Great day - with a few blemishes.
It was a marvellous way to watch a golf match in an armchair high up above the sixteenth green at the Celtic Manor. The wild enthusiasm of the crowd surprised me when it started at 8.00 this morning.
With an American guest I left home ar 6.30 am and arrived at 7.45am. The arrangements were great but there were a lot us trying to get to the Celtic Manor at the same time. Cars from the North and South of the M4 converged on the Magor junction and processed to the place when the heavy end of Llanwern Steelworks once stood. The place where I worked from 1963 to 1984 is now a barren flattened stone desert. With speed and efficiency we were directed to our parking places and ushered through the airport style security.
The walk from the buses inside the Celtic Manor resort was not for wimps. It was long, wet, finally up a steep cliff-like hill into the teeth of a gale. I had a warm welcome in the Kidwelly Suite overlooking the splendid course with a commanding view across the beautiful Usk. Valley. Bliss apart from the constant torrential rain.
Before I had finally worked out the scoring system, the rain stopped all the fun after two hours for a morale sapping seven hours interruption. The evening closed with some more play and a beautiful sunset.
It was a great shame for the tens of thousands of visitors. Many of them had booked their £100 tickets for one day only. It was not fun trying to fill seven rain sodden hours with eating, drinking and shopping. There will remain with all of us present today a powerful impression of a giant event magnificently well organised.
Without a new monsoon and some added sunshine tomorrow will be bliss.
Well done Newport.
Anti science coalition.
As Defra Ministers line up for the Conservative Party Conference the Badger Trust says Mr James Paice’s consultation document omits this vital conclusion about the control of bovine TB:
“First, while badgers are clearly a source of cattle TB, careful evaluation of our own and others’ data indicates that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain. Scientific findings indicate that the rising incidence of disease can be reversed, and geographical spread contained, by the rigid application of cattle-based control measures alone”
What's science when they are farmers waiting to be buttered-up?
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