Where will they put the West Midlands National Park?

In the news today: "Plans for West Midlands National Park move forward".

So where exactly would they put it, if it was to be something real and big. Not just a patchwork PR exercise that aimed to provoke no NIMBY-ism from voters? If it's indeed to be big and green, then I guess it would have to be near Birmingham, for political reasons. And be positioned so it at least has a chance of an eventual genuine connection with the National Forest, in perhaps 50 years.

Looking at the map, I'd then guess that a starting point would be adding 'wild-belt' hedged strips and that try to link up the natural areas between Sutton Park and Cannock Chase. Such that after 20 years a squirrel could (just about) leap from tree-to-tree from Sutton Coldfield up to Stafford.

Such wide thick-hedged wildife strips would be very-low cost, if they were for nature only, and were not hijacked by local councils to be public paths used by cyclists, dog-walkers, etc. All one would need would be to buy the strips of relatively low-value land, then add some stakes and wire and hedge it either side of the strip. The strip would be wide enough to be easily mown for wild-flower meadow, and would go more or less in a bee-line. After a decade, get in some lads with hedge-laying tools. Maybe also make some ponds at the connector-points, and at a distance around those plant clumps of what will eventually become large mature trees. All just for nature, no public access to the connector strips, only to what they're connecting.

Causing a buzz

"Stoke-on-Trent 'idyllic oasis' left looking this after being 'neglected' during lockdown".

First off, it's a complete journalistic spaff to call it an 'idyllic oasis'. It's a mini-park place in Hanley you avoid totally, or hurry through as quickly as possible, to avoid the drunks, druggies, and those waiting to go into the adjacent law courts to be sentenced for some heinous crime.

Secondly, as I understand it The Sentinel's offices are right next door to this. Did they not peep put of their windows before now, and spot that the grass was getting a bit long? Why have they saved up the 'story' until now?

Thirdly, who cares? The city now has a policy of letting verges grow quite long, for wildlife. It's great that the bees and crane-flies have been able to buzz among it for six weeks, and now we can cut it down when a critical mass of shoppers and revellers are back in the city centre again. Which, given the terrible weather forecast for this end-of-lockdown weekend, looks like being a week or so yet.

The more interesting response from the Sentinel might have been to call in a local ecologist and see what they can find in there with a camera-microscope.

The revolving shed

In the latest edition of The Idler, a revolving shed. Just for a writer to write in, so not actually a working gardening shed weighted down by potatoes, junk and heavy metal implements. And thus able to turn easily.

The turntable means it is able to turn away from a bitter or gusting wind, or from glaring sunlight, or toward the warming dawn.

A quick march to Festival Park

I hear that the old Army Reserves (aka 'Territorials') centre fronting onto the Waterloo Road in Cobridge has just been sold off. But if you're suddenly in need a squad of fit lads to sort out the Cobridge traffic lights, it has apparently relocated to a newly-built facility somewhere a little "to the south west of the site". Which would put the new one somewhere at the back edge of Festival Park.

Join the "Chop 'em and Whopp 'em" Army

The Commons Environmental Audit Committee has proposed sensible plans to bring work to some of the new unemployed. Under their proposal, 1.3 million volunteers would receive training "to learn how to identify, report and remove invasive species" from the UK environment, and then set about getting the mammoth task done. Thus forming a new Biosecurity Defence Force for the UK. The Government is said to be examining the proposal.

The UK may be looking at around 2 million extra unemployed. So a paid force of some 600,000 fit young people, supported by another 600,000 unpaid older volunteers + managers, would help to give long-term work to many. We had something similar in the 1980s, evolving out of the old YOP schemes for the unemployed, Groundwork — although by the 90s they'd become rather insular and managerial. I'd hope that a Biosecurity Defence Force, or a Biosecurity Improvement Frontline Force (BIFF) or some-such name, would be a little more approachable and responsive. One thing I'd suggest that the Force could do would be to ensure they leave a newly-made wildlife pond behind, at or near each project site. We really could do with another 50,000 ponds across the UK.

The Office for National Statistics's new death map

There's now a precise new death map for the UK from the Office for National Statistics, showing deaths involving the virus from 20th March to 17th April. The usual caveats apply about the precision of the recording, especially in care-homes. Of course, it isn't up-to-date to 1st May and the virus is far from fading away just yet. Each dot on the map represents much suffering among families who have lost loved ones. It also silently indicates a greater number who suffered, perhaps quite badly so, and survived. There will be more deaths and suffering to come, but for now here's the sad pattern:

Birmingham and the Black Country, Wolverhampton, all heavily hit and in a fairly uniform way. Shrewsbury and Leek seem to have almost escaped, at least by 17th April.

