A Great Educational Place - Paignton Zoo - Where We First Saw an Indian Lion!

UK: Devon’s Paignton Zoo Up for Sale! (2.10.2025)

My parents moved to Torquay in early 2002. We had visited Torquay on and off over the years – but only for the odd day-trip. Of course, Paignton Zoo had been there since 1923 – and most of us had visited at least once prior to that time – usually with school trips or days-out, etc. What was new was Living Coast (paid for by the founders of Paignton Zoo) – which opened on a beach not far from where my parents had settled. This possessed African Penguins and was marine-based. All my three children – Sue-Ling, Mei-An, and Kai-Lin spent hours of fun at Living Coast primarily because it was so close and relatively cheap to visit. A family ticket was about £20 or so – but a family could visit again free as many times as possible in the next week! This meant that we only visited the Zoo every so often – with one drawback being its size and the fact it is hilly with no public transport on site. Nevertheless, Living Coast only lastly around 17-years (closing in 2020 during Covid-19) – but the Zoo is currently 102-years old! The rise of racism in the area – with local hotels giving free holidays to BNP members and one hosting a UKIP Conference (Nigel Farage was given a Police Escort to the Livermead Cliff Hotel) – led to racial attacks rocketing and the once booming Japanese tourism trade coming to an abrupt halt. Racism toward tourists and visitors has destroyed the local economy – but the locals will still support these ideas and attitudes.

Congo: Children Bagged-Up and Ready for Collection! (25.7.2023)

The children are ‘brainwashed’ to co-operate in their own enslaving and abuse. Many of these adult women may well have been victims of sex-trafficking themselves and are repeating the cycle of abuse they experienced as a child. If the Colonial treatment of the Congo population (by the Belgians) is studied (which involved the routine hacking-off of hands and feet) – then placing children in bags ‘unhurt’ is considered comparatively ‘harmless’ to the local Congo people – regardless of how shocking such practices may seem to the contemporary Western observer.

I’d Rather Watch the Krankies… (14.5.2022) 

The bourgeoisie grew out of the peasantry. These were primarily ‘men’ of the ‘peasant’ class who made themselves indispensable to the feudal aristocracy (or those who held all the political power), by linking the ‘desires’ of such people to the craftsmen and artists who knew how to acquire supplies and raw materials and construct the (often ‘luxurious’) goods required by these over-lords. These ‘lords’ and ‘ladies’ would bestow goods, money, titles and land upon an effective ‘mercer’ or ‘merchant’ – that is someone who specialised in the exchange of ‘goods’ (barter) and ‘money’ (sales), etc. These peasants would break out of their usual peasant-lifestyle and through self-effort develop a deep and profound knowledge of who owned what, who could acquire what, and who could make what! They then ‘sold’ this knowledge (and ‘ability’) to the highest bidder and slowly, overtime, developed a new and highly wealthy group of people with considerable power and influence! Eventually, the ‘bourgeoisie’ or ‘mercers’ were able to even purchase ‘armies’ and fight the aristocracy! This is how the British bourgeoisie took political power (that is took control of the ‘means of production’) from King Charles I in 1649 – and has kept hold of it ever since!