the village idiot

In a woodland context I plan for at least 10% of the large coppiced Ash not making it. There is also the looming prospect of Chalara to consider. It looks likely that this will eventually kill or seriously hamper the Ash whatever course you take. With this in mind you might as well coppice it if the job requires it.

I see what you mean Mr Lee, the title is a touch ambiguous. Presumably you are more of a long tailed tit man? I did struggle a bit to find an appropriate title. Originally it was called 'Broody cousins with Great Tits get hot and steamy amongst the trees' but I decided this was far too long.

How do people find the Mowi cranes? Is the different geometry a plus or a minus?

I am not really very well qualified to answer you properly Big J. I rarely watch the telly so haven't seen the debates or the news coverage and I don't read newspapers. The consequence being that my political thoughts are almost certainly a bit dated. You are right in calling me an idealist. I think this probably comes from spending nearly all my time in the woods. The almost inevitable effect of this is to lessen your reliance on income and push the protection of the environment/planet to the top of the priority list. In my view it is so important that all other political considerations are secondary, hence my support for the only party to genuinely take the issue seriously. My instincts tell me that your description of life under a Green government may be a little exaggerated. I have no doubt that earning a large income would become more difficult under the Greens. Life would certainly become a bit harder, but my feeling is that if we were to slow down, stop scrabbling for eternal growth and live more sustainably we would become truly better off. Right, now that I have effectively discredited myself from providing current and valid input to this debate, I had better go and read up so I can feel qualified to continue posting:thumbup:

I've gone off blue tit. After you've tried nightingale there's no going back!

next !!!

Good idea! I am in the middle of an ancient woodland though so there should be nesting sites a plenty? There seems to be something about the kiln that he can't resist.

Got an on-going battle with a very persistent blue tit at the moment. It has decided that come what may it will build it's nest in Puffing Billy! Every time I block up it's nest hole it goes off in a birdy huff for a bit and then finds a new hole elsewhere on the kiln and starts stuffing it with moss and feathers. I really like having the little fella around, but the problem is that when Billy is running he heats up to 500 degrees C! Anyone got any ideas about how I can put him off? (I presume it's the males that build the nest)? Very ropey picture attached

You most certainly can eat a tree. It will also produce the oxygen you need to breath, and provide the materials to give you shelter. Of course money (also made from trees) is an important factor in peoples lives, it's just a shame when it becomes the most important factor.

Excuse my ignorance, but what the heck is 'the race industry'?

We haven't really got time to carry on leaving people to succeed in business. The people in business will always want inconvinient things to be dealt with further down the line so they can carry on amassing wealth. It is great that you operate on the principle of no harm, but unfortunately a great many people don't give a monkeys what harm they are doing and left unchecked will only get worse. Without a timely shift in peoples priorities, and an enforced regime to curb greed the future looks rather bleak.

:lol:

I would have thought the dilithium crystals were a better bet.

I'm pretty staggered that in a forum of people who love trees, and by extension the natural world, the issue people seem to get most emotive about is which government will most affect their bank balances.

Don't be daft, anyone can see that alien craft is far too sophisticated to be a Klingon vessel!

Don't think so, looks like an industry standard 2 inch EP309 mono adhesion selotape roll to me. I'm not familiar with that dispenser though... Could have been photoshopped.

Maybe we ought to replace religious education with Mindfulness lessons? To paraphrase the Dalai Lama: If every eight year old was taught to meditate we would eradicate world violence within a generation.

They obviously underestimated the awesome anti-invasion capabilities of our office stationary before they embarked on their 500 light year voyage of evil intent.

Couldn't agree more about banishing religion from the state, unfortunately no political party is offering this as a vision so we can't vote it in. A feasible first step might be to involve ourselves less in religiously motivated conflict in other parts of the world?

I think we may have to agree to disagree on this one:001_smile: We are probably more similar than we think! You vote UKIP, I vote Greens. Neither of us stands a snowflakes chance in Hell of being represented:thumbup:

My point is that they are not plotting to kill us because they are immigrants. The people leaving to join IS are British born and bred, as were the London bombers. Their misplaced gripe is idealistic not geographic. If there were no fundamentalist islamists in the country they would just change their tactics and fly planes into us instead. The best way (in my view) to protect yourself and your family would be to lobby for less military intervention in conflict areas. Creating a closed and paranoid country will not help matters.

Voting UKIP will not protect you and your family from terrorism. If anything it is likely to exacerbate the problem. It is religious extremists that wish to hurt us, not immigrants. Warped religious idealism is a separate issue to immigration and there is no easy solution. Closing our borders to people of alternate religions or countries would be akin to rejecting entry to all Norwegians in the fear that they are all Neo Nazis intent on the massacre of children on camping trips.

Please do not vote without first doing some research and independent thinking about the issues concerning you. There is some worryingly wrong thinking out there which is not only ignorant and lazy but also dangerous.

That is true, but not relevant to the point I was trying to make which is that you can't credibly suggest that racism is an unfounded term used against us by immigrants whilst at the same time referring to those immigrants as simply 'Asians' or 'Pakistanis etc'. For fear of derailing the thread I shall leave it at that.

Good plan. They do seem to get disturbingly excited over hazel beanpoles:001_huh: And quite right too!