Moby-Dick; The Whale

Today is the 161st anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick; The Whale, a novel by Herman Melville which first became available on the 14th November, 1851.

The wiki description of this novel is fascinating, "In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and the metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the journey of the main characters, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God are all examined, as the main characters speculate upon their personal beliefs and their places in the universe. The narrator's reflections, along with his descriptions of a sailor's life aboard a whaling ship, are woven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices, such as stage directions, extended soliloquies, and asides."

The review continues with, "The book portrays destructive obsession and monomania, as well as the assumption of anthropomorphism—projecting human instincts, characteristics and motivations onto animals. Moby-Dick is ruthless in attacking the sailors who attempt to hunt and kill him, but it is Ahab who invests Moby-Dick's natural instincts with malignant and evil intentions. In fact, it is not the whale but the crippled Ahab who alone possesses this characteristic."

The Wikipedia contributors to that article are most certainly well read, intelligent and articulate, literary critics and so it is no surprise to find that they do not perceive the whale as being evil, actually stating that it is Ahab "alone" who exhibits any evil intent. However, in popular culture, amongst the less well-read (or perhaps the more television brainwashed) Moby-Dick is, in fact, perceived as a terrifying sea monster.

That is hardly surprising because as a species we have always sought to demonise that which we simply do not understand and are further content to accept the truisms that everyone knows must be true, especially if that truism is, "Here be monsters!"

There is also the obvious commercial advantage in that anything which can be caused to be reviled by the general public can be slaughtered without risk to reputation as a commercial enterprise. Moby-Dick; The Whale as a reverse-marketing piece? Why not, George Orwell did the same for pigs with Animal Farm after all...

Most species of whales, as we all now know, were hunted to near extinction over the next 100 years but, sadly, whaling still has not stopped.

I won't blame Moby-Dick directly but there is something in our collective psyche that is stopping a mass public outcry against the 4 nations which are doing most to prevent the recovery of those most endangered species. That same something is stopping the protest that there should be against those 4 nations. Those same 4 nations who are still hunting those whales not yet proven to be endangered to the same levels of extinction as their cousins.

Those nations are Iceland (pictured), Norway, Denmark (specifically Faroe Islands although allegedly rather a lot of Icelandic whale meat ends up in Danish pig feed - and I thought I was being somewhat tenuous linking Animal Farm with Moby-Dick!) and, of course Japan, whose pirate whaling fleet plunders the Southern Ocean Whale SANCTUARY year after year for bogus research to fill supermarket shelves with toxic, and largely unwanted, meat. Did you know that in the whale sanctuary they kill an extremely high percentage of pregnant females because they swim slower and spend more time at the surface therefore are the easiest target of all for a military grade explosive harpoon? And people say I shouldn't call them disgusting barbarians! Societal norms for polite conversation notwithstanding, they are; therefore I do.

Only one NGO actively combats the killers at sea and that organisation is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who are now proudly embarked on Operation Zero Tolerance which you can read more about at this link: Sea Shepherd Operation Zero Tolerance

Another wonderful animal which has been been hunted to near extinction and remains under the most extreme threat is the shark. People blame Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg for demonising this animal with the novel and film, Jaws and that is certainly true in part. But they were not the first to do so.

Here are 3 newspaper reports from my part of the world, Scotland, published in 1937:

"*FATAL* - On the 1st of September, 1937, there was a triple fatality in the Kilbrannan Sound off Carradale on the Kintyre peninsula when a basking shark capsized a boat containing three people - named as Captain Angus Brown and his son and brother."

"On the 11th of September, 1937, a basking shark attacked a fishing boat, causing damage to its propeller. This incident happened off the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, very close to the Carradale attack."

"On the 12th of September, 1937, the Clyde steamer the Glen Sannox was attacked by a basking shark and two 5ft observation windows were broken. Again this happened in the same general area, just off the Isle of Arran."

Just look at the language being used: "attacked by," "causing damage to" and, my personal favourite, tales of a basking shark breaking observation windows. How? Seriously, how? And do please look at the picture, the basking shark - although a huge animal - is a true gentle-giant. I know, I have been assisting with surveys in my part of the World for a few years now and it is wonderful to see their numbers starting to stabilise, hopefully to recover in the years to come.

So why demonise them? Maybe this will answer your question, "Between 1946 and 1986 basking shark fisheries in Norway, Scotland and Ireland took 77,204 basking sharks." (EU Fisheries Report) and the last basking sharks were harpooned in the Clyde in Scotland as recently as the late 1990s.

