Speaker 1: Keep on money white with one thank you. I made
Speaker 1: full use of my weatherspoons. Sorry, you can keep talking
Speaker 1: about I made very good use of my weatherspoons thing today.
Speaker 1: And I had three cups of coffee, not because I
Speaker 1: wanted three cups of coffee, but because it's included in
Speaker 1: my room price. So therefore I had three cups of coffee.
Speaker 1: I had to force the last one down.
Speaker 2: Actually, there's no way you're going to let the bastards
Speaker 2: get away without giving you as much coffee as you could.
Speaker 1: Physically take it. Yes, exactly. It's very British thing is
Speaker 1: that if it's there, I'll have it.
Speaker 2: This is my buffets. Near never really took off in
Speaker 2: commercial settings in the UK, isn't it because we'd abuse it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, ah Man, you go on holiday to like places
Speaker 1: like Come you know, where they have these all in
Speaker 1: one things, and we're at it because we still have
Speaker 1: our British queuing idea, so we don't like it because
Speaker 1: Germans barge in front of you. But then you're going
Speaker 1: back and it's the only time you will see British people. Actually,
Speaker 1: what you're having for breakfast, well, I'm having some of
Speaker 1: this weird looking ham that's got to think it's got
Speaker 1: nuts in a three hard boiled eggs. What's that? I
Speaker 1: think it's a waffle. It was this a croissant and
Speaker 1: then some fried eggs, some hot dog sausages and yeah.
Speaker 1: People coming back with this sort of literally the whole
Speaker 1: of Europe.
Speaker 2: On a plate.
Speaker 1: And then they go back again and then say, oh,
Speaker 1: I better have some music the otherwise I'll.
Speaker 2: Get Well, it's like Carvery is, isn't it. They've taken
Speaker 2: off because that's why, because you're limited on your meat selection,
Speaker 2: but they let you fill up on the EDGs. You
Speaker 2: can have as many potatoes as you want because it's
Speaker 2: a penny per plate. To them, it's the Carvery is
Speaker 2: the only buffet that works in the UK for our mindset.
Speaker 1: It's weird. I have to I'm not a great fan
Speaker 1: of Carvery. I do not like the principle of queuing
Speaker 1: up for food.
Speaker 2: I just feel that something of the breadline about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is there's something of school the breadline. And
Speaker 1: also I don't want to walk back through a load
Speaker 1: of voyeurs. Are other tables saying fat bugger, look at him,
Speaker 1: where has he got?
Speaker 2: He's feeling judged, But you don't get back when you're
Speaker 2: walking back with a tray full of drinks, do you No?
Speaker 1: No, In actual fact, there's a slight sort of mutual
Speaker 1: right because you've got you know, you've only got beer.
Speaker 2: It's like it's that if you can get the triangle
Speaker 2: of pints, yeah you can do that, yeah yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately now though, of course with the wonky fingers, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not only as my fielding not as good as
Speaker 1: it used to be, but I can carry fewer pints
Speaker 1: because of this. You know, the issues are real. I
Speaker 1: know I'm speaking to someone with like metal legs now.
Speaker 1: I mean you're not really going yeah what leg singular?
Speaker 1: But you know it is something that I do feel
Speaker 1: the pressure is on me now when I'm carrying pints
Speaker 1: because I wonky fingers.
Speaker 2: You did make me go and get the round last night, though, you.
Speaker 1: Know what, I think it's the most important thing that
Speaker 1: when you get injuries like that, well look the coffee
Speaker 1: Soto reave or there is just out of shot. There's
Speaker 1: there's coffee being made by our lovely assistant. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: also the producer.
Speaker 2: Of the show.
Speaker 1: I do like that she's dressed in traditional sort of
Speaker 1: wood nymph outfit, which is excellent. You know, no wonder
Speaker 1: you're always hanging around Coppering. I like the funny ears
Speaker 1: as well. She is really a nymph, she really is
Speaker 1: an elf. Well I knew it.
Speaker 2: She's genetically from Lincolnshire, so I think that's how they
Speaker 2: look like down there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, extension, Yeah, yeah, it is funny.
Speaker 2: You may have noticed that this is a video podcast,
Speaker 2: and if you haven't, are you listening to it on
Speaker 2: the audio one? We'll go to the link as a
Speaker 2: video version that you can watch because we have in
Speaker 2: person Richard Nigus.
Speaker 1: Hooray. We actually do occasionally get together, don't we and
Speaker 1: sort of hold hands and skip about, not usually in
Speaker 1: a woodland setting, though it must be said.
Speaker 2: We haven't got any in Suffolk.
Speaker 1: We've got loads of woods in Suffolk. We are not
Speaker 1: as heavily wooded as here. But I do you know
Speaker 1: that actually the least wooded county, of course, is Lincolnshire.
Speaker 1: It's three percent apparently, which, funnily enough, is what was
Speaker 1: it but three two percent woodland cover at the end
Speaker 1: of the First World War across the country.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we're we are much much higher now. I mean,
Speaker 2: if I was a better presenter, I would have got
Speaker 2: the figures ready, but it'll be whatever's on the screen now.
Speaker 2: But you're here because this is well, we can once
Speaker 2: again say you have a book coming out.
Speaker 1: I've got a book coming out, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: you think this podcast has been going so low? Now
Speaker 1: we bored people when we first started, because you know,
Speaker 1: the first book's coming out, and now the next book's
Speaker 1: coming out, so yes, So the next one is not
Speaker 1: just about hedges. Obviously they do feature in it. But
Speaker 1: I'm going around and meeting loads of fascinating, interesting people
Speaker 1: who are people who work on the land, but they
Speaker 1: are people who continue to be those what's the term
Speaker 1: landscape generators? You see, because I just get fed up
Speaker 1: with all this thing that us humans rubbed at the system.
Speaker 1: And you know, the wood what we're sat in now
Speaker 1: you're doing it. You're working this wood. Generations of people
Speaker 1: before have worked these woods, just the same as hedge
Speaker 1: layers planted laid hedges and dry stone wallers built walls,
Speaker 1: and just the same as reed cutters cut reeds and
Speaker 1: use those. And all our landscape is completely man made.
Speaker 1: There isn't a single inch of wild in it. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think there's any wild left.
Speaker 2: In Well, there are wild places where, and places where
Speaker 2: if you go and lay down there you'll you'll die
Speaker 2: of hypothermia before someone finds you. But every bit of
Speaker 2: the British Isles has had sort of the touch of
Speaker 2: man on it. Yeah, yeah, for ten years at least.
Speaker 2: And we keep finding again, you know, we keep finding.
Speaker 2: We don't, we don't find anything, but people keep finding
Speaker 2: these sort of remains of campfire sites and remains of
Speaker 2: early industry and find out, oh, actually people were felling
Speaker 2: woodland here years ago, and the evidence of well, the
Speaker 2: hills up here, I mean, the part of the reason
Speaker 2: they don't have trees on is because they were felled
Speaker 2: for the sort of the edges of the hillfalls that
Speaker 2: were put there, and there were these iron age hill forts.
