From the BBC.  The image was taken by NASA’s Terra satellite showing Britain in the clutches of a cold snap.

Last night proved to be the coldest night of the winter so far, according to the BBC, with temperatures reaching -22°C (-8°F) in one village in Sutherland, in the Highlands.  Supplies of road grit are running low in some areas, with councils restricting gritting to major roads only.

‘Icy River Nevis’ taken by HighlandSC

Wildlife is particularly hard hit by the weather.

Photograph of a goldfinch taken by Simball

This from the BBC -

[Sites like power stations] are likely to be sought out by water birds that normally forage for fish when their usual habitats of freshwater rivers and lakes become frozen over.

“Kingfishers, particularly, are having a tough time finding food at the moment,” says Grahame Madge of the UK-based Royal Society of the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

“Their strategy in weather likes this tends to be to move a short distance to the warmer waters near power stations or in city centres. It’s quite possible we will see higher numbers of kingfishers in London and other metropolitan centres”.

[...] Mr Madge says such cold temperatures force many birds to make a tough choice at this time of year – whether to stay put and see out the worst of the weather or use their last energy reserves to fly to warmer climes.

[...] But with freezing temperatures affecting much of Britain and northern Europe, those who do fly south hoping to find some ice-free conditions could be out of luck, he says.

“Birds will generally make short-distance movements when their energy levels are low,” he says.

“But those birds that fly even as far as southern Ireland at the moment aren’t going to find what they are looking for. They may have to go further into southern Europe.”

The RSPB has also noticed that Britain this year has become a refuge for higher numbers of bitterns, owls and other birds flying in from Scandinavia and northern Europe, hoping to find warmer temperatures.

But it is not just birds that are feeling the effects of the cold weather.

[...] At London Zoo [...]  the animals are enjoying some well thought-out protection from their keepers.

Those that need it have heaters, increased levels of food and – if you are a kinkajou (a member of the racoon family) – a sleeping bag.

The cold weather has created some unlikely bedfellows, senior keeper Jim Mackie explains.

The zoo’s two Aardvarks, who arrived this year, like to snuggle up together under the heater. They share the meerkats’ enclosure, and around five meerkats have worked out that by sleeping on top of the Aardvarks they can get even closer to the heat, Mr Mackie explained.

“We’d noticed quite a lot of interaction between the two species in the summer, but we didn’t see anything like this,” he said.

“It’s been quite an exciting sight to see. We don’t think there would be this much interaction between the two in the wild.”

While the zoo’s tropical animals have preferred to stay close to the heaters in recent days, some of the inhabitants have been enjoying the snow – particularly the young ones who have never seen it before.

“The coati [another member of the racoon family] had a brilliant time, charging around in the snow and trying to find the food we’d buried,” Mr Mackie said.

“The ferrets have also had a great time digging through the snow. But they soon get tired of it, once they get cold.”

One animal that is not getting tired of the snow is Mercedes, the new polar bear at Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park, where temperatures have been as low as minus 20C.

“A lot of the wildlife here are huddling together right now and cutting down on their activity to stop burning energy,” explained the park’s Douglas Richardson.

“It’s quite the opposite with Mercedes. Right now, she’s spinning round on the pond and generally having a great time.”

Photo of the comedian Norman Maclean taken from The Urban Clansman, the blog of the Galgael Trust

From the Guardian -

Its freshly oiled pine hull is as fragrant as a wet winter woodland. Modelled on a thousand-year-old prototype, this hulking birlinn – a Gaelic longboat – will soon be ready to sail out along the Clyde and up the west coast in homage to the time when water was Scotland’s main thoroughfare. It is taking form in an old iron foundry in Glasgow’s Govan, home to a uniquely imaginative community project called the GalGael Trust.

Here, local volunteers teach carpentry, saw-milling and metalwork, as well as boat-building and sailing – the skills so valued in the once thriving shipyards that secured for this area its reputation as the workshop of the empire. It was the inexorable decline in demand for such skills that gifted Govan the reality it contends with today: paralysing levels of unemployment, chronic alcohol and drug addiction, and habitual violence on the streets. The fractured life stories of the men who come here to learn bear witness to all this.

The GalGael philosophy addresses what many an academic study has theorised: that deprivation has psychic as well as economic consequences; that social exclusion is ameliorated as much by a sense of place and heritage as it is by targeted benefits and instrumental interventions; and that hope flourishes in the most unlikely soil. Crucially, given Govan’s history, it recognises that the future is informed by the past.

Perched on a high-backed chair as expertly rendered as anything you’d find in Heal’s, Jinksy tells of 10 lost years sitting in the house, “becoming a vegetable”, after he was laid off as a council roadsweeper. Then a pal told him about the GalGael. “I’d lost trust in people, but there’s a family feeling here. I’ve always been an outside person and this brings you back to the land. It gives you an idea of place.” Over the years, the GalGael has helped hundreds like him to regain confidence in their working abilities, relationships and community.

Gehan, who set up the trust in the mid-90s with her late partner, explains how the act of building and sailing a boat in the same way that one’s ancestors did offers an immediate connectedness that is different from academically acquired history. The fact is that many city-dwelling Scots are only three or four generations removed from rural living, and connection to the land looms large in the national psyche. Many descendants of the half-million Highlanders driven off their crofts to make way for sheep-farming now live in poverty in Glasgow. While the Scottish land reform movement has scored recent successes with community buyouts like those on the isles of Eigg and Gigha, the GalGael is restoring an area of derelict farmland in Argyll.

It is thus entirely appropriate that some of the men working here have recently enjoyed a foray into acting, as extras in a television series on Scottish history. The History of Scotland, which concluded last Sunday on BBC Scotland, proved controversial, with many senior academics lamenting its broad strokes and glaring omissions. This reaction was perhaps inevitable, given the startling lack of popular treatment of Scottish history, as well as the legacy of poor and piecemeal teaching of the national heritage in schools. For many Scots, knowledge of their history begins and ends with William Wallace – and Mel Gibson’sBraveheart version of the man at that.

The 10-part series, fronted by the archaeologist Neil Oliver, was a watchable introduction, and avoided the usual shortbread-and-saltires mythologising, even tackling the country’s role in the slave trade. But it remains to be seen if this will serve to kick-start public examination of Scotland’s political, social and cultural past, or be seen as the history box ticked for another decade. It’s worth noting that on the same network Andrew Marr has been offering an examination of just the first few decades of British 20th-century history with the same amount of airtime that Oliver had.

Homecoming, a year-long festival celebrating the Scottish diaspora that concluded on St Andrew’s Day, prompted further examination of the national self-image with the news that the centrepiece Clan Gatheringevent in Edinburgh, which attracted claymore obsessives from across the globe, had made a £600,000 loss. Those clan chiefs, so beloved of our ancestry-minded American and Canadian cousins, continue to draw resentment over their collusion in the Highland clearances.

An organisation like the GalGael is local by intention, a bespoke vision that is constantly retuned and refreshed by its participants, rather than a one-size-fits-all template imposed from Holyrood or a charitable behemoth in London. To recognise its worth is not to submit to David Cameron’s big society rhetoric, but to see how small-scale originals like this one can only succeed alongside centrally governed support structures.

If it can teach us something nationally it is that, in understanding our past, we must face the faultlines of Highland or lowland, Catholic or Protestant, nationalist or unionist that have come to define the nation, though not always the people within it. And particularly at a moment when independence is once again top of the political agenda.

Moreover, if a sense of history is about a grasp of narrative and one’s place in it, this can only assist us in imagining the future. Last year theGlasgow 2020 project, funded by Demos, found that inhabitants of some of the most deprived areas continued to tell stories of optimism for the future of their families, friends and neighbourhoods. The true legacy of history can be hope.

From YouTube -

From the Galgael website -

Folk without an enriched sense of their culture are like trees with shallow roots… To our minds, this analogy describes the loss of identity and sense of meaningless that creates vulnerability to the vagaries of the worst excesses of modern life. A situation steadily worsened by the consistent undermining of the bonds of community.

Agencies picking up the pieces and the tab for tackling the symptoms of this rootlessness are essential. But beyond this – what is called for is nothing less than to reconvene a sense of ‘peoplehood’; deep roots for an identity that builds resilience, embodies shared values, and in the same breath, transcends narrow forms of nationalism.

The very name GalGael is our way of re-rooting these notions of identity in nourishing ground and recognises that there is both a bit of the stranger and a bit of the native in us all. In history, Gal Gaidheal were a 9thC people; the Gal – the ‘strange or foreign’ Norse, embraced by the Gael – the ‘heartland people’.

As a modern day people, GalGael folk have been re-visioning inclusive forms of community that build on our interdependence rather than slip into dependency culture, and that explore our collective responsibilities, not just our rights. From this stand point, we are reweaving the fabric of our families and communities, experimenting with notions of clanship, extended family and kinship.

‘by the people, for the people’ by kayodek

From the BBC -

The anger in the air is palpable. The ordinary people hold the political class in contempt.

