Letters to the Editor - July 2007

Pound for Poundbury

I visit Poundbury many times a year (Robin Page, March). The original scheme was a village in appearance except for a French chateau, which was out of keeping to my mind. The rest is a good mix of commercial properties and the essential pub. Alas, it started to grow, swallowing up two farms and spreading its tentacles to the bypass – and is still going on. The style of housing has changed to three or four storey buildings of pseudo Georgian-Victorian, so a totally different concept to the original appearance – but again a good mix of commercial development to give employment.

The question is, do people in these new developments work here or do local workers drive in from elsewhere while the properties are pieds-a-terre or holiday lets giving people a chance to don green wellies? They have built a new medical centre to replace two existing in-town practices – no doubt an improved facility but this means more car journeys and no cycle lanes, which would have been a good health option.

In spite of my comments I still like the concept and could live there if I could afford to. My main objection is the vast amount of greenfield prime farming land that’s been covered over and the enormous profit made through conveyancing, building houses on farmland and selling them at today’s inflated prices.

Colin Payne, Shoreham-by-Sea

Barm cake bureaucrats

I get fed up with barmy bureaucrats, the latest being the ones who stopped a baker calling her novelty tarts, pig tarts, as they don’t contain pigs or pork. I guess that puts an end to cottage or shepherd’s pie, Swiss rolls, Welsh rarebit, Irish stew etc. I don’t remember finding any fingers in my grandmother’s Deadman’s fingers cake, though her rock cakes could indeed have been made with rocks. Maybe those bureaucrats are as barmy as barm cakes.

Ron Bird, Leighton Buzzard

Prepared to back RSPB

I too am disturbed when I see a sparrowhawk catch one of ‘my’ garden birds but firmly believe they are not responsible for the decline of our songbirds. Comparing pre-war countryside to the environment today is using a very unlevel playing field. Raptors were indeed ‘strictly controlled’ by people who felt anything with a hooked beak should be shot or poisoned – some directly, most indirectly by the chemicals used on our land. Thank goodness, today’s views are more enlightened.

‘Cats took their toll’ we are informed. Surely, in line with the huge increase in human population since the war, our feline friend numbers would have also increased pro rata and thus their effect on songbird populations which makes sparrowhawk attacks pale into insignificance.

There are a host of reasons why our songbirds are declining – declining nest sites being one. Hedgerows, for example, have taken a beating over many decades and even I, a supporter, have not helped the local sparrows by having nice new white plastic fascias installed on my house.

To blame just one aspect, the sparrowhawk, just because it’s more obvious that other factors, I fear is well wide of the mark and to change allegiance away from the RSPB, who champion all birds to a group calling for culling of a species, is a great shame. I celebrate that we have birds as magnificent as sparrowhawks and am prepared to back the RSPB’s scientific-based view that the overall number of our songbirds is not depleted by raptors rather than my own, perhaps, misguided sentiments.

As for ‘the RSPB is becoming selective on what is allowed to live on its nature reserves’. Surely it is wise to discourage species that are not threatened in order to help those that are, especially in declining and rarer habitats. A reserve that doesn’t control its prime assets is surely not a reserve – it is open countryside.

John Trew, by email

Food for thought on intervention

There comes a time when man must intervene to protect bird species and it is now when sparrowhawks are having a detrimental effect on our songbirds. If people didn’t feed birds then the culprits taking them probably wouldn’t be known. The bird food industry in Britain is worth £100 million pounds and this industry would fold if people stopped feeding birds and birds had to rely on finding food in the environment. The business would also collapse if predators wiped out birds relying on seed for survival. The BTO and RSPB rely on people feeding birds in their gardens for their surveys.

H Woolridge, Rock, Worcestershire

We’re only fattening up the prey

In our area of Aviemore, my wife and I delight in feeding wild birds in our garden and had masses of visitors until sparrowhawks put in an unwelcome appearance. Now we have no more sparrows, siskins or tits, very few finches, only two blackbirds and even the collared doves are no longer to be seen. It’s totally useless for the RSPB to ask for wild birds to be fed. What for? As food for these raptors? Until the RSPB stops its supports for these hawks, wild birds and especially sparrows will decline further in numbers.

C W Boardman, Aviemore, Inverness-shire

Does anyone recall Bill Power?

I have lived in New Zealand for thirty-three years but still miss England and have fond memories of breeding finches and of long walks in local woods in Kent looking for these birds. I have only recently discovered Countryman, having purchased a used winter 1975/6 copy in an old secondhand bookstore. A great magazine. One that shows us that those old values are still alive in this modern world and one that makes me homesick for the old country but fills me with nostalgia.

Anyway the purpose of my inquiry is that a few years ago now I saw a programme on TV called Bill Power, featuring finches. I have always wanted to see if anyone has a copy or perhaps your readers know of where I can obtain one. I am more than happy to meet costs.

David Bellchambers, Auckland

An undisturbed appetite

We were having some decking put into the garden. The work was almost complete and preparations were being made to fill in the gap between the deck and the ground. At this point a mouse appeared from under the deck. Did he have a premonition? I decided to catch him and take him to the woods close by and the final touch could be put to the construction of the deck. The mouse, meanwhile, sat unconcernedly eating the peanuts which had fallen off the nearby bird table. He then moved into the plants in the adjacent rockery but I managed to pick him up (he didn’t resist!) and he sat on my hand quite undisturbed. I then placed him in a clear plastic box (with airholes!), added some peanuts and put the lid on the box where he continued to eat the nuts with a completely relaxed air.

Eventually we took him to the woods and during the journey he happily continued to eat the nuts. On arrival at the woods we tipped him (her?) and the remaining nuts out of the box onto the grass where he continued to eat his fill sitting only inches from me. It made my day and I hope his also!

Mary Morrison, Hexham

More nonsense

Replies to my query (March) about the words my mother sang confirmed it was a song called Koymenayo, arranged by Aubrey Kennet and published in Francis and Day’s Popular and Community Songbook No 2. I have another mystery to solve, a nonsense poem or song that my father and his family from Swindon used to recite:

For he was a man who knew about etemology, hebrew, shebrew, ju ju ology
Tintacks, shintacks, hobnailed boot jacks
He was as full as a Pickford’s van
Those who cracked up
Edison
Swore his jaw was more than medicine
Simply because he was a darn larned scientific man.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Wendy MacLeod-Gilford by email

4x4 tax

Gordon Brown doesn’t need to ‘get out more’ to know that probably ninety per cent of all 4x4s are fashion accessories used mainly for the school run and already blocking congested roads. That doesn’t bother him as he sees them for what they are – a nice little earner in taxes. I’d be interested to hear Robin Page’s views on the proposal to levy council tax on all farm buildings.

R D Palmer, Dover, Kent

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