A Walk In The Countryside – Get Involved In Nature’s Resurgance
August 14, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud. I set off for a walk through the local countryside for exercise, enjoyment of the scenery and to try to get some good wildlife photographs.
Down Spickett’s Lane there are several wild plum trees festooned with frui
t and I stretch up, standing on the bank to gather some. They are small and crimson when ripe, and quite deliciously sweet with an intense flavour. Juice dribbles down my chin. There are damsons, small and black and too high to pick without a ladder, more small yellow fruit and one in-between. On the other side the lane, the blackberries are not ready yet, but will be black and luscious in a couple of weeks.
I turned right, past the piggery where a few Oxford black-and-tan rare pigs remain, snoozing in the gentle morning, then round the edge of the bean field down towards the river. Waddesdon Estates farm this land and, as part of their Environmental Stewardship Scheme, all of their fields have a wildlife strip around the edge where wildflowers (weeds) prosper and bees and butterflies dart and settle in their search for nectar. A month ago, when the wildflowers were at their best, there were lots of butteflies: meadow brown in particular, common blues and small whites, green-veined whites, red admirals, peacocks. Now these are fewer, but they are still to be found along with a gatekeeper (small meadow brown) or two.
[Gallery not found]There are rustlings in the high, scrubby hedgerow and I hear some squirrels having a fight, squeaking and jumping about but see nothing. I cross the stile that penetrates it and step into a cow pasture with a wooded, watery drainage channel on my left. This is where newts, grass snakes and waterfoul skulk and a source of dragonflies and damselflies, and I see a large one zoom over my head, too fast to identify.
There is a brown bull with broad shoulders and a deep chest right ahead of me, on the footpath route over the field, and I approach with a little caution; but he is quiet and docile as I skirt around him. The air is fairly quiet now where it was alive with birdsong a month or two ago, but there are birds about. A buzzard circles up on a thermal, but doesn’t come close enough for me to see his colours. There are a lot of crows in the sheep meadow, and rooks in the wood at the top of the field, and an owl box in the tree near the cattle bridge where I saw a tawny owl last march. And there are the ubiquitous pigeons, flapping away noisily as I approach, and sparrows.
The cattle bridge crosses the River Thame, and a pause to see if I can see any fish in it’s fast flowing water. The reeds are varied and luxuriant and a shy moorhen pokes it’s head out of them but doesn’t emerge this time. A couple of cows gaze vacantly at me as they chew their cud.
I cross a gate and a stile, entering the Eythrope Estate, home of Lord Rothschild, who also owns the entire Waddesdon Estate.
Again there are wide, wild field borders, and as I skirt the field through longish grass, I see more white butterflies, and a couple of brimstones that look like a leaf when they stop to feed.
Above, buzzards and red kites glided under the blue sky and seemed to be gathering over the hill to the north: perhaps there was some carrion there.
[SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found]
As I walk, young pheasants suddenly burst up from the wheat and tall grass, flying further down the track or running into the scrub for cover. These are being bred for the shooting season that starts in October, but that is not the only doom that awaits these tasty game birds!
From only a few feet away, a fox springs up from the wheat where it had been lying in wait to catch a pheasant dinner, and runs off disconsolately through the golden crop. It is amazing what a wheat field conceals: along with the fox, and the pheasants, various small birds would suddenly appear, wings flapping at great speed in their panic to reach the nearby trees.
I come to a wider area of wildflowers
still in bloom: this area would have been planted with a rich variety of native species as part of the Waddesdon environmental work. The air hums with honey and bumble bees, many different flies and some small blue butterflies. This is a sound I hear too seldom these days where it used to be the norm on a summers day. It is the sound of nature at work in a healthy countryside and alien to blank squares of monoculture. This land is intensively farmed, but space is left for natural ecosystems to work and it’s health protected from chemicals and machines.
I stop to enjoy this buzz of life, then as I turn, a hare bursts out from the undergrowth a few yards away, and disappears into the hedge. About half a dozen kites are still circling in the air high over the hill, and a sudden birdsong bursts from nearby trees.
I leave the Waddesdon land, and climb through a meadow, then over another stile onto a neat and tidy field of rye grass: green and even and silent. The field edge has been mown, and it is empty of flowers, insects or any interest and the contrast is staggering.
We have turned much of our countryside into an aseptic monoculture which has been profoundly destructive to the diversity of nature in the British countryside. We have cut down hedgerows, ancient forests (over 80 percent have dissappeared this century), poisoned waterways and tried to turn the land into a factory floor which, for sterility, this field resembles. The terrible thing to me is that we have forgotten what the countryside should be like, and was like until very recently. The land along the Thame Valley shows that we can have both efficiently produced food and healthy natural ecosystems.
Waddesdon manages to farm profitably and efficiently, and because the people running it leave some land for nature and take care how they use modern technologies, after only a few years there is a resurgance of a diverse and healthy countryside. This creates a balance that protects crops, a balance that is destroyed by over-use of expensive chemicals and over-intensive practices. The result is that many of our species of birds and mammals are on endangered lists, and the countyside is often silent and boring.
My walk took me less than two hours, and in that time I have come across dozens of species, and been inspired and amazed by seeing the web of life at work. We do need more of it throughout our country, and it is us, all of us who have to make it happen realising that it is our health and quality of life that is at stake, and doing what we can to understand and restore our countryside.
The English Riots and The Runaway Train
August 12, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
We live in a troubled World, not helped by the decisions of democratic governments have been very short-sighted, geared more to keeping power than the long term good. One examle is the undermining of equality and sharing in society, which has resulted in the huge inequalities across the World, especially in the US and UK. These inequalities have contributed to the East African famine, over-population and environmental devastation. In my view is that this underlies the trouble this week in England (not Scotland, Wales).
