First £20,000 Dormouse Bridge

This is truly Newport’s Annus Magnificus.

All other MPs will eat their hearts out when they hear that my constituency now has a £22,000 Dormouse Bridge. It’s cunningly constructed so that acrobatic dormouse can climb a pole, walk a tightrope of steel across a road 12 foot off the ground then slide down another pole on the other side to safety.  

The bridge straddles a new road laid to ease traffic for the Ryder Cup in October. The road crosses a favourite path for dormice. I hope they learn to use it.

If not, it could be money wasted. Let’s hope the Mail does not notice.

 

 

Super beasts

The city is also blessed with a Super Dragons Trail. 

 

On a visit to the Newport Museum and Art Gallery today. I pictured two fine examples. One is a dragon of lights the other skillfully shaped out of wood.

 

 

There are 100 of them on sites throughout the cities painted in an astonishing variety of patterns and colours.

 

Australia Fair 

At last the truth about the swine flu scandal is recognised by another newspaper.

But it is on the other side of world. The Australian gives full credit to the Council of Europe and the British Medical Journal reports on which we collaborated. I know this blog has overdosed on this subject but my report is contributing to the world conversation on this astonishing scandal. This what the Australian has to say:

The Australian death rate from swine flu was 0.9 per 100,000, or 0.01 per cent -- 100-fold smaller than the 1 per cent mortality rate anticipated by the state and federal pandemic plans

But Australia was not alone. There are concerns that governments worldwide were panicked into overreacting by what some claim was a premature and unjustified declaration by the WHO that a pandemic was under way.

In June, the respected British medical journal BMJ printed the explosive findings of an investigation that claimed some of the experts advising WHO on the pandemic ``had declarable financial ties with drug companies that were producing antivirals and influenza vaccines''.

In one example, the WHO's guidelines on the use of antivirals in a pandemic were written by a flu expert who ``at the same time was receiving payments from Roche'', the maker of flu-fighting drug Tamiflu, the journal said.

The BMJ also highlighted the existence of a secret WHO emergency committee that advised Chan on when to declare the pandemic. The membership of this committee remained a closely guarded secret until this week, leaving observers to speculate that some might have industry links that had not been properly declared, or which the WHO did not wish to bring to light.

The claims -- which the BMJ describes as a scandal that has badly damaged the world health body's credibility -- have triggered the WHO to launch an independent investigation.

In Britain -- where citizens were initially warned to expect 65,000 deaths -- the government responded to the WHO's pandemic declaration by spending pound stg. 1 billion on drugs, including antivirals, antibiotics and 130 million doses of vaccine. By the start of this year, that death-toll estimate had been wound back from 65,000 to just 1000 fatalities, but even this proved an exaggeration.

A damning report by the Council of Europe found that by January 2010 fewer than 5000 Britons had been infected by swine flu, and the death toll was just 360.

Demand for Britain's vaccine stocks was similarly small: Britain has about 30 million doses of vaccine left over, according to an independent review of the response commissioned by the British government and published last month.

Despite this, the review concluded the response was highly satisfactory and good value for money.

France initially ordered 94 million doses of vaccine, but unlike Australia managed to cancel half its order through invoking get-out clauses when it became clear the illness was not proving as severe as feared.

The Council of Europe's report blamed national governments, the EU and the WHO for the ``waste of large sums of public money'' and for fuelling ``unjustified scares and fears'' over what the report's author termed a ``pandemic that never really was''.

The chairman of the WHO's now wound-up emergency committee, which gave the advice that led to the pandemic being declared, is Australian John Mackenzie, who says the BMJ has made innocent industry associations seem unfairly sinister.

A professor of microbiology at Perth's Curtin University, Mackenzie says industry links are impossible to avoid, given that there are only a few worldwide experts at the top of their profession, and that drug companies and government bodies such as WHO all want the best advice they can get.

Comments

[Paul Flynn]

Many, many thanks Ann. Marvellous to hear from you and even better to read your new poem. It's deserve a more prominent position on this blog. I will return to the subject later today. I hope life is smiling on you.

[Ann Drysdale]

The Dormouse Bridge

Nobody knows it’s for dormice,
the catenary over the road,
for although many people deplore mice
it’s erected especially for mice,
albeit not fieldmice and floormice
or even for my mice and your mice
(the invisible, secretive-spoor mice)
No.
Its use is exclusive to dormice
(the dear little save-up-and-store mice,
the sleep-through-the-winter-and-snore mice,
the tiny, too timid to roar mice).
It’s there to enable the poor mice
to get into contact with more mice
on the opposite side of the road
without
getting
squished.

[Patrick]

This is a classic case of what presenter Chris Packham refer's to as the 'T-Shirt' species.
We invest Millions on anthropomorphic species while our own lifestyles help to diminish the rest.
Will spending 200K on a dormice bridge do any good for even dormice?
We should take into account the number of site serveys , visits by consultants, landowners, countless council employee's all increasing footfall pressure.
The exposure from the 'dewy-eyed' bimbo tv presenter's that then attract people to visit thinking they will see a nocturnal creature at lunchtime sommersaulting overhead like an acrobat.

During the survey's dormice boxes will all be disturbed, opened to check if any are there.Should one be unfortunate enough to exist it will be cuddled, weighed, measured etc then patted on the head ready for the next disturbance.

Surely it would be better not to disturb them, keep surveying to once every ten years,not expose on TV the locations of their fragile habitats and not to build a 200K bridge during a recession?

If RCT are interested in helping nature maybe they could look at their landuse policies intensive farming, brownfield destruction, greenbelt, housing.

All destructive not just to one single species but a multitude.

If we were at all serious about reversing declines in biodiversity perhaps we wouldn't keep cats that kill 60Million garden birds a year, or support supermarkets that help destroy nature. We might even stop flying planes around the world to get a sun-tan etc.........

It's one thing driving around with wildlife stikers on your car, it's another to adopt a wildlife friendly lifestyle.

[HuwOS]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11091681

[Grendel]

Just be grateful it was ONLY £20K. The Peoples Republic of RCT paid £190K for theirs!

[Kay Tie]

But for those four months the mice would be reached out to.

Actually, I'd rather the mice had a bridge in perpetuity than four months of a prodnose reporting council employees to the police for telling Irish jokes.

[Paul Flynn]

And allow the dormice to be squashed Kay Tie? How heartless.

[Kay Tie]

TWENTY THOUSAND quid?!? You could hire a diversity outreach coordinator for four months for that amount of money.