Speaker 2: People have been doing stuff in all these landscapes for
Speaker 2: so long. Now we can't you can't remove that stall.
Speaker 1: Which is why I am get rather fed up with
Speaker 1: the rewilding narrative. Is that you turn a clock bag,
Speaker 1: and I get even more fed up with like the
Speaker 1: Biodiversity INTACTNOUS index that's used by Natural England to get
Speaker 1: this narrative that we're the most nature depleted country in
Speaker 1: Europe because they use a set date of seventeen hundred
Speaker 1: as that you know what we like compared with seventeen hundred. Well,
Speaker 1: by seventeen hundred we were already an absolute powerhouse of
Speaker 1: not only land juice for agriculture, but land juice in mining.
Speaker 1: I was up the other week in Wensleydale, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was stood atop a Bronze Age stone wall that
Speaker 1: had tumbled and an enclosure, and I was taken over
Speaker 1: here here's a a Bronze Age mine and so they're mining.
Speaker 1: Then you know, if you only got to go to
Speaker 1: Grimes Graves near in East Anglia and there they have
Speaker 1: got stone age mining for flints. So we who have
Speaker 1: been industrial, we have changed the landscape. Seventeen hundred is
Speaker 1: such a stupid nominal date. And there's all these complete
Speaker 1: buffoons who have bought this idea hook line and sinker
Speaker 1: that you know, and poor, poor old bio diversity in
Speaker 1: this country. We have just we've rubbed man out of it,
Speaker 1: have made us the bad guy. This isn't the work
Speaker 1: of bad guys here.
Speaker 2: And this is all We're just trying to work this
Speaker 2: out before we recorded, Well, I've been trying to work
Speaker 2: this out for two years. Why is this woodland here?
Speaker 2: Because the big ash tree that were sat underneath, that's
Speaker 2: quite old. That's over one hundred years old, i'd say,
Speaker 2: But then the older around it, they're probably twentieth century.
Speaker 2: They're probably less than one hundred years old. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: that was not that looks like an ash tree that's
Speaker 2: grown in a woodland, not something that's grown in the
Speaker 2: middle of a field, because it hasn't got all the
Speaker 2: marks on the side from where animals have been grazing
Speaker 2: on it. And so this was a tree that grew
Speaker 2: up in a woodland, but before this woodland. So there's
Speaker 2: a reason there's not that woodland that was there before
Speaker 2: and there's this new woodland.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Someone had to make that change. And it doesn't just
Speaker 2: happen by accident. This wasn't a forest fire. This is
Speaker 2: all This has been replanted, but by someone who's not.
Speaker 1: Here anymore, and someone with a purpose, because no one
Speaker 1: ever used I mean, when you think about it, we
Speaker 1: were just over the way there and we're watching them
Speaker 1: silogen and fent and class machinery is taking the strain.
Speaker 1: When this was all done, it was nothing but grunt,
Speaker 1: human grunt. And you know, so you wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: this on a whim. You didn't do it because that
Speaker 1: looks pretty. You did it for a reason. And when
Speaker 1: you if this wood was indeed planted then and it's
Speaker 1: largely older, they wouldn't have thought, well, perhaps when this
Speaker 1: is matured sufficiently, when I'm going to fell it, they
Speaker 1: will have invented chainsaws. By then, they would have been
Speaker 1: thinking that it will still be an axe. So therefore
Speaker 1: they must have thought, well, am I going to use
Speaker 1: this for them? Was it for charcoal? I mean, so
Speaker 1: we know that older had a lot of charcoal.
Speaker 2: It was basically it was a chemical input. It was
Speaker 2: for gunpowder. It was the carbon particular carbon percentage in
Speaker 2: the chemical rating for older charcoal made it better for
Speaker 2: making gunpowder than hazel charcoalco. So it was it was
Speaker 2: an industrial input.
Speaker 1: It was a chemical And I suppose perhaps because we
Speaker 1: know that we've actually got a road in Stow Market
Speaker 1: called Gunpowder Away, and that was because that was where
Speaker 1: the gunpowder factory was. And the reason why there was
Speaker 1: not a lot of trees around that neck of the
Speaker 1: woods was because they chopped them all down and they
Speaker 1: turned them into into gunpowder and then it blew up.
Speaker 2: Which is rather cool. There was a great big.
Speaker 1: Explosion and gunpowered away and it's but they had a
Speaker 1: sort of canal like system which they ferried things about.
Speaker 1: Talking of canals. Here's a very funny thing. Someone was
Speaker 1: telling me the other day. I think it's someone from
Speaker 1: the CLA. It was from the CLA in the east.
Speaker 1: They were telling me that they'd done a talk on
Speaker 1: improving bar diversity, on farms and whatnot. But they weren't
Speaker 1: just talking to landowners. They were talking like to other
Speaker 1: rural businesses, and they'd all done all this stuff. So well,
Speaker 1: how we can improve hedgeros and how we can do this,
Speaker 1: how we can do the other And then this guys
Speaker 1: were doing that. Is there any questions? He stood up
Speaker 1: and he said, he goes, I've noticed, he said that
Speaker 1: most of the field random of our ear I've got
Speaker 1: these mini canals. It goes, if we just widened them right,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't need to transport stuff by roads anymore. We
Speaker 1: could just go and put them down, the mini canals
Speaker 1: and canals. And so I went, you're talking about ditches,
Speaker 1: And he went, is that what you call them? Anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not really going to work. So he thought he
Speaker 1: had so he thought, well he's listening to this, but
Speaker 1: that it would be a very sensible idea to expand ditches.
Speaker 1: And he thought it invented a new method of transportation
Speaker 1: of goods via these mini canals, which turns out to
Speaker 1: be ditches.
Speaker 2: He's invented the early industrial revolution.
Speaker 1: Again, well done, Telford.
Speaker 2: Yes, you get some horses and you could drag them along. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: people could live on them, get a load of irish over,
Speaker 2: they could dig them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could perhaps go and have things like be lovely.
Speaker 1: We could perhaps go and paint our kettles just to
Speaker 1: celebrate them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's you realize just how challenging it is because
Speaker 1: the whole the wood nymph has come with coffee.
Speaker 2: The coffee has arrived.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: These are made from titanium, these mugs are they Well,
Speaker 2: they're not very good titanium. So I think it's made
Speaker 2: from sort of melted down Chinese meg fighter or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: You know, Is that also?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Amy? Is that also what your legs and I'm made of?
Speaker 2: No, it's stainless steel, not worth titanium. Apparently I can't
Speaker 2: do that, which I can't like straighten it without pain.
Speaker 2: So there's a big plate there. And that's all because
Speaker 2: that bit turned to wheatabix.
Speaker 1: And I think you need to have a baggiar trouser
Speaker 1: from here on in. That's you want to have trousers
Speaker 1: like mine slacks.
Speaker 2: Well you also have got knee knee pad things in
Speaker 2: them as well.
Speaker 1: I'm dead tactical. These these are Polish combat trousers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, look what the poles can do.
Speaker 2: Well, that's my phone is ringing. The one I said,
Speaker 2: I definitely turned off, but can all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other reason you're here is so that we can
Speaker 2: introduce you to some farmers.
