Barely have we had time to admire and digest the last 3 notices, than another has appeared!
Is it, one asks oneself, that the Springtide sap is rising at SSSS, or is it that they are celebrating the start of a new Local Authority year - with a new Local Authority budget to go with it?
(Sighs of relief all round as they congratulate themselves on surviving yet another year).
Whatever the reason, we, the multitudes of avid readers, count ourselves indeed fortunate that Sandwell MBC, through its SSSS organ of communication, keeps us so well informed of all of the new things happening at Sandwell Valley.
So what's new then?
Oh! They're going to chop down a few more trees.
So, er, not so new then. Just a bit more of the same.
I think it must have been the SSSS B team that produced this notice as it doesn't have the usual flair. A dead give-away is the use of 2 'possible's in the same sentence, but as they said they were going to possibly save as many trees as possible, maybe we should overlook the appalling grammar. Instead, we can pretend that we are unaware of the vast resources available to Sandwell which are patently unused for things like the correct use of grammar in public notices.
But the import is clear.
Trees are to be chopped, and as there are only 259 chopping days to Christmas, Sandwell better get a move on.
(Don't worry on that score. If there is one thing that Sandwell and its collection of specialist arborealists are good at, it's chopping down trees. They have several Green Flags to prove it.)
It's sad that a survey of trees has shown some to be in 'very poor health' and really wonderful that Sandwell are going to either chop them down or 'pollard' them if they possibly can, as they are possibly a danger to 'public safety'. That's always a great banker isn't it - 'public safety'. That's the one Sandwell used when it chopped down the 50 or so 100 year old poplars which used to flank the boathouse at Swan Pool.
But there have been other equally good reasons for chopping down the trees at Sandwell Valley (apart from keeping Sandwell employees and its sub-contractors in full employment).
For example, 'necessary thinning' to allow wild flowers to grow, or 'necessary thinning' just because they need, necessarily, to be thinned.
Then there was the necessary removal of willow and other assorted trees round Swan Pool so that a new CCTV camera on the Swan Pool boathouse had a clear line of sight to the, then, newly installed lifebelt stations, and the, then, newly beefed-up car park next door to the boathouse.
Of course, necessary thinning had to take place round the Swan Pool car park to discourage gays; dogging; drug dealers, murderers and other anti-social types.
Thinning took place on the approaches to the 2 motorway bridges for no obvious reasons apart from the ones given to me by a Ranger - being, 'nothing has been done here for years', and, ''they' want a Green Flag'.
More recently loads of trees (and mature hedgerows) have 'needed' to be removed so that many hundreds of yards of plaited fences can be made - this, of course, to the detriment of any birds which might have wanted to nest in any of them.
Then there are the few dozen trees that had to go when Sandwell installed street lighting in the Valley. (SSSS let us down badly here by not informing us of the reasons Sandwell had for their installation. Someone did suggest that if there was a problem round there at night, then the presence of these luminescent erections might facilitate orderly comings, and goings, rather than premature evacuations - but that didn't sound quite right to me).
Lots of trees went, and continue to go, in and around the area where an adult climbing frame, otherwise known as 'Closer to the Edge' of something, was constructed. I haven't seen many people getting closer to the edge, but I have seen one or two coach loads of hapless 6th formers being bussed in, presumably to bump up the attendance numbers.
Famously, lots of really fantastically old and beautiful trees were given the chop in Dartmouth Park, as part of its National Lottery financed 'restoration' because they were 'in the wrong place'. I ask you, trees that had probably been there longer than the park itself, sentenced to death by Sandwell because it thought that they were in the 'wrong place'. Sandwell - the personification of arrogance.
Let's not forget the necessary 100% removal of trees and everything else last year from an island in Forge Mill Lake (the Balancing Lake to those of us who know a thing or two), to encourage ground nesting birds to do whatever ground nesting birds do on a flat piece of dried mud.
And let's not forget the other trees that were removed from the banks either side of that island, to stop other birds from sitting on them and, thereby, spotting whatever the ground nesting birds were getting up to!! You may think this is too ridiculous even for Sandwell, but I have a photograph of the notice which spells it all out.
You don't believe me do you?
OK ......................
Quite recently, almost everything, trees, of course, included, was cleared from one end of Swan Pool on the pretext that a 10 year inspection of the bank, under a 1975 Act, needed to be carried out. Well, I'm not sure what happened in 1985, or 1995, or even 2005, because no similar clearance was made, as a number of well aged oaks would readily testify, were they still able to do so.
And soon there is to be a necessary clearance of trees in Jubilee Woods to facilitate the construction of a 'fantastic' cycle path. Hooray!
And there has been a fairly massive clearance in the woods adjacent to Ice House Pool, or Heron Pool as some of us know it. A pathway is being cut through what's left of those woods as well but I have no information as to its purpose.
Still, it doesn't matter really does it? As long as Sandwell managers; staff and sub-contractors can keep themselves in a job, who cares a jot if Sandwell Valley disappears in the process. Sandwell Councillors obviously aren't bothered, otherwise they would have done something to stop it ......... always assuming that they actually know what is going on.
And that begs a couple of quite interesting questions.
How many of Sandwell's Councillors have visited Sandwell Valley in the last 12 months, on even one occasion, on Council business? And how many Councillors have visited Sandwell Valley in the last 12 months, on even one occasion, for purely leisure purposes?
I don't think I would be at all surprised at the answers.
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