Doing your bit for the environment

It’s all out there :wink:

Did you by any chance have any input to CABERNET - Concerted Action on Brownfield, an EU funded initiative related to using brownfield land for building ?

Only in as far as for a period I was in charge of English Partnerships and the English Brownfields programme.

My wife had quite a lot of involvement with English Partnerships years ago, and knew several people there. You may even have met her. She was heavily involved in CABERNET, and it was I that came up with the acronym :wine_glass:

1 Like

How awful! How long ago was this out of interest? Is there no way to fight it? An ombudsman or something? Or an EU green person?

This was 2016/7, I fought it as long and as much as I could. It was the summons to the gendarmes and then going before the magistrates that was the final straw. Sometimes you have to realise that although you can take it to the “man”, you ain’t going to beat him.

1 Like

Sad abuse of their position of power.

Many moons ago in UK I lived in a farmhouse with approx 4 acres of land in an area designated as an SSSI…

My boundaries were with a working farm and as at the time I had little kids Border Collies and cats I was always conscious and conscientious of maintaining a chemical free environment for all of them…

It seemed to me that the farm bordering my land was anything but and when I lost a collie and had a private autopsy done the results were that he died of a banned organophosphate poisoning….

I contacted my parish council and local council and county council and eventually Defra and natural England with no real interest in my concerns….

The SSSi was a local dog walking area and there were many reports of dogs experiencing seizures during crop spraying periods….

The farm also had diesel spills resulting in the owner of a cottage just down the lane a bit from me losing her historic fruit trees and they had open top rat poison bins…

I became a thorn in their side and that experience taught me that supposed authorities allegedly tasked with protecting people and the environment are either ineffectual or else really don’t care….

1 Like

Many years ago I had dealings with a farmer who poisoned basically anything that wasn’t one of his cows that went near his farm, bowls of rat poison and antifreeze lying around, many people lost cats/dogs etc because of him.
I worked for the quarry next door to him and had to euthinise quite a few animals because of his poisoning, after many complaints to the council and DEFRA, they asked me to a meeting and proceeded to tell me that they had found no evidence of any poisoning by him, that was when I emptied the dead young fox and cat out of the black bag I had brought with me onto his desk, “Get these checked for poisons then” I told him.
It did not go down well but worked as the farmer was properly visited and charged after that.
Sometimes the direct approach works :wink::thinking:

4 Likes

Maybe I was not direct enough then…:thinking:

I had autopsy results….photos of dead red kites…video of unauthorised shooting whilst they were trespassing on my land…called the police over that many times…

Edited to add that eventually I put up a gate blocking any vehicle access to my land to prevent them driving in and shooting….I maintained the style giving access to people on foot and walking their dogs as I was in an SSSi and a historic public footpath existed across a limited area…in fact I maintained 2 styles for people on foot walking their dogs….

Edit number 2: About to go bed…Collies all chilled out and dozing and I just spotted a tiny field mouse in my kitchen….

To be continued probably on a more relevant thread….:grinning:

Huh, field mice! The electrics blew in our living room ceiling thanks to them…

Out in the field/garden we protect them and leave them to nest in long grass. In the house is another matter :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

But as you say, another thread!

2 Likes

Suspect we have the same problem, the only room without rodent mesh around the eves! Couldnt find the time to look at it last trip as too busy in the garden so first thing in the spring.

So basically COP26 really meant COPOUT26, India and China there’s a surprise :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::frowning:

COP26: Evasive words and coal compromise, but deal shows progress

Novel use of discarded blades…

2 Likes

You sure they weren’t loir?

The dog caught one, and not a loir!

1 Like

You might say the same for many parts of other power stations. But as I posted before they are looking at alternatives.

There are alternatives. Aerospatiale/Airbus in Toulouse refurbish and recycle helicopter blades and bring them back into service and have been doing so since 86 when i did the Verification and validation on the equipment. And it is very successful in reducing what would otherwise be landfill.

Thats interesting, I wonder why they simply don’t repair, refurbish and bolt back onto, maybe like Microsoft they change something so you are on a constant replace/upgrade path?

It costs money and that is what the operators dont want to spend. It is cheaper and quicker to buy and fit new ones which then have a life expectancy of around 10 years. By then the govt grants are used up and new ones can be built again using govt grants. The grant system doesnt have repairs or such included in them. Or at least it didnt.