Speaker 1: Some farmers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're looking at livestock.
Speaker 1: I am. I'm looking at livestock because I was talking
Speaker 1: at so I come over this way. I'm on a
Speaker 1: complete cook's tour. So I've had two weeks I'm traveling.
Speaker 1: I've been down to Surrey and Sussex looking at Coppice's
Speaker 1: woodland managers down there. Then I went up to Sirencester
Speaker 1: and then I went to Malvern to the Three Counties Show,
Speaker 1: where I spoke to some livestock farmers there, and Patrick
Speaker 1: Galbraith and I did a talk for the CLA there.
Speaker 1: Then I went to the monty Lip Festival at Montgomery
Speaker 1: and now over here. So the farmers I was speaking to,
Speaker 1: I was looking at how the livestock that we farm
Speaker 1: are also these landscape engineers. And so I met a
Speaker 1: fantastic guy who breeds Gloucester cattle and he does it
Speaker 1: in gloucestershere and rather than using them for their milk,
Speaker 1: he produces fantastic beef. And he's fascinating, this dude. And
Speaker 1: he's got this theory that because the land on which
Speaker 1: he's grazing his cattle is untouched and the Glocester cow
Speaker 1: is untouched, was never an improved beast. He said that
Speaker 1: the Gloucester cows has evolved to live off his grass,
Speaker 1: and his grass has evolved to live with the Gloucester cow.
Speaker 1: And he reckons that. He had a lovely term which
Speaker 1: I wrote down, which if I was a more, if
Speaker 1: I had hold your coffee while you do this, can
Speaker 1: you quite adept? This is my good hand hand? He
Speaker 1: called it cultural returning, and he thinks that's what And
Speaker 1: he wasn't some sort of new age Hippie Arts.
Speaker 2: Council funding wording.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I quite like it because it's in other words,
Speaker 1: is that if you're using regional local breeds on local land,
Speaker 1: he reckons that they have truly evolved to work on this.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone wants to use dexters and belted galoways
Speaker 1: at the moment in all this restorator thing, and they're
Speaker 1: putting bloody conic ponies everywhere, yet on Dartmoor they want
Speaker 1: to kill them all. His theory is the fact that
Speaker 1: the land has evolved to best suit these regional breeds
Speaker 1: and that they are lower in stress and almost their
Speaker 1: whole DNA has worked with that, so they taste sweeter,
Speaker 1: They taste better if they're on the land where they
Speaker 1: supposed to be. So you know, one would argue, for example,
Speaker 1: that we keep using belted galoways in projects in Suffolk
Speaker 1: and we're turning our backs on the Suffolk red pole.
Speaker 1: Should we be doing that because Suffolk meadows have evolved
Speaker 1: to have Suffolk red pole? What's your local breeds around
Speaker 1: this sort of way?
Speaker 2: Various various Wolsteins and Frisians and you know, dairy milk producers.
Speaker 2: But the one the farm. We're going to see after
Speaker 2: next will be red Pole. So you've got Welsh red poles.
Speaker 1: Here, yes, because red Pole though, was a thing that
Speaker 1: seemed to be everywhere. And they go, that's a Suffolk
Speaker 1: red pole. What's the difference. It's from Suffolk boy, so
Speaker 1: better than Norfolk Pole, you know.
Speaker 2: So just where you buy them from makes it?
Speaker 1: So what's the score with this? So I just touched
Speaker 1: on that dart More ponies. So someone wants to go
Speaker 1: a massive cull of dark More ponies? Who? Why? And
Speaker 1: what on earth is going on? Because your mother got
Speaker 1: dart moles, she's got Welsh ponies, arabs, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: What's you got? Amy? Okay hunting, But there's wildshill ponies
Speaker 2: over there, and there are some mid whales wild ponies
Speaker 2: as well. They're they don't then they're closer to like
Speaker 2: Provolsky neolithic horses almost the wild ponies there's not they're
Speaker 2: so hardy and they are they they behave more like
Speaker 2: goats than horses. But the Dartmore wild ponies depends where
Speaker 2: you are on Dartmoor. They're either completely feral creatures or
Speaker 2: they're just the thing at the end of the garden
Speaker 2: almost and it seems the attraction, the thing that people
Speaker 2: have in connection with the wild pony as a human
Speaker 2: seems to be more about the ones they see every day.
Speaker 2: It's been like sort of urban foxes, you know, to
Speaker 2: a lot of people in towns, foxes are the cute
Speaker 2: thing that lives at the end of the railway line
Speaker 2: or at the bottom of the garden or something nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the complete killing machines that they have
Speaker 2: around here. So the wild ponies in Dartmoor are either
Speaker 2: the ones that are right next to people's towns and
Speaker 2: their roads and the stuff they see regularly, or the
Speaker 2: the big feral things upon the hills. But the ones
Speaker 2: near the towns are the ones people are attached to.
Speaker 2: But they're not the ones I think people want to
Speaker 2: get rid of for the grazing and the biodiversity issue
Speaker 2: and the hit on the upland so.
Speaker 1: This is yet again another thing they're saying that they're overgrazing.
Speaker 1: The thing that I'd say about ponies is that if
Speaker 1: you look at cattle and sheep, they'll go crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch,
Speaker 1: and they will eat the way through it. Ponies are browsers. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they are doing the lawns and ruffs, which I
Speaker 1: thought or these people wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, anyone who's ever had cared for horses, though,
Speaker 2: is that they'll just decide they don't want that half
Speaker 2: of the field. They'll stand by the gate looking mournful
Speaker 2: until you bring them hay or halage or whatever, and
Speaker 2: they'll ignore stuff at the bottom. And wild ponies do
Speaker 2: have that to a degree. It's not that they will
Speaker 2: be very selective in what they what. They can also
Speaker 2: only get to certain areas, yes, and like sheep, which
Speaker 2: will get to pretty much everywhere. It's I think it's
Speaker 2: just that the idea of grazing is an issue for
Speaker 2: removal of these things because there is a this belief
Speaker 2: that it is grounded in some reality that if you
Speaker 2: take away grazing animals you will have trees. Trees will
Speaker 2: come back naturally, and that's true because everything is trying
Speaker 2: to return to forest in the UK, anywhere inland is
Speaker 2: trying to become a foresting and even our little fire
Speaker 2: pit there.
Speaker 1: It's got a little oak growing in a tree.
Speaker 2: Has planted itself and has started growing, and all around
Speaker 2: us weed trees, stuff that's trying to grow naturally. That's
Speaker 2: what would happen in that field out there if you
Speaker 2: took away grazing animals. It's what would happen in the
Speaker 2: Welsh Mountains if you took away grazing animals, but not
Speaker 2: all of it. So if you're taking away grazing animals,
Speaker 2: whether it's sheep or horses, you've got to decide. Okay,
Speaker 2: I am deciding that this should be woodland. This should
Speaker 2: be woodland and not what it is now, which is
Speaker 2: effectively just management. Just in the same way if you
Speaker 2: said I don't want this to be woodland, I want
Speaker 2: this to be grazingland. That's just a decision of equal magnitude.
