Brighton’s ‘green utopia’ has transformed into more of a leafy jungle ever since the Green-led council decided to ban herbicides back in 2019. The Mail caught up with residents to gauge public opinion on the ‘rewilding’ of the coastal city. Here’s an excerpt:
Some of the them stand up to five feet tall and completely block pathways used by children to get to school.
The weeds stray across pathways and pavements, climb lamp posts and signs and leave the elderly and disabled fearful of leaving their homes without a car.
Brighton has become the perfect example of how quickly nature reclaims the street if weeds are left unchecked.
But the ‘rewilding’ of the seaside city has become a hot issue and almost everyone has opinion.
Visitors say the weed infestation is making the normally dapper Regency resort look very down-at-heel and councillors say their email in-boxes are full with angry complaints.
The cause of the weed problem is the banning – by the Green-led council in 2019 – of glyphosate and other herbicides in the city.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in many of the weed killers on sale in Britain and it has been claimed is a potential cause of cancer.
The local authority has blamed a number of factors including Brexit for the infestation saying it has affected the recruiting staff and ordering equipment.
But Brighton & Hove City Council caused fury earlier this year when it asked residents to work unpaid to weed pavements, kerbs and paths near their homes.
The ‘Weed Warriors’ initiative was met with derision by many who felt the local authority had run out of ideas.
The council boasted: “We hope the scheme provides an opportunity for residents to gain new skills, be more active, get out and about in the city and find new places to explore. You’ll also have the opportunity to meet new people who are all as passionate as you about looking after our beautiful city.”
But Michael Elliott, 70, a retired accountant in Hove, said: “We pay nearly £3,000 Council Tax a year for services in this city. The bin collection is atrocious and now the council is asking us to weed our own roads. It’s just a joke!”
And Laura King said: “Are they joking? It’s absolute madness to expect residents to go out and start doing jobs the council is legally obliged to provide – especially when this is covered by the council tax.”
Cllr Anne Meadows, Conservative councillor for Westdene and Hove Park, said: “It’s not a joke. People are getting injured. I’ve seen young children on their scooters falling off and ending up in tears because of weeds on the pavements.
“Rewilding is all well and good but it should be limited to where it is appropriate such as nature trails and parks.”
She said the lack of action was also a danger to road users as many can’t see past large clumps of weeds when turning out of road junctions.
The Greens were ousted from office in the May election and residents are now looking at the Labour-led council to come up with a plan.
Anna Fox, 42, a nurse, said: “I understand the banning of dangerous herbicides but if you are going to take that step you have to have a plan on how to deal with the weeds that will flourish. It’s not good enough.”
The council has invested in new measures including mechanical sweepers, weed rippers and specialist strimmers in a bid to curb the problem but residents say there aren’t enough machines or workers.
In 2021-22 at least eight elderly people were hospitalised with injuries due to falls caused by overgrown weeds.
One resident, who prefers not to be named, said his 88 year-old father tripped on ivy growing across a pathway in Hove and broke his knee in June.
He said: “He’s always gone out for a walk and stayed very active and never had a fall so this was really unexpected. When he told me he tripped over ivy on the path I was furious. It’s totally unnecessary.
“My father was treated but he’s still suffering a lot of pain with it and is now using crutches or a wheelchair. He’s really lost his confidence. It could cost him his independence.”
Worth reading in full.
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I suspect in some places this is just an excuse for councils to do less work and spend the money on vanity projects and other rubbish
And all those 6 figure salaries the bosses award themselves, with taxpayer funded final salary pensions, for doing a job which is a monopoly, without any risk of being sacked for incompetence.
The weak-minded thinking that says if it’s natural then it must be good.
Take all these fools and tie them to posts in the Congolese jungle to be “rewilded”.
They are just saving on manpower costs, nothing else. Weeds are easily got rid of by other means, like manually removing them or using heat via a weed burning flame gun. Personally I don’t like to use glyphosate or pesticides in my garden, but it certainly isn’t full of weeds.
