National-grid-news: parks

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Parks and Open Spaces are littered with the feces of dogs (those of foxes cannot be helped) and many dog owners are the most irresponsible people that one can encounter.

Owning a dog comes with obligations, and some of them legal, and one of those is that you have to, by law, pick up Fido's doo-doo and dispose off properly in a litter bin.

The fact is that you do NOT have to hunt for a doggie doo bin anymore as any litter bin, in most place, in Britain, now can be used for dog waste. It is no longer, though in my eyes it still is and in all honesty nothing has changed, hazardous waste.

There was a time it was treated as such and it would be incinerated but within the last number of years it has been downgraded to “ordinary” waste again and is disposed off in landfill sites.

So, no excuse not clearing up after your dog and definitely no excuse to – when you have bagged it – to leave it littering the sides of a path in the bag. There is no fairy that will come along picking such bags up and getting rid off them.

Dog feces are a menace and harbor serious health risks and here especially for toddlers and young children, as several incidents in recent years have shown where children have lost the sight in their eyes because of contact with dog waste.

Some parks and open spaces, in summer, in certain places stink like sewers and worse because of heated dog waste laying in the grass and elsewhere. It only takes a little bag and a trip to a litter bin.

Be a responsible dog owner and clean up after your dog and dispose of the waste properly.

Post Title

→

The dog poo fairy does not exist

Post URL

→

https://national-grid-news.blogspot.com/2011/07/dog-poo-fairy-does-not-exist.html

Visit National-grid-news for Daily Updated Wedding Dresses Collection

Green Spaces essential for human health, study finds

Who would have thought? </sarcasm off>

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Now that was the very reason why Parks were created in Britain under the Public Health Act of 1875 and subsequent ones.

You probably also already know about the power of green spaces on your mind and body, but there hasn’t been any sort of real scientific assessment of that – until now.

But, was there really a scientific study needed? Well, maybe yes. Maybe this will make people value their parks and open spaces more.

Frances "Ming" Kuo, Director of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois has studied the effect of green space on humans in a number of settings and measured the effect of nature on human health and well being by using data such as police crime reports, blood pressure, performance on standardized neurocognitive tests, and physiological measures of immune system functioning.

What she discovered was what most of us probably already know. "In greener settings, we find that people are more generous and more sociable. We find stronger neighborhood social ties and greater sense of community, more mutual trust and willingness to help others. "In less green environments, we find higher rates of aggression, violence, violent crime, and property crime -- even after controlling for income and other differences," she said. "We also find more evidence of loneliness and more individuals reporting inadequate social support."

Because of this strong correlation between nature and health, Kuo encourages city planners to design communities with more public green spaces in mind, not as mere amenities to beautify a neighborhood, but as a vital component that will promote healthier, kinder, smarter, more effective, more resilient people.

It is for that very reasons that publicly owned parks and open spaces, parks to which the public has access to and gardens at home and especially also allotments must be part and parcel of our (urban) environment.

For that very reason also the provisions for parks and open spaces and those for allotment garden must not be reduced but must be increased rather. More people having access to such areas would, more than likely, reduce a lot of our problems in society today.

Not that that, probably, will make any difference to the people wielding the knife and the axe in Whitehall and other government departments in the UK as well as in countries such as the USA, etc.

They rather tackle the problems than to provide preventive means, which parks and open spaces and allotments are. In addition to that allotments are a vital part of national food security.

When that was mentioned, however, and the fact that we need to be more self-sufficient in food production some idiots in DEFRA and other government departments stated that, as a nation we have enough money to buy our food from abroad. Doh? And what are we going to do when we can no longer (afford to) bring the stuff in because of lack of fuel or of uneconomic costs of same? What then?

Post Title

→

Green Spaces essential for human health, study finds

Post URL

→

https://national-grid-news.blogspot.com/2011/05/green-spaces-essential-for-human-health.html

Visit National-grid-news for Daily Updated Wedding Dresses Collection