Speaker 2: But there's this perception that trees good, trees better, and
Speaker 2: this is what I don't.
Speaker 1: It's just slightly the reason for writing this book, because
Speaker 1: you know, we have to accept the fact that our
Speaker 1: landscape looks the way that it does because it more
Speaker 1: or less evolves because of farming. I think I've started
Speaker 1: off as saying it starts with a radical concept that
Speaker 1: Britain is not the tail end of a natural disaster,
Speaker 1: it's actually the result of man made brilliance. Bill Bryson.
Speaker 1: You know, he writes about Britain and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: by accident, the beautiful, irreplaceable British countryside was created by man.
Speaker 1: And I don't like this idea that they are removing
Speaker 1: that human element, that they are saying that the pony
Speaker 1: that is there is going to be removed. And yet
Speaker 1: the same people are arguing about that, the same ones
Speaker 1: who get absolutely when they go and get some flip
Speaker 1: in horse from what's it called the Conig pony. That's
Speaker 1: a Conig pony. Cool, but poor old dart mares aren't.
Speaker 2: Well, there's this shifting baseline thing as well. It's a
Speaker 2: bit like the post war, post Second World War improvement
Speaker 2: in tree cover. People would look at the lad and
Speaker 2: we just had the Woodland Trust tree equity score thing,
Speaker 2: which I admire the Woodland Trust for doing because it's
Speaker 2: quite a canny way of of categorizing a problem in
Speaker 2: relation to people, because that's what you need to do
Speaker 2: to get funding. I understand that, But anyone looking at
Speaker 2: it and paying attention to it for the first time,
Speaker 2: I go, oh god, we haven't got any trees. We
Speaker 2: haven't got any woodland. Whereas if you looked at the
Speaker 2: woodland cover in nineteen forty seven and compared it to
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, we have a hell of a lot more.
Speaker 2: But if you are starting at twenty seventeen and saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's what we need to fix, then it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what came before, because the problem starts now and you've
Speaker 2: got this shifting baseline of okay, whatever is the new normal.
Speaker 2: We'll judge everything from that, and for the British Isles
Speaker 2: rather than judging it against okay, maybe how it looked
Speaker 2: in the middle of the nineteenth century, which was after
Speaker 2: the first flush of Industrial Revolution, where we got rid
Speaker 2: of a lot of woodland because we're burning it all
Speaker 2: or using it to make all the things for the
Speaker 2: industrial revolution and the growing cities. What we need. What
Speaker 2: you need to do is look at it in comparison
Speaker 2: to what you want it to be maybe, or what
Speaker 2: it has been, and say, actually, we are improving things.
Speaker 2: If you want more woodland, if you want more bi diversity,
Speaker 2: things are gradually getting better. But if you're comparing Britain
Speaker 2: as it is today to rural Finland or North America
Speaker 2: or something like that and saying, well, we don't have
Speaker 2: these vast tracks of wilderness, you know, So therefore we
Speaker 2: are the most bi diversity depleted, sheep wrecked, chemical.
Speaker 1: Chemical soaps wasteland, the most Yes, the later in crisis. Yes,
Speaker 1: you guys add some yet more doom and gloom.
Speaker 2: Scroll and compare this to the rainforest of Central America.
Speaker 2: Yes we are, but we aren't. It's not as bad
Speaker 2: as it was, and it's getting better.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like Patrick Galbrais said when he wrote his
Speaker 1: last book, Uncommon Ground. He said, you know there's always
Speaker 1: so much this narrative that right to Rome and go
Speaker 1: bimbling on about that. You know, the British public are
Speaker 1: shut out of all bar nine percent of you know,
Speaker 1: shut out of eighty percent. They got nine percent.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: He went to one of these places where they were
Speaker 1: sort of pointing the finger at some earl or duke
Speaker 1: or lord or something or other, and he went for
Speaker 1: a bimble along the footpaths that are open, then went
Speaker 1: through onto the open access land that had been given
Speaker 1: and he bumped into a guy from I think it
Speaker 1: was Nigeria, and he had a conversation. Because Patrick's one
Speaker 1: of these people just talks to anybody, especially when he's
Speaker 1: in book researching mode. And this guy from Nigeria went,
Speaker 1: isn't this amazing? We can just go everywhere. Back at home,
Speaker 1: we can't go anywhere. And you know, I think if
Speaker 1: you are told by people who have either applausible voice,
Speaker 1: a loud voice, or one that is hysterical enough, then
Speaker 1: you can be but you can start believing that we
Speaker 1: are the most nature depleted country in Europe and then
Speaker 1: we're just not, and and we aren't. It's a farce
Speaker 1: because but the whole thing is a modeling system and
Speaker 1: most of our thing, I say, is that we'll plot
Speaker 1: this and then we'll create a model because we're so rubbish.
Speaker 1: I was speaking with Roger Morgan Grenville last week down
Speaker 1: in Sussex at a little event run by an organization
Speaker 1: called Greening Arundall. And firstly we went into a really
Speaker 1: rubbish pub. You know, I think we sometimes do a
Speaker 1: little bit of advertising by mistake. Here I'm going to
Speaker 1: do some advertising by advice here. Don't go into the
Speaker 1: Eagle in Arundor unless you want to watch the racing
Speaker 1: that is on all the time. But anyway, I said
Speaker 1: to these guys, they're about the bio Diversity INTACTNUS index
Speaker 1: and how we were told that we are the most
Speaker 1: nature depleted country in Britain, but we're not because they
Speaker 1: ask me the question which I get asked so much.
Speaker 1: Is all right for guys like you and I who
Speaker 1: can actually do this for a living, But what can
Speaker 1: you do if you're either too old, you don't want
Speaker 1: to change career, you can't change career, you want to
Speaker 1: stay doing how can you do it? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: do you know the most important thing I think that
Speaker 1: you can do is you can start getting involved with
Speaker 1: farm clusters, with individual farmers, and you can start becoming
Speaker 1: that data recorder. If your thing is bats or your
Speaker 1: thing are moths, doesn't matter what species it is, if
Speaker 1: you show a genuine interest I know rund my way,
Speaker 1: most farmers with a pretty general gentle approach would say yes,
Speaker 1: I'm quite happy for you to go and record swifts
Speaker 1: numbers here and then you get real data. Because nearly
Speaker 1: everything that we have in this country, whether it's trees,
Speaker 1: whether it's hedgerows, or whether it's nate wider nature, is
Speaker 1: recorded through modeling, not actually through genuine people going out.
Speaker 2: And recording it.
Speaker 1: And I think what that would probably show is that
Speaker 1: there are some counties Lincolnshire which has a lot less
Speaker 1: tree cover, and so that theoretically we say, do we
Speaker 1: need to put more trees in Lincolnshire? Is it what
Speaker 1: Lincolnshire wants? Arguably not, because huge reasons why there's so
Speaker 1: much of Lincolnshire hasn't got trees on is because it
Speaker 1: used to be under the sea. But we can then
Speaker 1: start getting localized regional patterns and then we can get
Speaker 1: some true, honest data. And so I advise people, don't
Speaker 1: you don't need to just come out on hedge land courses. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn how to lay a hedge,
Speaker 1: give you a mere call and we'll go and do it.
