Rewilding Redbridge

Wilding is an idea whose time has certainly come.

The chance to return huge areas of our towns and countryside to nature is vital at a time of climate crisis.

Returning areas to a wild state helps cut emissions and improves biodiversity.

The loss of biodiversity in this country over recent decades has been dramatic? 

Once these species have gone it is very difficult to get them back, though not impossible.

In Isabella Tree's excellent book Wilding, she tells how she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, rewilded the 3,500 acre Knepp estate in West Sussex. 

They stopped traditional farming and let the land recover . Animals were introduced that helped this to happen, including, long horned cattle, Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies, red and fallow deer.

The way these animals interacted with the land, helped bring back other creatures, like nightingales, turtle doves and painted lady butterflies.

Coppicing of woodland also returned.

It is extraordinary what develops, when the land can breath.

Humankind has done so much damage by imposing its present particularly destructive blueprint for living on the rest of nature. So much of what humans do is totally unnatural, such as the use of damaging pesticides and herbicides.

Rewilding has really taken off across the country.

Local authorities have embraced the idea, allowing areas to go wild, stopping cutting verges and planting wildflower meadows.

In Wanstead, the Grow zone project is based in this philosophy. 

Championed by Wild Wanstead and supported by Redbridge Council, it has seen parts of George Green being allowed to run wild. 

Similarly on Christchurch Green there has been some planting of wild flower varieties to get things going.

Most recently, Thames Water agreed to establish wildflower meadows around the pumping station at Redbridge roundabout.

The results on George Green have been dramatic, with 80 species of flora found in the area. The Essex Skipper butterfly has also appeared.

But now we need to go further and faster. The Grow zone concept needs to expand across Redbridge, so that biodiversity can be improved and climate change countered.

It is important that local people are kept informed about what is going on, otherwise they might get the wrong idea and assume the council are just not cutting the grass.

Just so long as people are told, what is going on and why, the vast majority will be supportive.

In Wanstead, there is also the excellent work of the community gardeners, whose efforts are  dramatically improving the biodiversity and look of the area.

So, in Wanstead, a start has been made on the Grow zones and wilding concept but things really do now need to expand and accelerate.

And in Redbridge we have such a rich ecological heritage to build upon, with fantastic open spaces like Roding Valley, Wanstead, Valentines and South Parks. Not forgetting Fairlop Water and Hainault Forest.

The period of the pandemic has seen nature coming back across many areas, it has offered a preview, in many instances, of what can be.

So let's build on that now, adopting a preferential option to wherever possible rewild Redbridge. 

 

Have your say in reshaping Redbridge post Coronvirus

The world will never be the same again, following the Corona virus pandemic.

Many people have lost loved ones, the country has been in an unprecedented lockdown for three months. But as we emerge from the crisis there is the chance to recast the world, for the better, around us.

One of the benefits of the lockdown period has been the chance to get out and enjoy nature. The absence of traffic, both on the roads and in the skies, has enabled us all to breath that cleaner air more easily.

People have heard the bird song and seen the stars above. It would be a tragedy if these gains were all lost in a mad rush to make up for lost time, with a return to polluting practices.

The pandemic has been a crisis but it has also shown what can be done when disaster strikes.

Another crisis facing the world is climate change and loss of biodiversity. As with the Corona virus, our collective futures depend on taking the measures required to overcome these threats.

The urgency of the response to Corona points the way.

Now, partly due to the Corona virus, we have the chance to address the climate crisis, restructuring our own environment around sustainable practices.

In Redbridge, there is the chance to create better walking and cycling facilities, increase biodiversity and cut pollution.

Redbridge Council is consulting on potential improvements to the living infrastructure.

Maybe you'd like to see more off-road cycle routes, better pedestrian walkways. Perhaps, more pedestrianisation of the high street. The creation of a Wanstead Square? More trees, community gardens and planters? The provision of more electric charging points? A reduction in rat runs?

All are up for grabs, so please make sure your voice is heard. It is no good remaining silent, then complaining later over what does or doesn't happen.

Have your say at...https://redbridgetravelmap.commonplace.is/

The power of community has been one of the abiding features of the pandemic period. People coming together to help each other. Neighbours really being neighbours.

Now is the chance to really build on those links looking to act ever more locally and sustainably. Travelling in cleaner ways but also sourcing foods as locally as possible. Remember the air miles.

Many people like the village status that Wanstead has attained, maybe we need to build on those village principles of localism and support for each other.

Now is a real chance to reshape our village in an even more clean, green and sustainable way.

