Letters

We all need their output, so we need to

The output of the possible Fern Brook solar farm could not be prevented from going to the local homes, electricity flows at all times to any connected socket unless it is switched off! My question to the locals is: where are you going to put your solar farms? When UK is decarbonised nearly all home power will be electric. I calculate the Shaftesbury district will need at least 65 MW to power its homes, one-and-a-half times what is proposed. Have you a better site? Peter Redman

n I was surprised by the strength of the piece from Canon Eric Woods in the Aug 20th Edn of the BVM. I have found a pleasant ‘excuse me’ moves a shopping trolley from my path, usually with an apology. The same often applies to walking phone users. It had never occurred that being engaged with someone other than me is a sign of another’s self-absorption, rather a momentary lapse in concentration. I was once told by a traffic police officer to imagine that the person next to me getting ready to race away from the lights, was going to a family emergency, or was late for a job interview. When we attribute a person’s behaviour as a behaviour towards us it can be seen as hostile which makes it less likely that we will engage positively. As for low self-respect. It is acknowledged that people with mental health issues that include a lack of self-regard benefit with positive engagement in society. I can’t imagine how I might be made to feel if I had plucked up the courage to go out alone but used messaging friends as a boost to my confidence to then be tutted at because I had the temerity to walk into someone’s path. The conclusion of the Canon’s piece was sad. How easy to visit the chirpy patient who had accepted her lot rather than try and understand the unhappy woman who felt weighed down

Cartoon by Lyndon Wall justsocaricatures .co.uk

by the world. People will act inconsiderately to all of us as, probably, we will act inconsiderately to others. We can’t change the behaviour of others, only how we react to it. Kate Hillam

n It has been gratifying to have received praise and kind comments about The Friends of Blandford Hospital’s recent Affordable Art Exhibition. There are many people behind the scenes I would like to thank: Kelly at Forum Framers, Bryan and staff at Cheap Printing, the girls at Miles of Value and the shop volunteers who donated paintings and who worked in sales. They all helped make things go smoothly. Then there’s Alison Board (artist) and Lyn Tyler (decorator) who managed to supply me with much needed art materials when I was shielding. And of course all our lovely customers who came, looked and bought ......thus helping to raise our final total to £2,370.50 for our hospital charity. Thank you everyone Joan Capron

n Yet again, despite the ‘sell’ on a Greater Dorset Council, we are faced with ‘levelling up’ on council charges; this time on uniform parking fees. Merging councils, we were told, would rationalise, have economies of scale and result in lower costs. Immediately, our council charge was equated (raised) with that of Bournemouth, yet lacking their amenities. I should be interested to know which ward Mr Ray Bryan represents. In another neck of the woods, I don’t know where Lynne Fish lives but I must conclude that she lives in a town. Even then it is not practical (nor possibly safe) to carry shopping on a bicycle. In many cases, the new cycle and pedestrian lanes are a menace. Certainly the turning junction in to the Waitrose store is an accident waiting to happen. Oncoming east bound traffic has to swerve in to avoid head on collisions and this is especially true if lorries are involved. Whoever designed and approved this layout would seem to have little common sense or indeed awareness of driving safety. Unfortunately, road traffic use is not only a necessity but a fact of modern life. We no longer live in one village or town all our lives. All the more important to resolve the major problem that is Stonehenge and the A303. The High Court ruling yet again pushes this problem on to the back burner. I am not in favour of the disruption for 12 years to build a tunnel, when a rapid and economic second carriageway could be built in a short time. The environmentalists, English Heritage etc. live in another world. If World Heritage wish to withdraw their support for the Henge then so be it. It would not stop people visiting the Stones. The misery of the disruption and economic and environmental cost to travel and the Henge on one of only two routes to the West has no foreseeable resolution and it is an on going scandal that when the Government persist with the cost of the vanity project that is HS2. The west Cotswolds and Oxfordshire is currently being devastated by the works on that white elephant; nothing more that a building site surrounded by desolated forest when the great and the good plant the token tree here and there, to compensate. It is of the problem of devastation of the rainforests, which is the major cause of climate change, but in that I wander from the immediate local but important issues. Jeremy Bloomfield Gillingham