Zooming in locally: Bradwell and the adjacent Chesterton have both been badly hit, with the spot being much bigger if they had been combined. In Stoke, Burslem/Longport/Middleport and Hanley/Etruria slightly less so.

Boris is back

Yipee, Boris is back...

The Sentinel has Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Downing Street statement in full.

Back to the land!

The government has announced that furloughed workers are allowed to seek alternative additional work with a third party. Or at least, they can so long as their existing contract allows it, and as long as the worker doesn't work on a project that benefits their main employer.

This relaxation should free up a large body of people to work for pay where they're needed. In areas of the local economy such as farms, market gardens and plant nurseries, where there are said to be some 80,000 vacancies as the new season gets underway. Obviously the job will have to be within easy reach of the home, as travel restrictions are still in place.

Stoke council on allotments

News just in from our local council:

"the council has received a 120 per cent increase in demand for allotments since the outbreak, and council teams are working to match people with available pitches. Allotment holders must follow national heath guidance on social distancing, handwashing for at least 20 seconds, avoiding touching their face and not holding communal gatherings."

Presumably some applicants are assuming that the crisis will go on well into the summer, and that a possible lack of paid pickers in the fields will affect their fruit and greens supply.

Though if that's all you want it will probably easier to grow a bit of fresh greens indoors in tubs by windows and on patios/balconies, and get a store of fruit in in the form of tins. Though you'd need to convert an entire south facing back-bedroom into a rotating racked garden, if you want really substantial supplies without going outside.

There will also likely be a boom this summer in "pick your own" in the countryside, assuming that travel restrictions are eased in June and that seasonal workers are not allowed to come in from abroad (for fear of triggering a second lockdown).

But good for the allotment applicants, if they really want do want to put in the heavy work that a new allotment is likely to need.

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Also (my advice, not the council's) be wary of uncooked fruit and seasonal fresh veg that people may have talked over and picked up / put back. This is especially the case of unwrapped supermarket veg that goes straight into the fridge at home without being washed. The virus lasts far longer on surfaces at general fridge temperatures. It's heat that viruses don't like, not cold.

On 8.2%

An update on my initial virus post, "Notes on the virus" (6th March 2020, updated 10th March). I had concluded that post by estimating a 3 to 5% chance of a 'severe' reaction for a healthy 50-something male allotment holder, on catching the virus. But now there is new data on this age group.

The seemingly reliable new study is from Imperial College, London and is based on data rather than computer models. The press release states a rate of hospitalisation ['severe'] of 8.2% in 50-59 year-olds known to have the virus. That's a one-in-twelve chance of needing to go to hospital.

However, this is across both non-healthy / healthy people in that age-group. Thus it's not to be imagined that all 50-59 year-olds have a uniform 8.2% chance of being hospitalised, if they catch the virus. They don't. It's far more likely that it's hospitalising mostly those in the 50-59 year-old group who already had underlying health condition (of a type that puts them in the danger category).

Further, on looking at the published paper from Imperial College one finds that their age-group data is actually from "mainland China", rather than from the UK. Thus my initial caveats about heavy drinking and smog-damaged lungs in urban China still apply. Such things would surely increase the risk. There's also the Chinese habit of conjuring with and censoring their statistics to consider. And that's presumably why the Imperial College paper can't state what the % risk is to otherwise healthy 50-59 year-olds. They presumably can't determine that because the Chinese didn't release that bit of the data, in the file on the 3,665 cases being tabulated by the report. Otherwise Imperial College would surely have reported the breakdown within the age group.

Thus "8.2%" sounds like a big juicy bit of new data, re: the risk to 50-somethings of hospitalisation. It will no doubt make for screaming newspaper headlines tomorrow, and scare half of Stoke witless. But it turns out it isn't very useful. It could actually be positive news for the healthy 50-something (i.e. there could be a negligible possibility of being hospitalised if a healthy 50-59 year-old), or it could be gloomy news (perhaps a 3-4% possibility of being hospitalised if a healthy 50-59 year-old). The latter is about the 3-5% chance I'd initially suggested in my initial post.

But, amazingly, it seems we still don't know what the actual % risks are for this age group, when properly split between the healthy/non-healthy, fat/normal, male/female and smokers/non-smokers. It should be relatively easy for such distinctions to be made, so why are we only hearing misleadingly broad statistics on this? I mean, if smokers are 80% more likely to die then we should know that ASAP and not at the end of pandemic.

Some extra background on this, from other sources on China. STAT reported that, across all age groups, having a pre-existing risk condition "increased risk of dying by 2.5 times". But that the "fatality rate in patients who reported no other health conditions was 0.9%".