Saturday, May 10, 2014

Killer hornets

Vespa velutina, sometimes known as the 'Asian hornet' is an invasive non-native species from Asia. It has recently arrived in France where it is spreading rapidly. As a highly effective predator of insects, including honey bees and other beneficial species, it can cause significant losses to bee colonies, other native species and potentially ecosystems. You know how sometimes your brain can rush ahead and end a sentence before the person talking finishes? Well this happened to me this morning when a medical professional was explaining about the hornets sting and anaphylactic shock he was saying that six people had died in France due to their stings but and this is where I finished off the sentence with " they were only French" instead of they would have died from a normal hornets sting too. 

It's wet here today which is a pain as I was hoping to log one of the last trees over the wall at the north end of the house, it came down after the rest were cleared and has demolished another part of the wall. There is another one beside it looks as if it will come down too so I may drop it before a wind takes the roots up too. Because the tree is over the wall I was hoping to log it when Angie was home so I can leave the dogs indoors so I may have to don the waterproofs.

I see my sister in law is out protesting on the Sydney streets today, good on you Gail. Her hubby didn't go as he said it would do no good, we have the same complacency here I did yet another submission earlier in the week to the Galway county councils development plan, it seems like every week now there is some request for submissions from the public re governments energy plans due to the Aarthus commission ruling that the public haven't been given enough voice in planning decisions, apart from the government just ignoring the submissions the sheer amount of them makes folk complacent. So I do my part anyway and put submissions in regardless. I think the Irish politians must be amongst the worlds most corrupt, it is quite common here to have a director of a wind energy company in charge of energy policy for the country, how much of a conflict of interest is that. 

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