5 Reasons Giant Pandas Are a Boost to the Economy



Stained Glass at Buckfast Abbey

 Another picture of the impressive and rather modern stained glass at Buckfast Abbey. I do like the way the light shines through it. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

There has been a surprising amount of vitriol directed at the Edinburgh Zoo's newest arrivals; two giant pandas on loan from China until 2021, Tian Tian and Yang Guan. This is largely because it is supposedly costing the zoo $1,000,000 per year to host them, which some people see as a waste of money. However, I love pandas, and so I disagree. I have thought about this complex issue in great depth, and present my conclusions below:

5 Reasons Giant Pandas Are a Boost to the Economy

1. Pandas are black and white. Therefore, as monochrome creatures, their arrival will be saving newspapers everywhere a small fortune on printing costs. Everyone knows that coloured ink is more expensive.

2. Pandas eat nothing but bamboo. As every gardener knows, bamboo grows like the blazes and is tricky to get rid of. Horticulturalists across the nation can send their unwanted bamboo to Edinburgh Zoo, and the pandas will eat for free every night.

3. Pandas are reluctant breeders, at best. Fewer panda babies means fewer claims for child support.

4. Pandas take shelter in trees or caves, but they do not build permanent homes. This means that the chance of giant pandas precipitating another subprime mortgage crisis is virtually nil.

5. Pandas, unlike many members of our great nation, are actually supposed to be fat and lazy. This means that, unlike humans of similar size and girth, they will not demand costly gastric banding procedures on the NHS.

Glass Light

This is actually a shot of the very modern stained glass windows at Buckfast Abbey which I mentioned previously. As well as the very traditional main building of the church, complete with elegant windows depicting various saints, they have a large and startlingly modern chapel section right at the back. The entire east wall of this chapel is taken up with a stained glass depiction of Jesus which, to be honest, I found wildly disconcerting. It's something that I would associate more with the very commercialised wings of American evangelism rather than a community of Benedictine monks, but there you go. Personally I'd rather not be stared at by a giant Jesus with square pupils, but whatever floats your boat. Or illuminates your monastery, possibly.

Anyway, alongside freaky Jesus there were some modern abstract stained glass windows which I actually rather liked, and this is a close-up short of some of the chunks of glass. I like the texture particularly.

Windows

Another photograph from my visit to Castle Howard, which has a wonderful collection of sculpture (alongside many other wonderful things). The art on display is also fantastic, and I loved the murals in the Great Hall; of special interest is the story of the firey destruction of a mural by Pellegrini and its eventual re-creation from a single black-and-white photograph by a Canadian artist, Scott Medd.

Not only that, but the house comes fully equipped with three cafes (we tried two; I can recommend the cream teas), a faintly absurd number of shops, and (on the day that we visited) some very damp Morris Dancers.