The problems of alienation from society that result from inequalities are deep seated and complex, and although some very good minds have been trying to tackle them for a long time, their solutions inevitably answer only part of the problem and are ham-strung now by lack of money.
Factors contributing to the attitudes that resulted in the riots are (not in any order):
* Poor parenting, which has been deteriorating over the past 30-odd years. This stems from the way society has become more individualistic, materialistic and unequal so that people at the bottom feel increasingly hopeless, disengaged and powerless. Parents turn to drink, drugs, sex and difficult children are left to get on with it without standards, discipline or guidance.
* A materialistic society – one who’s values turn more around bling than caring. One manifestation is the ‘shop-till-you-drop’ celebrity who acts as an icon that suggests that you can have all the money and stuff without having to work and strive for it.
* The idea that greed is good: being super-rich is often a sign of achievement (though not for the offspring of the super-rich), but what is important is how that achievement is measured. If achievement is being a Madoff who doesn’t get found out (and they do exist though he was extreme), then society has lost it’s moral compass. Anger at the banking crisis and it’s outcome, where the bankers cleaned up and society paid, is deep and wide-spread and contributes to the ‘why should I care?’ attitude.
* The increasing gap between the rich and the poor, both within our countries and across the World. This has resulted in a disconnect between sectors of society, and between governments and the rump of society. The result is that people at the bottom end either despair, or grab what benefits they can and live without working or contributing, and/or they become criminal without any concept of it being wrong.
* Lack of education, or at least, success in education: T Blair put billions into UK state education, but we still have 30% of children leaving primary school below the expected basic standard, many unable to read and write proficiently or at all. This in spite of huge research and endless initiatives have been put in place to turn things around. Schools try to instill discipline and set standards, but the problem exists largely in state schools (social deprivation, large class sizes, unvalued teachers) and not in the private sector (social privilege, small class sizes, highly valued teachers). Again, the wealth divide pertains.
* Too much information: Vast amounts of information are fed at everybody, totally unfiltered, through the media and IT, so school learning is devalued. Values are influenced or even dictated by what people happen to absorb. The increased reliance on social networking where people will gravitate towards others with similar attitudes makes any trend self-perpetuating, to the extent of large groups rushing out to trash the streets to create mayhem. It is not a question of limiting the technology or freedom, but of working out how society can best cope with this to produce a favourable outcome.
* Lack of moral leadership: Politicians are not trusted, even less since various UK MPs and US Congressmen have been jailed for corruption and immorality. Of course, politicians are people like you and me, and neither all bad or all good, and no-one likes a ‘goody-goody’, but the media amplifies misdeeds, without balance and often with a political spin, whilst much good is ignored. Company directors tend to line their own pockets to the cost of everyone else. There is Enron, of course, and Madoff, and Fred-the-Shred (ex MD of RBS) but also in the UK, an analysis of the FTSE 100 company directors showed that the average pension entitlement of main board directors was £160,000 per year, whilst the average employee could expect £6,000.
* I have rights, but sod the responsibilities. It’s my right to have (or sire) any number of kids by any number of partners, and the society will pick up the bill. It’s my right to get benefits to pay for my flat, food, children, schooling, medicare and fags, so why should I work? This is a very difficult problem to tackle as any adjustment to benefits causes hardship to the most deprived and increases resentment and anger.
A positive solution will be very difficult to achieve as it is a long-term project – this has been 30 years in the making. It is not a question of left or right-wing politics as neither have all of the answers, and an unbalanced approach will end up with a worse situation. Funnily enough, democracy itself contributes to the problem as political parties work towards getting elected or re-elected, rather than longer term outcomes. I think, perhaps, that this coalition govt is trying to work long term, with the opposing factions within the parties (and they are dramatic – lefty liberals and hang-em-high reactionaries at the extremes) cancelling each other out. But leadership has to be decisive within this continuing war, and a fast-moving situation. Good luck to ‘em.
Any blanket solution to the underlying problems is utopian and unrealistic when you take into account the reality of human nature and any govt that tried to carry out such a policy would probably end up fascistic and so fail.
Our society (Western capitalist) is a bit like a run-away train, with the drivers valiantly trying to keep the thing on the tracks whilst the bad injuns throw rocks and logs. And if the train comes off the rails, as it probably will, doing 90 miles per hour, and most of the people on board are killed, well it’s happened before. Of course it’ll be bigger this time, but those left will pick themselves up and start again. And we still won’t realise that you and me have no importance at all – we are as irrelevant as an ant in a heap: just read your history.
Where the BIG waste is.
August 8, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
You may find the charts on this link interesting:
http://www.citywire.co.uk/money/chart-of-the-day-why-china-blames-us-military-for-sandp-downgrade/a514375?re=15381&ea=237978&utm_source=BulkEmail_Money_Daily&utm_medium=BulkEmail_Money_Daily&utm_campaign=BulkEmail_Money_Daily
China is criticsing the USA for it’s debt situation following the down-grading in it’s rating. They point out the disproportionate amount of money the US pours into it’s military might – per head of population, it is simple madness.
The UK is not far behind – why DID we go into Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya? Why are we proposing to spend billions on a Trident replacement?
And then why are we, that is, our Government, so keen on nuclear power and reprocessing after Fukushima and when we are shutting down the reprocessing facility at Sellafield as it has been a big financial failure – billions down the pan. This project was set up under Thatcher and strongly opposed by Greenpeace and others, but who listens?
It is all madness, and my view is that some of the anger that exploded this weekend is the first outburst of many prompted by the growing inequalities in society and the total lack of accountability by those in power for squandering our country’s wealth. This chart brings another, very powerful, perspective on the matter and shows that we simply should not be spending vast amounts in this way.
And talking of grandiose projects, don’t get me started on HS2!