SOMETIMES you’ve just got to hand over to the experts and let them do their thing.

In this case it was four Castor Fiber colleagues who set about an enormous engineering task, transforming a patch of degraded land into wildlife-rich, biodiverse wetlands.

This isn’t just a ‘nice thing to have’ — healthy wetlands improve water supplies, prevent floods and reduce soil loss.

In 10 years, the Castor Fiber team have created 200m of dams, 500m of canals and an acre of ponds in Tayside.

The number of different plant species is up by 50 per cent in the 30-acre site.

We have only a third of the wetlands worldwide that we had in 1900 so this work is nothing short of miraculous.

Let’s hope more areas of the country take on Castor Fiber (aka the Eurasian beaver) to start beavering away at saving their particular corner of the environment.

Space is just a total waste

SO Labour are calling on the Conservatives at Swindon Borough Council to give the Kimmerfields developer the old heave ho.

In the 10 years since the deal was first signed with Muse, not a lot has happened.

We were promised: new streets bursting with retail, space for leisure, a hotel, a new bus station, offices and new homes.

We have got: a health centre, replacing the health centre we already had, a multi-storey, replacing the multi-storey we already had, and a block of assisted-living flats.

A couple of things strike me about all this. The first is: how are we going to fill new retail units when we can’t fill the ones we already have?

And secondly: what’s all this nonsense about ‘leisure space’? What exactly is leisure space?

Swindon has plenty of parks, which are well used and much loved. That, to me, ticks the leisure space box.

However, there seems to be a fashion for concreted space in the middle of town which serves no particular purpose.

For instance, the space in front of the train station means there is less room for taxis and people picking up and dropping off. There are a couple of benches in the middle of it but other than that, it’s just a load of concrete that you have to walk across between the station and the taxi rank. I don’t see anyone actively enjoying this.

Similarly, at Regent Circus in front of Morrison’s, there’s a vast oasis of more concrete not being used for anything in particular, but taking up room that could, for instance, have been given over to the road system to ease congestion. How often have you seen people relaxing or socialising in this area?

Then there’s the swathe of concrete at Whalebridge, which is either awaiting the promised influx of retail units or has reached its final desination of ‘leisure space’. Again, it’s devoid of people doing anything remotely leisurely.

We’ve tried public art and we’ve mooted bringing back the canal, so maybe space is the final frontier for town planners. But I think the council needs to give up on it, because frankly, it’s somewhere no one wants to boldly go.

They’re making breaking up even harder to do

IT strikes me that perhaps the EU is employing dirty tactics in the run-up to our divorce.

And I don’t mean by demanding a huge settlement (although that bit is true), the house, the car and full custody of the kids.

No — they’re being nice to us. Which I think is rather cunning.

Yesterday it was announced that come January, we will no longer have to pay those pesky bank card fees when we book a flight or buy tickets for a concert, or nip to the corner shop, for instance.

Apparently these charges added up to the ludicrous sum of £473m between us in 2010. So this has got to be good news.

I hope the EU continues its charm offensive and imposes on us a number of Good Things before we go our separate ways.

If they’re short of ideas here are a few:

  •  A much-reduced TV licence fee. Nobody should earn the TV licence fee from 1,000 houses each year.
  •  A higher rate of national insurance guaranteed to save the NHS from an untimely death.
  • A ban on rice cakes (how can something so tasteless smell so bad?).
  • Free poo bags dispensed at dog poo bins. Now there’s no excuse for not picking up, people.
  • All food to be served on plates, not chopping boards, pieces of slate, old dustbin lids or a starched pair of Chef’s finest underpants.
  •  A ban on parties nobody voted for propping up the Government.
  • A ban on Christmas being so much as mentioned before the middle of November. Six shopping weeks is plenty.
  •  An extra week’s holiday for all employees plus two extra bank holidays — one in October and one in February, because it’s a long gap between August 31 and Christmas Day and May 1.
  •  The Swiss to run the railways for 10 years or until a point when we are capable of running cheap, punctual trains with enough seats for everyone.