As a preface to this blog, let me state that I love traveling by trains and think that Eurostar, and the European high speed networks are brilliant. HS2 (High Speed 2) is a high speed rail project that was dreamed up by the Labour party when in power and taken on with full enthusiasm by the Tory/Lib Dem current government. It is to run from London Euston to Birmingham, then in phase 2 continue to the northern cities. Since its inception, the estimated cost has risen
Read more →Following my recent blog about the wind turbine proposal near Ford, there is an excellent article in the CPRE’s magazine this month that states the case from both sides. It is also to be found at http://www.cpre.org.uk/magazine/opinion/item/2802-getting-wind-energy-right I think that the most useful point made is by Rachel Coxcoon, who is broadly in favour of more turbines because of our need to produce our own energy without large carbon emissions. She says that the problem is more one of people feeling disempowered, and having infrastructure thrust
Read more →The owner of Lower Waldridge Farm (Mr Jeremy Elgin) in the county of Buckinghamshire, Near Aylesbury, is proposing to put a wind turbine on his land that will generate electricity for the National Grid. This has stirred up highly organised and vocal opposition that is passionate, and fixed in it’s view. For the protestors, it is instantly a question of right and wrong, a gut reaction, and emotional. We have lived with power pylons striding for hundreds of miles across the countryside through beautiful areas,
Read more →I read in the New York Times that people in the States (Land Of The Free, subject to terms and conditions and having money) are having to think twice about knocking down the old house and building a brand new one when they move, and of students brewing their own coffee rather than buying a moccachino in the cafe, or using library books instead of buying them. Good! Even if it’s only temporary. To each of us, having more money, more freedom, more choice is a
Read more →Ancient woodland has been continually wooded since at least 1600AD, and some may even link back to the original wildwood that covered the UK around 10,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. There are ancient beech woods in the Chiltern Hills which I explore at all times of the year. They are particularly lovely in the spring and autumn when the colours are vibrant with the changing season. Beech trees are very stately, their smooth grey trunks, like cathedral columns rising from the leafy forest
Read more →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 fruit and I stretch up, standing on
Read more →What connects a Pacific grey whale and you last visit to the shops? On your last visit to the shops, it is almost certain that you came home with some plastic that you hadn’t taken out with you: if you are really careless, then it would include the plastic carrier bags from the shops you visted, but it’s hard to avoid the odd polystyrene punnet in shrink wrap. Then there are the cardboard boxes with plastic wrappers on the food inside, and sometimes also on the
Read more →Yesterday I walked for about a mile through grassy fields, about half of them overgrown with grasses, nettles and other vagrant species. This was not in the middle of nowhere, but in prime Buckinghamshire farmland: some of the most fertile and longest farmed in England. These fields were completely vacant – no livestock, and certainly no crops. Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and
Read more →From one Sunday newspaper today, May 2nd 2009: Item 1: 33.8% of honey bees in the USA disappeared or died since last year. The picture is much the same in the UK, though figures aren’t all in yet and is a bad year in a continuing trend. The main, but not only cause, is ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ where whole colonies just die or disappear: what triggers it isn’t known, but taking into account chemical residues in wax, hives and honey, pesticides are a likely contributor. And
Read more →Last November, illegally obtained emails were publicised widely by climate change deniers, most strident among them Nigel Lawson, who claimed that the scientists must be exagerating their findings and not sharing the real data. So there was huge disruption and worry at East Anglia University and damage done to the reputation of climate change science in general aided and abetted by the media, who claimed that climate science itself was a scandal. The latest investigation results to be published last week exonerate the U.E.A. scientists and
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