The Gospel According to St Peter
30/10/2008 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness but cursing the darkness is more fun. So that was Izzie's excuse for attending an anti GM food rally today. But there's also a method to this serpent's madness. One of the guest speakers at this rally is the God of Garden Gorgeousnes himself - Peter Cundall
He was also one of the main attractions at last week's Garden Expo which turned out to be a big disappointment due to the totally vile hot and humid weather we had. So different to today which was sunny but crisp and crunchy and beautifully breezy
Last week's Garden Expo schedule was full of interesting stuff. Pete was in his vegie patch at 11am and 4pm, doing two one hours speeches - one at 11.30 and the other at 2.30 as well as doing meet and greet and book signings at the ABC stand. All of this for the four days of the garden expo. A schedule like that would wear out even a spring chicken but it's an 81 year old geezer we are talking about here
Now if that isn't an advertisement for the benefits of growing and eating your own organic food, then we don't know what is
One of the speeches had the intriguing title "We can survive" and was all about doom and gloom - well as doomy and gloomy as it is possible for such a twinkly eyed cute critter to be
He first got the gardening bug when growing up during the Great Depression and even though hardly any of the men in their local neighbourhood had jobs, a lot of folks survived by growing their own food
He adds that the coming gloom and doom is going to make those days look like a tea party
This time we've got rising oil and commodities prices, water shortages and global warming as well as the economic crisis.
He's a great advocate of digging up lawns which he hates with a passion and replacing them with vegie patches. After all, if you are going to spend time and water on your little patch, at least make it produce something useful. And there's also the advantage of getting a good work out and not wasting money on going to the gym
He also observes rather wickedly "Have you ever seen a happy jogger?"
Pottering about the vegie patch, he explains that his six 2 by 4 meter vegie beds can produce enough food for a family of four with lots to spare and one of the beds on its own can grow 200 kilos of potatoes. And that's without even trying very hard
But he warns would be growers not to turn into monsters with machine guns mowing down any hungry neighbours who dare snatch the precious munchies. It's much better to teach them too and work together than indulge in the dreadful dog eat dog 'us and them' mentality so promoted by the Powers that Be as a way of keeping people scared and easily manipulated
He was also talking about the Western Australian State Quarantine Guards who as good as strip search and give the third degree to anyone who is seen with something as seemingly innocuous as an apple core. He does a wonderful imitation - like some one who is dealing with a barrel of radioactive plutonium with a bit of anthrax thrown in for good measure
He then wonders how a state that is so obsessive with preserving agricultural purity could then even dream of doing something so irredeemably stupid as allowing trials of genetically modified canola
Apparently clean green Tasmania allowed so called trials of this toxic sludge - canola grows like a weed anyway without needing any assistance from the likes of Monsanto
He said the same thing again today at the rally. There was also a woman from a consumer's organization in Japan who presented the new Minister of Agriculture with 3 million signatures from Japanese citizens
Apparently they get most of their canola from this bit of Oz as it is one of the few places left in the world that is still kosher. Canada and the USA are most certainly not and even clean and green New Zealand has done deals with the devil.
She kind of figures that if they don't speak the language of green food then at least green paper will push a few buttons or two. The value of the Japanese export market must be simply enormous
It's quite amazing really. There's something so totally infectious about passionate people. Even when Peter Cundall talks doom and gloom, depression and recession, he energizes and excites the audience. He has probably singlehandedly done more for the cause of organic gardening and growing your own than any of the pompous preaching prats that appear regularly in the papers, magazines and on television
He's certainly corrupted this serpent and even dearest Dursleyish Aunt Petunia
PS Evil Izzie managed to get her paws on a copy of the document concerning risk management and GMO that one of the groups of concerned farmers presented to all the politicians. Some of it includes extracts from Monsanto's contracts with users of their Roundup Ready canola. Seriously scary stuff. You'd have to have mad cow disease to even touch this stuff with a barge pole
Is there no end to the insidious trend of the big end of town offloading all possible risk precisely onto those least able to bear it?
