Pollution, Palm Oil, Poo

“I want fresh air, orangutans and clean streets. I don’t want pollution, palm oil and dog poo.”

Pollution

Is this opinionated or informed? When I was in Beijing in 2012 the pollution was palpable. How bad is it in London? I’m a monarchist so I hope the Queen is not suffering. I checked at addresspollution.org.

This raises public awareness but it does not tell the narrative – air quality in London has improved hugely and can, of course, get better. But it’s better than many other cities around the world.

Palm Oil

Orangutans: their habitat is being destroyed by aggressive deforestation in Indonesia. Absolutely true but a story from the last century when rain forest was wantonly destroyed. Now the palm oil industry must get permission to plant additional acreage. By the way, a hectare of palm oil produces as much vegetable oil as ten hectares of soya. Also palm oil absorbs carbon and is an important component of the Indonesian economy providing jobs and reducing mineral oil imports (by adding palm oil to petrol). The RSPO (Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil) is made up of players from producers to manufacturers such as Unilever. Plantations that meet its social and environmental criteria can call their palm oil “green”. Nestlé say that 56% of the palm oil it uses for products sold in Europe is made from green palm oil and they are increasing this proportion every year. Likewise plantations and mills are raising their standards so that more and more palm oil will qualify as green. But palm oil still gets a bad press.

In fact the problem lies in the East; especially major consumers of palm oil such as India and China. These markets are price-sensitive and, as green palm oil costs more, only a small proportion finds its way East.

Dog Poo

I seldom see dog poo in the street although there are many more dogs than twenty years ago. Unfortunately there is more litter on the streets although I and some of my neighbours pick it up. The two principal causes are having three colleges in the locality and urban foxes. The foxes empty the litter bins in the cemetery at night, scattering their contents over a wide area. I sometimes clear it up when I am walking Bertie before breakfast but Bertie tries to help by eating as much as he can. When black bin liners are left out overnight to be collected early in the morning, foxes rip them open causing a lot of work for the street cleaner.

Let’s move on. Hammersmith Bridge remains closed to motor traffic. Buses make a long detour via Chiswick Bridge but some enterprising folk offer a bicycle rickshaw service plying between Barnes and Hammersmith; £2 a ride.

Thermopylae

If I ever knew anything about the battle of Thermopylae I’d forgotten it, until James Renshaw spoke about it at the Ancient World  Breakfast Club. James teaches Classics at Godolphin and Latymer, runs the AWBC but rarely is the speaker. I think he should be more often. The Spartans and Thermopylae is topical: hard-core Brexiteers have been called Spartans, so this battle fought in 480 BC may have been forgotten by me but others remember it.

The plucky Spartans blocked the pass of Thermopylae preventing a numerically superior Persian army conquering Greece. The Persians had been defeated before – even I remember Marathon alongside the good news that was brought from Ghent to Aix – and they were looking at losing another Away match. The pass was super-narrow, in today’s argot, and the Greek army easily held the pass for a week. However, as Robert Burns would say, something went agley. A venal Greek who knew the lie of the land showed the Persians a way through the mountains which allowed them to attack the Greek army from the rear. When this became apparent the Greek army withdrew, except for three hundred Spartans who stood their ground “do or die”; or so the myth goes. In fact other Greeks stayed too and there weren’t 300 Spartans. There might have been 301 but one had an eye infection and one had been sent away on an errand – so 299 Spartans and they were all killed by the Persians. This famous defeat, like Dunkirk, has come to define the losing side. The Persians won the battle but they didn’t win the war. That was finished when the Persians were decisively vanquished at the Battle of Plateau a year later, 479 BC.

The Battle of Aughrim

Aughrim is another important battle marking William’s final defeat of James II’s army in July 1691. It has featured more than once here – put Aughrim in the Search box if you are interested. At Barmeath it was always pronounced Or-Grim and nobody ever corrected my grandfather. This week at a discursive committee meeting of the Irish Peers’ Association the battle came up and my pronunciation was politely corrected by an Irish Viscount and an Irish Baron, so I knew I’d got it wrong. It is actually pronounced Och-Rim. Then the conversation turned to Emily Lawless (1845 – 1913) and her poem, After Aughrim. The history of the Lawless family is an unhappy one and her writing is infused with melancholy. After the battle the surviving Lawlesses fled to France with Patrick Sarsfield but the poem is a broader dirge to the misery in Ireland caused by war and famine.

 

She said, “They gave me of their best,

They lived, they gave their lives for me;

I tossed them to the howling waste,

And flung them to the foaming sea.”

She said, “I never gave them aught,

Not mine the power, if mine the will;

I let them starve, I let them bleed,—

They bled and starved, and loved me still.”

She said, “Ten times they fought for me,

Ten times they strove with might and main,

Ten times I saw them beaten down,

Ten times they rose, and fought again.”

She said, “I stayed alone at home,

A dreary woman, grey and cold;

I never asked them how they fared,

Yet still they loved me as of old.”

She said, “I never called them sons,

I almost ceased to breathe their name,

Then caught it echoing down the wind,

Blown backwards from the lips of Fame.”

She said, “Not mine, not mine that fame;

Far over sea, far over land,Cast forth like rubbish from my shores,

They won it yonder, sword in hand

She said, “God knows they owe me nought,

I tossed them to the foaming sea,

I tossed them to the howling waste,

Yet still their love comes home to me.