Buscopan, IDS and a Dearth of Water

Oof,

Apologies all but I have been laid crook with a severe bout of IDS

Reading the T&C's it seems Buscopan is ineffective when treatment is sought for Irritating Dickhead Syndrome.

Last week IDS and a tank full of thinks proposed that state pensions should only be issued when the age of seventy five is attained. IDS was then asked "sotto voce" to drop the subject as it wouldn't be very popular with the electorate,

but propose it he did.

I have paid into a private pension all of my working life as has the lady who sleeps on my left. We have also paid full NI contributions throughout our working lives. State pension payments from the age of sixty seven (nee sixty five) were a part of our future financial planning for retirement. IDS would now like me to work for another nine years contributing further NI payments for a reduced period of pension payments.

IDS receives a military pension and, one day, a parliamentary pension for coming up with this screwing over of the everyday Joe.

Ok it has been muttered in some quarters that I retired at the age of twenty one to become a riverkeeper, and while I may make it look effortless, it is a physical job. Not one that I had envisaged undertaking to the age of seventy five. My knees are a mess and regular visitors to this house will attest that my mind is on the wane,

beyond seventy I'm not sure I should be trusted with plastic knives, let alone a chainsaw with a twenty eight inch bar.

We now know where part of the funding for the false promises the current crock of shite have been making this past month will come from. Me and millions of others working for an extra nine years and not claiming my state pension at the age originally intended.

IDS even had the temerity to suggest it would do me good. Is he intent on creating civil unrest?

IDS: "Now that you have reached the age when you are eligible for a state pension we've done the math and would like to present you both with this bill for just over £130,000 (nine years of state pension for two people) that you can repay by working for another nine years, it'll do you good".

Mr & Mrs de Cani: Sorry Ian, how about you give us the lump sum that we have paid through NI and Serps throughout our working life and we'll be the best judge of what's good for us and which part of planet earth we decide to spend it"

Shame on You IDS,


If you query the bonafides of this tale, give "IDS retirement age" a google








Right, I seem to have got quite cross, and a little sweary but now I've got that off my chest (a chest that has undoubtedly slipped a bit) to river business.

Cress is pushing out from the margins helping to squeeze the river and maintain a rate of flow but it can smother ranunculus and kill it off prematurely. Fishing remains tricky with fish getting a very good look at whatever is presented, parachute adams remains the fly of first choice. Not much weed was cut during the August weed cut and blanket weed continues to flourish.

It took two days to top the meadows and they will need going over again once more this summer. It's a steady job on the magnificent orange tractor but years ago it would have been the swish of the scythe that toppled the lush growth. I am often told that I have the carriage and demeanor of a thirty five year old but I am actually of an age when tractors and ride on mowers were not used to tend to the banks of a chalk stream. When I first started falling into the river in the 1980's Allen scythes and brush cutters were king and the fringe was attended to with a slasher. Pre Allen Scythes mowing scythes would be used. A normal Turk Scythe with the blade set at a different angle than for weed cutting, with a keen edge it was a fairly efficient method of mowing and knocking off the fringe. There is a rhythm and method to mowing with a scythe that Aiden Turner has yet to grasp. During my brief tenure at The Houghton Club, I also remember a chain driven brush cutter that hung on a wall in a barn. The chain ran from the engine to the cutter head on the outside of the shaft, sans guards. I used to get my flares caught in the chain on my bike in the 1970s, This contraption, straight out of Wallace & Gromnit, put most body parts at risk of being snaggged and compared to modern strimmers the thing weighed a ton!.

Ben Stokes by the way, what a cricketer. Madam and myself were in the house when he hit the fastest Test century at Lords against New Zealand in 2015. When the force is with him, bat, ball or in the field the opposition had better look out.

Last week we had rain, not a lot made its way down to the aquifers and this week the river has run dry at Stoke Charity. Stoke Charity is roughly three and a half miles from the usual source of the Dever and four and a bit miles upstream from Bransbury.

It's a worry.

It has come close to drying up at Weston Colley two miles from the usual source of the Dever during the past few summers.

The river dried up at Weston Colley a few weeks ago. Dever Springs Trout Fishery used to rear fish in ponds upstream from this dry river bed.

There was a gauge on the river at Weston Colley to record flow and height of water.

This is a stretch of the Dever three miles upstream from Bransbury that I used to help stock with several hundred pound and a half brown trout each summer.

There was a thriving angling club with a burgeoning membership.



Sutton Scotney Anglers. They even had a HQ in the village with name plate on the door an'all.

Couldn't stock it now.

The current situation in the Dever Valley has been caused by five dry winters, an unsustainable use of the groundwater resource and not allowing enough of what little rain that falls to soak back into the ground.

Earlier this year a delegation of Trusts, Associations and Interested parties approached the Water Companies and EA about the need to conserve water this summer. The Water Company announced that there was nothing to worry about, they would just draw more out of the ground. The EA's gaze was drawn to their navel.

In early summer I wrote to my Local EA office asking why their groundwater data didn't reflect the anecdotal evidence in the Dever Valley of aquifers under pressure. A rather supercilious reply stated that their data was accurate and anecdotal evidence was the ravings of cranks and loons.

If nothing changes with regard to the way we use our groundwater and the amount of rain that falls in this corner of the country this stretch of river will receive its principle replenishment from the sewage works out flow at Barton Stacey. It will be much diminished and its character will change. Above the sewage works outflow the Dever will become a winter bourne, below the sewage works - high in nutrients prone to warming with regular algal blooms. It will cease to be a true chalk stream.

One of the reason I chuck up this guff is to provide a record for future generations that this wasn't always the case on the Dever. An incredibly productive and biodiverse chalk river environment is being quietly trashed by a generation's inability or unwillingness to look after a ground water resource that feeds these precious rivers.

I have said it many times on here, if a third world country or failed state treated a unique habitat with such contempt, we would be quick to condemn as corrupt.