Well we are stuck with flailing, though there are alternatives such as shaping saws which leave a much tidier result. Flails are often not sharpened enough, or inappropriately used on overgrown hedges in a single pass, hence the rippped branches can be far worse then they need to be. But there's a lot to consider. It's a lousy farmer who needs to cut all his hedges at once. There's no need to cut hedges every year. Also, it's possible to cut just the one side of a hedge that's growing over roads or lanes. A variety of hedge heights and shapes is good for diversity. Hedges that simply divide fields don't need the same close attention as hedges along roads. Young trees can be left uncut. It's great to see laid hedges but we're never going to go back to that. We should require landowners to show imagination in preserving a diversity of hedges, not just treat the land like a factory floor (like one farmer near us who has the cheek to run a "wildlife centre" on his extremely sterile farm - you can walk across his land for a quarter of an hour through huge, unhedged fields of oilseed rape and you won't see a weed or a butterfly or hear a bird singing).