The government is failing, as war and economic catastrophe are dealt with in increasingly unconvincing fashion by second-rate public servants. There is, for the first time in a generation, a sense of revolution brewing.

This is not today’s Britain. It is England in 1381, the year that witnessed one of the greatest popular risings in our history: the Peasants’ Revolt.

Between May and November that year, England was seized by spasms of popular rebellion, provoked by poll taxes and a disastrous war, and underpinned by the common belief that the government was a pack of scoundrels.

Towns and villages from Somerset to Scarborough rose against their rulers, beating and sometimes killing MPs, lawyers, landowners and politicians, tearing down their homes and vandalising their land.

Bloody revenge

At the heart of the rising was a march on London on Corpus Christi weekend (Thursday 13 to Saturday 15 June).

Traditionally this was a time of mystery plays and festive processions. In 1381, the main procession consisted of villagers from the Thames estuary marching along the pilgrim road between Canterbury and London, burning houses and taking political prisoners as they protested against their venal, incompetent masters.

The peasant’s revolt ransacked London before it was put down

When the protestors, led by their general Wat Tyler and the maverick preacher John Ball, reached London, they found they had significant common cause with the townsmen.

The London populace bore long-held grudges towards their own ruling elites – which included the oligarchic, super-rich merchant traders in the City as well as the hapless courtiers who governed in the name of 14-year old King Richard.

Common fury with the state of lordship bound rural and urban rebels in a compact to clean up government.

So the town mice opened their gates to the country mice, and together they all set about the cats.

At first there were organised protests, attacks on specific, symbolic landmarks: the Savoy Palace, home of the powerful and unpopular duke of Lancaster, was burned to the ground; the Temple, home of the legal profession, was sacked. Prisons were broken open and the Tower of London, where the government had holed up, was besieged.

Demonstrations became riots. A chopping block was set up at Cheapside, where the street ran sticky with the blood of the condemned.

Kind Richard II was only 14 years old when faced with the rebellion

The Archbishop of Canterbury had his head hacked off on Tower Hill. The Treasurer was murdered, as – in Suffolk – was a Chief Justice.

Some 140 Flemish merchants and their families were butchered on the banks of the Thames, in a shocking xenophobic massacre.

But for the luck of the young king, Richard II, and the fortitude of a few good men around him led by Mayor of London, William Walworth, the City would have been burned to the ground.

Tyler and his mob were eventually defeated at Smithfield, but it took nearly six months to calm the rest of the country.

Political revolt

The summer of discontent left a profound mark on the English political consciousness.

A few lines written, prior to the rebellion, by the Kentish poet John Gower, were suddenly recognised as an important tenet of government.

“There are three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand,” he wrote.

“One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude; for they will not be stopped by either reason or by discipline.”

I have thought many times during the past months that our politicians would benefit from revisiting the events of the Peasants’ Revolt.

In many ways it is a tale of mutual misunderstanding: the ordinary folk thought the worst of their politicians, and politicians saw their people as an economic resource, to be taxed and tormented as the necessities of government demanded.

The Black Death was a major factor in fermenting anti-government feeling

This government, like the government in 1381, has been caught out by a global crisis of unprecedented severity.

In the fourteenth century it was the Black Death, which killed 40% of Europe’s population.

The government’s reaction – to impose labour laws that stifled economic recovery but preserved the social hierarchy, was vastly unpopular, for it prevented ordinary people from improving their lives.

Now, it is the collapse in global credit which has brought a different sort of misery to millions.

No doubt there are many differences between 1381 and 2009. They were medieval, we are modern. And history never repeats itself as exactly as historians sometimes wish.

But if I were an MP today, I would make it my business to learn the course and the lessons of 1381 by heart. Then I would give thanks that there are no longer any chopping blocks at Cheapside.

Dan Jones is the author of Summer of Blood.

On the history of turnpikes, from Old Hampshire Mapped -

The following chronological notes are culled from various sources; do not take them as a definitive list of events.

From Ware Online, about the history of Ware, the town where the first turnpike was built -

Ware was situated on the Old North Road, the main thoroughfare of medieval and Tudor England from London to York and Scotland. In the centuries following the Norman Conquest, the main traffic on this road was military, but in about 1400, the people themselves began to move more freely around England, either for trade or on that medieval equivalent Of tourism, the pilgrimage. Ware is mentioned in the most famous account of a pilgrimage, Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, as being the the town from which the cook originated, and Ware was itself on the other main pilgrimage route, to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham in Norfolk. One Tudor writer said that the road through the town was known as ‘Walsingham Way’.

To serve these pilgrims and travellers, virtually every building in Water Row (the south side of the High Street) was an inn at some time during the period from 1400-1700. There were other inns in Land Row and Baldock Street, as well as a few in Amwell End, but it was the inns of Water Row that were ‘great and sumptuous hostelries’, as described by Raphael Holinshed. The most important were the Crown, the White Hart, the Christopher, the Bull, the George and the Saracen’s Head. The inns have long since been converted into shops, but the waggonways, which are a feature of the High Street, remain as reminders of the great inns of the past. No wonder the Tudor poet, William Vallens, described his home town as ‘the guested town of Ware’ What led to the disappearance of the inns was another thriving Ware industry, malting. The passage of waggons bringing barley into the town for malting made the roads almost impassable for much of the winter, with the result that, in 1663, England’s first turnpike was set up at Wadesmill, in an attempt to control the malting traffic. Immediately, travellers began to find alternative routes. Before 1663, Samuel Pepys travelled to Cambridge by way of Ware – often complaining about the state of the road, particularly when he had to get down from the coach and fell into a ditch – but after the erection of the turnpike, he preferred to go via Bishop’s Stortford. Others went by way of Hatfield, on what became known as the Great North Road.

In an attempt to attract what was left of the coaching business, the Ware inkeepers offered new facilities. Riverside gardens were laid out with summerhouses, or gazebos, for the enjoyment of their guests. In addition, any visitor who wished to stay in an inn containing the Great Bed of Ware was treated to an elaborate and bawdy ritual. In their time, a number of Ware inns housed the Great Bed, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is thought to have been made as a sort of advertising gimmick for the Ware inns.

The malting industry dominated the life of the town from the 17th century, and Ware could justly claim to be the premier malting town in England. What gave malting in Ware the edge over other centres was its position between London and the barley-growing counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and also its situation on the River Lea with easy transport by barge to London. One of Ware’s specialities in the early years was brown malt – a malt which had been cured at a high temperature over a wood-burning kiln – and this became the main ingredient of ‘porter’ or ‘entire’, the main drink of London’s labourers during the 18th century. Brown malt earned Ware its superiority and its own quoted price on the London Corn Exchange. There are many former malthouses in the town, now converted to other uses, and the last working malting, Paul’s at Broadmeads, was a thoroughly modern, computerised plant. However, that too closed, in January 1994, thus bringing to an end the 600-year-old malting industry for which Ware was once famous.

From wikipedia, on the history of toll roads internationally -

Toll roads are at least 2700 years old, as tolls had to be paid by travelers using the Susa–Babylon highway under the regime of Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the seventh century BC.^[1] Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the 4th century BC the Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes. Tolls were used in the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century and 15th century.

A 14th century example (though not for a road) would be Castle Loevestein in the Netherlands, which was built at a strategic point where 2 rivers met, and charged tolls to boats sailing the river.

Many modern European roads were originally constructed as toll roads in order to recoup the costs of construction. In 14th century England, some of the most heavily used roads were repaired with money raised from tolls by pavage grants. Turnpike trusts were established in England beginning in 1706, and were ultimately responsible for the maintenance and improvement of most main roads in England and Wales, until they were gradually abolished from the 1870s. Most trusts improved existing roads, but some new ones usually only short stretches of road were also built. Thomas Telford‘s Holyhead road (now the A5 road) is exceptional as a particularly long new road, built in the early 19th century.

National toll-road differences

Main article: Toll roads around the World

Toll roads are found in many countries. The way they are funded and operated may differ from country to country. Some of these toll roads are privately owned and operated. Others are owned by the government. Some of the government-owned toll roads are privately operated.

Some toll roads are managed under such systems as the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) system. Private companies build the roads and are given a limited franchise. Ownership is transferred to the government when the franchise expires. Throughout the world, this type of arrangement is prevalent in Australia, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, and Canada. The (BOT) system is a fairly new concept that is gaining ground in the United States, with Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi^[2], Texas, and Virginia already building and operating toll roads under this scheme. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Tennessee are also considering the BOT methodology for future highway projects.

The more traditional means of managing toll roads in the United States is through semi-autonomous public authorities. New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia manage their toll roads in this manner. While most of the toll roads in California, Delaware, Florida, Texas, and Virginia are operating under the BOT arrangement, a few of the older toll roads in these states are still operated by public authorities.

Payment of the road toll may be made in cash, by credit card, by pre-paid card or by an electronic toll collection system. In some European countries payment is made using stickers which are affixed to the windscreen. Some toll booths are automated. Tolls may vary according to the distance traveled, the building and maintenance costs of the motorway and the type of vehicle.