Speaker 1: But you can get a mark one set of eyeballs
Speaker 1: that you were born with, and a field guide and
Speaker 1: a book and you can record that data. And that
Speaker 1: is then hugely valuable and gives that localized data which
Speaker 1: always top trump some stupid modeling that's been thrown out
Speaker 1: by Tony Juniper and the Natural England and a bunch
Speaker 1: of scientists sat in flipping Kensington in the Natural History Museum.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also people have put a lot of effort
Speaker 2: into trying to convince other people that their way of
Speaker 2: seeing things is the right way. You know, their understanding
Speaker 2: of the situation is this Elon Musk is an evil
Speaker 2: man because he's a trillionaire, yes, Or this other person
Speaker 2: is a good person because they're poor, or because when
Speaker 2: they work for nonprofits therefore they're better than this person.
Speaker 2: Rather than seeking to understand, you know, I want to
Speaker 2: understand more about this thing. Yeah, you know, I now
Speaker 2: I think I have a clear idea of how this
Speaker 2: system works. I'm now going to go and check that.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to go and find out more because
Speaker 2: I'm probably wrong. And that's how I try and think
Speaker 2: about things now, and how I try and see things now. Okay,
Speaker 2: I want to understand more because the closer you look
Speaker 2: at something, and the more you study something, or the
Speaker 2: more you look at Lowe, you really look at one field,
Speaker 2: one area and say, I'm really going to get into
Speaker 2: the specie survey for this. I'm throw my survey squares out,
Speaker 2: do my trans X and go, oh, bloody hell, I
Speaker 2: didn't know we actually had this. You know, we had
Speaker 2: three different types of orchids in this I didn't know
Speaker 2: we had or whatever. You will find more things the
Speaker 2: more you try to understand it, and if you are
Speaker 2: somebody with an agenda in what you're trying to push,
Speaker 2: which is basically every human being on earth. Yes, because
Speaker 2: that is part of human nature. You are trying to
Speaker 2: optimize for something, You are trying to do something, you're
Speaker 2: trying to achieve something. If you're watching or listening to
Speaker 2: this and thinking, yes, but I don't have an agenda,
Speaker 2: you're wrong. You do have an agenda, even if it's
Speaker 2: just you want your family to do well, or you
Speaker 2: want you know, your people to do well, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: you kind of find something in such a diverse landscape
Speaker 2: as the British Isles to prove every agenda. So the
Speaker 2: bit we were looking at up before you came here,
Speaker 2: we went to a farm near where I live, huge farm,
Speaker 2: thousand cows, big dairy operation, and they rent a lot
Speaker 2: of ground around it to for silage. Although really when
Speaker 2: you get to a sort of a dairy operation of
Speaker 2: that size, were also what you're looking for is land
Speaker 2: to put slurry onto, because then you can take the
Speaker 2: silage from it afterwards, but you need to have somewhere
Speaker 2: to put that waste. And the fields we went to
Speaker 2: I know quite well, and they've got really good hedges
Speaker 2: haven't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lovely hedges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's no insects in the field, not a one,
Speaker 2: not a one.
Speaker 1: No, And you see that. That would be it because
Speaker 1: if your metric that you were judging things was the hedge, yes,
Speaker 1: you would say it's got mixed species thick from bottom
Speaker 1: to top. You obviously haven't got a deer problem here.
Speaker 1: That good stuff. So therefore you would say click, that works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then you only have to go two strides out
Speaker 1: from the hedge and you say the land is desiccated.
Speaker 1: If you walk through a field after harvest in the
Speaker 1: supposed chemical soak wasteland of East Anglia, you would see
Speaker 1: running through the stubble, you would see countless myriad of
Speaker 1: small spiders, beetles and other invertebrates. I didn't see one,
Speaker 1: not one.
Speaker 2: We did a couple of transacts across, didn't we And
Speaker 2: we both of us, because this is how we work,
Speaker 2: is that most of the time we're looking at our feet,
Speaker 2: what's down there, what's run through there, and you are
Speaker 2: not seeing it.
Speaker 1: Now, that, though, would give the message to the people
Speaker 1: who say that cows are basically nothing but disastrous. That
Speaker 1: would be saying, yes, see, look cattle, but it's not
Speaker 1: the cow's fault. We then came round the corner and
Speaker 1: we then saw another field to our left, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden the bird song because all we could
Speaker 1: hear was basically rooks and crows magpies. We saw one
Speaker 1: cock pheasant you went run. What he was doing out there?
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot to eat? But anyway, we
Speaker 1: didn't see anything there. But we walked one field and
Speaker 1: to our left there were then cows actually grazing out
Speaker 1: in a meadow, and there was a white throat that
Speaker 1: flew into the hedge. Then you see a number of
Speaker 1: other bird species, and the birds song suddenly started, which
Speaker 1: qued meant that they're because there was cattle actually out
Speaker 1: in the fields, not just there. After math spread on it.
Speaker 1: So you're going to go and say, well, surely the
Speaker 1: cattle are making a massively positive impact here.
Speaker 2: So both of those are a cow farming cow farming, yeah,
Speaker 2: but one completely different, completely different scales, completely different operations,
Speaker 2: but both come to the same category.
Speaker 1: Correct, So therefore this carte blanche thing is get rid
Speaker 1: of the cows and everything's fine. The sort of dale
Speaker 1: vince nonsensical gibberish I do think one of the other
Speaker 1: problems though, is that when you go out and you
Speaker 1: start genuinely looking, you do your transects, you go and
Speaker 1: put your little meter square out and start counting species diversity,
Speaker 1: or you go out if you go out with an
Speaker 1: entomologist and they're sort of armed with hundreds of little
Speaker 1: clear plastic tobs that they put things in and they
Speaker 1: have this knowledge of it, you suddenly realize that there
Speaker 1: is a lot out there. And so most of the
Speaker 1: time what tends to happen is that we are going
Speaker 1: out when we're doing this and you're trying to prove
Speaker 1: that there is stuff there. But positivity tends to not
Speaker 1: actually raise money. So what we are trying to do
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like farm clusters and getting
Speaker 1: funding out with governments funding, you're trying to say, look,
Speaker 1: we've done all this work and now we have got
Speaker 1: more farmland birds, or we've got more turtle doves, or
Speaker 1: we've got more of adders, grassnegs, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: You're trying to go and say, look, my work has
Speaker 1: done this. All. Too frequently the NGOs and people who
Speaker 1: have got a different agenda, they want to show what
Speaker 1: isn't there So, therefore, modeling, particularly models that say, back
Speaker 1: before we industrialized in this country, we had a lot
Speaker 1: of nature, and now we don't. It's much easier to
Speaker 1: use that model because the model tends to be doom
Speaker 1: and gloom, and doom and gloom is much more likely
Speaker 1: to raise you a few quid, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is you only get money for solving a problem
Speaker 2: really well. Its particularly if you're a charitory or a
Speaker 2: social enterprise, or you're a campaigning organization. You need to
Speaker 2: say this is a problem. If you give us money,
Speaker 2: we will fix that problem. Yeah, And then that disincentivizes
Speaker 2: you from ever solving a problem. Yeah, because what you
Speaker 2: need to do is say, well, we solve this problem,
Speaker 2: but never mind that, here's a new problem. Yes, here's
Speaker 2: a new problem, and then we need your money to
Speaker 2: solve that. And everything has to be a crisis. Everything
Speaker 2: has to be very, very urgent, because again, you don't
Speaker 2: get money to say, well, this sort of thing is
Speaker 2: looming on the horizon maybe in the next fifty years,
Speaker 2: can we slowly solve it now it needs to be No,
Speaker 2: we need to solve it by next June or everything's dead. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's that it's that level. And again I understand why
Speaker 2: funders do this, and that's, you know, maybe the best
Speaker 2: way to allocate funding. But it does incentivize a certain
Speaker 2: way of communicating with the public.
