New Blackmore Vale, August 20, 2021
Letters
Four counties need to form a formal alliance The Archbishop of York, in a recent newspaper article, advocated greater recognition of England. But in truth England has never had a cultural identity. The features listed by the Archbishop were essentially British rather than English. Alfred’s descendants formed England as a political construct – a conglomerate of the four great Saxon kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. The cultural identities remained regional. John Prescott’s Regional Authorities partly recognised this. But the South West Region was a collection of leftovers, with no cultural identity between Gloucestershire and Dorset, let alone Cornwall. As we see extensive powers being devolved to the great metropolitan areas with their elected mayors, the rural areas risk getting left out. Individual counties are too small to compete. So we need to recreate the core Wessex. A consortium of Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire could be large enough to earn a substantial measure of devolution while remaining a coherent cultural unit – a region not of great cities but of market towns, agriculture and small businesses. We need our county councils and our MPs to get together in a formal alliance which can talk to central government with an authoritative voice for Wessex. Mike Keatinge Sherborne n I have become increasingly concerned at the vast amount of untreated ragwort growing in our roadside verges. To my knowledge, ragwort is highly poisonous to animals and not too good for humans either, having always been known as an highly obnoxious 22
half of our annual budget. Despite this, we’ve begun work on how we can improve our bus services, and bin collections continue to be highly regarded by our residents. I recommend visiting our website to find out more about our plans for car parking charges, as well as how your Council Tax is spent. If there are any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the team on parking@ dorsetcouncil.gov.uk. Cllr Ray Bryan Portfolio Holder for Highways, Travel and Environment Dorset Council
Cartoon by Lyndon Wall justsocaricatures .co.uk
weed. It is not only poisonous whilst growing, but cut and lying dead it is a far greater hazard. Surely it is about time the authorities addressed this hazard as a matter of some urgency? Della Jones MBE n Your latest edition has an article by Steve Keenan – It failed to say where in your magazine’s area the location (“Ludlow”) was – first rule of journalism! I was mystified – but a quick search revealed the error: the location is LudWELL, near Shaftesbury. Silly sausage! Alan Holwell (near Sherborne) We know! Many of you emailed in about this – it was a slip of the keyboard… Ed n I read with interest John Carter’s letter in the New
Blackmore Vale on July 23 2021 regarding car parking. All of our car park ticket machines should accept cash and we have no plans to remove this payment option from our car parks. As for our plans to standardise car parking payments, we are doing this to ensure a fairer system for all residents regardless of where they live in the county. The introduction of new parking permits will ensure local people can avoid paying the increased parking charges, with higher pricing in tourist hotspots to ensure visitors pay more than Dorset residents. The formation of Dorset Council has saved significant amounts of money, but the financial challenges we face are great, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Social care need and costs continue to grow, making up more than
n Having read the article about hedgehogs last week, I am concerned about the feeding advice given. Evidence has come to light in recent years about the potential harm of feeding sunflower hearts, peanuts and mealworms, all of which are high in phosphorus, and when fed in the wrong ratio to calcium in their diet can have disastrous effects. If they are routinely being fed high phosphorus foods, the small amount of mealworms, sunflower seeds or peanuts that you are providing could be the difference between a healthy diet and a lethal dose of phosphorus. It should always be remembered that when feeding hedgehogs the aim is to supplement their natural diets, not be to replace their natural diet entirely. If phosphorus levels in food are consistently higher than the calcium content this can result in the body leaching calcium, which is stored in the bones, into the bloodstream to counteract the discrepancy. The resulting calcium deficiency within the bones causes them to become
