-Sixties finding places on continental Europe that resembled rubbish tips by the roadside and not believing what I saw (especially in Italy where local mafia ran rubbish collecting and had turned it into an art form in moving people's waste to beauty spots where it became, err people's waste) and thinking, 'thank God we are not like that.'

But times change and as the video describes other factors have come into play, not the least immigration and different cultures who don’t see rubbish as any sort as a problem and I include in those groups ‘travellers’ who do as they like where they like, something that has never ever been stamped on despite words being uttered in Parliament.

In this case at least there was a sense of justified retribution, a rare event.



I recall visiting my old mum a few years ago in north London. Because of traffic problems I came in  to town via Cricklewood, never an inspiring area but typical suburbia. I had not been to that part for several years before that but the change was not one anyone would want: every house it seemed had piles of plastic rubbish bags outside, many split open and the contents strewn across the walk way. Whole streets were like this. Why, I asked myself, and the answer was there before me: the whole area was now like somewhere in the Third World - no sense of communal responsibility.

I originally lived in Essex not far from the notorious - or is it infamous? - Dale Farm camp site, near enough to see and hear what went on but fortunately not near enough to be affected. I also lived near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk where the travelling ‘community' twice trashed the purpose built site provided for them and then complained of not enough official sites and that is why they camped where they did!

Going briefly off topic I see that an advert had been placed in the local paper advertising static caravans at Dale Farm for rent; you really couldn’t make it up.

That is in the past but they as a group like the other groups or cultures have grown since then by significant amounts. The area round where I live now has ongoing battles with illegal camp sites or  invasions of private property, yet they never result in criminal charges, for reasons we have all become inured to.



A recent trip down the nearby A47 a couple of days ago saw at one end of a field caravans that had not for the first time come straight off the dual carriageway through an entrance for tractors and harvesters and just set up camp as they do; but at the other end by pure coincidence there was an enormous pile of waste including white goods and everything else that must have been 12 feet high and forty feet long.

It is common knowledge that a mile of the same stretch of road is regularly strewn with rubbish, some in bags, some loose, and it is always on a Monday morning that you see it. This is not crisp packets thrown out of a car, it is wholesale dumping of rubbish and yet nobody has ever been caught, even on this major A road.

The rate of prosecutions is very low nationwide, around 0.3% against the number of reported incidents of fly tipping, so it is still easy money for those involved, and those who don’t care have little need to worry about getting caught, another of those laws that are sensible on paper but almost impossible to enforce.

Various reasons are put up for the rise in dumping rubbish. Council tip charges are one, and it is a valid point for many of the councils most affected by this blight are those that have the highest charges; the same councils will spend a lot more than the lost charges clearing up the illegal waste, but fail to see the connection.

My own council were very good in taking rubbish from our homes. Anything that could go in a bin was accepted and very reasonable token charges were made for items left at the gate to be picked up, things that many people would find impossible to get to the recycling centre because of the size; but that changed, and there are queues at the tip now and you have to book a slot in advance, are only allowed a certain amount of items and cannot return within two weeks. In a society where immediacy is the norm that is a very short-sighted approach to the problem, but it is normal for councils now in the majority of areas they run.

Though mine is nowhere near the worst of councils, ‘austerity’ means they now charge more, meaning people can’t be bothered and dump, so the cycle of fly-tipping, clearing-up and recycling continues and increases, for which we pay through our taxes.

The dumping of commercial waste is a whole different ball game, yet you can see by the prosecution figures above they are no more likely to get caught than the casual disposer of waste.

None of the above excuses the appalling amount of general waste just left on the pavement, thrown out of car windows or left on footpaths and country lanes. The recent return to normality showed we really had returned with this example of the state of the beach at Brighton, ironically the home of the Greens, when the crowds went home:

Why anyone would want to stay on a beach like that is beyond me. Rightly, much is made of the amount of plastic dumped, much of which sadly gets washed into the sea, a worldwide problem. I suppose the only difference from years ago is that it was broken bottles then, not plastic, that would slice through your foot if you trod on one hidden in the sand, so one small advantage today.

So in reality it is still human beings who are the problem. We have become lazy and the don’t care attitude to so many things today manifests itself in the rubbish that is discarded. There used to be a Keep Britain Tidy campaign in an effort to make us dispose of rubbish respectfully; was it a success? It seems not.

An example of the sheer laziness now prevalent was after the recent storm. I had a fence panel partially blow out on a side of my property that has a footpath alongside. We have a gate onto the footpath and I went out to do the repair. I am not going to exaggerate and claim I was knee deep in detritus but there were about ten items discarded in that stretch from the gate to where the the fence problem was: crisp packets, coffee cups, plastic tops and sweet wrappers. Why? There is a rubbish bin at the entrance to the footpath twenty feet away that is regularly emptied.

Even attempts to cut back on plastic bags usage, by selling 'bags for life', has foundered as anyone spending a weekly shop of say £100 soon got used to an extra 10p and treated bags for life in the same way as the free ones. Again in the past I remember being sent to the grocer's with a wicker carrier and all the veg and fruit going into the same bag; no one died!

Same with wine carriers, now abandoned as no one ever used them more than once - did they ever think anyone would. The only good thing some supermarkets have done in that area is let you use the empty wine boxes, which at least means they have been used twice.

We live in a throw away society. Much of this problem is blamed on rampant consumerism and our contempt for the landscape etc. Not really; that may be a small part for sure, but the major issue is we have just become a nation of people who to large extent don’t give a monkey's about throwing rubbish anywhere, that is the real problem.

As with so many issues today, apathy wins.