I will certainly return to shark issues with future blogs and you can be sure I will be following Operation Zero Tolerance defending whales with great interest. If you still have the appetite for more today then please see my 31st October blog, Sharks and the Gold Standard but for now, thanks for reading.

Get Motivated, Stay Motivated

I took a phone call this morning from someone who had been talking to someone who had heard from someone who had heard from someone else about my blog and particularly liked my post Smiling for Sea Shepherd which I introduced with the wonderful sentiment that, "The Opposite of Happy is Very Happy."

David lecturing at the Global Village during
the Volvo Ocean Race, Galway, July 2012

"I'm organising a conference for [major organisation]," she said. "We need a motivational speaker from the world of business with an interesting story to tell. Would you like to do it?"

Of course I said yes. It is what I do most of when I am not volunteering for Sea Shepherd and, let's face it, where else are they going to find a vegan, ocean activist business executive with experience of talking to large audiences in this part of the world at short notice?

I don't always speak exclusively from a mostly business angle of course, sometimes I get to speak a bit for Sea Shepherd - but only when there is not an even more motivational speaker like Captain Paul Watson or Captain Peter Hammarstedt around, both of whom make me look like not much more than the warm up act for the warm up act.

They are truly awe inspiring to listen to and I am proud to number myself amongst their followers as someone dedicated to ocean preservation. Dedicated, I should add, mostly because of their incredibly powerful motivational influence. But don't take my word for it, judge for yourself with this full-length video of Capt Paul speaking at Sea Shepherd's 35th Anniversary Event in Colorado:

From my own experience having delivered many lectures with some great and some not-so great results and having listened to other lectures - like those from Paul and Peter - which have produced amazing results, one thing seems clear. It is possible to be either a "motivational speaker" or to be someone who just speaks motivationally. The difference is measured in results - which lecture inspired the greatest commitment to action?

So what is it that makes the difference? Well it is not enough to get people motivated, we need them to stay motivated. I can do the latter for business because that is where my experience lies. Paul and Peter do it for the oceans because that is where their experience lies.

You can "get" anyone motivated by being genuine, honest and enthusiastic about something they are kind of interested in to begin with, talking from the head with passion if you will. You can only keep them motivated if you are able to demonstrate that you have been there and are determined to stay there, talking from the heart and talking from the heart with knowledge, experience and understanding.

If you haven't watched the video above yet, please do, I think it demonstrates that viewpoint admirably.

So we motivate people with compelling recollections of big life experience. Is that a defining characteristic of humans, the need to share knowledge? Perhaps, more than just humans, that is what defines the higher order species on our planet as this link to a BBC Science and Nature report suggests Humpback whale song spreads to other whales

If that is true then, "I think, therefore I am." is no longer sufficient. Existence without purpose is an evolutionary dead end and who wants to be one of those? And I never heard a song without purpose, that would just be called noise and who wants to be accused of that?

Is it too much to extrapolate the theory that both whale song and motivational speech is an example of, "I think, therefore I must do?" I hope not, because it is where I find myself as I campaign more and more on behalf of Sea Shepherd, on behalf of the oceans, on behalf of us all.

If you feel even just a bit more motivated to do something because of today's blog then please...

...be motivated for the oceans. They need you.

Thank you for reading

Making the (Vegan) Connection Redux

This month is World Vegan Month.

Regular visitors to this blog will not be surprised that I am of the opinion that we, that is the developed world "we" have a small but growing minority of enlightened individuals who are re-discovering veganism or, at least, something far more akin to the diets and lifestyles which existed amongst the common man and woman some 400 or more years ago.

We are not trying to force something new onto an unwilling world, we are just trying to live the most ethical life we possibly can whilst feeding our bodies with the best balance of nutrition we possibly can, a balance of nutrition which they were designed for in the first place.

If you read my blog, Vegan in the 17th Century you will know that meat eating grew quickly in the old world - in pretty much the same way as it is now growing in China - largely as a form of conspicuous consumerism to allow the newly affluent to demonstrate their social standing to their neighbours - keeping up with the Joneses, Elizabethan style, if you will.

