The Government alert over wildfire risks was the right thing to do - Sarah Todd

It would be churlish not to comment positively (don’t fall off your chairs) on the recent Government alert. It was absolutely the right and proper thing to do to send out the mobile phone emergency message warning about the extremely high risk of wildfires nationally.

This columnist had been suggesting for a few weeks the sort of public service television advert we used to see in the 1970s and 80s. But with all the different online streaming channels these days it maybe wouldn’t have been that straightforward. The same if social media had been used; some are sat gawping at Facebook while others are on Instagram and TikTok.

This is a sweeping generalisation, but anybody who didn’t get the message - who doesn’t have a mobile phone - is probably an older person living in the countryside who has this long-forgotten facet called common sense.

Of course, now they have worked out how to send them; they don’t want to be pinging them out willy-nilly. But for all those who have criticised the use of such a serious alert system - something designed for warning and advice in a ‘life threatening emergency’ such as flooding or attack - then they should spend some time with the general public.

We have experience of a very small (just five pitches) campsite and it will come as no surprise to learn that a certain redhead had been sticking up posters and walking around with her glasses on to spot any risks for weeks.

The miseries that we are, we only ever allow gas barbecues and certainly don’t have firepits and the like. But still, there is always the fear that somebody might think the rules don’t apply to them. So long before the Government’s alert a blanket ban had been made on smoking or any form of outdoor cooking.

The difference is that now, post message, people know what you are talking about. They have had the beep on their phone and are already on the same page.

People are no longer looking as if you are talking a foreign language when you mention fire risk. In our experience, since that text, they are viewing our tinder-dry nation more as a joint effort, with a glimmer of the pulling together spirit of the pandemic.

In a similar vein, there has long been signs up warning of extreme wildfire risk on approach roads to the moors and forestry. But many have driven by and not given them another thought; continued lighting their disposable barbecues or dropping cigarettes.

Now they have had that message on their phones day-trippers will, this correspondent is convinced, take more notice of them. Also, surely to goodness, ignorance could no longer be claimed in mitigation. Those ringing phones have made people sit up and listen. As has, of course, the images of those poor people’s homes going up in flames.

Of course, there is an element of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The drought and associated risks should have been addressed at Number 10 weeks earlier. Maybe if our new Prime Minister hadn’t been planning his holiday?

The whole situation has helped illustrate the ever-widening chasm between the public and the countryside.

We treat our green (well yellow at the moment) and pleasant lands as nothing more than a public playpark at our nation’s peril.

We have never needed the combined wisdom of people who know what they are on about when it comes to land management, such as farmers and gamekeepers, more than we do at this moment in time. Government bods with clipboards should watch, learn and let them get on with it. Waterways and drainage systems need maintaining, weeds and long grass need cutting back. It’s not rocket science. Our ancestors were doing it hundreds of years ago.

Uncut grass verges are a national disgrace; just waiting for fags to be thrown out of car windows. If some species of moth or newt doesn’t like it, well it will like being burnt to death in a wildfire even less.

To finish, the last few weeks have reminded me of our now grown-up son going on camps as a young boy scout. ‘Skipper’ had them all drilled to within an inch of their lives on the country code including skills such as fire safety.

Heroes are all around us, especially among the fire service. But they are also within such organisations and they must be helped - not hindered by red tape - when it comes to passing on their knowledge.

Perhaps the modern school curriculum should find time for visits from the local bobby (if there is one), fireman and farmer like our schooldays?