In France, all toll roads are operated by private companies, and the government takes a part of their profit.

Critics of toll roads

According to Gabriel Roth toll roads have been criticized as being inefficient in three ways:

1. They require vehicles to stop or slow down, manual toll collection wastes time and raises vehicle operating costs.
2. Collection costs can absorb up to one-third of revenues, and revenue theft is considered to be comparatively easy.
3. Where the tolled roads are less congested than the parallel “free” roads, the traffic diversion resulting from the tolls increases congestion on the road system and reduces its usefulness.

From wikipedia, on toll roads in the United Kingdom -

Medieval Pavage

Main article: pavage

In the 14th century, pavage grants, which had previously been made for paving the market place or streets of towns, began also to be used for maintaining some roads between towns. These grants were made by letters patent, almost invariably for a limited term, presumably the time likely to be required to pay for the required works.

Highway Repair

Responsibility for the upkeep of the roads seems to have rested with landowners, but was probably not easily enforced against them.

The Parliament of England placed the upkeep of bridges to local settlements or the containing county under the Bridges Act 1530 and in 1555 the care of roads was similarly devolved to the parishes as statute labour under the Highways Act 1555. Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four consecutive days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses. The work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways.

It was not until 1654 that road rates were introduced. However, the improvements offered by paid labour were offset by the rise in the use of wheeled vehicles greatly increasing wear to the road surfaces. The government reaction to this was to use legislation to limit the use of wheeled vehicles and also to regulate their construction. A vain hope that wider rims would be less damaging briefly led to carts with sixteen inch wheels. They did not cause ruts but neither did they roll and flatten the road as was hoped.

Early Turnpikes

The first turnpike road, whereby travellers paid tolls to be used for road upkeep, was authorised in 1663 for a section of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire. The term turnpike refers the military practise of placing a pikestaff across a road to block and control passage, this would be “turned” to one side to allow travellers through. Most English gates were not built to this standard; of the first three gates, two were found to be easily avoided.

The early turnpikes were administered directly by the Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions.

Turnpike Trusts

Main article: turnpike trust

The first turnpike trust was established by Parliament through a Turnpike Act in 1706, placing a section of the London-Coventry-Chester road in the hands of a group of trustees.

The trustees could erect gates as they saw fit, demand statute labour or a cash equivalent, and appoint surveyors and collectors, in return they repaired the road and put up mileposts. Initially trusts were established for limited periods of often twenty one years. The expectation was that the trust would borrow the money to repair the road and repay that debt over time with the road then reverting to the parishes. In reality the initial debt was rarely paid off and the trusts were renewed as needed.

The end of the Trusts

The rise of railway transport largely halted the improving schemes of the turnpike trusts. The London-Birmingham railway almost instantly halved the tolls income of the Holyhead Road. The system was never properly reformed but from the 1870s Parliament stopped renewing the acts and roads began to revert to local authorities, the last trust vanishing in 1895. However, some bridges have continued to be subject to tolls.

The Local Government Act, 1888 created county councils and gave them responsibility for maintaining the major roads. The abiding relic of the English toll roads is the number of houses with names like “Turnpike Cottage”, the inclusion of “Bar” in place names and occasional road name: Turnpike Lane in northern London has given its name to an Underground station.

Modern Toll Roads

In recent times, the concept of charging tolls to finance the building of roads has been revived, but so far the only new toll road is M6 Toll. The opposite is the case in Scotland where all toll roads have been abolished as of February, 2008 ^[1].

From The Times -

Horses were moved over long distances in pre-Roman Britain, recent analysis has shown. Previous theories that horses were bred on specialised ranches are now joined by evidence that animals may have been traded to southern England from as far away as Wales or Scotland.

The absence of young horses’ bones from some Iron Age sites, such as the Gussage All Saints settlement in Dorset, suggested that they had bred elsewhere; the capture and breaking of wild animals, perhaps similar to the feral herds of the New Forest and Dartmoor, seemed a likely source. The high proportion of stallion bones, as at Danebury hillfort in Hampshire, was also an argument for non-controlled herds, since a domesticated herd needs few stallions and many mares.

On the other hand, Julius Caesar’s claim that the Iron Age ruler Cassivelaunus had 4,000 chariots, and thus 8,000 chariot horses, at his disposal led the late Peter Reynolds to infer that horse breeding was a large operation, carried on at what were effectively stud farms. The presence of foal bones at only a few Iron Age sites supports such a breeder-customer model.

Analysis of horse teeth from two Iron Age sites near Winchester now indicates that breeder and recipient may not have lived close together, although the sample is as yet too small for firm conclusions to be drawn. One tooth each from the Rooksdown and Bury Hill sites, dating to the later centuries BC, were assayed for strontium-isotope content, examining the ratio between strontium-86 and strontium-87, which varies with the local geology, soil and groundwater content, and which is fixed in the tooth enamel through the early years of life as the teeth form.

Reporting in Archaeometry, Dr Robin Bendry and colleagues note that comparison with the teeth of domestic food animals from the sites, which could be assumed to be locally bred, and also human burials from Winchester, showed that the Bury Hill horse had been bred locally, although whether it was tamed or domesticated was not indicated. The Rooksdown specimen, however, showed a different pattern: possible areas for its origin include Devon and Cornwall, Wales, parts of northwest England and Scotland, or even parts of the Continent. The investigators note that similarly distant origins have been documented for humans buried in the Stonehenge area, although almost two millennia older than the Rookswood horse.

“The data show that horses were moved over great distances,” they conclude, “evidence for long-distance movement perhaps through trade or exchange.”

Archaeometry 51: 140-150.

All photographs and text from the Guardian.

A male great bustard makes a courtship display. Great bustards disappeared from the UK in 1832 after game shooters made it extinct. This emblem of Wiltshire and the heaviest flying bird in the world (it can weigh up to 20kg) was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in 2004, with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia. Great bustards need open grassland and arable fields where they feed on grasshoppers and cereal seeds; Photograph: Erich Kuchling/Rex Features

A beaver swimming in a Scottish river. Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK by the end of the 16th century for their fur, glands for medicine and because their building of dams interfered with other land uses. Proposals to reintroduce this famous wetland engineer to Knapdale Forest in Scotland began in 1994. This was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland for 400 years will be released this spring. Other proposals for reintroduction in England and Wales are being considered. The first beavers arrive in Scotland for the reintroduction programme that has started at a secret location. The beavers have all been electronically tagged; Photograph: A.Good/Rex Features

It’s been over 400 years since a wild beaver roamed an English river, but freedom will probably be short-lived for the lone male still at large after escaping – along with two rapidly recaptured females – a few weeks ago from an enclosure in Devon.

Unlike some parts of Europe, where beavers have been reintroduced by being chucked out of the back of a van, the return of once-extinct wild animals to the British countryside is treated with Byzantine feasibility studies, public consultations, legal wrangling, interminable arguments and meticulous planning. For example, it has taken since 1994 to reach acceptance on beaver reintroduction to Knapdale Forest, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, with the first releases due this spring.

Ecologist and beaver reintroduction specialist Derek Gow, from whose enclosure the three beavers escaped, says: “It has been a long and tortuous process, and the success of reintroductions of beavers will be because of the ability to manage the species and habitats. We are involved in a feasibility study with South West Water. Beavers could help water filtration, removing pollutants and conserving water supply to reservoirs. They are ideal for ecosystem engineering, and they bring real environmental benefits.

“That’s how you sell the idea of reintroduction and persuade landowners. It’s all very well talking about conservation in cosy meeting rooms, but any landowners think conservationists are a devious lot. If we can’t engage with landowners and show them the benefits, reintroduction will be dead in the water. Nature conservationists have to get gritty and realistic.”

Also preaching realism is Tim Coulton, professor of population biology at Imperial College London, although he’s talking about probably the least realistic of the reintroduction targets: the wolf. “The reason for our report [a joint UK and Norway report on wolf reintroduction in Scotland for the Royal Society in 2007] was to look at the effect of wolves on the deer population of Scotland by simulating what had happened elsewhere. The debate on wolf reintroduction had been driven by anecdote and we wanted to inject some science to provide a more informed debate.”

Coulton appreciates that the motivations of many who support animal reintroductions may be aesthetic or romantic, and he does not believe that, even with economic subsidies, there will be strong enough support from sheep farmers for the reintroduction of wolves. However, he does see reintroductions as an important means to an end. “We have to decide what we want from our open spaces – large fields or diverse ecosystems, tourism, water quality,” he says. “Reintroductions can be a tool to achieve these ends. I suspect science rarely drives reintroductions, but it’s the role of science to provide data for a debate and raise warnings, not to decide. That requires a wider public platform.”

Steve Carver, senior lecturer in geography at Leeds University and a coordinator of the Wildlands Network, agrees. “Reintroductions must have grassroots support and cannot work as an authoritarian, top-down process,” he argues. “The reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle on Mull [in Scotland] has developed an industry around wildlife watching. People need to see the benefits of re-wilded landscapes.” He says different landscapes need different policies, with subsidies for restoring habitats.

