The great north-west

The north west of England is a place where you are never very far from the countries most impressive sights. Wether you would consider those to be sporting arenas and stadia or mountains, lakes and castles, rolling countryside or urban metropolitan cityscapes.

The way in which the landscape (urban or rural) is maintained and looked after should be a process that involves all affected parties. This generally seems to be done by local authorities involving organised groups of representatives of interested parties. These groups arrive at some sort of concensus of opinion as to what should be done on a particular project area. My own view on this is that the information being discussed and the effects of implementation of the ideas put forward and agreed on does not filter much beyond the interested groups. In other words they can assume some sort of self assumed authority to give the thumbs up to civic project ideas.

This may be all well and good for well publicised projects like say redevelopment of a shopping area in a town centre. But what happens if the effects of these decisions are literally on your doorstep? How would you feel about waking up one morning to find a crew of wokers armed with chain saws were felling trees that are part of the look, feel and sound of your home life and the first you heard of it was the sound of the saws?

This has just happened where I live. Now, the work is all part of a very admirable project to clean up and improve the local cenotaph in order to make the annual service of rememberance more easily catered for and to allow peaceful refection in a quiet garden setting. This, I am sure is a project that has the support of the whole town and rightly so. However, the idea was floated some months ago and announced in the local press. At no time was it said that the process would involve the removal of about a dozen mature trees and the severe pruning of others.

My point is that decisions about work that directly affects the lives of local residents in a very tangible way was discussed, planned and executed without even a knock on the door of the nearest property (20 feet away) to explain what was going to take place.