What message (to use an ugly political term) does it send to our young people to brutalize hedges the way farmers and local authorities do? Uttlesford District Council is reputed to have one of the most privileged living environments in the country. The Dunmow bypass today is like a horrible wound; its trees (they were never a hedge) smashed, splintered and torn, jagged white wood wrist-thick mangled by the tractor, minced branches in tangled heaps. The beauty of spring, the sacredness of nature totally trashed – to save ratepayers’ money, as I’m sure the council would say.
Among the ‘services’ the council provides (with a profligacy that suggests spending other people’s money gives it no pain) could it consider training young people with nothing special to do to use a saw and a billhook? Working with nature is learning to love her. The brutalized roadsides seem to express nothing but hate.