The current reintroductions, and many of the candidates for a future return, do not require landscape-scale ecological restoration for their success. For example, the red kite has the highest population for 200 years in the UK. White-tailed eagles too can float over the existing landscape without its modification, while wild boar have introduced themselves to the English countryside very successfully, and great bustards like Ministry of Defence grassland and arable fields on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

The most iconic candidate for reintroduction, the lynx, could also arrive without any landscape restoration. This big cat seems happy to live in broadleaved woodland or conifer plantations, and it is estimated that the Scottish Highlands could support a population of 400 lynx. Its selling point is that it would keep down roe deer numbers, as well as foxes, the notorious predators of ground-nesting birds.

Carver says: “The reintroduction of lynx will depend on the success of the beaver, so I’m hopeful that, within 10-15 years, they may be reintroduced. Personally, I’d be happy going to my grave knowing they were back.”

Behind the reintroduction and the re-wilding agenda there is an important shift going on in the conservation world. “Traditional conservation has potentially seen its day,” Carver claims. “The old guard was focused on sites and species, and managed reserves for one species, not the whole landscape. There’s a reason for rarity. If we lose a few species, does it really matter if they’re common in other locations? The new paradigm in conservation is about habitats, landscapes and whole ecosystems.”

Facing a list of 1,149 priority wildlife species and 65 priority habitats that need concerted action to save them, the government’s chances of fulfilling its commitment to stop the loss of biodiversity before 2010 is hopeless. A new target of 2020 is being proposed, but that is likely to be just as hopeless. As traditional conservation becomes more difficult, with less money available and less public support in the current financial climate, the reintroduction of charismatic fauna offers conservation bodies a chance to engage with the public in ways that obscure species of plants and invertebrates in isolated nature reserves unfortunately don’t.

Defining moment

As well as this utilitarian approach to the value of animal reintroductions as economic tools, and the enhanced products and services of ecosystems, Andy Evans, head of the RSPB’s terrestrial research section, says: “There is a moral imperative to correct anthropogenic harm and a moral obligation to maintain habitats, and to improve them from damage caused by, for example, agriculture. Conservation, which has always been scale-dependent, is facing a defining moment.”

Ecologist and author Peter Taylor says: “The reintroduction of charismatic species is also a way of re-wilding the human mind, engaging people with nature on a deeper psychological level. But these reintroductions won’t happen unless all the community is involved, including hunting, shooting, fishing and farming interests.

“This kind of conservation is not helped by the dead hand of computer simulations, government consultations and accounts of the lynx being good for eco-tourism. In early natural history, there was a spiritual connection with nature. As a scientist, I think we need to reclaim something lost from scientific conservation. The lynx, the beaver and wild boar have become iconic emblems for that.”

Comeback contenders

Lynx
The Eurasian lynx, a secretive, powerful cat, is the most likely mammal predator to be reintroduced to the UK – although many say it is already here.

A Eurasian lynx mother sits in the grass while her two pups play in their outdoor enclosure in Germany. This secretive, powerful cat with tufted ears and a short tail weighing 25kg survived in Britain until 180AD. The Eurasian lynx is the most likely mammal predator candidate for reintroduction, although many say it is already established in some areas. It is estimated that the Scottish highlands could support a population of 400 lynx, where they would control roe deer and foxes; Photograph: Ronald Wittek/Corbis

Beaver
Hunted to extinction here by the end of the 16th century. A proposal launched in 1994 to reintroduce it to Knapdale Forest, Scotland, was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland will be released this spring.

White-tailed eagle
By 1916, this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct here through persecution. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia.

A white-tailed eagle seen in Scotland. In 1700 there were 200 pairs but by 1916 this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct after persecution in the UK. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A feasibility study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia;Photograph: /RSPB

Great bustard
Last year saw the first egg laid by a great bustard – the heaviest flying bird in the world – in the UK for 175 years. It was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in a project that began in 2004 with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia.

Pictured here is the first female great bustard to lay eggs in Britain in 175 years; Photograph: HO/AFP

Wild boar
After an absence of 400 years, they have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged in the 1987 storm. Now well-established in south-east England and the Forest of Dean.

After an absence of 400 years, wild boar have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged by the 1987 storm. There are now populations in south-east England and the Forest of Dean; Photograph: Solent News/Rex Features

Grey wolf
The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. Experience in other countries shows that reintroduction would help to regenerate vegetation and woodland.

The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. According to recent population modelling if wolves were reintroduced to Scotland, their population would stabilise at 25 wolves per 1,000 square kilometres. Although wolf populations would have an impact on the high red deer population, experience in other countries shows the wider effect would be to regenerate vegetation and woodland, benefiting wildlife and helping to restore ecosystems; Photograph: Robert Pickett/Pickett

Large Blue butterfly
One of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world, it became extinct in the UK in 1975, but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden.

The large blue butterfly became extinct in the UK in 1975 but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden. This is one of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world. It lays its eggs on wild thyme, then the caterpillars are adopted by red ants who take them into their nests, where the butterfly caterpillars become predators of ant grubs before pupating and emerging as spectacularly bright blue adults; Photograph: Emma Daniel/PA

Seed Drill, from Horse-hoeing husbandry by Jethro Tull, 4th edition, from 1752

From the BBC -

Jethro Tull was born in 1674 into a family of Berkshire gentry. He studied at Oxford University and Gray’s Inn in preparation for a legal political career, but ill health postponed these plans and, after his marriage in 1699, he began farming with his father.

At the time, seeds were distributed into furrows (‘drilling’) by hand. However, Tull had noticed that traditional heavy sowing densities were not very efficient so he instructed his staff to drill at very precise, low densities. By 1701, his frustration with their lack of co-operation prompted him to invent a machine to do the work for him. He designed his drill with a rotating cylinder. Grooves were cut into the cylinder to allow seed to pass from the hopper above to a funnel below. They were then directed into a channel dug by a plough at the front of the machine, then immediately covered by a harrow attached to the rear. This limited the wastage of seeding and made the crop easier to weed.

Initially the machine was only a limited success. In 1709 he moved to Prosperous Farm in Hungerford, and two years later decided to travel around Europe to improve his health and study agricultural techniques there. Upon his return in 1714, he perfected both his system and machinery. He pulverised the earth between the rows, believing that this released nutrients would act as a substitute for manure. While apparently successful – he grew wheat in the same field for 13 successive years without manuring – it is more likely that he merely prevented weeds from overcrowding and competing with the seed.

Tull’s other innovations included a plough with blades set in such a way that grass and roots were pulled up and left on the surface to dry.

Eventually, as agricultural improvement became fashionable, more interest began to be taken in Tull’s ideas. In 1731 he published his book, ‘The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry’, detailing his system and its machinery. It caused great controversy at the time, and arguments continued for another century before his eventual vindication. While several other mechanical seed drills had also been invented, Tull’s complete system was a major influence on the agricultural revolution and its impact can still be seen in today’s methods and machinery.

Tull died on 21 February 1741.

From Royal Berkshire History -

Jethro Tull was a major pioneer in the modernization of agriculture. He was born in Basildon in early 1674, the son of Jethro Tull Senior, a gentleman farmer of that parish, and his wife, Dorothy, the daughter of Thomas Buckeridge. He was baptised in the parish church there on 30th March.

At the age of seventeen, Tull matriculated at Oxford, to St. John’s College, on 7th July 1691, but appears to have taken no degree. He was admitted as a student of Gray’s Inn on 11th December 1693; and called to the Bar on 19th May, 1699. In his admission entry, he is stated to be of two years’ standing at Staple Inn, and to be the only son and heir apparent of Jethro Tull, of Howberry in Oxfordshire.

After being admitted as a barrister, Tull made a tour of Europe and, in every country through which he passed, was a diligent observer of the soil, culture and vegetable productions. On his return to England, he married, in 1699, Susannah Smith, of Burton Dassett (Warwickshire). They had two children named after themselves and he settled, with his new family, on his father’s farm at Howberry, in the parish of Crowmarsh Gifford, just across the Thames from Wallingford. Determined to improve agricultural methods and increase yields, he pursued a number of agricultural experiments there. By intense application, vexatious toil, and too frequently exposing himself to the vicissitudes of heat and cold in the open fields, he contracted a pulmonary disorder, which, not being found curable in England, obliged him a second time to travel, and to seek a cure in the milder climates of France and Italy. He returned, considerably improved in health, but greatly embarrassed in his fortune. Part of his property in Oxfordshire, he had sold and, before his departure for the Continent, had settled his family on a farm of his own, called Prosperous Farm, in the parish of Shalbourne, near Hungerford. There, he revised and rectified all his old instruments and designed new ones suitable to the different soils of his new farm; and demonstrated the good effects of his horse-hoeing culture. But though Tull was successful in demonstrating what might be done by improved culture, he was not able to turn it to his own advantage. His expenses were enhanced in various ways, but chiefly by the stupidity of the workmen employed in constructing his instruments, and in the awkwardness and maliciousness of his servants, who, because they did not or would not comprehend the use of them, seldom failed to break some essential part or other, in order to render them useless.