First it was health care and then pensions and job security and now even our food is not safe
He was also one of the main attractions at last week's Garden Expo which turned out to be a big disappointment due to the totally vile hot and humid weather we had. So different to today which was sunny but crisp and crunchy and beautifully breezy
Last week's Garden Expo schedule was full of interesting stuff. Pete was in his vegie patch at 11am and 4pm, doing two one hours speeches - one at 11.30 and the other at 2.30 as well as doing meet and greet and book signings at the ABC stand. All of this for the four days of the garden expo. A schedule like that would wear out even a spring chicken but it's an 81 year old geezer we are talking about here
Now if that isn't an advertisement for the benefits of growing and eating your own organic food, then we don't know what is
One of the speeches had the intriguing title "We can survive" and was all about doom and gloom - well as doomy and gloomy as it is possible for such a twinkly eyed cute critter to be
He first got the gardening bug when growing up during the Great Depression and even though hardly any of the men in their local neighbourhood had jobs, a lot of folks survived by growing their own food
He adds that the coming gloom and doom is going to make those days look like a tea party
This time we've got rising oil and commodities prices, water shortages and global warming as well as the economic crisis.
He's a great advocate of digging up lawns which he hates with a passion and replacing them with vegie patches. After all, if you are going to spend time and water on your little patch, at least make it produce something useful. And there's also the advantage of getting a good work out and not wasting money on going to the gym
He also observes rather wickedly "Have you ever seen a happy jogger?"
Pottering about the vegie patch, he explains that his six 2 by 4 meter vegie beds can produce enough food for a family of four with lots to spare and one of the beds on its own can grow 200 kilos of potatoes. And that's without even trying very hard
But he warns would be growers not to turn into monsters with machine guns mowing down any hungry neighbours who dare snatch the precious munchies. It's much better to teach them too and work together than indulge in the dreadful dog eat dog 'us and them' mentality so promoted by the Powers that Be as a way of keeping people scared and easily manipulated
He was also talking about the Western Australian State Quarantine Guards who as good as strip search and give the third degree to anyone who is seen with something as seemingly innocuous as an apple core. He does a wonderful imitation - like some one who is dealing with a barrel of radioactive plutonium with a bit of anthrax thrown in for good measure
He then wonders how a state that is so obsessive with preserving agricultural purity could then even dream of doing something so irredeemably stupid as allowing trials of genetically modified canola
Apparently clean green Tasmania allowed so called trials of this toxic sludge - canola grows like a weed anyway without needing any assistance from the likes of Monsanto
He said the same thing again today at the rally. There was also a woman from a consumer's organization in Japan who presented the new Minister of Agriculture with 3 million signatures from Japanese citizens
Apparently they get most of their canola from this bit of Oz as it is one of the few places left in the world that is still kosher. Canada and the USA are most certainly not and even clean and green New Zealand has done deals with the devil.
She kind of figures that if they don't speak the language of green food then at least green paper will push a few buttons or two. The value of the Japanese export market must be simply enormous
It's quite amazing really. There's something so totally infectious about passionate people. Even when Peter Cundall talks doom and gloom, depression and recession, he energizes and excites the audience. He has probably singlehandedly done more for the cause of organic gardening and growing your own than any of the pompous preaching prats that appear regularly in the papers, magazines and on television
He's certainly corrupted this serpent and even dearest Dursleyish Aunt Petunia
PS Evil Izzie managed to get her paws on a copy of the document concerning risk management and GMO that one of the groups of concerned farmers presented to all the politicians. Some of it includes extracts from Monsanto's contracts with users of their Roundup Ready canola. Seriously scary stuff. You'd have to have mad cow disease to even touch this stuff with a barge pole
Is there no end to the insidious trend of the big end of town offloading all possible risk precisely onto those least able to bear it?
First it was health care and then pensions and job security and now even our food is not safe
