Backwards Cambridge

It's been a while since I had a post on how backwards Cambridgeshire can be. However picking up a copy of the Cambridge Evening News can reveal a goldmine of information on how dim people round here can be sometimes.

First we have the complaints about a school play. On the front page. The peasants are up in arms over a production of "fiddler on the roof" which contained a video montage which "showed a variety of scenes from Middle Eastern conflicts".

The producer of the musical, which depicts the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Tsarist Russia, Richard Fredman, said in the programme notes "I make no apology for dedicating this production to all people forced from their homes by intolerance, ignorance and fear." Perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the play you might think.

The problem? Some (not all) of the video footage was of Israeli tanks and soldiers rounding up Arabs.

The CEN says that as well as protests from a local group (who they mistakenly identify as representing the entire Jewish community in the area) "Prof Geoffrey Alderman, a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle, called on the college to issue an "unreserved apology", and said: "The effect - presumably fully intended - was to turn the Hills Road Fiddler from a musical depicting Jewish suffering in the Pale of Settlement into a piece of anti-Zionist and even (some might argue) anti-Jewish propaganda.""

It's probably news to the Jewish director that he's anti-semitic for putting in loads of hard work producing a play that opposes the ethnic cleansing of Jews by choosing to broaden the scope to all human beings forced from their homes. Seems like only some refugees really matter.

Secondly, we have the local residents celebrating climate disaster.

That's right, the "wind farms are evil brigade" have won a short term victory against renewable energy. It appears they think that their rural idyll (bi-sected by the A428 and the A14) would be spoiled by the erection of turbines at Cotton Farm, Gravely.

They think, incorrectly, that the turbines will be noisy (I lived one hundred meters away from Europe's tallest wind turbine and you couldn't hear a thing, even when it was going full pelt, very eerie to watch at night) and that they would have a "negative visual impact" - presumably more negative than being submerged under three foot of water or the sight of human tragedies all over the globe.

Now I understand that not everyone appreciates the sleek beauty of wind turbines as much as I do but frankly these backwards tossers, who are wrong about almost everything, should not be allowed to halt progressive change for everyone else. You wouldn't hear the turbines over the network of busy roads that crisscross the area and they'd improve the frankly shitty landscape - particularly if the local residents moved away because of them.

There - that's my helpful contribution of the day.