A few days ago, I was reminiscing about a trip my family and I took to Austria in the summer of 1987. We travelled overnight by coach from London to Innsbruck (due to my late Nan’s almost pathological fear of flying), and spent 10 memorable days in villages on the southern slopes of the magnificent Inn Valley. My parents and I stayed in a gasthof in Axams, whilst my Nan was booked in at another gasthof in the neighbouring village of Götzens. Thinking about that holiday, all those years ago, prompted me to take a look on Google Street View to see if that part of Tyrol was still as unspoilt as it was back then. Thankfully, it is.
You don’t have to spend long on a virtual tour of Austria’s roads (or, indeed, most principal routes in continental Europe) to see how well kept the verges are. Not only are they almost completely free of litter, but the adjacent green spaces are tidy and any grass cut short. Signs are clearly visible and in a good state of repair, with the overriding impression that many European countries have a significantly greater interest in a decent appearance of their public realms than we do. The aforementioned verges are of particular interest to me, because many areas of the United Kingdom are now blighted by nature running wild. What I mean by this are motorway verges overgrown with trees, weeds and bushes; green areas on suburban roads covered in grass up to waist height; former flower beds on roundabouts that haven’t seen a municipally-purchased geranium in two decades; weeds poking through pavements that look like something out of ‘Day of the Triffids’, etc.
It annoys me when those charged with delivering the maintenance of public spaces fail in their basic duty. It positively enrages me when they lie to my face about the reasons for doing so. I recently contacted my local authority, Calderdale Council, to complain that many green spaces that once received regular mowing were now totally overgrown and unsightly. Do you know what codswallop I received by way of a reply? That the areas concerned were left in that state deliberately because of the council’s ‘Rewilding Program’! Rewilding Program!? According to the AI facility on Google, rewilding is ‘a large-scale ecological restoration approach focused on restoring natural processes and ecosystems, often by reintroducing missing species and allowing nature to take care of itself‘. When I think of rewilding, I think of Black Beauty galloping through the lovely English countryside to the sound of the iconic theme from Denis King. I most certainly don’t think of an overgrown erstwhile seed bed in the middle of a roundabout on the A58, now covered in all manner of both natural and human detritus. What self-respecting Red Admiral butterfly wants to engage in a bit of pollination surrounded by discarded crisp packets, last month’s polystyrene take-away cartons, and discarded empty cans of Tennent’s lager?
Let’s cut the crap! It isn’t rewilding. It’s another example of a department of government cutting money for essentials in order to redirect it towards pet projects. For when it comes to festooning council buildings in Pride flags, or investing money in the authority’s latest DEI scheme to encourage more one-eyed, transgender Barbadians with hair lips into local government, councils can magic money out of thin air faster than Paul Daniels smoking crystal meth! However, when it comes to providing the environment and services that people need, those crucial banknotes are nowhere to be found.
It isn’t just me that’s noticed this trend. Nor is it confined to my own local authority. A recent article in the Derbyshire Times tells of a newly-elected Reform councillor who took it upon himself to mow the grass in the middle of a nearby roundabout (https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/people/residents-urged-not-to-mow-public-spaces-after-reform-councillor-cuts-grass-on-overgrown-derbyshire-roundabout-without-permission-5187353), presumably because he was sick and tired of raising the matter through the official channels and getting precisely nowhere. I’ve found other examples around the country that have made the news – in Norwich (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65755393), in York (https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/24514678.row-grass-verge-mowing-overgrown-hedges-york/), in Boston (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gzdyer02o), in Great Yarmouth (https://www.greatyarmouthmercury.co.uk/news/24377817.people-great-yarmouth-frustrated-overgrown-verges/), and in Lisburn (https://www.northernirelandworld.com/news/environment/work-begins-to-cut-back-overgrown-grass-verges-along-roads-in-lisburn-after-concerns-were-raised-by-local-residents-4164628). As for the state of verges alongside the UK’s motorway and trunk road network, I can only say that I’ve needed to drive on significant stretches of the M1 twice over the past month and I noticed a greater proliferation of overgrown vegetation there than my mate and I did trekking the banks of the Pululahua River in Ecuador two years ago!
We have a political elite that is happy to proverbially shit all over the voting public, even as our taxes go towards paying for their gilded lifestyles of non-service. They lie to us over the impact of their cruel and vindictive schemes to transform the UK demographic in the shortest time possible; they lie to us over honouring specific election pledges and manifesto commitments; they lied to us about the need to Sovietise our freedoms during the Chinese cough, as well as the efficacy of the vaccines they demanded we speared into our arms; they lied about the suitability of Afghan migrants they smuggled into Britain en masse, whilst simultaneously denying us knowledge of a scheme OUR OWN taxes were wholly funding; and now they lie by pretending to have the interests of our local environments at heart, whilst actually presiding over their transformation of verdant spots from once-tidy and trim locations into the botanical and agrostological versions of Buster Merryfield’s beard!
This country is presently a slum. It looks like a slum and feels like a slum. The criminal neglect of municipal green spaces coupled with a large section of the population that wouldn’t recognise a litter bin if they fell over one has left our parks, verges, roundabouts and village greens crying out for some TLC. It’s about as far away from sensible and managed rewilding as it’s possible to get! In fact, I would say the importation of backward, dangerous, incompatible cultures into our country on daily basis is ‘rewilding’ the British body politic far faster than any unkempt grasses are rewilding our urban green spaces for the benefit of our flora and fauna.