n We are really grateful to the readers who pointed out our error in the advice given in issue 23 of the New Blackmore Vale magazine, recommending nuts and sunflower seeds among foods suitable for hedgehogs. Research in recent years has found that these can be harmful to hedgehogs when consumed in

accommodate solar farms somewhere

large quantities. As such we have amended our advice and would like to assure readers that any future communications from Dorset Wildlife Trust will not advise feeding these foods to hedgehogs. The advice to feed meaty cat or dog food remains correct and is advised. If purchasing a specific hedgehog food, ensure protein (meat) is the first and greatest ingredient, rather than fillers such as cereals. The welfare of Dorset’s wildlife is our priority and we apologise again for the error. Alex Hennessy Marketing and Communications Officer Dorset Wildlife Trust n We must congratulate our councils on a more enlightened policy towards roadside verges as important habitat for our fauna and flora. Della Jones (Letters August 20) may be interested to know that, contrary to her own observation, common ragwort was found to be “in significant decline” by the UK Countryside Survey of 2007. Natural England further describes ragwort’s “significant conservation benefits” –including at least 30 insect and some 14 fungi species’ life cycles being entirely dependent upon it. It is true that – in common with a percentage of all flowering plants – ragworts contain toxic compounds which in large doses can cause liver damage. But since the fresh plant has a repellent smell and taste, it is not eaten, and a hazard arises only where ragwort has been negligently cut and baled. Mark Pennell, Sherborne

New feature: Yesterday’s Vale

Archive photographs from David Burnett, author of LOST DORSET: The Villages & Countryside. A companion, LOST DORSET: The Towns, is being published this October. BULBARROW. Doctor Fielding and Nurse Marlowe attending a gypsy birth in April 1906, one of the 17 children born to Lavinia and Arthur Hughes, a ‘rat-and-varmint destroyer’. Thanks to their work in collecting traditional travellers’ songs by the celebrated folk singers Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, more than usual is known about the Hughes family, who were part of an extended Romany community that travelled widely throughout Dorset and settled on Canford Heath prior to it being built on – and still flourish today. Another child, Caroline, born in a horse-drawn caravan in Bere Regis in 1900 became a well-known singer, as was her mother. ‘My mother sang all the time. When she were making clothes-pegs or making we children’s bloomers, shifts and petticopats. We be all around the fire singing these old songs, and I been with my mother listening, listening, and I made her sing them over and over until I learned the lot.’ Caroline, like all the daughters, went hawking with her mother from the age of ten. ‘Where are you going to find a good mother when she’s gone? One who’s worked, slaved hard, runned and raced for you, been through bitter frost and snow, finding snitches of wood, buckets of water, through all the ups and downs.’ Caroline never learnt to read, and went to have eight children and 35 grandchildren herself. The National Archives hold recordings of her singing, and a double CD of her songs, issued by the Living Tradition, Sheep-Crook and Black Dog, occasionally comes up on eBay. As Queen Caroline Hughes she died in 1971 and was given a traditional gypsy funeral, in which her ‘caravan and all her possessions were burnt in the presence of her tribe.’

n Re letters 20/8/21 The attractive black and yellow striped cinnabar moth caterpillar munches on ragwort and we get the beautiful black and red cinnabar moth. If we lose ragwort I think we will lose the moth. I have seen ragwort covered in them in Martindale car park. Jean Palmer , Stourpaine be sprayed with weedkiller. As well as killing the plant this will also indiscriminately harm other species – not only the insects and pollinators which are so vital to our ecosystem, and indeed our future survival, but also small mammals such as the endangered hedgehog, which shares this habitat. Sonya Ward, Gillingham

ragwort can be harmful to livestock if it is dried and shredded into a crop of hay which is then fed to them. However, grazing animals avoid it when it is growing, and if a human wanted to poison themselves they would have to eat a large quantity of it intentionally. Ragwort is an important food source for cinnabar moth caterpillars as well as other insects and pollinators. Precisely because it is not eaten by grazing animals, it becomes a particularly valuable resource for insects. By destroying ragwort we are removing a precious resource for a variety of insect life, as well as the wildlife which feeds on those insects. By ‘treating’ the ragwort I’m assuming Ms Jones is suggesting it should