On your bike

Good to hear, this week, as the ground becomes softer and more liable to damage:

"Operation Transom is being launched in the City of Stoke-on-Trent to tackle the issue of nuisance motorbikes".

Presumably it's also easier to nab them, as it'll now be mostly concentrated in the drier evenings and on weekends. Rather than strung out all over the city at different times, as it presumably is during the school holidays.

Map of all Stoke virus deaths to 15th August 2020

Office for National Statistics - All "Deaths involving COVID-19" from the start of the pandemic through to 15th August 2020, for the Stoke-on-Trent city area.

It's the city's clean-up weekend!

This weekend is the launch of the city's clean-up, championed by our champion litter picker Debi Allbutt of Norton. It's just as well to do it now — early on Sunday morning or Monday — because it'll be wet once this fine spell is over. Monday tea-time will see the start of several days of rain and thunder. On the clean-up The Sentinel reports today that: "Community champion encourages Stoke-on-Trent residents to get involved in big clean up".

"It's literally so easy to take part in 'View From Your Door'. We're just asking everyone to head out to their street, pick up litter, pick up weeds, and make things look more presentable. It only needs to take 10 minutes."

Debi is encouraging people to share their before and after pictures on social media in their local community Facebook groups.

Great stuff. If you can take part, according to my research the best place to buy a good litter-picking stick in Stoke is Ableworld in the Leek Road near Hanley. There you want their "Classic Long" picker, which when last seen were re-branded Helping Hand sticks. You can also get a Helping Hand stick from Amazon, though it's long and you won't get it to fit in a pick-up locker. The other thing that's useful are flexible gloves and a firm stick about 12 inches long. Any bit of old tree will do, as long it's not going to snap. Roll the stick into the top of the bin-bag, to give you a "handle" to hold that keeps the bag open for popping the litter in with your stick.

Obviously the city could not have the usual Spring cleanup this year, so there's likely to be a lot to do. A week ago I did a long stretch near me, which needed to be done. But perhaps the city has more than can be done in a few hours on a Sunday morning or Monday lunchtime. The next best time of year for a mass litter-pick would then be just after Bonfire Night. In that still-crisp early November weather when the wind is usually very low, and the ground and its litter is not too moist and soggy yet.

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.