After this early growth, from around the start of the 18th Century until mid-way into the 20th Century things seem to have remained fairly balanced though. Veg(etari)anism seems to have become more widely understood and recognised but, as there was not yet large-scale industrialisation of food production, there seems to have been no particular mass-population excess to highlight that as some kind of polar opposite to the ill-health, obesity and other malignancies associated with New Elizabethan factory farming, mega dairies and chemists taking the role of bakers.

This axis of horror is like some kind of GM Army the World never wanted in the first place but don't you dare speak out against it or you will be branded some sort of lunatic fringe terrorist and a threat to the mighty $, £ or ¥. Actually, being healthy and living ethically probably is a threat to the mighty $, £ and ¥...

So when did it all change?

Part of it must have changed with television, more specifically, television advertising. Still more with the development of refrigeration - and affordable household fridges.

All of a sudden people could buy perishables in larger quantities knowing that they would stay fresh longer. Of course as every sales-savvy economist will tell you, increasing supply increases consumption, we just can't help ourselves scoffing whatever is in the fridge. I even include my fellow vegans in that remark, I have become such a food-lover since abandoning my old ways.

And then the advertising which was already well-established for non-food products really kicked into gear with the establishment of Meat, Milk and Egg Marketing Boards and a relentless "health argument" to school children. I say "health" but it isn't lost on me that this was the same era which brought you adverts like this:

Just in case there is any doubt, medical evidence now is that smoking really is bad for you. Incidentally, so is the medical evidence for a non-vegan lifestyle but the food industry clearly have better marketing people than the tobacco industry. Want to know more? Go see the film Forks Over Knives. Here's the trailer for it:

It is the scale of consumption in this new millennium which is staggering though. We went in the space of a few hundred years from eating hardly any meat and consuming very little dairy to eating mostly vegetables with some meat as an extra (ONE meat but TWO veg). Then in the space of a few decades we went from this scale of consumption to meat with everything and dairy in everything and if you eat vegetables or, horror of horrors, you are a vegan (I am) then you must be insane (I'm not).

Please forgive this non-vegan example but when I was a youngster my mum could make a pound of minced beef last the family for several meals. Now a pound of minced beef is a single portion for one of each day's two meals. Most people eat more for lunch than their parents did in a full day and then increase the quantities again for their evening meal. Clearly we are not winning the argument on health. So what argument can we use to win ground for non-human rights?

Well I particularly like the Vegan Society's latest campaign - which I promoted in my 1st November blog - Making The Connection. The video on that blog is very worth watching, even if you have seen it before. If you have never seen it, here is the link to the article where you will find the video at the end Making History on World #Vegan Day

As a society we are so far out of balance with the way we were, even 50 years ago that if we can't get that back then we have no chance whatsoever of returning to the balance we had in the age of enlightenment. So my question for today is:

How do we make people understand the connection between modern, extremely cruel, industrialised meat, milk and egg production and happy childhood images like this one, and didn't we all have something similar as our first jig-saws?

If your children knew that this picture was a lie, how would they react? Perhaps more important to ask though is, because we all know what the truth actually is why do we allow entire industries with the full backing of Governments to lie to our children?

Remember, "More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!"

Thank you for reading.

Swim Wild, Swim Free Part 2

I promised everyone in the Taiji Action Group on facebook a video of dolphins bow riding so please read on and you will find it at the end of today's blog.

Gilli from England, Chris from Wales and David from Scotland
under the watchful eye of youngest ship's crew member, Chloe

Last summer we sailed to Galway, Ireland with a 3 nations crew from Scotland, Wales and England to support our great friends and colleagues at Sea Shepherd Ireland during the finish of the Volvo Ocean Race. It was a long, hard sail: 73 hours in mostly challenging conditions but we had the crew and the boat to get us there and had been building the sea miles in advance to prepare the crew for the journey.

I am particularly proud that 2 members of that crew - Chris and Gilli in the picture right are now crewing onboard the MV Steve Irwin defending whales from the hunter-killer boats of Japan's pirate whaling fleet. If you read my blog a few days ago about Passion, you better believe they have it and they are using it.

I am even more proud that 2 other members of that crew will very soon be in Taiji, Japan as Cove Guardians. One of those crew members is Anna and I would love you to visit her campaign page as she is still hoping to raise enough funds to be self-funding for the trip, link to page: Anna's Taiji Campaign Page

Gilli with the crew of VOR Race Boat Groupama

As well as support for Sea Shepherd Ireland we were there to spread the message that there are far, far better things to do with the ocean than kill everything that either swims in it or is dependent on it for survival, sailing being an obvious example, and I will return to that in a future blog.