Speaker 1: Yes it does. And it also incentivizes people like you
Speaker 1: say to always is you almost get doomed fatigue because doomerism, doism.
Speaker 1: Oh god, you know, everything's the cost of living crisis.
Speaker 1: What people just going to say, do you know what,
Speaker 1: we're a bit skint at the moment because you know,
Speaker 1: we've basically spent all the money on covid yep, and
Speaker 1: then trying to help Zelenski not go and not go
Speaker 1: and get overrun by Ivan the terrible. If we actually
Speaker 1: just said we're a bit skin.
Speaker 2: At the moment.
Speaker 1: I can't come out on the piss this week because
Speaker 1: I haven't got enough money in my wallet. People go, oh,
Speaker 1: but no, it's a cost of living crisis. Yes, so
Speaker 1: you need you need, you need that layer that thick
Speaker 1: on with a trowel.
Speaker 2: There's yeah, there's you see this with that things that
Speaker 2: access to nature and access to outdoor spaces. Because my
Speaker 2: career was working as an outdoor instructor, working in the outdoors,
Speaker 2: taking people into the outdoors. I do firmly believe that
Speaker 2: people do need access to nature, because it's why now
Speaker 2: we both work in the outdoors. The reason you don't
Speaker 2: work in an office all winter and you stand on
Speaker 2: a damp, wind swept suffolk land lovely bending wood over
Speaker 2: is because you're outside and you don't have to see people. Yes,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people go into the outdoors for that,
Speaker 2: but you can't have all spaces for outdoor recreation. You
Speaker 2: can't have everything being for fun because also that land
Speaker 2: also has to be where we keep our wildlife, and
Speaker 2: that needs space and time. Where we grow our food,
Speaker 2: and that needs space and time, and it needs to
Speaker 2: be where our rivers are and the buffer that stops
Speaker 2: all the crap getting into the rivers and things like that.
Speaker 2: So this land that we're on has to do all
Speaker 2: sorts of things. So maybe have bits designated for certain things,
Speaker 2: or the access is managed, and that's what we do
Speaker 2: here with this woodland. We take people it's coppice and
Speaker 2: gradually return into coppice. We've only been managing it for
Speaker 2: two years, but we're starting to work on the edges there.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like moving into a house of an
Speaker 2: existing garden, don't touch it for a year, find out
Speaker 2: how it works, and then decide how.
Speaker 1: You're doing it.
Speaker 2: So now we're sort of making the glades and managing
Speaker 2: it and stuff. But we also bring people here. This
Speaker 2: little camp we've got here, we train groups, and we
Speaker 2: bring chefs here, and that little stump there is for
Speaker 2: chopping kindling. We had a guy he came with a
Speaker 2: group of chefs, so it's sort of chefs, but you know,
Speaker 2: the work in hospitality, so it's not high and find
Speaker 2: gourmet dining. It's really good food, great people, but it's
Speaker 2: more every day. And they came here their employer paid
Speaker 2: for them to come here. And we found out later
Speaker 2: that he'd had a death in the family very very recently,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't really up for this. But when he
Speaker 2: came here and found out he could just spend all
Speaker 2: day chopping kindling on that block there and just people
Speaker 2: would bring him tea and biscuits all day. That's brilliant.
Speaker 2: He was made up, and that's sort of just being
Speaker 2: able to spend time out here because it's a nice place.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you want.
Speaker 2: The bird song is green, there's lots of oxygen. He
Speaker 2: was made better by being in this place. I want
Speaker 2: to do that for as many people as possible. But
Speaker 2: if you made this woodland open access, everyone can wild camp,
Speaker 2: you can do whatever you want here, it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: this place.
Speaker 1: In that bird song for a start, No, interestingly a
Speaker 1: recurring theme. You know, I've been talking at a lot
Speaker 1: of places in the last couple of weeks whilst I've
Speaker 1: been on my tour of Britain.
Speaker 2: Remember what you look like?
Speaker 1: When I get I'll give her a nasty shock, won't Tiger?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 1: Who the hell are you go? And get out?
Speaker 2: She's got a photo from the wedding and it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Younger unless bearded, and a lot less gray, and also
Speaker 1: a lot less fat. But well, I don't like to say,
Speaker 1: but you and Lise have got the excuse you've got
Speaker 1: a metal leg now, whereas I'm just saying I can't
Speaker 1: be asked to do anything anymore. You know that's basically
Speaker 1: have you got metal legs? No? No, I just like beer. Really.
Speaker 1: We had three pints last night and also a Weatherspoon's breakfast. Yes,
Speaker 1: the most calorific thing known to man. Lovely it's brilliant anyway,
Speaker 1: One of the recurring themes that kept coming up and
Speaker 1: people saying, and they're sort of and these are our
Speaker 1: usually people are going to literally festivals and things like this.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about thickies. They're bright, well read individuals,
Speaker 1: some diverse backgrounds. But all of the saying, what can
Speaker 1: you do to help us get all these neats who
Speaker 1: we keep getting told about.
Speaker 2: Not in education, employment or training more training?
Speaker 1: How can we get these young people out and working
Speaker 1: with you? And I'll tell them I'll do a bit
Speaker 1: of do mangering saying, well, the apprenticeship schemes do not
Speaker 1: work for me. It's not that they don't just work
Speaker 1: for me financially, they literally do not work of how
Speaker 1: they're set up, because of the seasonality of my work.
Speaker 1: But also they don't work because things like I would
Speaker 1: need to have a porter loo if I took a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids out there, I would need to pay
Speaker 1: my from my own pocket for a port looo because
Speaker 1: that would be demanded and expected. I would need to
Speaker 1: go and put all these young people through various courses
Speaker 1: so they could use the tools necessary. And you know
Speaker 1: when every time you got to go and redo your
Speaker 1: chainsaw certificates, it's an expensive thing. Yeah, the insurers. I
Speaker 1: spoke to my insurance company and I said, can't really
Speaker 1: do it, you know, there is no way. When he
Speaker 1: said well, this is how much is going to cost,
Speaker 1: I thought, well that's not going to fly either. So
Speaker 1: there are all these financial barriers, which is why they
Speaker 1: end up. If they have any opportunities at all, they
Speaker 1: go to big charities where the people who are giving
Speaker 1: the core instruction know about as much about coppasing more
Speaker 1: hedge laying as I do about brain surgery, and we
Speaker 1: are missing out the ability to train young people on
Speaker 1: the job.