 

 

Review of Small Island first published last July - now see the play again, streamed by the National - https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-small-island

Small Island

Adapted by Helen Edmundson from the novel by Andrea Levy

This great production of Small Island at the National Theatre takes the audience through a roller coaster of emotions.

There is a constant undercurrent of humour, often born out of adversity. But then the cutting racism that has the audience drawing breath.

The impact of de-humanisation, treating other human beings as animals or worse. The physical revulsion of the very English husband Bernard (Andrew Rothney), returning from the war at the sight of a black person in his house, let alone anywhere near his wife.

The production no doubt hits parts of the audience differently, depending on the demographic. Those around in the 1950s and 60s get that shudder, as they remember just what it was like with the no blacks, no irish or no dogs notices in the bedsit windows.

Those same generations will then take a reality check, as to why we are returning to those times today - having to some degree taken large steps forward since.

Younger audience members will link the experience to the poisonousness of the immigration debate over recent years. The dehumanisation of individuals, who have become the other.

The plight of the migrant, leaving home to find a new life, Dick Whittington like, on the streets of London. Only then to be disappointed, finding discrimination, a lack of value for their talents and a generally hostile attitude.

One pertinent part of the play comes when Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr)  is about to go off to fight in World War II. His brother Elwood (Johann Myers) is a rebel seeking independence for Jamaica, seeing the war as a good chance to revolt while Britain’s back is turned.

Gilbert and the other black soldiers go off to serve King and country, only later be rewarded by being treated like dirt by resentful indigenous workers.

This Small Island production is all the more apposite today, overhung as it has been by the Windrush scandal and the reverberations of Brexit.

The performances are outstanding from Leah Harvey (Hortense) and Gershwyn Eustache Jnr (Gilbert) holding the centre, as they move through a myriad of emotions and experiences.

Andrea Levy’s book is ofcourse a brilliant account but somehow this adaptation takes the work, on making it very much a contemporary piece, reflective for Britain today.

A play well worth seeing, probably again and again, given the myriad layers of revelation and understanding contained therein.

How have the media done on the Corona virus?

The government decided to take aim at the messenger at the time of the revelations about special adviser Dominic Cummings lockdown breaking activities in Durham.

It was all due to the media's misreporting, according to ministers sent in to defend Cummings.

The exposure of Cummings was a highlight of the media coverage of the Covid pandemic.

Excellent work from the Guardian and the Mirror exposed the Upstairs Downstairs attitude at play at the heart of government, one rule for Downing Street, another for the populace. 

Public anger was well and truly stirred, especially when right wing tabloids like the Daily Mail weighed into castigate Cummings and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

But how well has the media done overall on the pandemic?

In the early days, there were questioning voices as to why the UK was following a different path to the rest of the world - except Sweden.

The government changed tack from its herd immunity approach and moved to a lockdown.

It was at this point that much of the media turned into a propaganda arm of goverment, playing a compliant role in propagating  project fear.

This meant emphasising the deadliness of the disease to ensure people 'stayed at home.'

The narrative meant starting almost every news item with the death figures, whilst rarely mentioning that the vast majority of people recovered from the disease. 

The Department of Health did not release recovery figures to journalists.

 It was only as plans for the lifting of lockdown were being announced that Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced 17% of London and 5% outside had had the disease.

The role of media in project fear was underlined at the start of lockdown by former Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Peter Fahy.

Asked on Newsnight, what the police could do to enforce lockdown, Sir Peter mentioned the limitations on the police before declaring that the type of media coverage amplifying the deadliness of the disease was by far the best deterrent.

The media did continue in poodle mode for sometime, seemingly taking every ministerial declaration at the daily Downing Street briefings as gospel.

This did not stop number 10 in true Trumpian style at varying times banning a number of media outlets, including Open Democracy and the Sunday Times, from the daily briefings.

It did though start to dawn on journalists that ministers were simply making statements for PR purposes that were then simply not being fulfilled.

The supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and lack of testing featured prominently.

Pressure though grew as it became obvious from the frontline that people were dying due to lack of PPE and that the mistakes on testing had contributed to the UK's failure to contain the virus.

Some devastating exposes followed, such as from the Sunday Times, which presented a chronology of the bungling approach of the government to the pandemic.

Panorama ran several excellent exposes, notably one on the failure to supply adequate PPE.

The Guardian and Mirror ran a number of excellent exposes, none better than the Cummings debacle.

And Newsnight and Channel 4 News have been forensic throughout in exposing ongoing inadequacy.

Newsnight anchor Emily Maitlis has often seemed to speak for the nation, calling the government to account, none more so than with the Cummings affair, for which she received a reprimand from the BBC.

