In three years Natural England has designated just two new SSSIs, which protect areas from development
The government’s wildlife watchdog for England is failing to halt the decline of nature after a sharp fall in the number of new places given top protection, according to campaigners.
At some point all the speshul places will be so designated and we’re done.
Logically at least that’s true.
More so – as you find more ‘special’ places, not only is each new one probably less marginally valuable than the ones before, but it’s also likely to lower the value of the ones you designated earlier, because once there’s more of them they’re clearly less rare than you thought at the time.
Particularly for places designated because of rare species; designate more places because they’re found there, and after a while it starts becoming obvious that the little newts (or whatever) were not that rare after all, which calls into question your earlier designations.
When the “experts” come knocking at my door asking to do a wildlife survey my answer was a very firm no. My land is private and under my control. What possible upside could there be for me if they declared it a SSSI and hence restricted how I enjoyed my garden.
It’s so British. Animals and plants can be speshul and need preserving! People? They’re useful for giving politicians and their mates loads of money, but otherwise can fuck off and die. Unless they vote Labour or give them “donations” and other fun things, in which case they can be embraced in the tender loving arms of TTK or Ed, Rachel or Ange. Exactly whose arms depends if they’ve recently had an HIV test, obviously…
Indeed, if the #delistings < #new listings, then logically everywhere will be protected eventually. And you can't burn an SSSI down to assist a delisting afaik.
Likewise if #comingoffbennies < #goingontobennies, then everyone will be on benefits.
Run it long enough and no-one will own an unlisted building, just as the proportion of whole numbers which are primes is zero.
When was “nature”? For much of Great Britain it must have occurred shortly after the ice went back and there weren’t yet enough humans to change anything much.
But the south of England, though, had not been covered by ice so I suppose there might have been tiny numbers of humans there. Did that mean it was not “nature” because there was human influence?
Or do we date the end of “nature” to the arrival of neolithic immigrants six thousand years ago with their dastardly farming technology? In which case “nature” means what? The island covered in wildwood with a few farmers cultivating clearances in the bits that aren’t too boggy?
I think we should be told.
It’s the typical progressive mindset. Everything is a process where each step is more of before. Problems are, by definition, never solved as the whole purpose of progressivisim is “more active”, “development”, “corrective measures”, “change”, etc
Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
If everywhere is special, nowhere is…
If all the useful places have been designated, then the committee to designate useful spaces has finished its work and should be disbanded.
However this is an existential horror and cannot be borne. Not to mention that the budget would be reallocated elsewhere…
Therefore, there is no end to the work of designating useful spaces.
What they need is to invent new categories, so that they can keep adding more sites. Sites of Special Chiropteran Interest, for that HS2 bat tunnel.
And yet when TPTB want to bring ashore an interconnector carrying unreliable green electricity, or want to connect some wind or solar farm to the National Grid, SSSIs and similar designations count for little, if anything.
Curse those newts coming over here in their rubber boats.
“What they need is to invent new categories, so that they can keep adding more sites.”
We’ve already seen that fanatics will invent new species in order to ensure they are endangered and therefore their habitat will be removed from construction.
See “snail darter”, which isn’t actually an endangered species. It’s not a new species – someone saw a fish in a prospective construction site and called it a new name.
Sir Keir Starmer update:
Starmer’s aides will not be able to fix his problems. He has to do that himself
Tom Baldwin
He only took an HIV test yesterday, but today we find him riddled with aides.
Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography
For the cunt who has everything.
@ Bongo
*Close to* zero
It’s a bureaucracy, they’re new ever going to declare ‘job done’ but will find everything more obscure ways to justify their existence.
See also English Heritage’s blue plaques- they keep finding new places that need them.
Steve
once again Forces me to the floor with the embodiment of a ROFL post
Starmer’s aides will not be able to fix his problems. He has to do that himself
Tom Baldwin
He only took an HIV test yesterday, but today we find him riddled with aides.
Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography
For the cunt who has everything.
Never a truer word said about a person
Random OT thought:
Production early in the war was slow because after the German invasion the aircraft factories near Moscow and other major cities in western Russia had to be moved east of the Ural Mountains. Ilyushin and his engineers had time to reconsider production methods, and two months after the move Il-2s were again being produced. The tempo was not to Premier Stalin’s liking, however, and he issued the following telegram to Shenkman and Tretyakov:
You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day, and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.
— Stalin
As a result, “the production of Shturmoviks rapidly gained speed.”
Sternly worded letters used to mean something.
VP – thank you, I do wonder about the sort of person who thinks Brylcreem Gigatwat is a good prime minister (there must be some?)
Probably North London website developers called “Jez”? Lawyers? Demonic spirits? But I repeat myself.
@Steve
Brylcreem Gigatwat
I’m stealing that, it perfectly describes Governor Newsome of California.
If Steve approved of all this “nature” stuff he’d have to stop demanding lions and instead demand wolves and lots of ’em.