Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[LMcD]

Followership.
Used by Tim Peake on 'Today' as one of the 'soft skills' taught to trainee astronauts - presumably a necessary complement to leadership. It doesn't actually make me grind my remaining teeth, but is clearly a contrivance. Is its meaning already covered by 'team spirit' or some other already existing phrase or word?

[teamsaint]

Deep/ Deeply, as used in PR pieces, is just starting to irritate.

“Our deep commitment to chamber music”. That sort of thing. Almost impossible to avoid in the arts , it seems.

[oddoneout]

Deep/ Deeply, as used in PR pieces, is just starting to irritate.

“Our deep commitment to chamber music”. That sort of thing. Almost impossible to avoid in the arts , it seems.

To counter any charge of superficiality presumably. Such over-egging tends to make me suspicious, as it seems sometimes to be a diversion or deflection tactic.

[teamsaint]

To counter any charge of superficiality presumably. Such over-egging tends to make me suspicious, as it seems sometimes to be a diversion or deflection tactic.

Well quite.

i’d really prefer something like “ we are superficially committed to chamber music”. It would at least be a change, possibly though provoking, and , for a time , funny.

[LMcD]

A new REWILDING project has been announced for part of Wales. Useful shorthand, I guess, for 'returning to something like its natural state', but to me it still feels like an ugly contrivance. Perhaps projects that harm or destroy the natural environment will come to be described as DEWILDING...?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A new REWILDING project has been announced for part of Wales. Useful shorthand, I guess, for 'returning to something like its natural state', but to me it still feels like an ugly contrivance. Perhaps projects that harm or destroy the natural environment will come to be described as DEWILDING...?

And perhaps setting a piece of Music to naff choreography might then become "DeDeWilding"?

(Jokette for Forumistas of a certain age, perhaps.)

[Serial_Apologist]

A new REWILDING project has been announced for part of Wales. Useful shorthand, I guess, for 'returning to something like its natural state', but to me it still feels like an ugly contrivance. Perhaps projects that harm or destroy the natural environment will come to be described as DEWILDING...?

Indeed - thoroughly unwildy!

[oddoneout]

A new REWILDING project has been announced for part of Wales. Useful shorthand, I guess, for 'returning to something like its natural state', but to me it still feels like an ugly contrivance. Perhaps projects that harm or destroy the natural environment will come to be described as DEWILDING...?

Or someone's idea of its natural state, at a particular point in time. However attractive the plant-based landscape of the British Isles may be, natural(as in untouched by human activity) it ain't.
It's restoration by any other name, but I think using 'rewilding' is in part a PR exercise. The initial stages can be pretty awful to look at( I saw a couple when visiting my sister in Scotland) but use of 'wild' can induce warm fuzzy feelings about the rightness of the procedure.
Degradation is the negative version, probably because it is more emotive, and so useful for obtaining public support to tackle it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Or someone's idea of its natural state, at a particular point in time. However attractive the plant-based landscape of the British Isles may be, natural(as in untouched by human activity) it ain't.
It's restoration by any other name, but I think using 'rewilding' is in part a PR exercise. The initial stages can be pretty awful to look at( I saw a couple when visiting my sister in Scotland) but use of 'wild' can induce warm fuzzy feelings about the rightness of the procedure.
Degradation is the negative version, probably because it is more emotive, and so useful for obtaining public support to tackle it.

We really need Richard Tarleton to join in and clarify our thinking on this, which I only studied for four years as one thread in a Horticulture B.Sc, and that, admittedly 20 years ago. So I'm a bit rusty But from memory, civilisation's effect on the environment over millennia means that there can be no return to a "natural", pre-human species state of balance, since there being no tabula rasa, short presumably of total ecodestruction wrought for example by an asteroid, all "succession" proceeding from theoretical ecological premises amounts to "secondary succession". The original interference-triggered imbalances oblige further interference, so we have such activities described as "plagioclimax management", which amounts to intervening in natural processes of succession before the completion of what would otherwise be uninterfered with cycles - one example being timing grass mowing in such a way as to optimise species diversity. Too early, and rosette-type plants such as dandelions haven't had the chance to compete with surrounding faster-growing outshading grasses; too late and other larger shrub-type perennials have a head start on smaller more diverse species aided by access to solar photosynthesis.

