The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

16 The Sunday Times April 24, 2022

COMMENT

Rod Liddle

Our countryside’s withering under an

influx of proles and an onslaught of toffs

migrants to Rwanda.

So if the government

wants them back at their

desks, it should announce a

series of extremely sensible

right-wing schemes: the

reintroduction of hanging,

grammar schools, prison

sentences for sexual

deviants, voting rights

dependent on property

ownership and so on.

Then it could watch them

flood back to do their

damnedest to stop it all.

T

he sun puts his little hat on for

our Easter holiday weekend

and, joyously, thousands of our

lumpenproletariat make the

pilgrimage to north Wales to

take a dump somewhere on

Snowdon. It is a recently

evolved tradition, every bit as

charming and compelling as that which

takes Muslims to Mecca or Roman

Catholics to Lourdes. Bolt shut the

tenement door, load up the Nissan Juke

with six packs, congealing pizza slices

and Doritos, drive to the bottom of the

mountain and then begin your ascent

until you find the perfect place to drop

your drawers.

In the middle of the funicular railway

line, for example, which is where

Gemma Davies, a tour guide, saw one

chap happily making his deposit. She

added that everywhere she walked she

came across chav-eggs wrapped in

tissue, or in paper cups, or clinging to

the edges of a shrub. Officially, Snowdon

is 1,085 metres high, but I suspect it’s

grown a bit of late and may one day soon

rival Ben Nevis. If not K2.

Gemma ventured that perhaps there

were insufficient facilities for that

benighted sub-species which never

really went in for potty training and the

concept of deferred gratification. No,

indeed. Knock up some toilet blocks

every few yards — that would accord

with the demands from angry reviews

left on Tripadvisor, whose semi-literate

contributors also bemoaned the fact that

Snowdon was “too steep”, lacked

“concrete paths”, was “cold at the top”

and would benefit from a McDonald’s.

This is the problem with making our

national parks more “accessible” for

people with the IQ of sphagnum moss

and the sense of civic pride of a pit bull

terrier with ADHD: they end up actually

going there. What we really need to do is

keep them out, perhaps by barricading

them in their barrios, or telling them

that Argos has a sale on.

It is a problem with which our

national parks have to wrestle, now that

they are caught between two poles. For

many years accessibility and urging

people to visit our most beautiful areas

have been the priority, even to the point

of worrying that ethnic minority folk do

not visit the countryside enough and

should perhaps be herded, en masse, up

Kinder Scout and told to like it. And so

the vast ugly car parks have blossomed,

along with concrete bog buildings, snack

bars and information centres for

imbeciles.

It has all been to the detriment of the

parks. Now, though, they are charged

with being part of the government’s

30x30 biodiversity strategy — 30 per

cent of the country to become protected

for wildlife species by 2030 — and are

failing on an epic level, partly through

pandering to incontinent Mancs and

Scousers out for a climb up the first

25 feet of Snowdon. But partly because

they have always got it wrong.

The British Ecological Society has just

published a report which suggests that

less than a fifth of the 28 per cent of our

country’s land that is made up of

national parks and areas of natural

beauty actually provides a haven for

wildlife, and as such it should not be

classed by the government as

“protected” land. I would say this is an

overestimate. In the national parks I

know best — the Yorkshire Dales,

Northumberland and most of all the

North York Moors — the park authorities

seem to connive in the destruction of

wildlife habitats in order to appease the

landowners who are, in the main,

engaged in making money from driven

grouse shoots.

Grouse moors take up a remarkable

8 per cent of the UK, all for the benefit of

just 40,000 braying hoorays blasting the

cap-doffing beaters to bits. This activity

leaves behind a desolate moonscape

devoid of wildlife except for the

occasional curlew and, of course, the

grouse. The heather is burnt when the

other birds are about to nest and

mammalian and avian predators are

peremptorily exterminated by the

gamekeepers. Round my way what we

are left with is a bizarre profusion of

jackdaws — the apex predator now all the

rest have been killed — and millions of

very fat rabbits.

This scenery would be more

beautiful and more supportive of our

rarest birds and animals if the

co-dependency with a damaging,

privileged activity were to cease. More

alluring to us humans, too. Remember

that figure of 40,000 who benefit from

8 per cent of our land? Just one wetland

bird site — Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire

— caters for 250,000 people a year.

Those sorts of numbers would provide a

real cash bonus for the towns and

villages, some of the poorest in the

country, within our national parks. With

the additional bonus that people who

like looking at birds and animals are nice

middle-class folks who attend to the

lavatory before they leave home.

Anyway, this would square the circle

for the national parks: accessibility for

humans, plus biodiversity. And the only

downside is that it might annoy the

sheikhs and dukes who own the grouse

moors.

Contrite PM in India

PHOTOBUBBLE: NICK NEWMAN

I see our civil servants are

still refusing to go back to

the office, ensconced as

they are in a kind of

perpetual Covid. The public

sector liked the “do no work

but still get paid” culture of

lockdown and is disinclined

to give it up.

However, according to

reports, the mandarins are

also determined to do

everything they can to

thwart the government’s

scheme to send economic

They

complained

Snowdon was

‘too steep’

and could

do with a

McDonald’s

A right turn to get

mandarins back

The following headline, from

Metro, has something of an

incongruity in it. I wonder if

you can spot what it is?

“Ex-soldier exposed her

penis and used wheelie-bin

as sex toy in public”.

This happened in

Middlesbrough (natch) and

the perpetrator was a serial

sex offender who wishes to

be called “Chloe Thompson”

because he identifies as a

woman, despite fairly

compelling evidence to

the contrary. Listen, I have

met some women. And

none identify themselves

as such by lopping out their

old fella and waving it

around. Chloe is not doing a

very good job of this

“identifying” stuff, then.

Incidentally, about 60

per cent of trans women

who are in prison committed

sexual offences, compared

with 18 per cent of the

general male prison

population.

Chloe has her new

identity well in hand

Nice

spinning

Nobody’s

interested in

partygate and

I’m getting on

with the job