Love that picture of Blenheim. Those were the days when a general got something to show for being victorious. Poor old Petraeus won’t get so much as a bus-shelter.

Interesting about New Hampshire, though. I know that most of eastern Canada was thickly forested until a bunch of uppity Scots showed up wanting to scratch a living out of this new world they’d moved to, and now most of Ontario is a wheat field, I guess. Haven’t spent much time in Eastern Canada but that’s what one hears.

I think I’ve mentioned it before but here in King County, if you have more than 5 acres you’re not allowed to touch 90% of it. Not a barn, not a tree house for your kids, can’t beat back the weeds for safety or aesthetic purposes, nothing. So basically the government has seized 90% of your land without paying for it so the Seattle townies can go for a drive on a weekend and pretend they’re driving through untouched pristine wilderness that they haven’t actually had to pay anything for. So of course what purpose is there to own more than 5 acres? Of course a land developer can buy 100 acres and clear cut the whole thing for McMansions, which I personally think is less aesthetically pleasing than this sort of thing, but then we’d never get to that point anyway since what’s the point of investing in your property if your descendents will never get to inherit it.

Of course the same thing happens in the US. 150 years ago New Hampshire was bare and given over to sheep. Now it’s 86% re-afforested because the sheep business moved west to Brokeback Mountain or wherever (dunno whether the Aussies were involved in that - not sure they allow gay shepherds Down Under). The Great Smoky Mountains were bare until re-afforestation in the 1930s. The Texas Hill Country has been entirely re-created by irrigation. Such examples proliferate once you start looking.

Nowadays large tracts of the UK are pretty uncompetitive when it comes to primary production (and, apart from wartime and its aftermath, have been since about the time the railhead hit Abilene and they started packing meat in Chicago) and so the focus is shifting to “adding value” which is what continental peasants have done since time immemorial, making their own cheese, wine, herbal remedies etc and charging a premium for the product. This of course requires buildings in which to engage in production. And who objects to the erection of these buildings? Environmentalists, allied with townies who’ve converted the old barns which might otherwise have been used for the purpose and who are damned if they’re going to have their property values ruined by local people trying to make a living.

Forget the wildcat - the vast majority of people have never heard of it, let alone seen one - the really endangered species is the rural producer. Thanks, environmentalists!