The drill-husbandry had been probably known and practiced for ages; but was first adopted upon a regular and permanent plan by Tull, who professed to have caught the idea from the vine-culture upon the Continent, and to whose ingenious mind the mechanism of an organ suggested the rudiments of an implement for the delivery of seed in drills. “It was named a drill,” he says, “because when farmers used to sow their beans and peas into channels or furrows by hand, they called that action drilling” and it could sew three rows of seeds simultaneously. Later, he devised a horse-drawn hoe to clear away weeds

Tull became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn on 5th May 1724. About this time, he was prevailed upon, by some of the neighbouring gentlemen, who were witnesses of the practical utility of his system, to publish his theory, illustrated by an account of it in practice, which he undertook to do, at no inconsiderable expense, and, at a time too, when he was much harassed in his pecuniary affairs. His first publication was a ‘specimen’ only, in 1731; which was followed, in 1733, by ‘An Essay on Horse-Hoeing Husbandry’ folio; which was translated into French by Du Hamel.

In the course of thirty years culture of his own grounds under every disadvantage of ruined health and embarrassed circumstances, this enthusiastic genius reduced the tillage, seeding, and weeding of land to a system, which being founded in nature and philosophical truth, no length of time will be able to overturn. For, despite initial resistance to Tull’s revolutionary ideas, they were eventually adopted by large landowners and, in time, formed the basis of modern agriculture. Most subsequent drilling and hoeing implements were either copies, or improvements upon the invention of Tull; and his book, in which theory and practice are properly combined, was long in popular esteem. Whatever were his defects, it would probably be difficult to name a man, whose works have conferred a more solid and permanent benefit upon his country. Yet, whilst so many others, for services of a very different nature and tendency, have enjoyed the most splendid rewards, Jethro Tull, whose honest labours were to contribute to the feeding and the employment of countless millions, was suffered to pine out his days in misery and distress. His reward consists in being recognised by posterity as the illustrious ‘Father of British Agriculture’.

Tull died at Prosperous Farm on 21st February and was buried, in his native village of Basildon, on 9th March, 1741.

From wikipedia -

Tull was born in Basildon, Berkshire to Dorothy Buckridge and Jethro Tull and baptised there on March 30, 1674 ^[1]. He matriculated at St John’s College, Oxford at the age of 17 but appears to have not taken a degree. He was later educated at Gray’s Inn.

He became sick with a pulmonary disorder, and as he went in a search for a cure he travelled Europe seeking more knowledge of agriculture. Influenced by the early Age of Enlightenment, he is considered to be one of the early proponents of a scientific (and especially empirical) approach to agriculture. He helped transform agricultural practices by inventing or improving numerous implements.

Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, a device for sowing seeds effectively. At the time his workers did not like the idea because they thought they were going to lose their jobs. In fact, the Sumerians used primitive single-tube seed drills around 1,500 BC, and multi-tube seed drills were invented by the Chinese in the 2nd century BC.

Tull also advocated the use of horses over oxen, invented a horse-drawn hoe for clearing weeds, and made changes to the design of the plough which are still visible in modern versions. His interest in ploughing derived from his interest in weed control, and his belief that fertilizing was unnecessary, on the basis that nutrients locked up in soil could be released through pulverization. Although he was incorrect in his belief that plants obtained nourishment exclusively from such nutrients, he was aware that horse manure carried weed seeds, and hoped to avoid using it as fertilizer by pulverizing the soil to enhance the availability of plant nutrients.

Tull’s inventions were sometimes considered controversial and were not widely adopted for many years. However, on the whole he introduced innovations which contributed to the foundation of productive modern agriculture.

Tull published his famous book, The New Horse-Houghing Husbandry, c.1731, with the sub-title “an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Nutrition”

Tull tried to persuade European farmers to adopt what he called ‘horse-houghing husbandry’, which involved growing crops in rows and hoeing them thoroughly. These may seem to be obvious and necessary processes to a modern reader. But they were not practiced in Europe until the eighteenth century and he was the major contributor in this conversion. The Chinese were doing this at least by the sixth century BC, and were thus a good 2,200 years in advance of the West in one of the most sensible aspects of agriculture. ^[2]

Tull died in Shalbourne, Berkshire (now Wiltshire), and is buried in the garden of St Bartholomew’s Church, Lower Basildon, Berkshire.

From the Bradshaw Foundation -

An extraordinary collection of mammoth remains and flint tools unearthed in a Norfolk quarry may be evidence of the first Neanderthal hunting camp discovered in Britain, scientists said yesterday.

The 50,000-year-old fossils and artefacts, among the best preserved in this country, are casting important new light on the lifestyle of Homo neanderthalis (Neanderthal man), the cousin of modem human beings that lived in these islands in the last Ice Age. A 12-week archaeological dig at a gravel pit has revealed a pile of at least seven tusks up to 8ft long, large teeth and partial skeletons from at least four mammoths, together with eight Neanderthal flint hand-axes, teeth from a woolly rhinoceros and reindeer antlers.

The close proximity of the Neanderthal tools and the animal remains – one hand-axe is actually inside a mammoth skull still attached to a tusk – suggests that the site was a hunting hide where the hominids ambushed their prey, or a scavenging ground where the kills of predators, such as sabre-toothed cats and bears, were butchered and eaten. Either way, the discoveries will help scientists to piece together new details of the Neanderthal way of life, solving puzzles about their diet and behaviour.

The Norfolk site contains a network of watering holes, which would have been an ideal spot for either activity. There are no Neanderthal bones or teeth, but their presence has been confirmed from the age of the dig and the style of the hand-axes. Andy Currant, curator of fossil mammals at the Natural History Museum, said that there was clear evidence of Neanderthal activity. “You don’t get piles of tusks like this unless someone has gathered them up,” he said. “It has to be deliberate. The hand-axe was the Swiss Army knife of the middle Palaeolithic. If you’ve got one actually in or on a skull, you don’t have to worry what else you’ve got, there’s butchery going on. I’ve never seen anything like this in Britain.” David Miles, chief archaeologist for English Heritage, which funded the dig, said: “This is as good an example of a Neanderthal kill site as you will find. This site is not just of national but of international importance.”

The best evidence for Neanderthal hunting comes from Germany, but the Norfolk hand-axes offer the strongest indication yet of such hunting in Britain, Mark White, a Palaeolithic archaeologist from Durham University, said: “It is valid to speculate that the Neanderthal had gone to this watering place because they knew they would find prey to kill.”

Bill Boismier, of the Norfolk Archaeology Unit, who led the excavation team, said that the absence of cut marks on the bones, together with large numbers of carcass beetle fossils found, made scavenging more likely, although they did not rule out a Neanderthal kill. The excavations are the first to be supported with a grant from the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund, which distributes money raised by a tax on gravel quarries to environmental and historical projects in such areas.

Neanderthal Man was present in Europe and Asia from about 130,000 years ago to, about 30,000 years ago, when it was supplanted by modern man, Homo sapiens. Woolly mammoth grew to about the same size as a modern Asian elephant, standing between 8ft and l0ft high at the shoulder and weighing between four and six tonnes when fully grown.

A report by Imogen Mowday on the Bradshaw Foundation website -

A bout-coupe style handaxe lodged against fragments of a Woolly Mammoth’s tusk.

These images were taken at a newly discovered Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) site in East Anglia dating from approximately 60,000 [sic] years ago. Archaeologists continue to work there and are revealing what may be the most important Palaeolithic site in Britain since evidence of Homo heidelbergensis, dating from circa 500,000 years ago, was discovered in Boxgrove in the 1990s. This new site has so far revealed over a dozen bout-coupe style handaxes, one of which is shown in photograph number one lodged against fragments of a Woolly Mammoth’s tusk. The clear association of Neanderthal handaxes with a range of Glacial animal, insect and plant species makes this site the first of its kind to be found in the U.K.

Woolly mammoth, bears, reindeer and frogs, and hundreds of flint flakes and tools. The exciting discoveries were made during the draining of a lake for gravel extraction. A local archaeologist who is a highly skilled flint-toolmaker (a knapper), was monitoring the gravel extraction to ensure that no archaeology was damaged or not recorded. The site first became clear to him when two large mammoth tusks protruded out from a layer of peat. Immediately work ceased and archaeologists began to record in fine detail the thousands of fragments of animal bones ranging from woolly mammoth to bears, reindeer and frogs, alongside many hundreds of flint flakes and tools.

A Neanderthal trap to kill or scavenge off large mammals. It has now become clear that the remains were deposited within ponds, which would have been set against a tundra backdrop: an environment containing little tree cover and perhaps a permanent layer of permafrost. These watering holes would have provided a perfect arena for Neanderthals to trap and kill large mammals, or to scavenge off the corpses of animals left by other carnivores. Future examination of all the flint tools and animal bones may be able to clarify whether the Hominids were hunting, scavenging or both. Already some bones appear to have fractures indicative of hominids smashing them for marrow extraction, as the rich fats and nutrients contained within would have been essential for survival in a cold climate.

