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New Blackmore Vale, 1st April 2022
blackmorevale.net
Letters
Lost without a compass? • One of my pastimes is walking in the area so I should like your ‘A walk around…’ feature. But I have had a problem with Mr Chris Slade for a while now and today was the last straw, bringing me to write in. On page 59 of your March 4 issue, Mr Slade talks about a walk that “takes you for about eight miles around the parish of Gillingham”. Have I read this right? Eight miles?!? Who has the time to walk eight miles (a four-hour walk) and if they did, would they choose to spend those precious four hours walking around Gillingham? But my regular bone of contention with Mr Slade is the ongoing references to walking “eastward”, making “your way south-eastwards”, head “north-west for a furlong then turn left, south-southwest for a mile…” Is it just me or is this an old-fashioned and complicated way to describe a walk? Does Mr Slade assume people use and know how to use a compass? Do you have accounts of people actually following Mr Slade’s instructions successfully? As it stands I use Mr Slade’s articles as a pointer to where to walk, but I would never rely on his instructions and perhaps that’s good enough? Maggie, by email • It may be unwise for Ros Everleigh (NBVM 38, March 4) to return to the Lib Dem obsession with Brexit, given that her party was trounced at the 2019 general election for doing its best to thwart the democratic referendum result.
She claims that the subject tops her conversations with voters, which might indeed be the case if she only talks to Lib Dem voters, but I think most people have moved on. Yes, there have been and continue to be complications arising from the implementation of the vote, but many if not all of these complications arise from the attitude of the European Union, whose negotiators said in as many words that in order to deter others Britain needed to be punished for its effrontery in wanting to leave the club. And as for the suggestion that leaving the club diminishes our national identity: given that in belonging to it our identity, and the ability of our elected representatives to take unfettered decisions, was subsumed in a supranational organisation, this seems to me a remarkably illogical statement. Roger White, Sherborne • On looking again at the application for the proposed 188-acre site between Mappowder, Pulham and Hazelbury Bryan it came home to me with a gasp of horror – this is not a few panels in a field behind a village, this is a massive scar on the landscape with a very long list of infrastructure requirements involved. Consideration of this application will begin on 19 March. I want to emphasise the flooding aspect and the vulnerability of lives along the River Lyddon, which frames this space. In the 14 years I have lived
in Kings Stag, specifically on Ridge Lane, my neighbours and I have been marooned, endured water lapping around our doors, suffered great anxiety and potential risk to life. It happens every year. In the winter of 2013-14 we were trapped 11 times; it was a miracle I was able to wade out to attend my husband’s funeral! In the past six months, rainfall caused the blocking of the village road and Ridge Lane flooding came up to my armpits. I was forced to wade through it in the dark, which was a terrifying experience. A neighbour closer to the proposed site was flooded so extensively that she is still unable to move back into her home. We are told that extreme weather is only likely to intensify. We the public are well aware of and support renewable, green energy sources, but greater consideration needs to be given to the siting of such enterprises and the implications thereof. The runoff from the solar panels would concentrate water into an already highly challenged and delicate network of ditches and streams. We have been warned. Noelle Adeley, Kings Stag • Dorset is an amazing county with a wide variety of habitats. But its wildlife is under constant threat of persecution. Shooting estates are allowed to ‘control’ native animals and birds to protect farmed birds whose only purpose is to provide sport.
‘Trail’ hunts, whether by accident or, as some claim, on purpose, have spent the winter terrorising foxes, deer and hares. You don’t have to look far to find video footage and photographs of out-ofcontrol hounds chasing and, in some cases, killing innocent creatures. Applications have been submitted for supplementary badger culling licences in both Somerset and Dorset. The routine use of pesticides and herbicides is having a devastating effect on insect populations. Local MP Chris Loder recently stated in the February 18 edition of this magazine, after the news that two white-tailed eagles had been found dead in the county, that he doesn’t think “Dorset is the place for eagles”. Dorset is most definitely a place for all wildlife and it is up to us all to protect it. According to the ‘State of Nature’ report from 2019, “UK’s wildlife loss continues unabated”. Our chances of seeing our wonderful array of animals and birds in their native habitats grows slimmer day by day. If we don’t act now then we face a future without them. Amanda, Sherborne • I want to query your editorial policy of publishing letters whose authors’ names are ‘withheld’. It seems to me that if someone feels strongly about something – for instance, in the latest issue, the person attacking Boris Johnson over the ending of Covid restrictions, and someone else attacking other
Unfortunately we don’t have room to publish all your letters. With this in mind, please limit yours to 300 words.
