With apologies to Chardin – www.johnsadlerillustration.com

• IF you are a Camden Council taxpayer, do you mind your money being spent on leaf-blowers, destroying insect and wildlife habitats for months in Camden’s parks?

Autumn’s over, leaves long gone, but the parks department sends blowers anyway, deep within bushes for 30 to 60 minutes, even blowing rainwater on bare paths.

Camden’s head of parks, asked why every last leaf, even off-path, must be removed from parks, replied that leaf litter could harbour plant and tree diseases.

What plant and tree diseases? Leaves have fallen from trees for hundreds of millions of years. They nourish the soil, protect the tree roots.

The head of parks ignored being told: leaf-blowers fire air three times the speed of a hurricane into hibernators’, insect and pollinator habitats.

Pollution from their petrol engines (and other loud, polluting gardening power tools) is proven in lab tests to emit nearly 300 times the air pollution of a Ford pick-up truck.

The noise is distressing and continues for hours, in parks specifically intended to give sanctuary from noise and air pollution.

Each machine costs the council over £30-worth of fuel a week which therefore would amount to tens of thousands of pounds a year for Camden parks’ range of power tools.

Does anyone remember a one-hour weekly art class for the elderly scrapped for lack of council funds? And the many other council cuts to public services reported by this newspaper in recent years? But thousands of pounds is always available for fuel for pointless leaf-blowers.

Camden spends a fortune on clean air strategies. But air pollution in parks is worse than anywhere. Throw away the power-tools, Camden. Let things grow and live, and let the public breathe fresh air.

S FIELDER, N6