During our stay, as well as meeting most of the crews from the race fleet, we were hosted at a gala dinner by JCI Galway and had many meetings with politicians and dignitaries from all over the world including Ambassadors from countries known to be friendly to Sea Shepherd. But what really impressed us all the most was the fabulous welcome which we received from the people of Galway who treated us like visiting royalty. It was a pleasure meeting everyone who stopped by to say hello or who stopped us in the street to say hi and I know that all of the crew very much look forward to a return visit.

The real highlight of the trip didn't happen on land though, it happened at sea off the Connemara coast when these common dolphins came to visit. It is just a short video, enough to show you how these wonderful animals choose to interact with their land-based cousins, but not so much that we interfered with the obvious pleasure they were taking in playing with us.

Something worth thinking about:

That video lasted only 40 seconds during which time the dolphins swam a greater distance than they could have swum in even the world's largest dolphinarium. In the wild they swim for miles and miles and miles in a straight line and range over thousands of square miles. These are not animals which should be held in captivity. Not ever.

Thank you for reading.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Today's blog is all about seals. Scotland's seals. Did you know that since 2011 the Scottish Government has been issuing licences to hunters to kill them in their thousands?

Although I have only been involved since early 2011, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) has a long history of campaigning to protect seals in Scotland dating back to the early 1980s when our volunteers took direct action against the then Scottish Office instructed cull in the Orkneys, risking their lives by lying down amongst the seals which otherwise would have been shot without hesitation.

Capt Watson and crew visit Little Green Holm Summer 2011

The very happy end result of that campaign was the cull being stopped and to ensure that it could not be restarted wherever SSCS had control over matters, SSCS Islands Trust purchased the Island of Little Green Holm which exists to this day as a Seal Sanctuary.

A wide range of stakeholders, including SSCS, then continued to campaign against the illegal killing of seals which sadly commenced almost as soon as the state-sponsored culls had ended.  Nobody can state with 100% confidence how many seals are being killed illegally every year but the Scottish Government told us that they put the figure at 1,000 and were aggressively dismissive of any other figure, higher or lower. I was at that meeting, the figure of 1,000 was actually shouted in my face by a senior policy officer from Marine Scotland. He would admit no deviation from that number and if that's the number he wants to use who am I to argue with a Government official?

On 31st January 2011 the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 became effective in law. The Scottish Government announced it with huge fanfare claiming that, amongst other things, it would provide increased protection for Scotland's Seals. Subsequent press releases have continued to be phrased in the most self-congratulatory style. How wonderful our Government is. We should all be very proud. If only.

Remember the figure which they insisted we use for illegal killings was 1,000. To protect those 1,000 seals from harm Marine Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government issued licences immediately to cull 1,298 seals which increased to 1,339 seals by year end. Talk about treating the electorate with contempt!

The following year they issued licences for another 1,167.

So to reduce the illegal killing of 1,000 seals we issue liences two years running to "legally" kill an even larger number. Hey presto, no more illegal killings, none, zip, nada, nil, how fantastic; the Scottish Government has eliminated crime. All it took was making this particular crime legal. All it took was criminals making sure they had a bit of paper allowing them to do what they were always going to be doing anyway and finding a Government Department willing to collude with them whilst they did so. I wonder what else that would work with?

Something else that was launched in January 2011 was the wonderful Visit Scotland advertising campaign, Surprise Yourself. I still love this video:

High point of the video is Mike Smith, the chef from Shirley Spear's wonderful Three Chimneys Restaurant on Skye, pointing out the seals to his diners. And so he should. The United nations identifies Scotland's seals as a flagship species invaluable to our country's tourist economy.

I still cannot for the life of me fathom why the Scottish Government should be allowing our essential tourist economy to be replaced with (mostly) Norwegian owned fish farms and (at least partly) non-Scottish owned hunting/shooting/fishing estates. All of these industrial and private commercial interests benefit only a tiny minority of already very wealthy people whilst destroying a(nother) generation of young rural Scots by putting tourism at risk allowing those non-tourism businesses to kill as many seals as they can get licences for.

Killing seals just for the crime of being seals. Please be under no illusion, our very fragile rural economy is at real risk, extreme risk and the very few that benefit from the decision to do this can not easily be shown to genuinely benefit any other part of our national wealth. Economically it is insane. Morally it is repugnant.

