They want it all
-
- Posts: 3516
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2017 9:03 pm
- Has thanked: 1413 times
- Been thanked: 1668 times
-
- Posts: 6158
- Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2012 7:51 pm
- Has thanked: 1177 times
- Been thanked: 727 times
Re: They want it all
When a government don't publish a report it can only be because it recommends something they don't want to do. In this instance it feels like they are stopping the proletariat from roaming over posh peoples private playgrounds.
And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.
Suzuki DR200 Djebel.
Suzuki DR200 Djebel.
-
- Posts: 526
- Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 11:03 am
- Has thanked: 78 times
- Been thanked: 139 times
Re: They want it all
The landed Gentry do hold an enormous amount of sway in Whitehall, Cameron and May still bring up the subject of removing the hunting ban, May even thought it was a suitable subject to bring up during her disastrous election campaign, it wouldn't take much to guess who's side Johnson would come down on given his background and almost callous disregard for the opinions of the masses.
Re: They want it all
I moved to the “countryside” 6 years ago..its a joke, it’s man made patchwork of mono cultures owned by old farming families And knobs.
There is more accessible nature on the outskirts of towns and cities than in the “countryside”
Much of what they call National parks in this country are really just named that so rich Landowners can get subsidies off the rest of us in exchange for a token footpath here and there.
I’ll keep making this point...kick the Torres out, there aren’t any great alternatives, but it’s the Tories that do most to perpetuate the serfdom we call home
There is more accessible nature on the outskirts of towns and cities than in the “countryside”
Much of what they call National parks in this country are really just named that so rich Landowners can get subsidies off the rest of us in exchange for a token footpath here and there.
I’ll keep making this point...kick the Torres out, there aren’t any great alternatives, but it’s the Tories that do most to perpetuate the serfdom we call home
Re: They want it all
This website and the book it relates to make interesting reading if you are interested in access to land and politics in general.
https://whoownsengland.org/
Maybe they could donate some of the land they could seize from Putin’s supporters and donate it back to the public.
https://whoownsengland.org/
Maybe they could donate some of the land they could seize from Putin’s supporters and donate it back to the public.
-
- Posts: 7920
- Joined: Mon Apr 30, 2012 10:53 am
- Has thanked: 100 times
- Been thanked: 523 times
Re: They want it all
AgreedSeminole wrote:I moved to the “countryside” 6 years ago..its a joke, it’s man made patchwork of mono cultures owned by old farming families And knobs.
There is more accessible nature on the outskirts of towns and cities than in the “countryside”
Much of what they call National parks in this country are really just named that so rich Landowners can get subsidies off the rest of us in exchange for a token footpath here and there.
I’ll keep making this point...kick the Torres out, there aren’t any great alternatives, but it’s the Tories that do most to perpetuate the serfdom we call home
We buy things we don't need
With money we don't have
To impress people we don't even like
With money we don't have
To impress people we don't even like
- Scott_rider
- Posts: 2436
- Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:47 pm
- Has thanked: 29 times
- Been thanked: 294 times
Re: They want it all
This website shows the 92% of land we can't access in England and the 8% of land that we can access... .
http://www.openaccess.naturalengland.or ... /MapSearch
I had no idea it was such a small amount... No doubt there are similar websites for Wales/Scotland/NI.
http://www.openaccess.naturalengland.or ... /MapSearch
I had no idea it was such a small amount... No doubt there are similar websites for Wales/Scotland/NI.
Suzuki GSX-S1000F...the KTM 450 EXC-R has gone
- Snaf MKII
- Posts: 698
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2019 2:57 pm
- Location: Simms Hill
- Has thanked: 918 times
- Been thanked: 751 times
Re: They want it all
That doesn't tell the whole picture, it doesn't include all public rights of way, many beaches, town centres, parks etc. It is however about the same as the area covered by buildings.
-
- Posts: 751
- Joined: Fri Aug 16, 2013 7:14 am
- Location: Fife
- Has thanked: 205 times
- Been thanked: 156 times
Re: They want it all
Scott Scotland has " Right to Roam " laws which gives anyone access to the land and rivers for walkers,cyclists,canoeists,horse riders but prohibits motor propelled vehicles.Scott_rider wrote: ↑Sat Apr 23, 2022 10:43 am
I had no idea it was such a small amount... No doubt there are similar websites for Wales/Scotland/NI.
