Babylonian Times

HELPFUL ADVICE FOR UK COMPANIES
(provided by Envirowise)

http://www.envirowise.gov.uk/envirowisev3.nsf/key/MBEN4PBHQY?open&login

‘Q: We occasionally experience problems with our effluent discharge exceeding our Consent conditions. How should we address this matter?

A: ...you could contact your Water Company and establish if they are prepared to relax the current maximum COD (chemical oxygen demand) level in your Consent, so that you would avoid the potential of prosecution for non-compliance with your Consent...’
Of course you could.

Envirowise - Practical Environmental Advice for Business, a Government programme managed by Momenta, an operating division of AEA Technology Plc, and Technology Transfer and Innovation Ltd.

THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY

Welcome to anyone born in the Chinese Year of the Monkey, which officially started on January 22nd. ‘Fun...loving...generous...Give a Monkey a boring book to read and he’ll turn it into a musical, that’s the kind of creative creature a Monkey is’; as one website explains. Of course, it’s referring to people; not to real monkeys. As a real monkey in the Western world, thanks to corporate research, you’re unlikely to be writing musicals, and more likely to be having the top of your skull sawn off and parts of your brain extracted instead.

It hasn’t been a good year so far, for real monkeys. David Blunkett recently described the skull/brain extraction procedure (used in the UK) as causing ‘moderate’ suffering, rather than ‘substantial’. But hopes that Mr Blunkett might try a ‘suck it and see’ approach have been dashed. Instead, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection has had to issue a legal challenge(see www.buav.org for details). Meanwhile the BUAV’s service provider has been threatened by multi-national contract animal testers, Covance, with legal action if certain material is not removed from the BUAV’s website. Covance, it seems, really doesn’t want the public to see the undercover video the BUAV’s investigator filmed inside its primate lab in Munster, Germany, and no wonder. Follow that with the proposed Sainsbury-sponsored primate lab at Cambridge University (‘in the national interest’ apparently, although the university could not supply one neuroscientist in its favour) and it’s no surprise that our genetic relatives are taking action themselves. According to eyewitness reports, monkeys in New Delhi have started assaulting the Parliament building, ‘ransacking files, screeching at visitors and banging on windows in the Parliament complex.’ While in Katmandu, Nepal, around three dozen monkeys recently invaded the Indian embassy, where they ‘attacked officials, defecated in offices and destroyed equipment,’ according to a harried embassy spokesman. He refused to comment on why the animals might be going apeshit in the first place.

MAKING POLICY IS FUN!

Between the 7th and 9th of January, dozens of industry leaders willing to pay $3,000 met Bush Administration officials and 15 Republican members of Congress for a cosy private dinner and golf game. There they helped to write a ‘Top Ten To Do List’ for Congress, and discussed the rewriting of environmental legislation and federal energy policy. Environmental legislation and golf? ‘Global warming?’ ‘Fore!’... at least, we suppose, it explains Kyoto.

ARE THEY, BY ANY CHANCE, RELATED?

‘This is the best darn tomato I’ve ever tasted... Sink your teeth into the delicious flesh of these astounding tomatoes.. You’ll be the hero of your family with these heaven sent beauties ...your taste buds will throw a party for your mouth...I pity people who never even dream how scrumptious a tomato can be...I’m not talking skimpy, I’m talking tomatoes... movie star tomatoes’ (continued for several paragraphs)

UK Sunday Mirror - recent advert for Miracle-Bush (TM) Tomatoes - £9.95 for five packets.
‘My mother is 82 years old, housebound, lives on a social security check and sent money for the Miracle Tomato bush in early March. Her check has been cashed and no tomatoes.... ‘
‘I obeyed the instructions, watering and such, and the little things sprouted. They got about two inches long, tried to make a leaf and promptly keeled over and died. Every last one of them bit the dust. Not all at once, mind you, it took some two weeks which made my pain and suffering just that much worse.... ‘

‘I guess I am just another consumer that has been duped into buying something...’
USA ‘Garden Watchdog’ website - Comments regarding Rogers & Webster Miracle-Bush (TM) Tomatoes (58 comments: 1 positive, 2 neutral, 55 negative)