The Lake District - will this ruin everything?

[pErvinalia]

That's some impressive rational thought there...

[Rum]

Holland - flat and boring as fuck. OK?

To you maybe but you live in hills. People who live in mountains and hills are narrow minded as they dont see much sky. Flat open countryside produces a broad minded person because of the big sky.

I've always thought of you as broad minded so that proves it.

[Scot Dutchy]

That's some impressive rational thought there...

I did not come up with that gem. I just read somewhere. It was about Swiss mentality. Big skies do give a sense space and freedom. I did feel sometime quite claustrophobic sometimes in mountains. I remember once in a corrie off of Glen Coe a really classic U shaped and the cloud came down and put a lid on it that was a very claustrophobic feeling.

[laklak]

Yeah, it will ruin everything. Same thing happened here, fucking New Yorkers took over and destroyed paradise. Came down here to get away from New York and turned the place into fucking mini New York.

On the plus side, if you own property the value will rise as more and more assholes cram into the place, then you can sell up and go live somewhere with a lower asshole quotient.

[Brian Peacock]

Holland - flat and boring as fuck. OK?

To you maybe but you live in hills. People who live in mountains and hills are narrow minded as they dont see much sky. Flat open countryside produces a broad minded person because of the big sky.

And statistical analyses show that people who live on the flatlands are more likely to be unhealthy, poorly educated, incarcerated, and inbred.

[Scot Dutchy]

Linky? We Dont live on Flatlands. It is an estuary for three major European rivers.

[Rum]

Gonna flood the shit out of you!

[pErvinalia]

Linky? We Dont live on Flatlands. It is an estuary for three major European rivers.

Estuaries, by definition, are flat.

[Scot Dutchy]

But they are not flatlands.

[pErvinalia]

But they are flat. Like the passion of its residents..

[Scot Dutchy]

No passion in the Outback then?

There is more passion in a Dutchman's big toe than in all the cold English women.

[Svartalf]

Holland - flat and boring as fuck. OK?

but man, the Rijksmuseum, the van gogh house, the red lights district in amsterdam...

[Forty Two]

Your negativity gets rather boring at times, Scot...

[Brian Peacock]

My brother used to live in South Lincolnshire, which is notoriously and monotonously flat, so much so that the locals considered it an ill omen to live atop a hillock, for traditional lore had it that Lincolnshire hillocks were a sign that Satan was trying to break through to the surface from the fiery pits below.


Can you see where Satan is lurking?

[PsychoSerenity]

Here's George Monbiot's take on it:

The Lake District’s world heritage site status is a betrayal of the living world

Everything that has gone wrong with conservation is exemplified by this decision: the cowardice, the grovelling, the blandishments, the falsehoods. The way conservation groups rolled over is shameful, but also familiar. They did nothing to prevent the Lake District, England’s largest and most spectacular national park, from being officially designated a Beatrix Potter-themed sheep museum.

On Sunday, the UN agency Unesco granted the Lake District world heritage status. This, according to the report on which the decision was based, will correct an “imbalance” between “natural values” and “the cultural values of farming practices”.

The entire high fells have been reduced by sheep to a treeless waste of cropped turf whose monotony is relieved only by erosion gullies, exposed soil and bare rock. Almost all the bird, mammal and insect species you might expect to find in a national park are suppressed or absent, and 75% of wildlife sites are in an unfavourable condition. So you could be forgiven for thinking that the balance should be tilted back towards nature. Oh no: apparently it’s “the cultural values and benefits of the farming activities” that have been neglected.

While I haven't looked into the details of the report and I've never been to the Lake District, I have to say I very much agree that conservation is this country is appalling. It's like that with our moors here in Devon. The idea that the cultivated/farmed/grazed landscapes are what need to be preserved, at the expense of the wild natural growth. And it's not even as though there's a business case for it to be that way as it's all heavily subsidised anyway. Why can't we subsidise planting trees and letting forests grow?