A very good friend with close connections to the Government described me (in the nicest possible way) as a "troublemaker" whilst very kindly promoting Musings on a Troubled Planet for me.

Yes I am. I'm exactly the sort of troublemaker as the little boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor's New Clothes. This is the short story about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, or stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a little boy cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"

Did you spot the two Emperor's new Clothes observations in today's blog?

Emperor's New Clothes #1

Licences to turn 1,000 illegal killings per year into 1,000+ legal killings. The little boy shouts out to the crowd, "The Emperor's Immoral!" At best the Emperor is an accessory to crime.

Emperor's New Clothes #2

Salmon farms and exclusive hunting/shooting/fishing estates to replace essential tourism. the little boy shouts out, "The emperor is an economic illiterate!" At best the Emperor thinks he can ignore the moral majority because the money men can afford better lobbyists.

New clothes for the Emperor

We need the good politicians that still remain to fix this before Scotland faces her new future either as a fully independent nation or as a much more autonomous constituent country of the UK, 2014 will not retain the status quo no matter what way the vote goes. Either way, post 2014 the World's eyes will be on us to see what sort of clothes we are wearing.

If you would like to know more about the campaign to save Scotland's seals from being killed please visit www.SealScotland.com

Thank you for reading.

Passion is Everything

Today's blog was inspired by this most powerful of videos from Captain Paul Watson

He isn't kidding. As I watched the video I found myself reflecting on what had got me into the organisation. It wasn't slick presentations, it wasn't clever marketing materials (and I cannot begin to tell you how angry I get when I see charities spending donated funds on fancy advertising to get more funds to do more advertising to get more funds to...)  No, it was the passion and unshakeable belief of the very first Sea Shepherd volunteers we met early in 2011.

The background to this meeting was not particularly unusual, at least not for Sea Shepherd.

At the time I was the head of a long established Glasgow Trade Incorporation which every year distributes a number of cheques to deserving charities on the recommendation of our own membership.  Sea Shepherd was one of that year's recommended charities.

Of some note is the observation that the following year it became the first charity to be awarded a cheque for a second year in succession and has just surprised even me by becoming the first charity ever to receive a 3rd award.

Let me tell you that this Incorporation received its first Royal Charter from Scotland's King James V (father of Mary Queen of Scots) in 1527, that it is very definitely part of "the establishment" and that it does not give any money to any charity which does not follow charity rules - both within the letter of the law and, more importantly, the spirit of the law. It does give money to charities which accomplish miracles with next to nothing for resources and if you know any organisation which fits that bill more readily than Sea Shepherd we would all like to know about it. I will, of course, tell you lots more about this institution in a future blog so please add your email or join with friends connect on the right of this page to make sure you get notification when I do.

But back to my first encounter with the organisation which was soon to take over every spare minute of my time (and rather a lot that were never spare in the first place) What was it that got me, the then head of that charitable institution, so heavily involved with Sea Shepherd so quickly?

In a word, PASSION.

Having sent the cheque in the summer of 2010 we received a letter from Sea Shepherd UK that was clearly very different from the usual corporate thank you note we were so used to seeing from other organisations.  This was a letter from the heart telling us not only how much the funds meant but all the things they would enable the charity to do. I was impressed. So impressed that I phoned their UK telephone number and told Darren, the UK General manager for Sea Shepherd, just how impressed I was. His enthusiasm for (what was then not yet) my cause (but soon would be) rang out. When he unexpectedly invited myself and my wife to visit them in London early in the New Year after all his work for that year's campaigns was out of the way I accepted without a second thought.

Please take a look at the photo above. We were not being invited to visit some glass palace built on donated funds (and have you ever had a charity tell you up front that they would use YOUR funds to build a glass palace? Thought not.) We were not being invited to the sort of sumptuous board room which I found rather too normal on my many trips to the capital. We were being invited to meet the very heart of the organisation, its people, and they weren't too worried about comfortable surroundings, they just wanted to defend the oceans.

MV Steve Irwin, another visitor to London that year

Those young, and not so young, Sea Shepherds impressed us so much we agreed on the spot to become more involved. Knowledge is not power, knowledge is responsibility. Those amazing, passionate people gave us knowledge we could not ignore and they gave us an example of commitment to responsibility that we could not honourably ignore either.

Of particular note is the fact that three people in that photograph are now on board the MV Steve Irwin on their way to defend the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary from the pirate whaling ships of Japan's ICR (apparently the R stands for "research").