Have they never heard the old adage, “one year’s seeding equals seven years weeding”?
Incidentally, our local council tried this last year. It was sadly ironic to see they had left a ‘wild strip’ of unmown grass around the rec to ‘encourage wildlife’, but then put in dozens of mole traps because they didn’t like the mole hills! Obviously some forms of wildlife are less acceptable. (I went and kicked all the traps out of the ground. They’ve never used them again.)
It’s a personal choice what you use in your garden, but I’ve looked into the science on glyphosate and claims about it being harmful to micro organisms in the soil or other forms of life are junk science. Almost anything can cause cancer with repeated exposure to very large amounts. You’d probably have to be drinking glyphosate on a weekly basis for years before it increased the chances of you getting cancer.
If I lived in Brighton I would happily weed my bit of pavement using Glyphosate. The risks are tiny unless you are an agricultural or horticultural person regularly using it whilst ignoring all safety precautions.
I am watching this happening on the highways and pavements in my area.
Has it not occurred to any of the people in charge just what damage this will do as the weeds push out kerbstones, slabs, concrete and tarmac? And the cost to repair.
Suggest a few Brighton people start suing the council as you can do for trips on uneven pavements and potholes.
Mind you, with “global warming” the problem may soon be solved by urban bush fires.
I also love their complaint that immigration rules have meant they can’t import cheap staff. Bl××dy hypocrites.
But it’s not “your bit of pavement” to be doing anything with.
Maybe the council would like to change the definition of ownership so that everyone can own everything and therefore nobody own anything, but I for one would prefer to care for what’s mine and no more. Otherwise, the council might take it the wrong way and decide they should be “caring” for my property, too!
Principles are important.
Having lived all my life in small rural communities which our councils rarely remember exist, we are used to just “getting on with things”.
This was what communities did until the 70s and 80s when the government started to interfere in everyone’s lives, charge more tax, take over community groups and say “we can do this better” and destroy community cohesion.
People stepped back because it was easier that trying to stop councils getting involved and f@@@@king things up.
Of course they couldn’t/wouldn’t deliver what people wanted it didn’t fit their agenda. The “woke”, diversity issues mean they have charged us more and more for less and less of what we really need.
Cottage hospitals? Keeping an eye out for you neighbour? Sweeping the snow off your elderly neighbours path? Better not, because if they then slip and fall you will get sued.
Can you imagine what would happen if a community did take it into their own hands and use glyphosate to stop their elderly neighbours falling and ending up in hospital?
Now they have destroyed community cohesion they can isolate us and instead of us helping each other they now get us to spy on each other.
So we end up saying “not MY pavement”.
I wouldn’t mind doing all that community thing but I don’t want to pay the council at the same time. Just try choosing to do only the former! So we’re agreed: The New World is needed!
Peter Hitchins puts in the first part of his post, more eloquently than I can, what I have been trying to say.
I worked in Local Government from 1976 to 2004 and witnessed this first hand. It was heartbreaking as far as I was concerned which was why, in the end I resigned.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12499743/PETER-HITCHENS-Militants-turned-town-halls-concrete-corridors-mediocrity.html
If we had a government that was even slightly “conservative”, they would insist that every local authority reduced their staffing levels to what they were in 2000, unless they could demonstrate that additional statutory duties needed more “human resources”.
Not that things were good in 2000, but at least we could avoid paying for all the “diversity” officers, “climate change” officers and the rest, which are almost certainly ultra vires anyway.
Then we could wind it back to, say 1990 and get rid of the ‘nuclear free zone’ officers.
Might start getting a bit of value for money and deflating some swelling Empires.
Obviously, some changes in Local Authority remits would assist.
How about insisting that the ONLY things that were “recycled” were those very few for which there was any use and value of the things “recycled”?
Yes, Peter Hitchens nails this. Looking back now it is impossible not to see how the radical destabilisation and undermining of societies was deliberate. The eradication of centuries old counties, destroying the grammar schools etc were all intended to break us apart and destroy communities.
It worked.
Don’t forget though, with ownership comes liability.
In my home city, the council has mowed a portion of the grass in public areas once this year. They haven’t touched any trees since before the lockdowns. I’ve been mowing a portion of the council land to the side of our house, because it runs up to our side wall and weeds were getting everywhere. Grass and other weeds were five feet high and we ivy going up the wall. After the one cut that was done, I’ve kept the side of the house mowed. However, at the bottom of our garden is another open area and the council didn’t bother to cut it. The weeds were growing through our fence. There’s a wild patch, overrun with weed that’s about 15 feet tall. I weeded all along our fence and tackled the worst of it with a chainsaw to create an eight foot buffer zone. But I have to be careful, because it’s not our land and the council uses eco-bollocks as an excuse for their negligence.
When you drive around the city, it’s noticeable that everywhere is overgrown and unkempt. Weeds are growing out of the pavements, out of drains and walls. Roundabouts are overgrown and diminishing visibility of other vehicles. Trees are dangerously oversized and their branches are often down to pavement level. There are patches where you have to step into the road because the pavement has been made impassable by trees or bushes. It looks like some post-apocalypse scene in a film, where most of the human race has died.
Worse, it’s led to many people not tending to their own gardens, so everywhere has a feel of neglect. I’d have cleared the weeds on the edge of our garden and in cracks of the pavement and road immediately beyond with a pressure washer, but the council instigated a hosepipe ban at the end of April, before it even got warm. I’ve done some of it by hand.
When I was growing up, all the way up until within the last decade, the council did the trees and undergrowth once a year, the grass once a month from about April to October. Since the lockdown, it’s like the country died. Councils chuck a ton of money at Pride Month, but spend barely a penny on civic pride.
I would certainly agree with you about the trees. We live by a beautiful, but massive, plane tree, which is so enthusiastic about its growth that anything higher than your average car is brushing the branches. It needs a severe haircut, but I can’t see that happening until there is an accident or claim for damage.
We pay the council a bloomin’ fortune in council tax, where does it all go? I know…don’t ask
It’s the same here too. The only bit they seem to be passionate about mowing is the one tiny patch in our godforsaken city where Bee Orchids grow. As soon as you see the flower spikes you know the mower will be round next day.
“It looks like some post-apocalypse scene in a film, where most of the human race has died.”
That is the intention. Another way to undermine moral. Or maybe it is just simply preparation for a coming post apocalyptic World.
I don’t rule anything out these days.
Cannabis is a known carcinogen yet the Greens almost want consumption to be mandatory. Glyphosate is fine if used according to instructions.
I am in California just now and at tge first hotel we stayed there was a State mandated plaque warning about chemicals from everyday plastics which might cause cancer.
I wonder what is the risk from tripping over weeds or being scratched by weeds or stung by the insects that live among them.
daft.
A metaphor for the rot that’s set in everywhere we look. A shabby disgrace.
Brighton’s awful: dirty, run-down and car-parking charges are outrageous.
Do yourself a favour and stay well away.
Now there is a job that illegal migrants could do to help pay for their accommodation.
“[people] who are all as passionate as you about looking after our beautiful city.”. So the Council are not then, they don’t care? Yet the Council’s one and only duty is to ‘look after the city’ and it’s people.
Isn’t it just the ‘new way’…..get rid of what worked in the past with absolutely no notion of having an alternative?
Do the drongo’s we have in charge at every level of Government go to some sort of classes or on courses to learn how to do this??
The snobbish elites are ‘presentists’ who believe that they are the most sophisticated human beings who have ever lived. In their mind, the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years is ‘savagery’ and should be destroyed. Net Zero is essentially a corporate rebranding of Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’. Currently, cancelling educated people is being used instead of murder, but when you look at what ‘teachers’ are telling a generation of children, you can see there will be murder in a generation’s time.