Drowning in a flood of ignorance about drainage

What a good letter in Country Week last Saturday from Jack Caley. Like Mr Caley, I spent 40 years in land drainage. I saw how important it was to keep rivers and ditches clear of obstructions. As he said, it is dry land that absorbs water in a downpour, not boggy ground.

From: Bernard Robinson, Midland Terrace, Hellifield, Nr Skipton.

What a good letter in Country Week last Saturday from Jack Caley. Like Mr Caley, I spent 40 years in land drainage. I saw how important it was to keep rivers and ditches clear of obstructions. As he said, it is dry land that absorbs water in a downpour, not boggy ground.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There are too many people having their say in the countryside today who know nothing about agriculture or food production. If the Environment Agency and the RSPB get their way, we will all end up up to our knees in water, with nothing to eat.

From: Bernard Robinson, Midland Terrace, Hellifield, Nr Skipton.

From: GAW Heppell, Rawcliffe Lane, York.

I HOPE that one of your naturalists will be able to give me an explanation. Since the New Year I have had an invasion of ladybirds through ventilators of my bedroom windows into the space between the windows and secondary double glazing. This is the first time that this has occurred in the 21 years I have lived here.

The creatures are red with black spots; are they the Harlequin? Others got in through the minute gaps around a balcony door. I have removed about 150 and I see that there are 17 more in the last 48 hours.

From: Barbara Sunderland, Hill End Grove, Bradford.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

TO continue the letters about frogspawn. Last year, we had frogs in the pond by the dozen as usual. They spawned but there were no follow up tadpoles. This also happened in a neighbour's garden. This year, the frogs arrived as usual mid- February and froze in the thick ice that covered the pond and I also found several frozen to death around the garden. At the moment, we have no residents, so what future for the frogs?

From: David T Craggs, Tunstall, East Yorkshire.

IN a recent episode of the ITV programme Wild at Heart (Sunday, March 7) set in Africa, Danny, played by the actor Stephen Tompkinson, arrived at a neighbour's cattle farm to vaccinate the herd for tuberculosis. When the issue of bovine TB is discussed in this country, and a badger cull is called for, vaccination is never considered as an alternative solution. Why?