Neanderthal behaviour

The site will undoubtedly greatly aid our understanding of Neanderthal behaviour. As David Miles, chief Archaeologist for English Heritage, expressed it: “We may have discovered a butchery site, or, what would be even more exciting, first evidence in Britain of a Neanderthal hunting site, which would tell us much about their social abilities”. Not only may we learn about the way in which Neanderthals behaved in order to obtain food, the discovery of mammoth tusks in a concentrated area may indicate that the Neanderthals used them to construct shelters or territorial markers. Therefore the site’s finds may ultimately allow us to make suggestions about the symbolic behaviour of Neanderthals and allow them to be viewed as highly intelligent sentient beings, finally removing any old views depicting them as “primitive”.

From Fathom.com -

At Lynford, a site in Norfolk, there is evidence of an association between Neanderthals and mammoths. This is a very exciting site that has only been excavated in the last few months, by the Norfolk Archaeology Unit. It has revealed wonderful remains of several mammoths, and numerous small hand axes made by Neanderthals dating from about 50,000 years ago. One of the research questions to be addressed is that none of the mammoth bones so far seem to have cut marks on them. So is this association accidental? Perhaps these hand axes were being used to butcher other animals elsewhere on the site and were then mixed in with the mammoth remains? Or perhaps the Neanderthals were indeed hunting, or at least scavenging, the mammoths. AHOB is involved in this rich vein of current research.

From About.com, by K. Kris Hurst -

The early Mesolithic archaeological site of Star Carr is probably one of the best known sites in England, occupied intermittently for about 300 years, beginning about 10,700 years ago. The site lies within the Vale of Pickering in east Yorkshire in what would have been at the time a swamp fringing a lake. Star Carr was an engineering marvel for its hunter-gatherer inhabitants, the settlement built atop a man-made platform of brush wood, stones and clay, set to stabilize the surface.

Artifacts recovered at Star Carr included over 200 barbed spearpoints, elk antler mattocks, bone scrapers, and masks or headdresses made from red deer antlers. Animals represented in the faunal collections included red deer, roe deer, wild oxen, elk, wild pig, and waterfowl, but a curious lack of fish or molluscan remains, given its location.

From the Times Higher Education (published 2000) -

One of the seats of Stone-Age civilisation in the British Isles has just become even older. Experts have been able to date the settlement of Star Carr, where the first evidence of wood-working and possible animal husbandry has been discovered, with unprecedented precision.

It emerges that the inhabitants of Star Carr, in the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, lived in a lakeside settlement dating back 10,970 years, just 600 years after the ice sheets retreated following the abrupt end of the last Ice Age.

Petra Dark, an archaeologist at Reading University, said: “It is even older than we thought and for the first time for any Mesolithic site, we now know the exact length of the interval between the occupation and climate warming.”

In a forthcoming paper in the journal Antiquity, Dr Dark said that a new assessment of tree-ring data in Germany had added 200 years to the age of the site.

Excavations at Star Carr over the past two decades have revealed evidence that nearby reedbeds were annually burned, implying a deliberate management policy that may have been intended to entice animals to the lakeside where they could be easily hunted.

Evidence of a plank-built jetty was found, representing perhaps the first use of such sophisticated woodwork in the British Isles.

From Wikipedia -

Star Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, England. It is around five miles south of Scarborough (grid reference TA02798100).^[1]

It belongs to the early Mesolithic Maglemosian culture, evidence for which is present across the lowlands of Northern Europe, and is a Maglemosian type site.^[1] It was occupied from around 8770 BC until about 8460 BC, possibly with a period of abandonment between 8680 BC and 8580 BC.^[2] It was discovered in 1947 during the clearing of a field drain.

Star Carr’s main feature is a birch brushwood platform which stood on the edge of former Lake Pickering.^[3] The platform would have been laid down to consolidate the boggy water’s edge.

Hearths found further away from the water indicate temporary settlement. It was visited seasonally by Mesolithic hunters chasing red and roe deer, elk, aurochs and wild boar.^[2] The original analysis of the animal bones led to the suggestion that the site was occupied during the winter season. New work has proved this to be wrong, and has shown that hunters visited the site in early summer, to take immature deer that had lost maternal care. A few visits may have been made later in the summer^[4].

The mud of the lake has preserved items dropped into it and the hunter’s tools such as flint scrapers used to clean animal skins and worked bone and antler have been found. The most striking examples are 21 perforated part skull and antlers of red deer.

A fragment of a wooden oar implies that the people who occupied the site also built boats, probably coracles or simple canoes used to travel or fish. Beads made from stone and amber suggest personal adornment. Remains of a dog are indication of the animal’s domestication during this period.

The flint came from the Yorkshire Wolds further south. A type of axe, new to Britain, was made from it at Star Carr. It was sharpened during its life by simple transverse blows which made it more adaptable.

The most famous find is the top part of a stag skull, complete with antlers. The skull had two holes perforated in it and it has been suggested that it was used as a hunting disguise, or in some form of ritual or story-telling..

Excavations at Star Carr are currently being undertaken by a team from the University of Manchester, led by leading expert Dr. Chantal Conneller. During August 2008 extensive excavations will be undertaken, extending the trenches dug by Grahame Clark, who remains an authority on the site.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} “Star Carr“. Pastscape.org.uk. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
2. ^ ^{a b} Scarre (2005), p. 397.
3. ^ Scarre (2005), p. 396.
4. ^ Legge and Rowley-Conwy 1988

Bibliography

• Scarre, Chris (ed) (2005). The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28531-4.
• Legge, Anthony J.; Peter Rowley-Conwy (1988). Star Carr Revisited; a Re-analysis of the Large Mammals, Birkbeck College. ISBN 0-7187-0876-8.

From British Archaeology -

Fading Star

Star Carr is one of the truly great sites of ancient Britain. It has been revisited by archaeologists (the then young editor among them) more than any other excavation. So how is it that in five years it may be gone? Nicky Milner – deep in her own revisitation – explains.

Star Carr, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire has captured the imaginations of archaeologists since the first significant excavations in 1949–51. In the 1940s the British mesolithic (then thought to have lasted 3,000 years, now dated to 10–4,000BC) barely registered in prehistoric narratives. Grahame Clark, however, realised the importance of hunter-gatherers in European prehistory. He hoped the promise of organic remains likely to be preserved in the wet peat at Star Carr would add a new dimension to an era represented by little more than a few enigmatic flint artefacts.

It did. In fact the range and quantity of finds, including red deer skull frontlets turned into headdresses, and antler points made for spears or harpoons along with manufacturing blanks and raw antlers, remain outstanding in Europe. Star Carr has been described as a “type site”. It never fails to appear in text book accounts of the mesolithic. It has had a huge number of research articles written about it, it is constantly being reinterpreted and further excavations were undertaken in the 1980s by the Vale of Pickering Research Trust.

So, why carry out more excavations there?! Well, despite all these years of research there are still many important unanswered questions about Star Carr. And now we have discovered that the site is under serious threat and may soon be lost forever.

Over the last 20 years or so the Vale of Pickering Trust has been working hard to picture the ancient landscape. Today the area is farmland, but some 11–12,000 years ago Star Carr would have been on the edge of a lake. The lake turned to peat through prehistory, but augering and measuring the peat’s depth have revealed the mesolithic land surface and lake edges. Test pits dug around much of the lake edge have also discovered a number of other early mesolithic sites.

What this work has shown is that Star Carr is not a “type site” within this landscape: it is unique. None of the other early mesolithic sites has the same kind of artefact assemblage. At Star Carr 192 barbed antler and bone points have been found (which is over 97% of the total number found in Britain!). Only one other broken barbed point has been found on the lake, at No Name Hill. The antler mattocks, stone axes and beads made of shale, animal teeth and amber found at Star Carr have also not been found on the other sites around the lake. As if that was not enough, Clark’s antler headdresses find parallels on only three sites on the continent, each with one example. Star Carr has 21.

This work around the lake has allowed new interpretations to be put forward. For instance, Richard Chatterton, Joshua Pollard, Chantal Conneller and Tim Schadla-Hall have all considered the unusual range and quantity of material culture at Star Carr, and have suggested that these objects may have been the focus of ritual deposition into the open water. They also identify the social significance mesolithic people attributed to animals, particularly in this context red deer, as the motivation behind the unusual depositionary practices. Yet technological analysis highlights the range of activities at Star Carr and the network of connections with other sites in the area. These authors have not tried to replace the other functional interpretations, such as butchery site or hunting base camp, with “ritual site”.

New questions

The original excavations and the monograph have been heralded as being of a high standard for their time, but there are certain questions which have been thrown up by the new interpretations which cannot be answered with present data.

