The National Education Union general secretary speaks to Ben Chacko on growing calls to protect children from a toxic online culture
WITHIN days of the Tory government’s announcement that it will replace the set-aside huge payment to already rich farmers and landowners with even more money, supposedly to re-wild our countryside, at least one landowner has shown his total contempt for any kind of wildlife and landscape protection.
A huge section, well over a mile, of the beautiful Herefordshire River Lugg has been bulldozed. In a matter of hours this act of extreme and criminal vandalism has changed the Lugg from a beautiful river meandering through flowery water meadows into a straightened and re-profiled hard-edged sterile canal.
Ancient bank side trees have been grubbed out and burnt. Many riverside habitats completely obliterated. In just a few hours the bulldozer swept away part of a mature landscape that had taken many centuries to develop.
One of the major criticisms of China’s breakneck development in recent decades has been the impact on nature — returning after 15 years away, BEN CHACKO assessed whether the government’s recent turn to environmentalism has yielded results