Speaker 2: I have a folder in my phone which is just
Speaker 2: screenshots people have sent to me from the forestry industry
Speaker 2: out of annoyance of social media posts from charities who
Speaker 2: do coppising sessions in the winter and things like that
Speaker 2: come compasing with us and it's the coppy stool afterwards,
Speaker 2: and it's got jaggy a bit sticking out there. I've
Speaker 2: got forestry friends who just send me this going, have
Speaker 2: you seen the state of this? Because what they want
Speaker 2: that behind you it should be that high off the ground,
Speaker 2: in flat or even slightly sloped, and that's it, and
Speaker 2: that's how it should be because they know it from
Speaker 2: the industry because they do it day day and day
Speaker 2: out through the winter, whereas if you work for a
Speaker 2: wildlife trust or something like that, this might be one
Speaker 2: of twenty different things you have to do within your role,
Speaker 2: and this is just what you're doing that week. I mean,
Speaker 2: you'll see. You'll see tomorrow at one of the farms
Speaker 2: are going to you'll see the results of some mechanical
Speaker 2: hedge laying done by a I won't say which group.
Speaker 2: It was by a charity that had volunteers out to
Speaker 2: do hedge laying activities. And my friend was one of
Speaker 2: the instructors, and he was doing of the normal hedge
Speaker 2: laying at the top phil and then there was someone
Speaker 2: else doing the mechanical hedge laying. And what the mechanical
Speaker 2: hedge laying has ended up with is trees. Huge trees
Speaker 2: like this drop down in a line with nothing growing
Speaker 2: up in between. So now you have a dead well
Speaker 2: half entry on the ground with shoots coming up out
Speaker 2: of it, which sort of makes a row of more trees,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't make a good head because there's nothing
Speaker 2: there to lay now now unless you bury that to
Speaker 2: make that part of the bank. When you go to
Speaker 2: lay it again, you have to cut out all the
Speaker 2: woods and all the sideways bits. So when you go
Speaker 2: back to do that again, there'll just be even a
Speaker 2: fewer trees that had before. So mechanical headplaying sort of works,
Speaker 2: but only if you do it properly, yes, and you
Speaker 2: know what you're doing exactly.
Speaker 1: And I find that this is an issue because you're
Speaker 1: here loads of politicians at the moment. They have realized
Speaker 1: that there are lots of lots of young people who
Speaker 1: not only are not in employment or education or training,
Speaker 1: but they are also getting chronically depressed. So they are
Speaker 1: adding to the welfare bill because they have never and
Speaker 1: as you say, that bloke you were talking about was
Speaker 1: chopping kindling there he felt better about being out doing this.
Speaker 1: We have got aspirations from the government to plant forty
Speaker 1: seven thousand miles of new hedgerows.
Speaker 2: It's millions and millions and millions of trees that we
Speaker 2: haven't got in this country.
Speaker 1: No, that we don't even grow. So therefore why are
Speaker 1: they not thinking, well, okay, well, let's look at all
Speaker 1: these aspirations we've got that require huge human resources. And
Speaker 1: then if you were bringing these people into work and
Speaker 1: getting trained, then we might actually succeed. I mean, because
Speaker 1: you could get rid of Miliban's stupid could run to
Speaker 1: net zero if you actually made you had more of
Speaker 1: these woods coming back into rotational coppice, because they would
Speaker 1: breathe that bit better. If you supported the forestry industry better,
Speaker 1: it would work. If you actually had the human resources
Speaker 1: there to do it well, then you would probably be
Speaker 1: able to do it without littering the countryside with these
Speaker 1: fatuous bits of Chinese plastic and metal called, you know,
Speaker 1: solar power stations. Because I always think that if you
Speaker 1: actually called the solar farm what it is is it's
Speaker 1: a power station. What's the fuel? Does it burn the sun?
Speaker 1: Then people go, I ain't haven't that anywhere near me.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to say you're going to have
Speaker 1: a solar farm, don't worry. You almost imagine the word
Speaker 1: farm makes you think of the darling buds are made,
Speaker 1: isn't they?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a bucolic, wonderful landscape. Well, solar farms and
Speaker 2: solar power stations, they are there are solutions for now,
Speaker 2: aren't they. They're sort of that thing of we must
Speaker 2: solve this problem and also do it within our election cycle.
Speaker 2: Has to be done whilst we're still in power, so
Speaker 2: we people know that it was us in our party,
Speaker 2: whichever party it was, it's our party that did this good.
Speaker 2: And we say this on the what's the announce today,
Speaker 2: the under sixteen social media.
Speaker 1: On social media. And also funny enough, I did notice
Speaker 1: that the Defense Secretary and the Armed Forces Minister resigned
Speaker 1: and the next day the Prime Minister decided to send
Speaker 1: our marines in to go and sort of a do
Speaker 1: one on a Russian tanker. So there's always this knee
Speaker 1: jerk nonsensical staff, I mean, but it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: if you think about it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: You're saying, I can't work out why there are so
Speaker 1: many olders here all the same. So someone at some
Speaker 1: point one hundred years ago turn the centry, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps immediately after perhaps that they might be nineteen nineteen trees.
Speaker 1: You know, they might have been we've got to get
Speaker 1: some tree covered back in because then they gave them
Speaker 1: a grant and they thought, what's going to grow in
Speaker 1: this wet wood? Olders and they put them in and
Speaker 1: they didn't really think this is going to be a
Speaker 1: real pain in the butt for the for these two
Speaker 1: lunatics who are taking this wood on to try and
Speaker 1: and turn this into a manageable wood. Is exactly the solve,
Speaker 1: same stupid knee jerk reaction of putting solar panels all
Speaker 1: over the place because that's fine, and they're saying to farmers, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we'll pay for twenty five years, twenty five hundred quid
Speaker 1: per hector. It'll be absolutely fantastic. In twenty five years time,
Speaker 1: when I will be fifty six, when I'll be eighty,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be seeing the whole of East Anglia
Speaker 1: is there's all these lorries going to be driving around
Speaker 1: with these decrepit solar panels, and we're going to think
Speaker 1: what we're going to do with all this stuff. We've
Speaker 1: just got a massive problem in twenty five years time
Speaker 1: that we are going to have millions of tons of
Speaker 1: this crap to get rid of. So just kicked the
Speaker 1: can down the road a bit.
Speaker 2: It's a again, it's this solution for now, without this
Speaker 2: without any thought as to what your legacy will be
Speaker 2: now and understanding how we got in this situation in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 1: I guess that's the thing is the fact that you
Speaker 1: said it everything is five year short termism.
Speaker 2: Manette Batters was talking at the Monty.
Speaker 1: Lipfest and she said a thing that we have repeatedly
Speaker 1: said on country Slide is that she's trying to work.