-
- Posts: 3516
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2017 9:03 pm
- Has thanked: 1413 times
- Been thanked: 1668 times
Re: They want it all
Rod Liddle nails it in The Times
The sun puts his little hat on for our Easter holiday weekend and, joyously, thousands of our lumpen proletariat make the pilgrimage to north Wales to take a dump somewhere on Snowdon. It is a recently evolved tradition, every bit as charming and compelling as that which takes Muslims to Mecca or Roman Catholics to Lourdes. Bolt shut the tenement door, load up the Nissan Juke with six-packs, congealing pizza slices and Doritos, drive to the bottom of the mountain and then begin your ascent until you find the perfect place to drop your drawers.
In the middle of the funicular railway line, for example, which is where Gemma Davies, a tour guide, saw one chap happily making his deposit. She added that everywhere she walked she came across chav-eggs wrapped in tissue, or in paper cups, or clinging to the edges of a shrub. Officially, Snowdon is 1,085 metres high, but I suspect it’s grown a bit of late and may one day soon rival Ben Nevis. If not K2.
Gemma ventured that perhaps there were insufficient facilities for that benighted sub-species which never really went in for potty training and the concept of deferred gratification. No, indeed. Knock up some toilet blocks every few yards — that would accord with the demands from angry reviews left on Tripadvisor, whose semi-literate contributors also bemoaned the fact that Snowdon was “too steep”, lacked “concrete paths”, was “cold at the top” and would benefit from a McDonald’s.
This is the problem with making our national parks more “accessible” for people with the IQ of sphagnum moss and the sense of civic pride of a pit bull terrier with ADHD: they end up actually going there. What we really need to do is keep them out, perhaps by barricading them in their barrios, or telling them that Argos has a sale on.
It is a problem with which our national parks have to wrestle, now that they are caught between two poles. For many years accessibility and urging people to visit our most beautiful areas have been the priority, even to the point of worrying that ethnic minority folk do not visit the countryside enough and should perhaps be herded, en masse, up Kinder Scout and told to like it. And so the vast ugly car parks have blossomed, along with concrete bog buildings, snack bars and information centres for imbeciles.
It has all been to the detriment of the parks. Now, though, they are charged with being part of the government’s 30x30 biodiversity strategy — 30 per cent of the country to become protected for wildlife species by 2030 — and are failing on an epic level, partly through pandering to incontinent Mancs and Scousers out for a climb up the first 25 feet of Snowdon. But partly because they have always got it wrong.
The British Ecological Society has just published a report which suggests that less than a fifth of the 28 per cent of our country’s land that is made up of national parks and areas of natural beauty actually provides a haven for wildlife, and as such it should not be classed by the government as “protected” land. I would say this is an overestimate. In the national parks I know best — the Yorkshire Dales, Northumberland and most of all the North York Moors — the park authorities seem to connive in the destruction of wildlife habitats in order to appease the landowners who are, in the main, engaged in making money from driven grouse shoots.
Grouse moors take up a remarkable 8 per cent of the UK, all for the benefit of just 40,000 braying hoorays blasting the cap-doffing beaters to bits. This activity leaves behind a desolate moonscape devoid of wildlife except for the occasional curlew and, of course, the grouse. The heather is burnt when the other birds are about to nest and mammalian and avian predators are peremptorily exterminated by the gamekeepers. Round my way what we are left with is a bizarre profusion of jackdaws — the apex predator now all the rest have been killed — and millions of very fat rabbits.
This scenery would be more beautiful and more supportive of our rarest birds and animals if the co-dependency with a damaging, privileged activity were to cease. More alluring to us humans, too. Remember that figure of 40,000 who benefit from 8 per cent of our land? Just one wetland bird site — Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire — caters for 250,000 people a year. Those sorts of numbers would provide a real cash bonus for the towns and villages, some of the poorest in the country, within our national parks. With the additional bonus that people who like looking at birds and animals are nice middle-class folks who attend to the lavatory before they leave home.
