The readers and non-readers of Birdwatch magazine have voted this blog their Blog of the Year.
What a lovely Christmas present!
Later today, two summaries of the year through what was covered in this blog (Jan-Jun at 1230; Jul-Dec at 1800).
You will have to rush down to your local newsagent, or await the arrival of your magazine in the post, to learn whether Chris Packham has won the vote for ‘Conservation Hero’ for the second year in a row (he got my vote) and which is the ‘site’ of the year but I am allowed to reveal that Liz Truss ‘won’ the Guano Award for being utterly hopeless in her role as Defra Secretary of State. This blog has never been a fan of the hapless, hopeless trust-less Truss (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here and there is more, I promise you).
And a Happy Christmas to all our readers!
Congratulations, Mark – well deserved!
Well deserved Mark, Congratulations.
In years to come your name will be used as an example of how someone can fight for the rights of animals to live without persecution & for us all to take responsibility for the damage we do to the environment. You have joined together the voices of many ordinary people who just want what’s fair. You got my vote and will continue to have my support over the many years of fighting ahead.
Merry Christmas and a prosperous, Persecution free 2016.
Chris got my vote too.
Stewart – thank you for a lovely comment. Happy Christmas!
Totally well deserved Mark. Nature needs heroes like you.
Yuletide Greetings & a Glorious 2016.
@derbysmossfool – thank you. Happy Christmas!
I am really glad you won. I find your blog is really, really helpful for people my age who don’t always understand all the sides of an argument. Any other youngsters interested in conservation who aren’t reading it are missing out big time. By reading the blog post and all the comments, it really helps me to appreciate sometimes quite different sides of the story. I look forward to reading your blog before school every morning.
I hope you have a really good Christmas and 2016.
Findlay – thank you. Happy Christmas to you, Harley and Mum and Dad! Hope to see you all lots in 2016.
Well done Mark.Your defence of wildlife is desperately needed and the amount of work you get through has to be admired.
Hope yourself and Rosemary have a nice Christmas and a good new year.
Dennis – thank you. Happy Christmas to you and Ann!
Congratulations Mark, very well deserved
Always informative (generally balanced, just occasionally biased but only post analysis of case(s) and that’s necessary given the twaddle promulgated by t’others), inspirational, motivational, and honest – a daily dose should be a social or maybe environmental prescription to all, especially politicians and government ministers?
If only 10% of your public readership act then the folk who need to be held to account are in for a fair bit of ‘correspondence’ this coming year? I’d like to think that it’s considerably ‘moor’.
We all need reminders, and we must all keep reminding folk, that complacency has no place in environmental conservation and that collaborative critical mass can yield results – your tally is evidence. If people listened to your clarion call for a letter a month to their MP / politicians, research and inform yourself well on just a couple of key issues (eg neonictinoids, climate change, hen harriers (raptors) and wildlife crime, bTB and badgers etc.) then a realisation that people are able to effect and affect decisions and ultimately policies will follow? Perhaps it’s the festive influence on reality and that hope springs eternal as a new year is on the horizon?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? You’ve certainly done a fabulous job, thank you and here’s to 2016 and its challenges and hopefully opportunities of which I suspect that there will be a fair few?