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Nick your own apples?

Here’s some tips for those of you wanting to open your own park (note: does not apply to safari parks – Best Prada Outlet In Milan lions follow their own rules).

1) Do not put bushes near the entrance, people think that criminals might be hiding behind them.

2) Put seats around the edge of Authentic Prada Shoes For Sale the park that look inwards so people can look out at each other, it increases security and a sense of communal space.

3) Do not stage amateur long-range crossbow championships, Agatha Ruiz Dela Prada especially at the weekend.

The third rule is my own, and I think it’s a decent one. The other two I got from Chaz Farghaly, Apertura Outlet Prada Montevarchi head of parks for Manchester city council and the man responsible this week for launching a £200,000 plan to plant orchards, berry bushes and herb gardens in all the city’s parks. Not just plant them, but encourage people to pick and eat from them too. Like Andrew Marvell might have done. Had he Authentic Prada Handbags For Cheap lived within a 20 mile radius of the Trafford Centre.

If I am to be perfectly honest, my first response to reading this news was not an uncynical one. (The Sun was the same. Its headline ran: Fruit and nutty plan Authentic Prada Bags For Sale Philippines to be green). I had visions of an extended member of the Gallagher clan (Oasis, Shameless, doesn’t matter) shoving a gooseberry bush down his jogging pants and opening an impromptu fruit stall in the pool room of the Dog and Quack.

That I could be troubled by such images is testament to media wanker prejudices, natch, but also to a natural dilemma when it comes to an idea like this: is it really a good idea to trust?

Chaz claims not to be rushing into this blindly, as you would expect from a public servant spending a large amount of taxpayers’ money (who’s that snickering at the back?). This scheme arrives after 10 years of Best Prada Outlet In Italy Manc parks investment in Manc parks, and a marked improvement in both their condition and the number of people using them.

“I know places where, traditionally, you wouldn’t expect a tree to survive for two weeks, which now have very few examples of vandalism. You improve the state of the park, you get more people into it. You get more people in, they start to police it themselves. Fifty-five of our parks now have their own friends groups. It’s funny prada saffiano, but when the parks never had any bins, we didn’t get any complaints about rubbish. Now that they do, somebody always complains if they’re not being emptied regularly.”

I like the idea Agatha Ruiz Dela Prada Sale Uk of a virtuous civic circle that’s driven by busybodies and contains an intrinsic element of whinging. It’s very British. But this won’t apply to all the parks Authentic Prada Milano Handbags in the scheme. Chaz admits that some will rely on simple education (labelling of the plants, signs that might say something like “don’t take more than your fair share and if you do, feel guilty”) and even more on pure trust. Whatever that means.

There is a bloke (I say a bloke, I mean an academic with a doctorate in economics) who is compiling a database of trust, all the studies of it and its many definitions (currently he’s up to 23). A brief perusal of his index shows how difficult it is Authentic Prada Purses Sale to define trust, what the expectations are among those who offer it and the forces that drive people to reciprocate it.

Simply put, it’s beyond my ken to know whether this will actually work. It does seem though that if one was to hope to rebuild a Broken Britain (I prefer to think of it as Knackered Britain or, maybe, Britain’s Ticked Off), kindling trust among local communities might not be a bad idea. Perhaps fruit will prove an effective means to this end. If not, you can always fall back on social reconditioning by Tazer.