Anyway, this would square the circle for the national parks: accessibility for humans, plus biodiversity. And the only downside is that it might annoy the sheikhs and dukes who own the grouse moors.
The sun puts his little hat on for our Easter holiday weekend and, joyously, thousands of our lumpen proletariat make the pilgrimage to north Wales to take a dump somewhere on Snowdon. It is a recently evolved tradition, every bit as charming and compelling as that which takes Muslims to Mecca or Roman Catholics to Lourdes. Bolt shut the tenement door, load up the Nissan Juke with six-packs, congealing pizza slices and Doritos, drive to the bottom of the mountain and then begin your ascent until you find the perfect place to drop your drawers.
In the middle of the funicular railway line, for example, which is where Gemma Davies, a tour guide, saw one chap happily making his deposit. She added that everywhere she walked she came across chav-eggs wrapped in tissue, or in paper cups, or clinging to the edges of a shrub. Officially, Snowdon is 1,085 metres high, but I suspect it’s grown a bit of late and may one day soon rival Ben Nevis. If not K2.
Gemma ventured that perhaps there were insufficient facilities for that benighted sub-species which never really went in for potty training and the concept of deferred gratification. No, indeed. Knock up some toilet blocks every few yards — that would accord with the demands from angry reviews left on Tripadvisor, whose semi-literate contributors also bemoaned the fact that Snowdon was “too steep”, lacked “concrete paths”, was “cold at the top” and would benefit from a McDonald’s.
This is the problem with making our national parks more “accessible” for people with the IQ of sphagnum moss and the sense of civic pride of a pit bull terrier with ADHD: they end up actually going there. What we really need to do is keep them out, perhaps by barricading them in their barrios, or telling them that Argos has a sale on.
It is a problem with which our national parks have to wrestle, now that they are caught between two poles. For many years accessibility and urging people to visit our most beautiful areas have been the priority, even to the point of worrying that ethnic minority folk do not visit the countryside enough and should perhaps be herded, en masse, up Kinder Scout and told to like it. And so the vast ugly car parks have blossomed, along with concrete bog buildings, snack bars and information centres for imbeciles.
It has all been to the detriment of the parks. Now, though, they are charged with being part of the government’s 30x30 biodiversity strategy — 30 per cent of the country to become protected for wildlife species by 2030 — and are failing on an epic level, partly through pandering to incontinent Mancs and Scousers out for a climb up the first 25 feet of Snowdon. But partly because they have always got it wrong.
The British Ecological Society has just published a report which suggests that less than a fifth of the 28 per cent of our country’s land that is made up of national parks and areas of natural beauty actually provides a haven for wildlife, and as such it should not be classed by the government as “protected” land. I would say this is an overestimate. In the national parks I know best — the Yorkshire Dales, Northumberland and most of all the North York Moors — the park authorities seem to connive in the destruction of wildlife habitats in order to appease the landowners who are, in the main, engaged in making money from driven grouse shoots.
Grouse moors take up a remarkable 8 per cent of the UK, all for the benefit of just 40,000 braying hoorays blasting the cap-doffing beaters to bits. This activity leaves behind a desolate moonscape devoid of wildlife except for the occasional curlew and, of course, the grouse. The heather is burnt when the other birds are about to nest and mammalian and avian predators are peremptorily exterminated by the gamekeepers. Round my way what we are left with is a bizarre profusion of jackdaws — the apex predator now all the rest have been killed — and millions of very fat rabbits.
This scenery would be more beautiful and more supportive of our rarest birds and animals if the co-dependency with a damaging, privileged activity were to cease. More alluring to us humans, too. Remember that figure of 40,000 who benefit from 8 per cent of our land? Just one wetland bird site — Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire — caters for 250,000 people a year. Those sorts of numbers would provide a real cash bonus for the towns and villages, some of the poorest in the country, within our national parks. With the additional bonus that people who like looking at birds and animals are nice middle-class folks who attend to the lavatory before they leave home.
Anyway, this would square the circle for the national parks: accessibility for humans, plus biodiversity. And the only downside is that it might annoy the sheikhs and dukes who own the grouse moors.