"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...


| No, that simply isn't true. I've seen a patch of woodland in the town I
grew
| up in completely stripped of bluebells by people digging them up for
their
| gardens. They didn't even fill in the holes.

That is a cosmetic matter. In most such cases, it is ecologically
unimportant.



I perhaps should have pointed out that the few truly interesting forested
bits of my home town tend to be on really steep slopes; digging things up
and leaving holes does a lot of harm next time it rains. Bit it ain't just a
cosmetic matter anyway; removing plants from the context of the habitat they
're in is way more important than that.


| I see... So it's all a big conspiracy... Come on Nick, you can't
seriously
| post a conspiracy theory and then accuse anyone else of being gullible.

You are now being Conveniently Forgetful.



No I'm not. I'm ridiculing the conspiracy theory concept.


The issue of the Act being abused to create property rights was raised
when it was first proposed and its flaws were pointed out in detail
when its first draft appeared (with possible solutions). Not by me,
but by MPs and others. The proponents denied that they were doing
so, made some changes ELSEWHERE in that Act, but refused to change
any of the relevant aspects.

No, I am not posting a conspiracy theory - I am saying that I saw
evidence of a conspiracy at work.



Sorry, Nick, but can I use that quote elsewhere? It strikes me that it could
be used as a defense of any conspiracy theory at all.



The act, like any other, is a flawed bunch of ideas that has passed through
the hands of two 600 member plus committees (commons and lords) plus a whole
load of other interested parties. That's how we make laws here. And as well
as generally working in an inexplicable way, it also means that a lot of
laws are passed in such a way as to be never enforceable (or only rarely
worth enforcing). That's one of the beauties of our system, when you think
about it.


| No, I don't accept that at all. Once you reduce the population of a
plant
| like bluebell to a point where there are only a few left in an area,
they're
| much more likely to be wiled out by carelessness than if you've got a
decent
| population. One or two can be trodden on or uprooted accidentally; a
whole
| bluebell wood cannot.

Hmm. Have you tried doing that deliberately? I have. While bluebells
are not immortal, you don't kill them as easily as that.



All gone from at least two sites I can think of in Gateshead (my home town,
which I keep mentioning so I thought I'd better name it).


It is also virtually impossible to reduce a bluebell carpet to only
a few plants without removing most of the topsoil - what you CAN do
is to remove the ones of flowering size, but they also spread
vegetatively.



True enough. But then the disturbance of the ground doesn't always favour
rapid recolonisation by the bluebells, and it can leave what remains awfully
vulnerable.