Environmental investigations were carried out during the original excavations, but they did not provide detailed information on the archaeological contexts. Through the work in the 1980s it is now thought that much of the area excavated by Clark may have been open water at the time of occupation. This also raises questions about the brushwood, which Clark interpreted as a living platform. It is now believed it lay beneath the artefact layers and was perhaps a natural wood accumulation. The site stratigraphy is far from clear because there are very few section drawings.

Another area of intrigue is the wooden platform found during palaeoenvironmental investigations in the 1980s. This platform, unlike the brushwood one, shows clear evidence of working, and according to ancient wood specialist Maisie Taylor is the earliest evidence for carpentry in Europe. To date we know very little about it, how it relates to the archaeology found in Clark’s trenches, its extent and where it leads to.

Another major question is “how big was Star Carr?”. There seems to be a general impression that Clark’s excavations encompassed most, if not the whole of the site, but it now seems that he uncovered only some of the lake edge deposits. The fieldwork carried out in the 1980s suggested that the site was larger and there was a dry land element.

Another important issue is the timing of activities. From the distribution and typology of barbed points, Clark suggested there were two phases of occupation; he estimated that Star Carr was used over 25 years. Work in the 1980s by Petra Dark on pollen and burning of reed swamp has suggested that the site has a much longer history and that it was probably occupied, intermittently, over about 230 years.

New work

Three years ago, we revisited Star Carr again and fieldwalked it. What was immediately apparent was that the land had been affected by peat drainage. What had in the past appeared as a totally flat field (seen in some of the earlier fieldwork photographs), now rises and falls. What would have been dry land on the lake edge in the mesolithic stands proud of what would have been the lake, and we estimate that the peat has shrunk in some places by several metres.

The fieldwalking provided some interesting data. A peninsula to the east of the original excavations produced large quantities of flint, and some test pitting suggested that plough damage was occurring. The following year we excavated a line of test pits down the peninsula. This revealed substantial concentrations of knapped flint, in some areas up to 139 pieces per square metre. This suggests that the original excavated area constitutes less than 5% of the total occupation!

Fieldwork continued last summer, when we excavated two larger trenches to determine whether the archaeology continued in the lake margins to the east of the earlier excavations. We also wished to elucidate the stratigraphy of the sediments, and observe the effect of drainage and the state of peat.

Trench 21 was fairly shallow, and produced flint but no organic material. Trench 22, however, was much more like both Clark’s trenches and the 1980s excavations. It contained considerable quantities of wood. Maisie Taylor suggests this represents a natural accumulation of brushwood, similar to that discovered by Clark. However she also found several distinctive triangular chips which are a characteristic of mesolithic woodworking. This activity may have been connected with the manufacture of the timber platform discovered in the 1980s, which lies only 12m to the west of this trench.

We also found several pieces of antler, one of which has clearly been worked: a strip has been removed to make a barbed point. What is more, burins and other flint tools were found beside it. These finds show that activities occurred further around the lake edge than had been previously thought; there may be other concentrations of activities elsewhere still to be explored. The antler has now been dated to roughly 8700BC, which falls towards the end of the period of occupation and coincides with Petra Dark’s later phase of reed swamp burning, demonstrating a long tradition of antler working at the site.

What was really shocking, however, was the state of the antler. It had lost almost all of its mineral content and was flattened in section, unlike the solid antler found in Clark’s excavations. Specialists who visited the site and saw this, along with the state of the peat and the wood, suggested that any antler, bone and wood that still survives will probably disappear within the next five to 10 years. Research at York University by Matthew Collins and his team is showing that bone can rapidly decay in a mere couple of years if contained in peat where the water table fluctuates seasonally. It is possible that this may be happening in some areas of the Star Carr site.

The future of Star Carr

The arguments for further work at the site could not be clearer. Less than 5% of the site has been excavated and there is still much to learn:
• What was the nature of the dry land area? Were there structures, hearths and other activities? What does the flint distribution tell us? How far does this occupation area extend? Could this represent large group gatherings?
• What was the nature of the lake edge deposits? What exactly was the context of deposition – were objects being placed in open water or reed swamp? How did the hydrology of the lake work – were some areas seasonally flooded? Where did the timber platform lead and why was it constructed? Why is the accumulation of brushwood there? How far does it stretch? What is the distribution of lake edge activities such as antler working? Why were artefacts being deposited at the lake edge?
• How can we understand the temporality of activities at the site? Did they change over time?
• Why is this site so different to other sites around the lake? Why have other sites like this not been found in Britain? How does this site compare to other sites on the continent?

Our plans are to continue excavating. This year we hope to investigate a larger area of the original dry land to look for evidence of occupation and activities, and to assess the extent of the plough damage. We also intend to excavate nearer to Clark’s trenches at the lake margins, to further investigate the deposition of bone and antler, to monitor the degradation of the peat and the conditions for organic survival, and to examine the stratigraphy and nature of the lake edge deposits and the brushwood accumulation in more detail. We are lucky to be collaborating with a wide range of specialists who are providing support and expertise on subjects that include wood, pollen, sediments, macro-plant remains, insect remains and conservation.

But time is running out. Although Star Carr has been studied for over 50 years, we may have less than five years before much of the waterlogged remains deteriorate completely.

There have been criticisms by some that Star Carr has not just informed, but also prejudiced and biased our understanding of mesolithic Britain, and that perhaps this site has been studied too much already at the expense of other sites.

It is certainly true that Star Carr has dominated our narratives of the period. But these have drawn on a very small area of the site, creating a biased understanding. It is important that we try to understand much more in order to correct previous misapprehensions. It is also important that Star Carr is not seen as a “type site”, but is acknowledged as having a unique character, at least within the Lake Flixton landscape.

We aim within the next five years to rescue much of the remaining archaeology and address many of the new research questions that have been posed. And we hope that the site will continue to stimulate interest and debate for generations of archaeologists to come.

The new excavations are a joint project between the Universities of York, Manchester, UCL and Cambridge supported by the Vale of Pickering Research Trust, the British Academy and the McDonald Institute, Cambridge. See www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/Projects/StarCarrWebsite/index.htm. Nicky Milner directs a new MA in mesolithic studies at the University of York.

From the BBC -

A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of “new fundamentals”, according to a leading food expert.

Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing “structural failures”, such as “astronomic” environmental costs.

The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.

Professor Lang is a member of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council.

“Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s,” he told BBC News.

“It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.

“At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers.”

Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people’s diets and public health.

“But by the 1970s, evidence was beginning to emerge that the public health outcomes were not quite as expected,” he explained.

“Secondly, there were a whole new set of problems associated with the environment.”

Thirty years on and the world was now facing an even more complex situation, he added.

“The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population.”

Fussy eaters

Professor Lang lists a series of “new fundamentals”, which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:

• Oil and energy: “We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets.”
• Water scarcity: “One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water,” Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK’s vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
• Biodiversity: “Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land.”
• Urbanisation: “Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?”

Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?

The UK’s Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, recently set up a Council of Food Policy Advisers in order to address the growing concern of food security and rising prices.

Mr Benn, speaking at the council’s launch, warned: “Global food production will need to double just to meet demand.

“We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed.”

Professor Lang, who is a member of the council, offered a suggestion: “We are going to have to get biodiversity into gardens and fields, and then eat it.

“We have to do this rather than saying that biodiversity is what is on the edge of the field or just outside my garden.”

Michelin-starred chef and long-time food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees with Professor Lang, adding that there is a need for people, especially in the UK, to reconnect with their food.

He is heading a campaign called Dig for Your Dinner, which he hopes will help people reconnect with their food and how, where and when it is grown.

“Food culture is a whole series of steps,” he told BBC News.

“Whatever amount of space you have in your backyard, it is possible to create a fantastic little garden that will allow you to reconnect with the real value of gardening, which is knowing how to grow food.

“And once you know how to grow food, it would be very nice to be able to cook it. If you are growing food, then it only makes sense that you know how to cook it as well.

“And cooking food will introduce you to the basic knowledge of nutrition. So you can see how this can slowly reintroduce food back into our culture.”

Waste not…

Mr Blanc warned that food prices were likely to continue to rise in the future, which was likely to prompt more people to start growing their own food.

He was also hopeful that the food sector would become less wasteful.

“We all know that waste is everywhere; it is immoral what is happening in the world of food.

“In Europe, 30% of the food grown did not appear on the shelves of the retailers because it was a funny shape or odd colour.

“At least the amendment to European rules means that we can now have some odd-shaped carrots on our shelves. This is fantastic news, but why was it not done before?”

He suggested that the problem was down to people choosing food based on sight alone, not smell and touch.

“The way that seeds are selected is about immunity to any known disease; they have also got to grow big and fast, and have a fantastic shelf life.

“Never mind taste, texture or nutrition, it is all about how it looks.

“The British consumer today has got to understand that when they make a choice, let’s say an apple – either Chinese, French or English one – they are making a political choice, a socio-economic choice, as well as an environmental one.

“They are making a statement about what sort of society and farming they are supporting.”

Growing appetite

The latest estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices.

This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007.

The FAO warned that the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.

