Ash veterans of middle Sussex Visit them before they die

Ash veterans of middle Sussex

Visit them before they die

Dave Bangs, October 28th 2012 dave.bangs@virgin.net Tel: 01273 620 815


Don’t let anyone tell you that Ash is a second rate tree.

To be sure, it cannot make the size of ancient Oaks, Sweet Chestnut or Beech, but it can make magnificent giants of three spans and more trunk girth (a span being the stretch of my open arms...six feet). It can make the coppice stool holes that Marsh Tits love to nest in, and the sweetness of its trunks can bear a cloak of lichen in many colours and the greatest profusion.

It is as outgrown coppice and hedgerow stools that many of its most characterful trees now manifest themselves, and a quarter of all the old Ash trees we’ve recorded in the middle Sussex Weald (between the Adur and the Ouse) are coppice stools.

Yesterday we walked along the upper greensand scarp north of West Burton and Bignor Park, partly along the green lane past the slivers of woodland marked as Grevatt Wood on the map, and partly through the scarp slope woodland north of Bignor Roman Villa.

What extraordinary Ash giants we saw !!  Shortly after leaving the lane north of West Burton to walk the scarp top green lane we saw a huge Ash maiden of about three spans. Then, at top of the Brackeny slope, SU 998 147, due south of the visible, raised camber of Stane Street crossing the marshy ground below, we saw a magnificent pollard Ash, with great sprawling limbs and a coat of hoary lichen (much Parmelia perlata and others of the genus; many Pertusarias and grey crusts). It was over three spans in girth. Just westwards, at the point where Stane Street breasts the scarp top, there is another three span Ash, with a ‘geocache’ in a trunk rot hole.

On the scarp slope just west of the Bury - Bignor parish boundary there is another open wood, SU 991 150, with many fine Ash maidens – and a three span Oak. We counted four Ash giants, one over three span, and three over two span girth. There may be more.

That part of our walk was only about two thirds of a mile, yet we had found seven Ash veterans in that time, as well as abundant younger Ash and gnarled old hedgerow stools long outgrown their last plashing.

This is Ash country...as is the rest of the Upper Greensand country and the Downs...and as is the clay land of the Low Weald and the Wadhurst Clay outcroppings of the High Weald.

If we lose Ash in these landscapes we lose their clothing and character.

On the greensand bench north of West Chiltington and Thakeham there are some fine veterans, like the nearly-three-span Ash at the top of the scarp east of Woodshill Farm, below the footpath, TQ 097 196, and the huge coppice hedgerow stools of the tiny lanes, valleys and holloways.

On the shrunken greensand bench east of Wiston, at the ghost farm at Buddington, TQ 162 122, on the top of the bank, there is a truly gigantic Ash veteran of 3.5 span girth, by my crude measuring.

On the Brighton Downs I love the whopping great Ash and its daughter at the northern end of the Crooked Moon Hedge, TQ 233 072, north of Holmbush. In the mother tree a swarm of Honey Bees was emerging from a rot hole when I first visited. There is another huge Ash veteran in the scarp bottom rew east of Ditchling Beacon, and north of Western Brow, TQ340 130...and when we first found it there was a colony of Honey Bees living in its bole, too.

At Ashcombe Bottom, south of Blackcap, on the site of the ancient Bocholt, where the Battle of Lewes was fought, there is a grove of several tall Ash trees which stand together on the parish boundary in the upper valley, TQ 371 121. They are not separate trees, but linked in a part circle by their roots...They are the outgrowths of a truly gigantic old coppice stool that must have marked this boundary for centuries. A Blackbird was quietly sitting her eggs in her bough cleft nest the last time I looked.

In the middle Sussex Weald between the Adur and the Ouse we have counted 36 veteran Ashes, but we have omitted many from our count because the sheer numbers of giant hedge and coppice stools make accurate recording difficult.

They include the huge old coppice stool of 12 big poles east of Lower Ryelands Bridge, on the bank of the Ouse, north of Lindfield, TQ 342 272...and the three span pollard Ash in a hedgerow east of Brantridge, TQ 292 301, in Balcombe parish...and the gnarled and crumbling old Ash pollard above the gill head, south east of Great Thorndean Farm, TQ 273 255.

They include the Rackhamesque three span Ash  just east of Christ’s Hospital station, TQ 148 291...and the four old Ashes - all of two spans and more - in and around High Wood, in the bend of the Arun’s upper waters, south of Broadbridge Heath...and the 2.5 span Ash just between Parthings and the railway line on the south west edge of Horsham, TQ 157 297.