So the media has performed well in holding the government to account, even if it did take a little time to get going. The role in propagating project fear, so unquestioningy was a blemish but that is now being made up for in scrutinising every move of government in seeking to tackle the pandemic.

There is still much to be done, keeping the government and other agencies under scrutiny. It will also be important in the long run to ensure that there is a comprehensive public inquiry into the way the pandemic has been handled in the UK.

Black lives matter, so let's see some real change

The death of George Floyd in the US has triggered mass protests across the world.

Riots spread across the US, reminiscent of the scenes following the assassination of Martin Luther King in1968.

In Britain, the situation was inflamed by the news of people from the Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community being disproportionately represented amongst those killed by the Corona virus.

In Britain and America, an avalanche of anger has erupted, after festering for many years.

Things have moved on a little from the 1960s and 70s  days of notices in bedsit windows saying No blacks, No Irish, No dogs but maybe not as much as some think. Racism has become more covert and less visible.

Incidentally, those bedsit notice days were also when an English Literature teacher in a Wanstead school could joke to his sixth form pupils as to how when he referred to the Black Death, it was not the death of Martin Luther King, he was talking about.

Despite the protests, reports and legislation the inequalities have continued to grow.
Britain and America have to face the fact that they are racist, sexist societies. The hardest hit people over the years of Tory austerity policies were BAME women because they were at the bottom of the pile, 

If you are BAME, then you are more likely to die from Corona virus or go to prison but not attend Oxbridge.

The UK government also created the hostile environment, that in turn brought the Windrush scandal. A policy that saw people living in this country all their lives being deported back to countries they had hardly visited. 

The death of George Floyd is but the latest black death at the hands of the police in the US. There have also been a disproportionate number of black people dying in police custody in this country. In both Britain and the US the police are not brought to account for these actions - they have effectively been granted impunity. The result is that the deaths happen again and again.

Things need to change fundamentally, with a rebalancing of society, from top to bottom. Justice must apply as much to the police, as to everyone else.

The pressure needs to be raised throughout society for change in all areas of life. There must be real equality across society, not just empty rhetoric.

The politicians that represent the people must genuinely reflect the ethical make up of society.

And as George Floyd's brother urged, people need to use their vote to help get that change.

 In America, that means coming out to vote to ensure Trump is ejected from the Whitehouse. In the UK it means voting for politicians really committed to change and the creation of a more equal and just society.If people come together this change can really happen.

Times they are a changing in Wanstead Park

One of the real pluses of living in this area is the green oasis that is Wanstead Park.

It is a place many of us go to breath in the natural world. 

During the period of lockdown, many people have come to the park in search of peace, walking around the lakes and across forest land. It is our green lung.

The history of the park is legendary, with the famous Wanstead House, that used to sit in an area now occupied by the golf course, dominating.

At the recent AGM of the Friends of Wanstead Park, Nigel Fransceschi showed some pictures of the site as it used to be in the 18th century. They gave a great perspective, with the house, the vista running down to the Ornamental Lake, then on the other side the basin pond (now part of the golf course, opposite Overton Drive) surrounded by trees.

Nigel is working with Dr Hannah Armstrong on a new book called Wanstead House: East London's lost Palace. 

No doubt the history of the Childs family (who owned the house) and the final tragic tale of William Wellesley Pole and Catherine Tylney Long will feature prominently.

There is much also going on with the natural development of the park. The Park Plan, which has been some years in the making, has now gone through the various approval stages of the City of London Corporation (CLC). This will hopefully be implemented alongside the flood prevention work that the CLC is having to do to meet its statutory obligation in addressing flood risk.

These works will hopefully see the lakes restored, with water levels being sustained. Better walkways, signage and a visitors centre are all projects on the horizon.

Geoff Sinclair, Operations Manager of Epping Forest, and his team are already making improvements, such as the cutting back and opening up of the area around the Perch Pond.

The Glade, running down to the Ornamental Lake, has also been restored to some of it's former glory, with some cutting back.

So there is much happening and more to come in the park.

The recent lockdown period has also underlined some of the requirements going forward, such as clearer indications for cyclists as to where they can go.

Where Wanstead Park is unique is in its multi-faceted nature, There is the wild wilderness, the history of the House, wound up with the East India Company, and even further back a Roman settlement on the site. Something for everyone, as it were. Lets hope the ongoing developments over the coming years help bring together all of these unique aspects in a 21st century thriving  context.. The park has certainly never been more popular than over the period of the pandemic.