Turf it out: is it time to say goodbye to artificial grass?

It’s neat, easy – and a staggering £2bn global market. But as plastic grass takes over our cities, some say that it’s green only in colour

If your attention during the Women’s World Cup was on the pitch rather than the players, you might have noticed that the matches were all played on real grass. That was a hard-won change, made after the US team complained to Fifa that they sustained more injuries on artificial turf.

In private gardens, however, the opposite trend is happening: British gardens are being dug up and replaced with plastic grass. But this isn’t the flaky, fading stuff on which oranges were once displayed at the greengrocer. Today’s artificial grass is nearly identical to the real thing.

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Turf it out: is it time to say goodbye to artificial grass?

It’s neat, easy – and a staggering £2bn global market. But as plastic grass takes over our cities, some say that it’s green only in colour

If your attention during the Women’s World Cup was on the pitch rather than the players, you might have noticed that the matches were all played on real grass. That was a hard-won change, made after the US team complained to Fifa that they sustained more injuries on artificial turf.

In private gardens, however, the opposite trend is happening: British gardens are being dug up and replaced with plastic grass. But this isn’t the flaky, fading stuff on which oranges were once displayed at the greengrocer. Today’s artificial grass is nearly identical to the real thing.

Continue reading...

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Conveyancing: Advice for homebuyers Nottingham Estate Agents

Are you baffled by property jargon such as the term ‘conveyancing’? haart ensures you understand what the process entails with this helpful guide Conveyancing is the term applied to the legal and administrative work associated with transferring ownership of land or buildings from one owner to another. When an offer has been made and accepted […]

The post Conveyancing: Advice for homebuyers appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Country diary: a dowdy female with the vapours gets male moths a-flutter

Langstone, Hampshire: Potential mates can detect the emergence of an adult vapourer moth from miles away

It was impossible to miss the rusty tussock moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar foraging on my raspberry bush. Its body was dotted with orangey-red pinacula, wart-like growths sprouting clusters of pale lemon hairs. It had two bristly black antler-like protrusions at the front of its head, and a tail-like projection from its rear. Along its back four sulphur-yellow dorsal tufts stood proud, like the bristles of an interdental toothbrush. Measuring it at 25mm in length, I could tell it was a female, as males reach a maximum of about 15mm.

These caterpillars are polyphagous, feeding on a wide range of deciduous trees and shrubs, so I potted up a selection of raspberry, blueberry, hazel and birch, and introduced her to a rearing cage. After five days of feasting, she stopped eating and spun a cocoon on the underside of a hazel leaf. Over the course of a week I squinted through the web of silken threads, watching the silhouette of her larval body melting and morphing into adult form.

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Country diary: a dowdy female with the vapours gets male moths a-flutter

Langstone, Hampshire: Potential mates can detect the emergence of an adult vapourer moth from miles away

It was impossible to miss the rusty tussock moth (Orgyia antiqua) caterpillar foraging on my raspberry bush. Its body was dotted with orangey-red pinacula, wart-like growths sprouting clusters of pale lemon hairs. It had two bristly black antler-like protrusions at the front of its head, and a tail-like projection from its rear. Along its back four sulphur-yellow dorsal tufts stood proud, like the bristles of an interdental toothbrush. Measuring it at 25mm in length, I could tell it was a female, as males reach a maximum of about 15mm.

These caterpillars are polyphagous, feeding on a wide range of deciduous trees and shrubs, so I potted up a selection of raspberry, blueberry, hazel and birch, and introduced her to a rearing cage. After five days of feasting, she stopped eating and spun a cocoon on the underside of a hazel leaf. Over the course of a week I squinted through the web of silken threads, watching the silhouette of her larval body melting and morphing into adult form.

Continue reading...

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Two-child benefits limit hurts the poor | Letters

The cap pushes a million children deeper below the poverty line, says Ruth Lister, while Paul Nicolson points out that the very rich can pass land on to their three or four children tax free

Your report (Ministers urged to scrap ‘nasty’ two-child limit on benefits, 1 August) rightly warns of the likely impact on overall levels of child poverty. However, given that the majority of children affected are already in poverty, perhaps even more worrying is the Child Poverty Action Group’s estimate that a million children (over half of those concerned) will be pushed deeper below the poverty line.

From the research you cite, it would seem that the two-child limit is undermining the government’s own policies, including on domestic abuse, refugee integration and family conflict. Yet it is doing nothing to monitor its impact. This betrays the kind of irresponsible indifference to the effects of its policies on the wellbeing of some of the poorest children and families in our society, lambasted recently by the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Ruth Lister
Labour, House of Lords

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Here's how Britain's broken housing system can be fixed in a decade | Joe Beswick

There is no shortage of ideas on how to solve the housing crisis. All that is lacking is the political will

New figures released on Wednesday confirmed what we already knew: homeownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for young people. A survey by Santander found 70% of 18- to 34-year-olds now believe that homeownership is over for their generation. Our housing system has been allowed to degenerate to such an extent that secure and affordable housing is increasingly unavailable to working-class people, and in many places middle-class people too. But it’s not for a lack of ideas that this has happened. What we are lacking is the political will.

Fifty years ago the country had a fairly stable housing system. The need for secure, affordable housing of the middle class was largely met through homeownership, and that of the working class through widely available social housing. But a reliance on the private market to deliver homes since the 1980s, and the loss of millions of social homes over recent decades, has destroyed this system.

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