The Lake District - will this ruin everything?

[pErvinalia]

I don't know, you'd have to look at the listing. Sounds like it's primarily a cultural heritage listing.

[Scot Dutchy]

How are you going to preserve the cultural heritage of the lake district? What is it exactly? It sounds so very vague.

[JimC]

Doesn't matter. It will support the jobs of several dozen bureaucrats...

[pErvinalia]

How are you going to preserve the cultural heritage of the lake district? What is it exactly? It sounds so very vague.

It's sheep farming or sumfing, isn't it? You preserve that heritage like you would preserve any other heritage.

[Scot Dutchy]

Wet finger work.

[rainbow]

How are you going to preserve the cultural heritage of the lake district? What is it exactly? It sounds so very vague.

Tat?

[Scot Dutchy]

Cute and so unreal.

[Forty Two]

Wordsworth and his sister started the fad for the lake district.
All most people know about him is that he wrote " I wandered lonely as a cloud " etc etc.

It later turned out that he actually wrote "I wandered lonely as a cow" and his sister told him to change it to cloud.

He still gets all the credit though.

This is a man's world.

I'm not so sure editors generally get writer's credit on material to which they suggest edits.... male or female.

[Forty Two]

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.

Did he really just claim that living on flat lands makes a person broadminded, but living in mountainous terrain makes one narrow minded? Is that serious, or dry humor?

[Forty Two]

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

It's basically a drainage ditch.

[rainbow]

Wordsworth and his sister started the fad for the lake district.
All most people know about him is that he wrote " I wandered lonely as a cloud " etc etc.

It later turned out that he actually wrote "I wandered lonely as a cow" and his sister told him to change it to cloud.

He still gets all the credit though.

This is a man's world.

I'm not so sure editors generally get writer's credit on material to which they suggest edits.... male or female.

Chauvinist pig!

[Forty Two]

Wife: Here, let me show you this poem I'm publishing in the next poetry anthology...

Husband: Okay, honey, lemme see that poem. O.k., ok. wandering around. Going here and there. Like cows. I get it. Like cows.

Wife: Oh, do you like it?

Husband: [sips beer] yeah, hun, it's cool. It's nice. But, you know what. Lemme tell ya, if you say clouds instead of cows, it might be better.

Wife: oh, o.k., let me try that.

Husband: yeah - o.k. - but if you use it, I want to be credited as co-writer. It would be sexist not to include me.

[pErvinalia]

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

It's basically a drainage ditch.

[Brian Peacock]

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?

He misses the point completely. The Lake District is a human made habitat/environment. Sheep farming is what has made it as it is today (or last century anyway) along with the remains of mining and slate production which were big industries in earlier centuries. It is the current look and feel that draws people to the place,. It doesn't pretend to be wilderness in any shape or form.

There is a lobby which calls for a big reduction in sheep farming, the planting of trees and 'restoration' to something like it would be if left to nature's devices, but it isn't a strong one.

There's pretty much nowhere in the UK that isn't a managed landscape. I often bemuse Americans i meet on the Cotswolds way with the fact that many of the stone-walled field patterns are 1000 years old. They find that idea staggering, and bumble off wide-eyed, imagining they're stepping through the ancient landscape of Middle Earth or something.

Having said that though, and given the state of UK farming in this area, a lot of mixed farmland is reverting to meadow and copse round here. Where even 10 years ago you'd find sheep on the tops and cattle and crops in the valleys now you just find acres of empty space slowly succumbing to mother Nature's insistent green thumbs. The only area of agricultural growth seems to be clay pigeon shooting, quad biking, and livery for the sad, fat, and neglected ponies of the privately schooled children of stockbrokers and hedgefund managers.

[Forty Two]

There's pretty much nowhere in the UK that isn't a managed landscape. I often bemuse Americans i meet on the Cotswolds way with the fact that many of the stone-walled field patterns are 1000 years old. They find that idea staggering, and bumble off wide-eyed, imagining their stepping through the ancient landscape of Middle Earth or something.

I don't think there is anything wrong with amazement over ancient things. I had sort of that reaction when touching a 1000 year old cathedral, and nearly 1000 year old headstones in its courtyard. The fact that someone carved those stones, and placed them with their hands, and carved words and images into the stone, and here I am 1000 years on, reading and touching that same stone. There is wonder in that.

It doesn't even have to be that old. I was at the fortress at Nassau, Bahamas a couple of times, and in that fort there are stone rooms that were soldier's barracks. Carved into the walls are 18th century inscriptions of Englishmen who were stationed there. It gives one a sense of communication between or through the ages. Someone carved that stone, and I am reading it. I know his name, his rank, and something of his thoughts.

That's always been interesting to contemplate.