trees have hollows inside them. their live part is outside. there does not seem to be any rot around or inside the tree which would weaken it. the exterior is protected by the waterproof bark and the bit of the tree which is carried food and nutrients is the area of the trunk directly behind the bark. if the tree isn't rotting then it is not dangerous. it is clear that the person who is in charge of trees in singapore doesn't know anything about them because they have all been pruned so that they get more and more more unstable as the years go by. The tree height should have been capped by pruning the topmost branches and the branches and the trees should have been pruned so that they gave maximum coverage. But the person who decided how the trees are looked after has just told the contracters who aren't trained tree surgeons to just do whatever they want. as a result the trees have grown too high for cutting and become top heavy resulting in falling hazards. i mean can someone please speak to nparks and tell them to get a tree surgeon in to advise them. and a good one,. not a chainsaw happy one with connections to industry. do you know that wood now is more expensive than steel? kek sim only.
Cyclists and motorcyclist, along with the Alphard and Noah cars (apparently they are popular Grab taxi vehicles) in Singapore are the absolute worst. They have their own traffic rules which makes driving and using the roads in Singapore dangerous for others. The motorcyclists speed on the many many Expressways, without any protective gear, zooming in the in between lanes and overtaking cars everywhere. Cyclists ride pavements, brush up against cars and seem to think they are the most important people on the road for some unknown reason. I know that Singaporeans are atrocious, rude, obnoxious drivers, but these guys and their idiocy take all of those fine qualities and compound them. I also dont know why there is no enforcement of the laws for them. Is there a special law in Singapore which says motorcyclists can create their own interlanes? Like what the actual fuck? And that cyclists can just mow people down on the pavement which they aren't even allowed to be on?
I was at Belfast City Airport recently and nearly passed out when I saw that in the short stay carpark it was 13 quid an hour. I was what the actual fuck. So i parked in the long stay which was 7 quid and only 20 m further than the short stay. but in the future i will ask the person I'm collection get to the collection point and i will get them. we live only 5 mins from the airport. but as i waited at the arrivals gate, it was so sad to see that there were very few people who were waiting to see their friends and loved ones for the first time. indeed, with all the four of us who waited, every single person who came through the doors got bug hugs and kisses. one woman on a wheelchair had her baby placed her lap. something human has been taken from the airport. it is part of the dehumanisation of the landscape.
I also discovered that they were planning to extend the airport - eight new stands i think... along with the dilapidated RSPB in belvoir park forest and the erratic opening times in belfast harbour and the neglect of portmore lough which was evident even two years ago when i last visited it, i just thought, are the RSPB going to pull out of ireland? maybe they will leave and let BWI take over. Lough Erne and Lough Beg can become cross border projects managed by BWI or jointly managed... Rathlin they will probably keep and it can be managed from the Scotland office. When I first joined the RPSB there were like 10 of us. Something like that. maybe 15. then it really expanded and the office in belvoir was not large enough for everyone. even though it was pretty good.
i have lost touch with all things conservation, so i don't know if the numbers have recovered in any meaningful way. once i brought a journos to some place... i think lough erne and they asked the warden there, how much money has the rspb put into getting these 30 pairs of curlew back. and he said, oh i think about 2 million. he was like what??? 2 million... i mean it is a lot. habitat management. but the point is that these birds are signs that the environment is doing ok. they are at the top of the food chain and having them thrive means that the rest of the food chain is doing alright and other creatures are doing alright too. and the water and the air and the land is doing alright - and i think we can all agree we need water air and land.
i dont know. it is heartbreaking. it feels like right now we are in the midst of loosing somekind of war to the stupids and the angries and the evils in this world. is there any hope for us?
apart from this year, i keep my travel down to one trip to singapore a year. i know the carbon footprint is bad enough. but do we need to have everyone flying everywhere all the time for no good reason at all in the middle of a fossil fuel emergency? do people really not understand and know how to say well, actually, i don't need to be in some sort of arms race with my colleagues about how many weekend trips I had to prague and this year.
Comments