“World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries,” said FAO assistant director-general Hafez Ghanem at the launch of the agency’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 report.

“The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality,” he added.

Professor Lang outlined the challenges facing the global food supply system: “The 21st Century is going to have to produce a new diet for people, more sustainably, and in a way that feeds more people more equitably using less land.”

Here is an excerpt of Tim Lang’s speech:

During this talk I’m going to cover very quickly ‘structural factors’ that I think are shaping the world of food, then I’m going to explore ‘what the policy context is’ [...].

So the first:

I could probably rant at this point! Essentially the twentieth century and all the progress, which there undoubtedly has been, has been built upon certain assumptions and certain infrastructural givens.

I do want to stress, when we’re saying how terrible things are, that actually there have been huge advances in the 20th centaury; increased output of food, more people being fed, wider range and availability, people being fed better and life expectancy rocketing in many countries for all sorts of complicated reasons, but within that, diet has been a critical factor.

Lets not forget that.

BUT. The environmental cost has been astronomic. The impact on public health, which is what my colleagues and I work on a lot, is immense. Diet is now THE single, biggest factor in causing premature death worldwide.

Even in Sub-Saharan Africa five percent of the population are obese. Even in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The impact of inappropriate eating, inappropriate diet, and inappropriate food ingredients on the globe is now really well documented. The problem is, and just recently on the 28th August the World Health Organisation’s commission on Social Determinants of Health came out documenting this, where does that leave the world of food?

New Fundamentals

Within the Royal Institute of International Affairs’ food supply working party, which I’ve been in for three years and which is coming out with a big report this time next month, I have been arguing that the new 21th Century world of food in going to be based on what I call the ‘New Fundamentals’. These fundamental factors might be obvious to you (Garden Organic members) but not necessarily to everyone.

Oil

Firstly oil. Oil and energy. Cheap non-renewable resources of energy have underpinned everything; the agrochemicals, the fertilisers, the tractors replacing the land used to grow oats to feed the horses that drove the ploughs. You name it, you think it, its all based on oil. Even down to the oil that drives the Volvo that takes you six miles on average now to the hypermarket to get the cheaper food. We have an entirely oil based food economy. And yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets. Everyone knows that.

Water

Secondly, most of my colleagues in food policy around the world agree, that actually important though oil is, the thing that is going to bring 21st century approach to food to its knees, is actually not oil, but water!

I speak as someone who was a farmer in the Forest of Bowland, which is the centre of God’s plughole! I have a friend whose farm has 120 inches of rain a year. It seems inconceivable that anyone speaking in the English language, let alone anyone with a British passport, could say that water is a problem. It is.

50% of all vegetables coming into this country come from foreign countries. Think of the growth, the explosion of growth, just in Kenyan green beans. Well every stem of a green been from Kenya, each stem, has used four litres, yes four litres of potable water, and this in a water stressed country. We have a very complicated situation emerging around water.

I am a commissioner on the Government’s sustainable development commission and I led a review of how the Government deals and doesn’t deal with supermarkets as the gatekeepers of the modern food economy. One of the key things that we tried to push, and I certainly pushed very hard and have been pushing behind the scenes, is to get Defra to start auditing, begin to develop the methodology for auditing food by water. It is going to be the decider in the next 30 years. Water economy, water exchange, and virtual water are going to be critical factors.

Climate change

Thirdly, climate change. Climate change is altering everything; where food can grow, how it can grow, etc. You know it; it is going to alter what we can do.

Biodiversity

Fourthly, biodiversity. The collapse of biodiversity is something that even worries the agro-chemical companies whose market is about selling. Some very strange things are happening now. The old black/white, them/us divisions that the organic movement, and the gardening world, have dealt with are going to begin to break down. You will start to get very radical thoughts coming out of the long-term thinkers and planners in companies that we’ve spent a lot of our time arguing against and with. Biodiversity is another of the key factors.

Demographics

Demographics. You don’t have to be a eugenicist to see that going from 6.7 billion people on the planet to 9 billion on the planet by 2050 means a lot more food has got to be produced. A factor is what diet people eat, so if you eat like the average American, well, frankly, we’re dead, the planet can’t do it. If you eat like us in Britain, the planet can’t do it. If you eat like the Chinese of a hundred years ago you can feed 12 billion. What you eat is a critical factor but none the less the demographics are an important feature now.

Urbanisation

Urbanisation is probably the most important thing within the social sphere. The shift we have now, it is arguable, is that we are just past the point where, for the first time in human history, more people live in the towns than in the country. In which case where do they get their food?

That’s why I told you about my failures with my own garden. I can’t grow my own food. My wife and I try to have something from our garden, even if it’s just a herb each meal but we eat out a great deal. Any pretence of feeding myself is a nonsense.

Now write that over 5 billion people. Who’s going to grow the food? Where are they going to grow it? Who’s going to be the labour force?

Labour

There has been a collapse of the labour force. Look in Britain at the racism over the migrant labour. I was born in Lincoln; my home county has been a disgrace! The Fens are a major producer of vegetables. It has brought in migrant labour at very low rates and then treated them disgustingly. Now this is delicate stuff I know, but if British people are not prepared to go and work in the fields, how are we going to grow veg?

We need to consume less meat, less dairy, more fruit and more veg – but from where?

Nutrition transition

The ‘nutrition transition’ is a phrase that in my world is critical. It is a transformation that happens when people get richer and they alter their diet. They eat more fat and more meat, unless from vegetarian culture. People shift from drinking water or tea to soft drinks i.e sugar. They get increased calories. It makes them fatter, leads to heart disease and degenerative diseases. The nutrition transition is not just an issue of nutrition, though it is, with direct impact on health, it is also a major cultural phenomenon. The culture, the psychology of it is very important.

Health care costs

The thing that gets me out of bed each day is health care costs. The reason the food system cannot go on as it is going on is because of the cost of health care.

The cost of diet related diseases to the NHS in this, the 5th richest country, is unsustainable. Think what it does to India. The town I was brought up in, now one of the biggest cities in the world, Mumbai, has the highest rate of diabetes type 2 in the world. And it has no NHS. It is a disease of the rich. Here it is a disease of the poor. Poor people here are fat; in India rich people are fat. It is a return for us to the 18th Century. The health care costs are bringing the country to its knees.

Think about how much it applies in the US where 40 million people don’t even have health care insurance. Now apply it to the developing world, which is going through a nutrient transition and then think of your Cargill or Monsanto or Nestle, one of the big companies. Nestle sells 1% of all food consumed on the planet and plans to increase this to 2% by 2020. That may sound very small, but it is awesome power and that’s my final point.

Price volatility and Battles of power

Volatility of price is coinciding with battles of power, of power and control.

So these are what I call the ‘New Fundamentals’. But what’s the response of Government? What is the policy context?

Firstly they have not taken any notice of it. We have been lonely voices. But actually there is incredibly good evidence that has been building up since 1975. The Government’s own report from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy in 1974 said the health care cost of cardiovascular disease and diet related ill health is unsustainable. That is 34 years ago. Nothing new about this but the evidence has built up to a point at which the system is not going to be able to carry on in the same way in which it has been doing.

Now let’s go back to the 1930s. The evidence creators, researchers and scientists said “We don’t need to have this crisis of collapsing farming, of malnutrition in the big Western cities, of absolute malnutrition in Asia.” and they came up with what my world would call Productionism i.e. that with suitable use of science, capital investment, and research, you can produce more.

Has anyone here heard about Sir George Stapleton? Well, what Stapleton was about was that if you put drainage into the uplands you can grow different grasses and what looks like unproductive moor land, will deliver. It may deliver more meat, they weren’t thinking about heart disease then, but it will deliver.

But basically that Productionist model is now what is under threat. That whole model, although it has gone through various changes and evolutions etc, is now in trouble.

The economic mainstream thinking is essentially neo liberalism; let markets survive.

But in fact what Productionism fed into in the 1940′s, in the post war reconstruction, symbolised by Lord John Boyd Orr who was the first Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation was the need to harness nature by investment and by rebuilding skills.

And that is what is now coming unstuck, that whole diverse set of experiments gone off on different paths that people like Stapleton and Boyd Orr, like the organic movement in their different ways have done, is now hitting its soft brick wall.

Mean-time one of the irons of doing things differently, the Common Agricultural Policy, (CAP) which actually was set up to stop malnutrition and hunger in Europe, people forget that, just became a subsidy milking scheme from you and me as tax payers to rich land owners. Particularly here in Britain. 80% off all the money from the CAP went to 20% of farmers. It was a siphon from the mass to the few.

Now what is the British Government’s position of dealing with the New Fundamentals? The first is that it is actually ignoring it. In 2005/06 the Treasury and Defra put out major policy statements that said don’t have policies, let the markets decide! Sweep away the CAP, decouple! And that’s actually happened! So now just when we need a policy, a set of levers to address the New Fundamentals, we haven’t got one. We actually haven’t got any engagement. That is when I start getting worried and that is why I’m here because I think this is the policy vacuum that people like your good selves have got to get involved with.