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Having recently travelled ten years into the future with my blog – this week we travel twenty years into the past. What would I change? What would I do differently….? Would any of these changes have made the slightest of difference to where I am now? ….
I’ve never been one for looking back and saying … ‘If only I’d done this’ or maybe ‘I shouldn’t have done that’ – I’ve always considered it a waste of time. But just maybe… I should have taken a few of the more obvious trade names that were available when I set up Japanese Knotweed Solutions Ltd. If you now look on ‘Google’ there is every version of using the word ‘Japanese Knotweed – (add suffix) – Ltd’ – be it ‘control’ or ‘eradication’ or ‘management’ or ‘killer’ etc. etc. etc. …and to add to my frustration they each call themselves the ‘number one’ company and the ‘first company to set up dealing with Japanese knotweed’…
The weirdest thing about these companies is that they then believe what they have written… and quickly forget that they’ve copied all their ideas from Japanese Knotweed Solutions Ltd. I even know of one company that copied our website that then had their website copied …and got upset claiming they had come up with the original ideas…funny the tricks the mind can play.
If I had managed to register all of the names that could be associated with Japanese knotweed for use as a company name – I would have been the ONLY Japanese knotweed titled company trading ….and would have had a massive advantage if the market place.
Maybe I would have had every knotweed job that came up…?
So maybe that’s one thing I would change.
Legislation is perhaps something that should have been looked at closer twenty years ago? I wonder if some stricter control of invasive species would have stamped out JK before it got so well established?? I know how government works, and i know that its not easy bringing in some powerful new law that makes it illegal to allow invasive non-native species to establish on your land…but maybe we should have tried harder??
I know of several major land owners that have allowed invasive species to run rampant on their land with little or no management – simply because there was no legislation in place and no financial benefit in doing so.
But ..these companies are not hard up.
They aren’t about to go into financial hardship by spending a few quid on invasive species management – yet they been allowed to do nothing…simply because of the risk that there would be a backlash for being given such a financial burden.
You will also find that these landowners and wealthy lords and ladies have a vested interest in making sure such legislation never gets pushed through parliament. It would hurt their pockets too much – and so deals are done, whispers are heard and the wording of new powers is both weak and ineffective.
I think we ‘pussyfoot’ around far too much when a simple, hard, clear response would be much better. Invasive species grow far too quickly for their spread to only become an issue once they have left the confines of one particular area of land ownership. By the time they have breached a boundary and become a legal issue the plants are generally in such a rampant growth phase that it’s too late to do anything.
Surely a simple robust statement that … ‘It is illegal to have invasive non native species growing on your land’ – would clarify the situation…?
Yet with Japanese knotweed it is considered far too widespread to legislate against. It would be considered too unfair on particular land owners to make it illegal – so we have to just accept its bullish behaviour and rampant growth to the detriment of all of our native species.
So maybe that’s a second thing I would change.
The changes highlighted above would definitely have changed my life. I would suggest that with these small tweaks… maybe I would have retired by now… as a multi- millionaire……
:-/
Mike C
