Youngsters won’t be wild about our countryside efforts
MY grandson was one of those children starting ‘big school’ today.
I looked at his brave little face and immaculate uniform and thought of my school days.
The only photo I can find is me wearing a very itchy goalkeeper’s jersey three sizes too big with sleeves down to my knees.
As the school years passed, I learned what my parents and grandparents had sacrificed for my generation.
Two World Wars to prevent us becoming an enslaved nation was a huge sacrifice we could never repay.
I do recall a large number of amputees in town when I was a child.
It never occurred to me that many were the result of defending our country from Hitler and his abhorrent Nazi Party.
I didn’t understand that ex-servicemen’s clubs were for those returning home from a war so horrific they could only discuss with fellow sufferers.
After WW11 conviction politicians like Nye Bevan
fought fearlessly to create a National Health Service and for the first time in our history good medical treatment was available to all. (That was some ‘gift.’)
Looking around at our wonderful parks told me most had been donated by wealthy families for the good of the public. You don’t see much of that today do you?
As I grew older I realised how hard our forefathers
worked so their children would be free.
An amazing health service, vastly improved housing, beautiful parks, seaside holidays all of which made me wonder what our children and grandchildren will think of us.
Where are our ‘conviction’ politicians with grand ideas to improve the lives of the common man? HS2 is hardly going to improve the lives of any but the wealthy.
Where are all the new parks going to come from?
Certainly not from Cheshire East who can’t wait to sell-off and develop as much as open land they can.
Yes, they are going to talk about it but only while bulldozing peat bogs and destroying wildlife habitats.
So what will our children say of us?
That we ripped up more hedgerows than at any time in our history.
That we killed off 95% of all tree sparrows, 71% of starlings and 56% of all song-thrushes?
That we allowed water companies to raise prices while pumping sewage into our rivers and seas. (Between 2016 and 2021 water companies discharged sewage into waterways and the sea for a total of 9,427,355 hours, the equivalent of 1,076 years.)
As they grow up all those little boys and girls starting school today are going to ask what we did to save the wildlife and countryside we held dear.
I’m not sure they are going to like the answer.