Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

I walk in my local park every day, because I own dogs. I don’t take every dog walk there, but I normally walk through it or past it with the dogs. I’ve noticed changes over the last few years, with the rubbish bins being emptied less frequently, and on occasion overflowing, with the frequency of the grass cutting, and hedge trimming. I know it’s because times are tough for the local authority and they’ve had to make savings, and they’ve done this by reducing services. When the last Council tax bill went out it was the first increase in a number of years. The reason given for the increase was to maintain services, those services that have already been reduced significantly since 2010. I can’t help thinking that the logic of my local Council is flawed over how it spends and saves money on what it delivers, and that many of these decisions are driven by political motivations. This article paints an even more depressing picture of our park lands. To be honest none of it surprises me and in a local context I can see there be changes ahead. Whilst it’s not been explicitly stated what the intention is, there was a big consultation last year on “improvements”. Many seemed sensible, although not fully thought through, and there is a history of bad decision making in terms of long leases for parts of the grounds.

One thing for sure however, this is a local amenity that I feel strongly about and take a keen interest in.

There’s been a lot of movies remade (or rebooted, as I think is the industry parlance) – I’m not sure about this one though: