Nexplai · Mark

At the dawn of the second decade, of the third millennium, there is a major problem affecting our towns and cities. Locations as diverse as Trefforest and Paris are slowly finding their footpaths buried under the residue of their many dogs, and a solution to this is urgently required.

I have been looking into possible solutions, and ultimately there are only three or four viable options. One solution that has been discussed was for the creation of segregated footpaths for dog walking, this would enable the dogs’ residue to only affect other dogs and their owners, it would provide a social environment for them and it would also keep the dogs away from phobic people. Another solution that was put forward was that all dogs out in public should be forced to wear a nappy in order to collect the residue; personally I’m not sure that the animal or their keeper would enjoy this and disposable nappies create an environmental problem of their own.

The final suggestion, which has been successfully trialled in Israel, requires a database of the DNA of all known dogs, and then when residue is found that the owner has not taken care to remove the dog and thus its keeper can be located. Once the careless owner has been located they can be fined, the fine acting as a deterrent and a method of funding the database, staff, and other costs in relation to the dog residue problem.

Once were set up it would provide many other benefits;

It would enable lost dogs to be returned to their homes more efficiently, this would reduce the number of stray dogs being put to sleep because their owner could not be found, in cases where the owner does not want the dog returned there would be a good case for prosecution and large fines.

As in a recent case in America, the DNA of a dog can be used to prove identity, paternity and ownership. Knowing that any dog can be tracked back to its owner should act as a disincentive to would be thieves thus reducing the level of animal crime.

The database could also be consulted by the police when necessary to eliminate a dog from their enquiries, or indeed to prove its guilt. There are cases where animals have been destroyed due to false complaints, being instantly able to prove the animal’s innocence would save lives.

One final benefit is that we would have a database of all of the dogs in the county, which could be sold to Google to help them show more effective pet food ads and bring much needed money into the government.

Today marks the start of Celebrate Your Name Week, starting with Namesake Day.

I have yet to find, after many years of searching another Mark Beech within my family tree, or even another Mark amongst my ancestors, but I’m aware of a number of other people, and even a village called Mark Beech, with whom I compete on the Google SERPS.

The village of Mark Beech is located in Kent, but I first located it on the cover of a road atlas in WH Smith, at the time I felt that this was a most excellent form of subliminal advertising if only to a very limited market.

One Mark Beech, a Dr Mark Jonathan Beech, is an archaeologist in Abu Dhabi, and whist I know little of his work his main claim to fame is that as a student he attended a Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages gig at Dingwalls at Camden Lock.

Another Famous Mark Beech is the author of the AZ names in rock, a smart little book detailing how many of our favourite bands acquired their names’.

For reporting on NASCAR Sports Illustrated have a Mark Beech, although I have never read any of his writing.

Other Mark Beechs include a lawyer, an illustrator, a retired blogger, and I’m sure there are many more that I have yet to find.

Serious politics involves solving serious problems; one of the problems blighting Britain at the moment is the shockingly high rate of Teenage pregnancies. Almost a year ago I fist asked what should be done about this, and got a range of responses back, some people suggested more education, other felt less education was the answer, some felt that forced gender segregation from the age of 12 to 20 would solve the problem (and I’m inclined to agree that if male and female teenagers were never allowed the meet the chances of one of one of them acquiring a pregnancy are reduced, but such a plan would be costly, and it would not work) some of my f’book fans even got in touch to suggest that cattle prods may be the answer but failed to elaborate on how.

Late last year I was shown another potential solution that seems to be working on the European continent; that is statistics show that there is an inverse correlation between the cost of condoms and the rate of teenage pregnancies. The UK has according to a report published on December 4th 2009 the lowest priced condoms within the EU and the highest rate of teen pregnancies, where as on the continent the report stated the price is over 100% higher and they have far fewer teenagers getting pregnant. Following on from this I have looked into research on the issue of a Condom Tax, would raising the price of Condoms by 100% (as well as giving parity with our continental brothers within the union and raising funds for our ailing government) help to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies?

So far the result of this research has proven inconclusive, with opinion divided between those that feel it would have the desired effect and those who fear it would in fact have the opposite effect. Some commentators have noted that an higher price would make the Condoms seem more attractive, almost as a status symbol, others were keen to point out that some teenagers would no longer afford to practise safe sex and would turn to abstinence.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and it’s mostly a good day to be in Wales.

Only mostly, because the Liberal-Democrats in Cardiff continue to desecrate Bute park, and the Environment Minister Jane Davidson, Pontypridd AM, is refusing to do anything about it as it would constitute a conflict of interest. For reasons only known to themselves Jane and Cardiff council seem to think that the park needs to have lorries driving through in order to kill the plants.

Only mostly, because of the Liberal-Democrats in Cardiff who continue to sell off our national treasures, and priceless manuscripts from our library. Possibly to spite the people of Wales for only giving them 4 MP and 6 AM the Lib-Dem Council in Cardiff are splitting up some of the most important books and manuscripts in Wales to sell them to the highest bidder.

But the sun still shines, and over the sound of the diggers in the park you can almost hear the birds sing, there will be better days ahead, this corrupt status will fall, we can only hope that it does so before the last tree is felled and the last book ripped from our library.

I spent yesterday afternoon delivering leaflet in Trefforest, delivering news and promoting policy in the anticipation of an upcoming general election, I was led to observe that it seems that even now in 2010 one of the most effective methods for political communication still requires the mass murder of trees, and it still requires people out on the streets to actually deliver the propaganda. Whilst there are calls to reform the regulations on political advertising in the UK this is currently and I suspect will continue to remain for a while yet the status quo.

I was also informed yesterday that one of my friend’s acquaintances, Adam, is angry with me for my Town Council Election campaign, as they feel that Labour coming second by 8 votes was entirely my fault for contesting the election and getting 30 people to vote for me. Were I in the mood to argue with this person I would have to point out that Labour actually gained votes and that it was the formerly victorious Plaid whose vote collapsed to just 100, but there is a more important issue here.

Living in a democracy is more that about going out to vote every few years, it requires active participation, it requires people who are willing to put themselves through the election but it also requires many more people to stand up and promote their chosen candidate. It is all very well for Adam to sit in the pub bemoaning, and blaming me for the fact that Labour lost, but had he spent a little less time in the pub and a little more thinking of ways to help his chosen candidate then maybe he would have been happier with the result, instead of having to blame it all on me.

But then it is easy to sit in a warm, dry pub and moan, it takes a little more effort to get out into the snow and rain and actively participate in the democratic process.

Over the weekend we observed the United Nations celebrating World Social Justice Day the event on the 20^th of February now in its second year, and also the start of Fair Trade Fortnight.

Fair Trade is easy to understand and is widely supported, it is based on acknowledging that the capitalistic western world had been exploiting foreign lands, robbing them of produce, people and resources in such a manner and for so long that it is now impossible to stop but we do need to somehow help the exploited workers.  We are seeing more and more products being sold as Fair Trade, this is to note that we will never stop exploiting the workers that produce our chocolate/tea/coffee/etc… But if we give them a fair price for their goods we can allow ourselves to feel a little better about the damage our exploitation causes.

Social Justice and aid are harder to understand despite the UN’s sponsorship. There is very little information about “Social Justice” available; this is due in part to the face that it is a neologism for the time dishonoured practise of the capitalistic western world forcing its capitalistic world view onto every nation it comes into contact with. The aim of World Social Justice as promoted by the United Nations to raise the people in other nations up from being people with resources and values into consumers, ripe to be exploited by the economies of the western world, the education that is offered is only to educate people into being consumers, the healthcare that is offered is offered only when it is cost effective to keep people alive either as consumers or producers, nothing is offered without the benefit going to the western bourgeois.

Personally I will continue drinking Fair Trade team and eating chocolate that the farmers have been paid a fairer price for, and feel slightly better about myself. But I will continue to be sceptical about World Social Justice for in my humble opinion it is only a stick, used to beat and mould the developing world into a market place for the gratification of the developed world’s bourgeois.

As a veteran of the blogosphere I know that there are certain expectations for what content needs to be included in the first post of any new blog; the blogger must set out a manifesto of what they will be posting, provide a time scale and list what they hope to achieve with the blog and also their general hopes and aspirations in the real world. Not being the type of person who would wish to breakaway from a tradition especially one that should be easily subverted, and so I now progress to my opening blog post.

1. This blog will feature the writing of me, Mark Beech, in my own style of writing that has been described as fresh and naive as recently as 2005.
2. This blog will feature posts about politics, humour (mixed where possible) and anything else that I feel like writing about deviating wildly when I have nothing and/or something important to say about anything.
3. This blog will be updated frequently or infrequently as direct result of my motivation to write combined with having anything worth saying. No part of this should be taken to mean that I will only post about things that are worth saying.

On the eve of this first post I was able to for the first time see my own name BEECH Mark William on a ballot paper , and what is more I could even see that some people had written an X next to my name. Unfortunately 71 more people had made their X next to JONES Clayton Francis of Plaid Cymru, 87 more than that had chosen to put their X next to THOMAS Lynda the Labour Party Candidate and 8 more even than that put theirs next to PRICE Philip of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Philip with his 196 votes will become the councillor for Pontypridd Town next week.

With my 30 votes I should maybe feel defeated and rejected, but in truth I am honoured and humbled that out of a ward in which I know no-one 30 people were happy to stand up and ask me to represent them. I’ve also learned a lot from this campaign, a lot that I will be using to my advantage in my next campaign, and as the song went in ’97 things can only get better.

Hopefully this blog will document that things do indeed get better, or if not maybe it will provide people with the occasional laugh.