A new forest or money for the NHS?

We can have both. Or let me reword that, as the 6th (?) largest economy in the world we ought to be able to have both.

or Trident or HS2 or any of the Tory vanity projects that billions are being wasted on ..but its not the tory way ...is it?

I think both are important and, as paddyann said, HS2 should be abandoned and the money used for more constructive projects. Trident too, in my opinion, but I realise that a number of people feel differently.

I wonder how many people really think that HS2, which by all accounts will save a fairly insignificant amount of journey time from London to the Midlands and onwards, is worth the extraordinary environmental, social and economic cost.

I agree with everything you and paddyann say, Eloethan.
I notice the Northern Forest is going to go from Hull to Liverpool; to divide North from South even more?

I thought that one of the woods I go to was part of the Great Northern Forest, a woodland trust wood.

Only you would think of that DJ! I just thought it was pretty much the shortest route when it would make much more sense to bring it down to join to Thetford Forest! So now the north will have a Northern Forest AND and Great Northern Forest and you get motorways and statues and things. Even decent leisure centres with swimming pools!

Seriously, I think the money should go to the NHS for now and suspect this is just another announcement on a wish list which may or probably may not happen.

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.

This governments sudden claim to be interested in the environment, eg their ‘strategy’ on plastic waste, is hogwash too.

Flipping heck, dj! I understand it is actually a series of woods not a belt of trees and brambles designed to keep pesky northerns out of the way.

There is a newly established forest near us which is a huge benefit to lots of people in terms of employment and enjoyment.

There have been studies that prove 'nature' in all its forms is beneficial for lots of health problems.

I think it is to be funded by the Woodland Trust but I have no idea where their money comes from - no doubt someone will tell me - probably in no uncertain terms.

I must admit your posts made me smile DJ & Kitty .

They conjured up a sort of modern Robin Hood situation where travellers from the south are held up and asked to hand over money to fund the ‘Northern Powerhouse’.

Like a green Hadrian's Wall, you mean, OldMeg?

The Woodland Trust gets money from people like you and me, Kitty. You can be a mamber, or just buy trees to commemorate certain events.
However, this is a bit more than that, and requires tax money.
I agree it should go to the NHS instead. However, it's only about half a million pounds. NHS needs a lot more than that.

www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2018/01/new-northern-forest/

Sorry but this is amusing, recently there was talk here about an English parliament bu those in the North seem to have a big problem with the South , two English parliaments ?

If you want something else to make you smile, there's a petition on change.org to stop people putting bird spikes in trees!

Nfk, part of the A1 hasn't yet been dualled, let alone a motorway. North of Alnwick it's like a country road, just like in Norfolk.
I remember when we moved down to Norfolk, in the seventies, asking a man where the place was we were looking for. He told us that the road widened, then narrowed again and it was just after that. We assumed he meant a dual carriageway, but he literally meant the road widened. Couldn't tell because it was December, in the dark, no lights.

When we had new furniture fitted in our bedroom and study, the company sent us a certificate to say that they had donated a percentage of the cost which had purchased trees for the Woodland trust. I rather liked the idea that they had replaced the trees.

And lethally dangerous too Durhamjen. Can you imagine this in any other part of the country? The A1 connecting England to Scotland a single track road? It has claimed many lives over the years with highly dangerous cross over points, farm traffic etc. But still it’s in the North so it doesn’t matter.

Surely Forests are about health. There is more and more evidence of the good effects that contact with and use of green spaces has on both the mental and physical health of those that experience them regularly. So investing in a new forest is as good for the nations health as investing in the NHS

That must’ve been posh furniture Harrigran you definitely don’t get that with a Billy bookcase from Ikea.

I like the idea though.

I’m all for woodlands, wherever they are going to be, but I don’t really “get” these forest projects. It sounds like the Northern Forest is going to be something like the National Forest which is a swathe of newly planted woodland that cuts across middle England, linking up various so called community forests as it goes, from North Leicestershire to South Derbyshire and out to South East Staffordshire. You see signs for it that must confuse the hell out of visitors to the country travelling up and down the M1 faced with a relatively treeless landscape, who wonder where it is. Is your newly established forest part of that, kitty? Likewise the South Yorkshire Forest, for which there is a large sign at the top of my road. There are a few relatively small areas of “greening” of former mining sites and establishment of reed beds to improve ground water quality, and two nice country parks that predate the project, but I don’t know how much of this actually constitutes a forest in the strictest sense of the word. I read somewhere that one of the reasons for planting the Northern Forest is, in the long term, to provide biomass for energy use, in which case I hope that large swathes of it are not going to be fast growing conifers that don’t enhance the landscape.

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.

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.

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.

We need forests , wildlife needs forests , trees are healing

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.

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 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/