A new forest or money for the NHS?

Don't know where you live Grey but you have clearly traveled south at some point and met them .

I worked with a German colleague who had previously lived and worked in Birmingham, she wanted to go back, just didn't like the attitude of Londoners.

We don’t need wolves to terrify travellers from the South - they think we all still wear woad, throw spears and hang people up by their feet anyway .

That would be fun. Imagine how terrified travellers from the deep south would be!

Maybe wolves will be introduced into them.

Greyduster Perhaps the location is intended as an extension and joining-up of the existing woodland to allow thge wildlife and plants, fungi etc to expand into it? There may even be plans to further extend into corridors in and around the places you are thinking of? Or it might be a "This'll appease those dratted northerners" move, of course.

Nonnie, I can’t comment on the merits or demerits of Birmingham because I have never been there, but in terms of green space, according to a satellite survey carried out last year, it is fourth, behind Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bristol.

Some years ago, when we lived near Warwick a friend called to ask me what Newcastle was like because her husband had been offered a job there. She really thought they were both 'north' near each other!

Grey I read that Birmingham is a very green city but everyone I knew when I lived near London thought it was a nasty filthy place. They did think it would be better to put the new Wembley there as it was more accessible but flatly refused to believe it had more miles of canal than Venice or that Symphony Hall had better acoustics that Roayl Albert Hall!

My next door neighbour said they had been "up north" to a wedding. I asked where up north and she said "Luton". I had a quiet chuckle to myself.

Nonnie Bristol to The Wash is the north/south dividing line, apparently, according to folks when I moved down south.

Surely it would make more sense to plant a forest in areas where there are fewer green spaces and areas of open country. Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Leeds are among the top ten greenest cities in the UK and few of the northern cities lack “green lungs” of some description within or outside their boundaries that are within reach of the population. I remember my Welsh brother in law visiting us for the first time and commenting, “I didn’t expect there to be so many trees here!” Perhaps the powers that be think the same and that we in the North need introducing to trees !

Yes Elegran, my feelings exactly.

So no point complaining about the trees, better to be pleased about them but also keep reminding them about the NHS.

There is sufficient money for both.

The government is making the choices.

Surely the planting of trees, preferably deciduous, is good for the environment?

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/about-us/how-we-are-run/how-we-are-funded/
You can subscribe regularly, buy trees - or just buy a Lottery ticket! Everything helps.

However the proposed ‘Northern Forest’ is greenwash, obscuring the government’s destruction of older trees: HS2 will destroy or damage 98 ancient woodlands, while Sherwood Forest is explored for fracking shale gas. With their uncontaminated soils and 400-year-old trees supporting thousands of species, ancient woods are irreplaceable, but it’s still deemed too expensive to, say, bore an HS2 tunnel under the bluebells of South Cubbington wood in Warwickshire.
Actually I was just going to ask that, and I see it has been answered OldMeg, thanks.
So hogwash really.

No HS2 and more trees anyway, please.

Has the north south divide moved? I thought it was Watford, anything north of there was always treated as 'The North' when I lived in the London area!

Recently read a long amusing piece on Facebook about Birmingham area not being 'North' for the sake of those in the south who didn't know.

I think the point of linking up existing woods is to provide corridors for the wildlife to move from one area to another, to keep the gene pool mixing well and genetic health good and maintain the biodiversity that the environment needs.

treesforlife.org.uk/forest/human-impacts/habitat-fragmentation/

That's ours gd. As a family, we is it a lot. DH is walking it (and doing a blog for the dgc), there is a great visitor centre and we use it for general walks.

I agree Elegran in fact the more trees planted the merrier.
These projects are all long term thinking and will be wonderful woods and forests for future generations to use, and yes, the lungs of the planet.
It’s a good idea, but for some, nothing this Government can do is right ( even when it clearly is) and no doubt would complain if the South was ‘getting all the trees’ ? and are still complaining even when the North is getting them!
I have my doubts about HS2 as well, but no doubt the late Victorians were saying the same thing about the railways back then.We have to have progress.

We need forests , wildlife needs forests , trees are healing

gilly, I think most of that forest will be coming from our furniture installation. A large national company who advertises in the glossy magazines, nothing to do with poshness, they were the only ones that offered the understated design that we wanted.

Forests are the lungs of the world, and everywhere they are being cut down and not replaced. They absorb Co2 and excrete oxygen. The amenity aspect is a bonus to their original more basic value, they are not just a pleasant extra. They work alongside the NHS, not in opposition to it, and the cost of this is a fraction of the cost of the NHS. It doesn't have to be either/or. We need both.

"The trees can eventually grow back, but at the rate we’re cutting them down, they can’t grow fast enough. Tropical deforestation is the 2nd biggest contributor to climate change." www.theworldcounts.com/stories/deforestation-facts-and-statistics

It takes tens of years for newly planted hardwood trees to grow enough to even look like a wood, let alone make much contribution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and adding oxygen. Any planting NOW is good news for our grandchildren and the future.

I fear that will be the case Greyduster, conifers as far as the eye can see whilst ancient woodlands are destroyed in the name of profit progress.

I share your pain OldMeg about woodlands destroyed for HS2. There is a particularly beautiful and tranquil stretch of ancient woodland just to the north of Lichfield that I have been fortunate to know over the last two years, which will no longer exist when the track eventually goes through. What price the rabbits, foxes, deer and other wildlife that call
it home. And what price we humans losing yet more of our natural habitat just so we can race around ever faster and finally disappear up our own rear ends.