Stuart Maconie: England will fight for access to its coast

This rather excellent article by

BBC 6 Music DJ, writer and avid walker Stuart Maconie is taken from the Walk magazine website. He warns of a bigger public backlash than over forestry should the Government abandon its commitments to English coastal access.

You can justify anything with statistics, of which, as Vic Reeves astutely observed: “95 per cent are made up on the spot”. Of late, we are fed a daily diet of grim figures, mountains of debt, oceans of deficit, all trotted out to justify deep and lacerating cuts to our public-spending budgets. Leaving aside the question of who got us into this mess (it certainly wasn’t me, or any of the nurses, cleaners, librarians who are carrying the can), I’d take issue with the notion that when times are tough, some things are expendable.

Take footpaths. While it doesn’t take a genius to work out that, by inclination, a Conservative-led government is not going to put matters of access ahead of matters of private property rights, there are issues here that should worry walkers. We saw what happened when the plans to sell off the nation’s forests were announced last year. This hugely misguided strategy united some of the most disparate sections of our society, from retired colonels in the Shires to eco-warriors.

Now, as the Ramblers’ chief executive Tom Franklin has pointed out, it seems from the recent Government white paper that the all-England Coast Path project may be being quietly shelved. If so, we should make our voices heard again. If one thing should exercise an island race even more than woodlands, it is the coast and the sea. It may not be putting it too strongly to call free access to the British coast a birthright.

Billy Bragg puts this primal and enduring link rather nicely. Billy lives dead alongside the South West Coast Path in Dorset. He’s often asked by those mindful of his roots in urban Barking how he feels now living in the countryside. He always replies that he doesn’t live in the countryside. He lives by the sea. There’s
a difference. He’s absolutely right. The British coast is a joy and a marvel. We are blessed in having it as our neighbour. From the austere and haunting flats of East Anglia to the pleasure palaces of Blackpool, from the rugged inlets and gull-haunted rock cathedrals of Zennor to the muddy, ribbed Humber Estuary beloved of Philip Larkin. The sea has shaped the land and us. We should not give it up without a fight.

There’ll be some who balk at the notion of walkers getting ‘too political’, feeling that we should stick to our genteel pursuits and let others make tough fiscal decisions and wield the axe. To which my reply would be unrepeatable. The roots of the Ramblers, let’s remember, are not in cream teas and stiles, but in dissent and protest. Every time I take out one of my beloved OS maps – in mountain mists, or lashed by rain on a soaking moor, or later by a crackling fireside with a warming Talisker – I think of Benny Rothman and his mates. Because these last few years, when I look at the battered map, I see great expanses of sandy yellow where previously there was antiseptic white space and ‘keep out’ signs.

The yellow shading stands for open access land; great tracts of our country once forbidden to me and you that is now open to us all. That ‘right to roam’ was won by the bravery and fortitude of many, and chief among them were the Kinder Scout Trespassers. In my new book, Hope And Glory, I make the point that the British love of nature and exploration transcends class and economic divisions. You only have to look at how climbing, for instance, made tight partners of men as socially disparate as Chris Bonington and Don Whillans to see this.

The point is that a nation is not built on GDP and fiscal prudence alone. Nationhood is forged in the character of the people and how they interact with the landscape and history of the land. I get a swell of pride when I see Japanese tourists taking pictures by the shores of Derwent Water or the slopes of Skiddaw; or when I chat to the German and Dutch tourists who throng the Cornish sections of the South West Coast Path, entranced by the savage beauty of it.

If a Big Society means anything, it is an open society: a society that welcomes those, British or not, who want to enjoy the nations’ natural joys and wonders to the full. If not, we are a small and crabbed society, one seeking to close doors and lock gates under cover of an economic darkness. We should not let this happen.

Stuart Maconie’s Hope And Glory is published by Ebury Press

The best way to clean up an oil spill is not to have one. The second best maybe to make a meal of it.

Want To Clean Up An Oil Spill? There Are Some Microbes Looking For A Meal

BY ARIEL SCHWARTZMon Aug 1, 2011

A lingering mystery of the Gulf oil spill is where the oil actually went. It seems now that the microbes in the water made a meal of it, but that doesn't mean we can rely on them for the next spill. (This article is directly from Fast Company which I came to from the Do Lectures' twitter feed...)

After the initial shock of last year's Gulf oil disaster passed, it quickly became apparent that the oil had somehow disappeared--on the surface, at least. Dispersants helped break up some of the larger plumes, sure, but that doesn't entirely explain why the surface oil slick in the Gulf seemed to disappear just three weeks after the disaster. Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute think they have the answer: hungry bacterial microbes.

Scientists have known for some time that certain bacteria enjoy a good meal made out of oil. But after studying samples from the slick and its surrounding waters, the Woods Hole researchers discovered that bacterial microbes inside the slick were devouring the oil a whopping five times faster than microbes outside the Gulf slick. And strangely enough, there was no increase in microbes inside the slick, leaving the researchers to wonder what the microbes did with all the excess energy gained from chowing down on oil (you would except more microbes to breed as a result of all the available oil).

The researchers were also surprised that the microbes consumed so much oil in the first place, since necessary nutrients for the oil-eaters--like phosphorous and nitrogen--were lacking in the oil slick and surrounding waters.

The scientists' big fear, of course, is that oil companies will take this information and use it to allay fears about future oil disasters ("We can spill all the oil we want into the ocean because it's just feeding the microbes"). But Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, questioned just how well these microbes break down oil in an interview last year: "Now, did they degrade every single component of the oil? It's doubtful. And there could be some long-term effects from some of these very, very low concentrations. We don't know. That remains to be seen."

The Woods Hole researchers also explain that molecules from the broken-down oil could still find its way into food webs, both offshore and in shoreline areas. So while the oil may appear to be gone, little bits of it could have toxic consequences.

Still, it's a comforting thought and a sure source for innovation--if bacterial microbes can at least partially help clean up our massive man-made disasters, what can we learn about how to speed up, mimic, or augment that process in preparation for the next big oil spill?

[Image: Flickr user faceless b]

Reach Ariel Schwartz via Twitter or email.EL SCHWARTZMon Aug 1, 2011