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Rangers Services - savage cuts

We were so anxious to get rid of the tram that  I fear we may have ended up making a pact with the devil!This week the cuts to the Park Ranger service were agreed. One the main casualities of the excercise is Phil Belman the leading light of all the conservation work done in this borough for the last two decades.Below is part of the submission put to to the meeting by Nic Ferriday chairman of Brent River and Canal Society."Loss of Brent Lodge Brent Lodge is an invaluable base. The local community knows where it is, they can obtain information and they can meet the rangers. This would be lost if the centre were closed. The service would be me more remote and less responsive; not “more responsive” as claimed.The centre is also important as a base for ranger work. For example, the regular working parties at the Brent Meadow disused allotment and Hanwell Spring nature reserve, undertaken by volunteers of BRCS and London Wildlife Trust, use tools and are led by rangers from this centre. It would be far less efficient for rangers to have to drive from Southall or Acton to get to site in Hanwell for these working parties and for their everyday activities. Their work time (and therefore taxpayers’ money) would be wasted driving instead of being on site doing something useful. Cuts to ranger service The service has been cut and the process is continuing. There were until recently 24 ranger posts which were filled. This was cut to 20, and now only 16 are filled. We understand that the posts are not being advertised, so the cut is effectively now to 16. That is a 33% cut from 24.There also two Senior Ranger posts being cut. It is claimed this will not affect ‘front-line services’. This cannot be true. The existing senior rangers, with their small teams are often seen out on frontline work. They have led walks for the BRCS, addressed our AGM and have been seen pollarding willows with a chainsaw.  We understand that there will also be cuts to the Contract Manager posts. This is likely to increase the incidence of contract failures, with adverse consequences for conservation.  The claim “we are not reducing the level of experience or expertise ..” is manifestly  incorrect. The reduction planned will get rid of by far the most experienced countryside manager and expert field biologist in the council. How will the council respond properly to the many planning applications that affect open spaces without this expertise?The attacks on the ranger service are an unworthy attempt to justify cuts.  If there has been a failure of leadership and management as claimed, the answer is to improve the leadership and management. It is not to cut the staff.The claim that there are no management plans is also untrue. There are management plans for many areas including the Brent River Park. I have seen some of them and been invited to comment. There is no Biodiversity Action Plan, an omission that I have personally have regretted for many years. But that is a failure of higher management to prioritise it, not a failure of the rangers or senior rangers.ConclusionsWe urge the council to re-consider its decision to close Brent Lodge and Horsenden Hill as ranger bases and thereby maintain links and support for the local community.We also urge the council the restore the ranger force to a total of 24, equivalent to the 20 + 4 seniors, and fill the vacant posts forthwith.These actions will, coupled with effective management, go a long way to protecting and enhancing our open spaces for the benefits of borough’s 300,000 people and the benefit of wildlife and biodiversity."

Peter Wright ● 6930d39 Comments ● 6891d

This weeks phrase is - Red herring

Red herringMeaningA deliberate misleading and diverting of attention from the real issue. OriginRed herrings are salted herrings that turn a reddish colour during the smoking process. They have come to be synonymous with the deliberate false trails that are the stock in trade of 'who done it' thrillers. The term has been used to refer to people as well as to fish for some centuries. John Heywood's 1546 glossary, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue includes the expression: She is nother fyshe nor fleshe, nor good red hearyng.Fish was eaten by the clergy, flesh by the rich and the dried and smoked herrings by the poor. So this list of the foods eaten by all classes of society was a metaphor for 'encompassing all eventualities'.How do we move from the actual herrings in that expression to the figurative 'throwing off the scent' meaning? One theory has it that the meaning derives from the practice of using the oily and smelly herrings to lay false trails for hunting dogs. This practice is well documented from as far back as the late 1600s and Nicholas Cox's The Sportsman's Dictionary: Or The Gentleman's Companion, 1686 describes it: "The trailing or dragging of a dead Cat, or Fox, (and in case of necessity a Red-Herring) three or four miles... and then laying the Dogs on the scent."It seems implausible that people laid false 'fishy' trails in order to deceive hounds so that their prey would escape. After all, there was no hunt saboteur movement in 1686, and who would have a motive to do that? It's more likely that the use of red herrings was a training exercise, intended to put the hounds on the scent rather than to throw them off it. Nevertheless, the laying of a scent trail for dogs does establish the linguistic 'surrogate' meaning for 'red herring' and the further step to 'deliberate deceit' isn't a large one. Another theory is that the meaning derives from a trick played on one of his servants by the wealthy English clergyman Jasper Mayne. Mayne died in 1672 and willed large sums for the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and to the poor people of his parishes of Cassington and Pyrton. He also willed to a servant "Somewhat that would make him Drink after his Death", which was left in a large trunk. When the trunk was opened the servant was disappointed to find that the bequest turned out to be a salted herring. The will doesn't mention a 'red herring', but a report of the event in Jacob's Poetical Register, 1719, does, so we can date the 'false representation' meaning to that date at the latest. Of the two theories, the Mayne story seems the more compelling. It introduces the idea of a deliberate misdirection, which, unless we are to believe that people deliberately misdirected hounds, the other lacks. Whatever the source, the figurative usage of the phrase was well established in UK by the early 1800s and had migrated to the USA by the middle of the century, as in this example from The New York Times, in May 1864:But when the Emperor found that England would not join him in a war, he cleverly started the "red herring" of the Congress which he knew well enough was out of the question, but which has admirably answered his purpose of creating a diversion.Copyright © Gary Martin

