pumpkinstrokemarrow

Then there was a badger snuffling around in a short grass field in the daylight. First time I have seen one in the wild, alive. As opposed to dead by the roadside. Then a buzzard parked up on something in the same field on the following day. Clearly quite keen on whatever the something was as it did not flap off when we parked to peer at it. Then sundry deer and rabbits. And, last but not least, but sadly when I was in a pub, another badger ambling down the lane with a rabbit in its mouth. Must have been a dozy or sick rabbit to allow itself to be grabbed by a badger which one would think was a lot slower, at least at running, than a rabbit. Might have a fast enough grab though.

In-between times, had a new toy to play with. To wit, one small petrol engine, looking rather like one of those small generators you can use to power up your power tools on a building site, but on this occasion powering up the hydraulics to work a hydraulic drill. Full sized drill, just like its pneumatic cousin, weighing in, guessing, at fifty pounds or more. Quite heavy enough when it is maybe forty years since one used such a thing in earnest and maybe ten years since one used one at all. Quite effective at smashing through masonry, stone and concrete. Managed neither to get the thing stuck down a crack nor to snap the drill bit. The former requiring one to lift the fifty pound drill off the stuck bit - which would be a bit hairy single handed - and the latter requiring one to snap the plastic. Entirely appropriate that the thing should be made by JCB, that well known manufacturer of vehicles with hydraulic attachments. But not so well known that it had occurred to me that the drills that one can attach to the ends of their arms were hydraulic rather than pneumatic. Obvious when one gets around to thinking of it.

On the way home read about new departures in our legal world. It seems that part of the New Labour Project was to further empower our judiciary. Not a written constitution but an understanding that there are some things that are not done. Governments are supposed to be helpful, honest and open. Human have rights - this last being helped on its way by the European initiative of the same name. With the result that lawyers can now boss the government about if the former think that the latter are getting out of line. Not to the point where the lawyers can go against the expressed wish of parliament, but if the lawyers think that government is getting out of line, they can insist that parliament is express about it; to make it quite clear that government is being instructed to do this thing in contravention of accepted standards of administration and behaviour. Rather in the same way that we read of permanent secretaries asking their ministers to provide express direction to do things that they, the permanent secretaries, think a bit dodgy. Direction that is then lodged in a reasonably public place.

Now on the face of it, empowering lawyers in this way sounds like a good thing. There is something to hold our over mighty government in check. But then one thinks that the thing doing the checking is a bunch of very highly paid professionals who conduct their business in what might just as well be ancient Japanese. A bunch who have a clear financial interest in making as much of a meal of such matters as possible. Also a bunch who have rather blotted their copy books recently by striking down proposed strikes by the toiling masses on the basis of very flimsy technicalities.

Do we really want to open the door to all kinds of judicial meddling in the affairs of the executive, to open the door to more or less to anyone with enough dosh to pay for the meddling ticket?

But where will we find someone better qualified to do the checking? Something which is clearly needed given the way governments behave these days. When will the Guardian and the Independent get around to weighty articles on the subject?