A pox on all Condem/Libcon ministers and their corporate mates...and a pox on greedy nurseries and garden centres and their consumerist profiteering...at the expense of nature and of their grossly underpaid staff.

May they rot...as these Methuselahs...these great survivors...may be doomed by their neglect to rot...

Video of Saturday's march

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Pictures from today's march

......video to follow




















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No justice sell-off!

  

Last Monday members of PCS working for courts in Brighton demonstrated against the threatened privatisation of much of the justice system. This could see companies like G4S getting their hands on enforcement of fines and fixed penalties.

Make sure crime doesn't pay for big business!

More at www.pcs.org.uk/justicenotforsale

Some types of squatting okay by hypocrite Weatherly

Hove Tory MP Mike Weatherley likes to go on about squatters.  He is quite the crusader when it comes to homeless people squatting empty unused property.

Strangely though he has a somewhat different attitude to organisations which squat the land of other people and dispossess those people of the means to make a living. 

Witness his strange reaction to the regular protests taking place outside the recently-opened EcoStream store in Western Road. 

He's even got the Israeli Embassy involved. He seems less keen on defending his constituents' right to protest. 

Report below from Tony Greenstein

Zion­ists try­ing to avoid anoth­er Ahava-like humil­i­a­tion

The stall did a roar­ing trade

 

One of the Bedouin slat­ed for removal from the land

Today, was the begin­ning of a large pick­et and stall out­side the Israeli shop Sodastream.  A num­ber of our oppo­nents, includ­ing two mad Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ists, were on hand, but the vast major­i­ty of Brighton peo­ple pass­ing by gave us their sup­port and we ran out in 2 hours of over 500 leaflets.  There are a num­ber of pic­tures of our pick­et and also a video, whose qual­i­ty leaves a lot to be desired but gives a flavour of the exchanges.  

So suc­cess­ful though was our first out­ing that we’ve decid­ed that instead of mount­ing pick­ets every 2 weeks, as hap­pened at Ahava, we are going to do week­ly pick­ets of this Apartheid shop. 

Its brand­ing in Green Brighton is interesting.  It calls itself ‘Eco’ stream – part of an attempt to green­wash its activ­i­ties just as the Jew­ish Nation­al Fund calls itself an eco-friendly organ­i­sa­tion, build­ing all those forests and parks, even if they are on top of razed Arab vil­lages whose inhab­i­tants have been expelled from the West Bank!  But there is noth­ing eco friend­ly about Ecostream’s base and activ­i­ties. 

As the infor­ma­tion below shows, Sodas­tream is based in the Mishor Adu­mim indus­tri­al zone, which is part of the grow­ing num­ber of Jew­ish only set­tle­ments on the out­skirts of Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adu­mim. 

Amongst our oppo­nents was a Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ist who claimed to live near­by, but was dis­turbed by our ‘offen­sive’ message.  His neig­bours described him as a 'w*****' and a mad Black female fun­da­men­tal­ist who seems to think Apartheid was and is ok, and 2 or 3 Zion­ists who repeat­ed the same hoary lines.  One of them at one point asked me ‘what about the 6 mil­lion’!  As if the dead at the hands of the Nazis jus­ti­fy fur­ther racism, as I asked what was the log­i­cal con­nec­tion. 

This is Sodas­tream’s first UK out­let and it is rumoured they have a 6 month lease.  It is incum­bent upon us to ensure that it is not renewed and Sodas­tream get the mes­sage that stolen goods from stolen land are not wel­come here.

Tony Green­stein 

Israeli apartheid prof­i­teer Sodas­tream opens new store in UK

August 22, 2012, Cor­po­rate Watch 

Sodas­tream, a car­bon­at­ed bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­er, is based in the Mishor Adu­mim set­tle­ment indus­tri­al zone. Mishor Adu­mim is an indus­tri­al area  attached to the res­i­den­tial set­tle­ment of Ma’ale Adu­mim, East of  Jerusalem in the Israeli occu­pied West Bank. Israeli com­pa­ny Soda Club, which owns the Sodas­tream brand­name, has  opened a new store called Ecostream on West­ern Road in Brighton, UK.