Peter Wright ● 6896d1 Comments ● 6896d

Ode to a Yorkshire Pudding

YORKSHIRE PUDDING(Marriott Edgar)Waitress, excuse me a minute, now listen.No I’m not finding fault miss, the taties are lovely, the beef is alreet –but what sort of pudding is this?It’s what? Yorkshire Pudding? Nar, come, come, come, lass.It’s what, Yorkshire pudding, you say?Nay, its pudding I’ll grant you, some sort of pudding, but not Yorkshire Pudding.Nay, nay, the real Yorkshire Pudding’s a poem in batterTo make one’s an art not a trade.Now listen to me for I’m going to tell thee how’t first Yorkshire pudding was made.A young angel on leave from Heaven came flying above Ilkla Moor,And the angel, poor thing got a cramp in her wingAnd came down at an old woman’s door and the old woman smiled and said, “eee, its an angel-well I am surprised to see thee.I’ve not seen an angel afore but thas welcome. I’ll make a nice cup of tea.”And the angel said, “ee thank you kindly I will.”Well she had 2 or 3 cups of tea, 3 or 4 sally lunns and a couple of buns, angel’s eat very lightly you see.Then the old woman looked at the clock and said,“By gum he’s due home from t’mill is my Dan. You get on wi yer tea,But you must excuse me, I must make puddin now for t’old man.”Then the angel jumped up and said, “give me a bowl, flour and water and eggs, salt and all and I’ll show thee how we make puddings in heaven for Thomas and Peter and Paul.”Then the old woman gave her the things and the angel just covered her wings and prayed with a hush.Then she tenderly tickled the mixture wit’ spoon like an artist would paint with a brush.She mixed up that pudding with Heavenly magic, she played with her spoon on that dough,Just like Liberace on the piano or Kennedy would twiddle his bow.And the old woman whispered, “ Oh angel, the clouds that I see in yon’ skies,so fleecy and foamy is batter for pudding for saints feasting in Paradise.It’s mixed with the rain and its stirred with a rainbow and baked in the beautiful sun.”The angel kept stirring and smiled as she answered, “and when a star falls, it’s done!But joking aside,” Said the angel, “the secret of puddings made here or aboveis not in the flour and the water but when you’re mixing it, see that you mix it… with love.”And when it were done, she put it in t’oven and said to t’old woman, “goodbye.”Leaving the first Yorkshire Pudding there had ever been made…. and that’s why:It melts in the mouth like the snow in the sunshine.As light as a maiden’s kiss.As soft as the fluff on the breast of the dove……..NOT ELEPHANT’S LEATHER LIKE THIS !!!!

Peter Wright ● 6898d2 Comments ● 6897d

This weeks phrase is - Keep the ball rolling

Keep the ball rollingMeaningMaintain a level of activity in and enthusiasm for a project. OriginThe American expression 'keep the ball rolling' was preceded by the similar, now archaic, British phrase 'keep the ball up'. They had much the same meaning, the earlier one alludes to keeping a ball in the air, i.e. conveying the notion of keeping an activity going. This was used figuratively by the radical social philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in a letter to George Wilson in 1781, referring to his efforts to keep a conversation going:"I put a word in now and then to keep the ball up." Bentham may be long dead but continues to be radical. He didn't opt for the traditional coffin, buried six feet under, but willed that his body be stuffed, mounted and put on display. It is exhibited in a cabinet at University College, London (although the severed head has now been removed). As a student at the University in the 1960s I was one of many who took the opportunity to open the cabinet doors to see Bentham peering back through the waxy glass - quite disconcerting. The 'keep the ball rolling' version of the phrase owes its origin and popularity to the US presidential election of July 1840. That election is widely regarded as introducing all the paraphernalia of present-day elections, i.e. campaign songs, advertising slogans and publicity stunts of all kinds. The unpopular incumbent President Martin Van Buren was pitted against Whig candidates, General William Harrison, a war hero who had fought against the Shawnee Indians at Tippecanoe, and John Tyler. The Whig candidates revelled in a folksy 'cider-drinking, log-cabin, men of the people' image and adopted the first known political slogan - 'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too'. A song of the same name was considered to have sung Harrison into the presidency:Don't you hear from every quarter, quarter, quarter,Good news and true,That swift the ball is rolling onFor Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.Harrison's campaign literature referred to Victory Balls. These weren't, as we might expect, dance parties that celebrated his famous victory, but ten-foot diameter globes made of tin and leather, which were pushed from one campaign rally to the next. His supporters were invited to attend rallies and push the ball on to the next town, chanting 'keep the ball rolling'. Copyright © Gary Martin

Peter Wright ● 6901d1 Comments ● 6898d