Our Evil Children; our Useless Police.

We have a community owned woodland walk in our village.    It is a pleasant and much used circular walk with a stream running through it.     Members of our community give up their time freely to maintain and enhance this space.

We had an in-service training day this week - a day where school pupils do not go to school, but their teachers do.     This leaves children with a free day on their hands, and a day where supervision by parents may be stretched due to work commitments.

So a group of these free-ranging kids got hold of some extra strength bleach - the really heavy duty stuff, and went down to the community walk.   They poured this concentrated chemical over bridge handrails, on the ground and over a memorial stone.    This was simple premeditated badness.

Our walk is used by walkers, by children and by dogs.    Imagine a young child holding onto a handrail and then putting their hand to their mouth - as children do.     Imagine dogs walking through concentrated bleach and then trying to clean their paws.    Imagine the bleach falling off the bridges into the stream and killing the fish.

We called the police and tried to keep walkers away meantime.    We gave up waiting for the police after an hour and a half, and it was dark.    A car might have taken a turn round the car park later on - but that is all that it was.     And we have heard nothing more.    The police clearly are not interested, which is appalling.    We obviously have wait until we have a child with blisters down her throat requiring hospital treatment before anything gets done.

As a farmer, I have to monitor and record all my chemical use.   There are very strict rules about the distance between spraying activity and watercourses.    I have to record and have available for inspection the minute detail of all spraying activity.   We are talking about dilute chemical here.     If I pollute a waterway, I will (rightly) be taken to court.    And, yes, I have had a randomised snap inspection by the authorities.

But it seems that if children pollute a waterway with concentrated chemical, then nobody cares, including the police.    The children in question should be found;   the people who are supposed to looking after them should be hanging their heads in shame.    It is similar to the situation where children set fire to a healthy beech tree last summer.