jingles_sunderland 2003-06-06

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

As a boy I grew up in a part of Sunderland called Southwick where terraced houses were only a short walk away from shipyards, a coal mine and local telephone factories. As a teenager I moved to a suburb called Penshaw where the skyline was dominated by a replica of a Doric temple and where terraced houses were only a short walk away from a mine spoil heap, the monument to the Lambton Worm and the country home of Lord Lambton himself.

These facts are very pertinent to this superb little book of articles by Matt Ridley. I have always been somewhat sceptical of just taking in what other people tell me and so I have had a terrible tendency of going out and finding out for myself. You cannot help but notice if you live in England how things change so quickly. Our towns expanded, the countryside shrank, the fields are dominated by that disgustingly yellow oil seed rape and the number of butterflies has dramatically falled. Environmentalists tell us that the end is nigh and cite all sorts of scary things to make their case but there is never the concrete proof that any reasonably educated person might wish to see.

Elsewhere on the Amazon boards readers will notice my revieve of the Skeptical Environmentalist. This review has brought me some notoriety and some, ahem shall we say unfriendly correspondance. However the point remains that there is some truth in the rumor that environmental organisations can only be considered successful if they attract funds and the only way they can do this is to scare the general populations sufficiently to attract their notice.

Matt Ridley does a tremendous service in being a qualified scientific journalist who can cut through the scare tactics to put forward a sensible view on some of this stuff and make a common sense criticism which is generally accesssible.

In this wonderful little green book a collection of his published articles in Britain's Telegraph newspaper are collected and wherein he 'debunks' to coin the American terminology a considerable number of what can only be termed environmental myths.

His comments are well written, brief and to the point as journalists points should be and which bring a new sense of information to what is normally considered a serious scientific subject beyond the ken of us lesser mortals.

In his inimitable style he brings an insider's point of view backed up by his own experience of living in Northumberland which must surely rank as one of the most beautiful relatively unspoilt areas of the British Isles.

I heartily commend this book to everyone and in particular to anyone who knows anything about the famous cattle who reside in the Northumbria area.