How­ev­er, Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in the vil­lages around Mishor Adu­mim are pre­vent­ed from build­ing any per­ma­nent struc­ture under Israeli mil­i­tary  orders. Their tents and huts, and even a pri­ma­ry school at Khan-al-Ahmar, are sub­ject to demo­li­tion by the army 

The Israeli army plans to forcibly evict and trans­fer 20 Pales­tin­ian com­mu­ni­ties, some 2,300 peo­ple, from their homes in the area of the Ma’ale Adu­mim set­tle­ment bloc in the occu­pied West Bank. The plan aims to relo­cate the com­mu­ni­ties, a major­i­ty of which are Jahalin Bedouin, to a site about 300m away from the Jerusalem munic­i­pal garbage dump.  Israeli author­i­ties have not con­sult­ed with the com­mu­ni­ties and the res­i­dents oppose the move. Mil­i­tary offi­cials have said that the army will begin imple­ment­ing the plan in early 2012.  If car­ried out, this forced trans­fer would vio­late Israel’s oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tion­al law and uproot some of the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties in the West Bank. 

These build­ing restric­tions pre­vent the estab­lish­ment of any Pales­tin­ian busi­ness­es, mean­ing that local Pales­tini­ans are forced to work in the set­tle­ments. Pales­tin­ian agri­cul­ture is lim­it­ed by the set­tle­ments monop­oly on land and the restric­tions placed on the graz­ing of cat­tle, often lead­ing to the seizure of cat­tle by the army. 

Pales­tini­ans work­ing for Sodas­tream in Mishor Adu­mim are work­ing in the con­text of the occu­pa­tion. In Jan­u­ary 2012 activists from Stop Sodas­tream Italy made the fol­low­ing state­ment in response to claims by the com­pa­ny that its work­ers were well treat­ed: “the fact remains that, as sub­jects of an occu­pa­tion regime, these work­ers do not enjoy civil rights (includ­ing the right of work­ers to orga­nize) and are under con­stant threat of hav­ing their per­mits to work in the set­tle­ment revoked by the com­pa­ny at any moment.” 

“Pales­tin­ian work­ers often have no choice but to work in the set­tle­ments, with high unem­ploy­ment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occu­pa­tion. The 2011 Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Trade and Devel­op­ment report explic­it­ly links the decline in Pales­tin­ian agri­cul­tur­al and indus­tri­al sec­tors and the dire human­i­tar­i­an con­di­tions with Israeli gov­ern­ment poli­cies, in par­tic­u­lar the con­fis­ca­tion of land and nat­ur­al resources, restric­tions on move­ment of peo­ple and goods, and iso­la­tion from inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Only a colo­nial mind­set could claim to pro­vide jobs to the very same peo­ple whose land and free­dom have been stolen.” 

Bedouin tent slat­ed for removal

The Pales­tin­ian call for boy­cott, divest­ment and sanc­tions urges a boy­cott of all Israeli com­pa­nies until Israel com­plies with inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law, rec­og­nizes the fun­da­men­tal rights of the Arab-Palestinian cit­i­zens of Israel to full equal­i­ty, the rights of return of refugees and ends the siege of Gaza and the occu­pa­tion of all lands occu­pied in 1967. 

Sodas­tream prod­ucts are sold in the UK at Robert Dyas, John Lewis, Argos, Comet, Lake­land and some Sains­bury and Asda stores.

For more infor­ma­tion on Soda Club see here, pages 96-102. 

Orig­i­nal link:

Get on board the train for a future that works!

 

The war of Mick Jagger's bus pass

One of the more risible announcements to come out of Lib Dem Conference was the revival of the notion that there are millions of "wealthy" people out there who should not be receiving benefits, that there are somehow shedloads of savings to made if we just means-tested universal benefits, particular those which go to pensioners.

Invariably , the example of some rich famous person will be wheeled out, supposedly to justify this position.  Sometimes it might be Mick Jagger, or maybe Alan Sugar - super-rich older people who theoretically could get certain benefits like bus passes and winter fuel payments - you can just see Mick queuing up at the town hall for a bus pass can't you?

In reality, significant savings are only possible if these cuts are carried well down the income scale. So all Nick Clegg has achieved is to worry thousands of low-income pensioners that they are about to lose benefits which help to make life reasonably civilised.

The other point which is always overlooked is the cost of actually means-testing benefits - a whole bureaucracy would need to be set up to administer it.   These benefits operate efficiently and simply - they are cheap to administer.   If we want rich people to pay their way, making sure they pay their proper share of tax would be a more appropriate start - yet the Lib Dems have voted to give a massive tax cut to the richest.  And of course we all know which group gets the biggest non means tested subsidy for transport and household expenses......don't we?