[Richard Tarleton]

We really need Richard Tarleton to join in and clarify our thinking on this, which I only studied for four years as one thread in a Horticulture B.Sc, and that, admittedly 20 years ago. So I'm a bit rusty But from memory, civilisation's effect on the environment over millennia means that there can be no return to a "natural", pre-human species state of balance, since there being no tabula rasa, short presumably of total ecodestruction wrought for example by an asteroid, all "succession" proceeding from theoretical ecological premises amounts to "secondary succession". The original interference-triggered imbalances oblige further interference, so we have such activities described as "plagioclimax management", which amounts to intervening in natural processes of succession before the completion of what would otherwise be uninterfered with cycles - one example being timing grass mowing in such a way as to optimise species diversity. Too early, and rosette-type plants such as dandelions haven't had the chance to compete with surrounding faster-growing outshading grasses; too late and other larger shrub-type perennials have a head start on smaller more diverse species aided by access to solar photosynthesis.

Thank you! Just seen this....

I don't think any advocates of rewilding imagine for a moment that we can return to the "wildwood" state of millennia ago. But it is the case that our uplands - prime candidates for rewilding (I like the term) are the most impoverished in Europe - and I've walked extensively in the French and Spanish Pyrenees (and just about every other area of Spanish upland), French, Swiss, Italian and Slovenian Alps, primeval forests in Croatia and Slovenia (50% forest, with the greatest density of bears in Europe), etc. (I've also done a large section of the Appennine Way in Italy, of which the less said the better). So I know whereof I speak. The uplands should be repositories of large(r) carnivores, large birds of prey, etc. . Instead of which, our uplands are barren repositories of...sheep, and in Scotland of deer - which would be fine, if we had wolves, to keep them in check, which we don't. So, our uplands are boring monocultures of...grass. In Snowdonia, alpine plants hang on in those parts from which sheep are excluded.

The finest public advocate of rewilding here is probably George Monbiot. I've heard him in debate with the appalling (in this context) NFU, and recently being interviewed by Martha Kearney on Today. Talking about the Lake District, she talked about the "landscape" in terms of dry stone walls - the relatively recent, anthropogenic land use system imposed on the landscape. Monbiot identified the geological landforms as being what was special - there is very little else, except protected pockets of woodland. I drove through Snowdonia only last weekend - the same story. I avoid the Brecon Beacons and Cambrian Mountains (Mid Wales), about as boring as it gets.

Unfortunately, as all the species which should be there have been extinct for centuries, we have no choice but to reintroduce them (cf sea eagles in Mull....) - and the best way to begin to restore the uplands is to....remove the sheep, which nobody apart from sheep farmers wants anyway. There's a messy stage, when we pass through the scrub phase, but you can't jump straight from grass monoculture to mature woodland. You have to think in centuries.

That's for starters!

PS in the absence of wolves, deerstalking is fine, only they should shoot the super-abundance of breeding females, not just 14-point stags

[oddoneout]

Trouble is that the general public wouldn't like the Lakes etc to be covered with forest as that would spoil the views.....There is something ironic about being quick to recognise(and criticise) the effects of deforestation in other countries but not even considering that is what we see in so much of this country.

[Richard Tarleton]

Trouble is that the general public wouldn't like the Lakes etc to be covered with forest as that would spoil the views.....There is something ironic about being quick to recognise(and criticise) the effects of deforestation in other countries but not even considering that is what we see in so much of this country.

Very true - but memories are short, and it's largely a result of conditioning (Beatrix Potter, Herdwick sheep, Monarch of the Glen, etc.). The Scottish Highlands as we know them only date from the late 18th century, and the Highland Clearances. An interesting case study is Yellowstone, where people adjusted to the recovery of the large carnivore population, and reforestation, very quickly. Another problem is that most of our European neighbours, from Scandinavia to Spain to the Danube, are accepting of the idea of large carnivores, whereas in this country one escaped lynx (prey: rabbits) gives everyone an attack of the vapours.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Very true - but memories are short, and it's largely a result of conditioning (Beatrix Potter, Herdwick sheep, Monarch of the Glen, etc.). The Scottish Highlands as we know them only date from the late 18th century, and the Highland Clearances. An interesting case study is Yellowstone, where people adjusted to the recovery of the large carnivore population, and reforestation, very quickly. Another problem is that most of our European neighbours, from Scandinavia to Spain to the Danube, are accepting of the idea of large carnivores, whereas in this country one escaped lynx (prey: rabbits) gives everyone an attack of the vapours.

Could I suggest that this thread has lately left its true philological home pastures, and climbed to socio-economic, even political upland slopes? Perhaps it deserves a separate thread?

[Nearly wrote "sheep-filled uplands", but engaged brain just in time]

[Richard Tarleton]

Yes, it started with the word rewilding - or is that re-wilding? - setting LMcD's teeth on edge - I responded (on request) to defend both word and concept..... Do we really want a thread on rewilding? Not sure I have the energy

[LMcD]

From today's 'Times':
BBC staff have been told to use non-binary pronouns when addressing gender-fluid or transgender employees to ensure that the corporation does not develop a "heteronormative culture"