Today I am passionate about defending ocean wildlife worldwide. What are you passionate about?

Thank you for reading.

Glasgow Girls Take A Stand

I have been a corporate sponsor of Glasgow's Citizens Theatre for many years now and in turn the Citz has given me lots of support for Sea Shepherd (see video at end of today's blog).

Anybody who follows Sea Shepherd Scotland @SeaShepherdScot on twitter and saw the pics we posted last night will not be surprised at today's subject matter, we were at Glasgow Girls The Musical and it was BRILLIANT.

Brilliant with a message.

Not a touchy-feely, good always triumphs over evil, US sitcom style message. A real, gritty hard-hitting message in two-parts.  Firstly, some really shitty stuff is happening every day to people just like you and me. If only we would open our eyes and realise that the people it is happening to are just like you and me. Secondly, and most importantly, if we don't take united action against obvious wrong-doing what then? What kind of people would we become? Have we become those people already?

My very great friend Steven Purcell once replied to a Toast I had made to The City of Glasgow and he said, to what was a multi-national audience, "You don't have to have been born in Glasgow to become a Glaswegian."  That phrase came back to me last night as I watched Cora's fabulous cast recount the tale of Glaswegian children being subjected to dawn raids by the UK Borders Agency. Does that still happen was a common question heard during the interval. The sad answer is yes. Why? Because politicians would rather do what the Daily Mail tells them "the voters" want rather than do what is right. Except...

Except I'm a voter too so why is my voice not being heard? That was covered very pointedly in the musical with clever voice overs of radio talk show phone-ins. These featured all the usual one-brain-cell radio ranters telling the world how all these refugees are on the scrounge, what an easy touch we are in this country, how they "steal" all our jobs and all the other blabbity nonsense that anyone who really has opened their eyes can see is just simply not true. But it is this vociferous minority whose collective voice is being heard and if you are not sure that you have popular support it takes enormous courage to speak out against what is perceived to be "the system" because we all know that the system doesn't like troublemakers. Don't we?

This was driven home in an unmistakable way in the musical when Roza was confronted by her mum who wanted her to be just like all the other girls, keep her head down, say nothing in case it hurt her and that song had me in tears, just as it had the first time I heard Cora perform it at the Indigo Hotel in Glasgow. What could hurt more than doing nothing?

The story of the Glasgow Girls is that you must do something. In my Swim Wild, Swim Free blog of 4th Nov, I introduced the lifestyle mantra, "If it is to be, it is up to me." The Glasgow Girls know that already. Now so does everyone who has seen that production. Now I hope so do you.

This amazing production deserves to take the world by storm. It is a story from Glasgow and about what happened in Glasgow but it is relevant to so much more than Glasgow. It is a tale that we should all hope will inspire ordinary people, just like you and me, to take a stand. Here's what National Theatre of Scotland has to say on the subject:

"Inspired by the real life Glasgow Girls and the show based on their campaign, #TAKE A STAND is a new National Theatre of Scotland project, in partnership with the Citizens Theatre and the Scottish Youth Parliament, and with sponsorship from ScottishPower inviting groups of young people to take action, to inspire others and to make a positive difference to society."

Now here is one of those odd multiple synchronicity moments that seem to happen more and more as I dive deeper and deeper into this new ethical world I wish to live in:

Anna, my best friend who I invited you in an earlier blog to Help Send Anna to Taiji (please click on the link and do just that) was one of the co-founders of the Scottish Youth Parliament. Anna is clearly taking a stand. It gets better though because eighteen months ago National Theatre of Scotland invited contributions for their first Five Minute Theatre day and so Anna, myself and a few other Sea Shepherds and Sea Shepherd supporters worked with NTS and were massively assisted by The Citz to produce our own Theatre piece which demonstrated - you guessed it - a business executive Taking a Stand. And that became a self-fulfilling prophecy for us all as we now are committed to take action, to inspire others and to make a positive difference to our society. How many connections are there in there? If we can get you to be Anna's sponsor, playing the part of Scottish Power, we will have synchronicty big style.

Here is the video. It was filmed in one of the Citz rehearsal rooms and was first aired by NTS. The acting is enthusiastic amateur rather than consummate professional, the direction is missing, the lighting didn't happen and the sound... well, please just bear with us on the sound.

But the message! I hope the message is as clear as the one Cora, NTS and the Citz are delivering right now:

TAKE A STAND

Thank you for reading.