Make the Lake District more inclusive? What rubbish! | Clive Smith

Apparently, research has shown that the fells are too heavily weighted towards older, able-bodied white people.

How the hell does a landscape discriminate!? It’s just there. It’s always been there. It is what it is. It isn’t going to change shape or move. People move. Or choose not to.

The earth’s tectonic plates haven’t been creating these landscapes for a few billion years with the intention of excluding certain sections of society. It won’t be long before volcanoes and the Grand Canyon are called out for being racist.

A black person is just as able as a white person to pull on some walking boots, a Berghaus jacket and take on a few trails in the countryside and admire a nice view.

And how are hills and long walks more suited to older people? I would say it is the opposite. These sorts of things are appreciated more by older people, so they are more likely to visit.

They might just as well flatten all the hills and Tarmac the whole lot while they’re at it.

I’ve always fancied a trip up Everest but after a button popped off my work strides the first morning back to work after the Christmas and new year excess, I’m clearly not fit enough. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to cry for a chairlift to the summit. It’s just not possible for everyone to do everything they’d like to.

Maybe, to attract a more inclusive crowd, they should include a fried chicken outlet every few miles and put a McDonald’s at the top of each peak. Free banana milkshake and a medium fries for anyone who climbs it without stopping. Or go the whole hog and build a pub every mile and include a strip club and a casino to attract the stag-do crowd.

The waft of fast food outlets, Oasis blaring from a juke box, beer cans and chip wrappers strewn about the place will do wonders for one of our country’s most naturally stunning settings.

Moonshine, the perfect tipple for space station astronauts

Twelve bottles of Bordeaux are being sent to the International Space Station where it is hoped that it might lead to insights to benefit the food and drinks industry and therefore help fight climate change.

The wine is strictly off limits to the astronauts though. Yeah, yeah, course it is. Sitting in a space station all day must get pretty dull so a bottle or two of a fine red would be just the ticket. Puts a completely different spin on drink driving doesn’t it?

I wonder what cheeseboard they sent with it, obviously to help research into climate change again.

Why not just put a vineyard on the moon and make their own booze, call it ‘moonshine’ or something...

Imagine if it had been chavs chasing foxes with golf clubs

While most of us have had a decent time over the festive period, the old fox didn’t fare so well.

First there was Jolyon Maugham QC, who boasted on Twitter he had battered a fox to death with a bat. Then you had the scumbags out hunting on Boxing Day and a dead left outside Chris Packham’s house.

I don’t understand the mindset of someone who enjoys killing defenceless creatures. There are even people who line the streets to cheer them on.

Had it been a gang of chavs in black North Face coats and baseball caps instead of red hunting jackets and hunt caps, bombing about town on BMXs chasing wild animals with golf clubs, there’d be uproar.