Speaker 1: When she was head of the NFU, she was always
Speaker 1: trying to work on a much longer timeline than politicians
Speaker 1: wanted to do because they wanted the short termism of
Speaker 1: the headline yep, and they wanted within everything to be
Speaker 1: done and dusted within the five years that they're in,
Speaker 1: you know, in powerful. And I don't quite know how
Speaker 1: you get out of that because everything is short termism
Speaker 1: and the countryside cannot work on these narrow little five
Speaker 1: year windows that politicians impose on. It's not a party
Speaker 1: political thing. Every single party does it. They hope they
Speaker 1: might have more than five years, but they know they
Speaker 1: might not, so they need to do something and almost
Speaker 1: it's bugger the consequences. Yet, people who work in forestry,
Speaker 1: people who work in farming, people who work in conservation,
Speaker 1: they cannot work on those short termism, no scales and
Speaker 1: their loggerhead So I think there is only one conclusion revolution. Revolution. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a letter to the King and
Speaker 1: say it's time.
Speaker 2: Sir, step forward, pick up the sword.
Speaker 1: Pick up the sword, pick up the mace and cast
Speaker 1: it aside and say you're loyal. Royalist forces are gathered,
Speaker 1: all seven of us. Ready.
Speaker 2: We've got the crap haircuts. We've got the crap haircuts.
Speaker 1: We've got the beards where we look slightly like I
Speaker 1: want to be Prince Rupert of the Rhine right arm.
Speaker 1: I will find who would calumby you just carry our
Speaker 1: bags bordering, but carry on bags for us.
Speaker 2: Can imagine it this? Yeah, we've got we've we're gonna
Speaker 2: end We're gonna end up with a new government any
Speaker 2: day now because we've got an election coming up or
Speaker 2: by election in Makerfield, and whoever there is going to
Speaker 2: be effectively crowned prints of the next party that is
Speaker 2: in control of us. But the mindset won't change really
Speaker 2: that much on any of that thinking that short short
Speaker 2: term ism. It's basically finding out who's going to be
Speaker 2: your step parent for the next five years, and if
Speaker 2: we are going to have a parental mindset from our rulers,
Speaker 2: from the our elected leaders you know too, because definitely
Speaker 2: it's all elections and they're all fair and there's never
Speaker 2: any chicanery at all. If we are going to be
Speaker 2: our parents and they're going to think in that mindset,
Speaker 2: can they at least think ahead, maybe to our few
Speaker 2: years on the line for us, maybe to our children
Speaker 2: and their children, rather than just thinking, well, we'll give
Speaker 2: them ice cream for dinner now because that will make
Speaker 2: them happy. Yeah, I hank ahead.
Speaker 1: I have to say, it isn't something I had on
Speaker 1: my Bingo card that how do you elect? You imagine
Speaker 1: if you've suddenly got someone who came here, I don't know,
Speaker 1: from a country who probably hasn't got a great knowledge
Speaker 1: of Britain. Ah, so say some of that Luxembourg and
Speaker 1: they came along and said, so how do you elect
Speaker 1: your governments here? Well, what you have to do is
Speaker 1: you have to stand for an MP in Wigan and
Speaker 1: then you will become the leader of Britain. Is this
Speaker 1: always the way? No? But that's now The new thing
Speaker 1: is whoever wins a seat in Wigan becomes basically what
Speaker 1: we the fifth largest economy in the world. So who
Speaker 1: knew that Wigan is the absolute fulcrum.
Speaker 2: See I think we should return to if you want
Speaker 2: to be an MP, if one the stand as an
Speaker 2: elected member of Parliament, or the Senate or anything you
Speaker 2: even if you're not from that area. Once you stand for.
Speaker 1: That place, yeah, you're there for life.
Speaker 2: You are never allowed to leave. You have to work there,
Speaker 2: you have to live there, your children have to live there.
Speaker 2: You are stick living in that place and your address
Speaker 2: is published. Yeah. I think you ought to have little castles.
Speaker 2: People can harangue you in the supermarket, and.
Speaker 1: Now I think each place ought to have a castle.
Speaker 1: I think every Thursday you basically get this conger line
Speaker 1: of people coming along with all their woes, and you
Speaker 1: have to sit there on a throne type thing in judgment,
Speaker 1: and you're going to say, and you have a sort
Speaker 1: of figure saying, mister Jones, the dog poo bin hasn't
Speaker 1: been them, did right?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Who's responsible for dog poo bins? Yeah? And say, well
Speaker 1: that'll be uh smithers in right. Have him have a
Speaker 1: hand chopped off. That would be a much the better
Speaker 1: lair exactly of government. And then you have a whis
Speaker 1: every sort of year, yes, where you go along and
Speaker 1: you have to go around the king. And then he
Speaker 1: can go and say I'm looking at here and I'm
Speaker 1: afraid the Waveney Valley. What have you managed to do, then,
Speaker 1: Lord Ramsey of Waveney, Well, I've managed to ban greyhound
Speaker 1: racing and what Yes, and I've written a lot of
Speaker 1: letters about Palestine, my lord. Yes, but what about the
Speaker 1: potholes everyone's complaining about. Well, I haven't done anything about them. Right,
Speaker 1: kill him and then then there would be another election,
Speaker 1: you know, because basically he would have been killed because
Speaker 1: he's just banned gray and racings and feel the potholes in.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be a brilliant you know.
Speaker 2: So to recap this episode, return of feudalism, lovely. You
Speaker 2: should only be allowed to access the land if you're
Speaker 2: brought there by somebody who's managing it. Yes, some cows
Speaker 2: are okay, depends where they are and what they're doing. Yes,
Speaker 2: all politics is terrible. Yes, you've got another book coming out.
Speaker 1: I've got another book coming out that we haven't mentioned
Speaker 1: that though, But yeah, we'll come on to that.
Speaker 2: Anything else have we miss Have we missed anything else? Amy?
Speaker 1: And Amy's a wood nymph, She's a wood nymph.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there we go.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that is I met a lovely
Speaker 1: lady in.
Speaker 2: This is a short story because were running out of
Speaker 2: a card I.
Speaker 1: Left a lovely lady called Sarah in Montgomery and she
Speaker 1: runs a business. We're gonna have to get her on
Speaker 1: the show where basically she takes opinion polls of people
Speaker 1: in the Lamb Bay sector so that she can feed
Speaker 1: back to DEFA and other government bodies. Is that what
Speaker 1: to do? And I did say to her, you must
Speaker 1: listen to Country Slide and imagine if she just listened
Speaker 1: to this one, this one, yeah alone, this would alone,
Speaker 1: she'd go, this is what have we been missing all
Speaker 1: our lives?
Speaker 2: Not the horse one? No, not the horse one or
Speaker 2: Leslie Dolphin is tolp Paul Leslie? Right? So I'm getting
Speaker 2: someone's flashing at me from the side saying we need
Speaker 2: to wrap this up so the patron only after show
Speaker 2: will record, maybe record tonight in the pub so we
Speaker 2: do live Wetherspoons. But for everyone else, thank you very much,
Speaker 2: thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and we'll
Speaker 2: see you again next time.
Speaker 1: Bye bye,