Did you see these?

Mark 4 Comments

What others say about the ban driven grouse shooting campaign:

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4 Replies to “Did you see these?”

  1. As others have already said, the debate on driving grouse shooting has generated rich data for research. I am therefore placing on record here one of the emails my husband sent to his MP. If there are potential PhDs in this topic, they might also examine the veracity of Hansard records (verbatim?.

    “Dear Mr Gethins,

    As one of your constituents I wish to raise with you an important matter of principle. A key element of our democracy is the ability of any citizen to submit a petition on a matter of concern and, if accepted, have this debated by Parliament. A fundamental principle must surely be that once the wording of this has been lodged and accepted and signing is underway, it should not be possible for the wording to be subsequently changed. At the very least this would call into question the validity of the signatures prior to the moment of change.

    I should like you to know that this is exactly what has happened in the case of the recent petition to preserve driven grouse shooting and grouse moors. Since the petition’s website is a UK Parliament website, it must then follow that the change in wording must have been done by someone within the UK Parliament system. Such an act of tampering with an already active petition would seem to be, in principle, illegal.

    The fact that this is happening also raises a serious human rights issue to do with endangering signatories. When individuals sign these petitions one may assume that they are aware that they expose themselves to risk (as they can be identified) but are knowingly accepting that risk. Let us suppose that the editing were to change the tone of the petition in such a way that significantly increases the risk, this (possibly) illegal act has now exposed them to a level of danger they had not accepted when they signed the original petition. This is wrong and in breach of their human rights as they have had no say in the matter.

    Since there is now evidence of seemingly internal interference in the democratic process, I think this is something that you as a Member of Parliament should ensure is properly investigated. Its existence undermines the legitimacy of the democratic process in which you are a key agent.

    I look forward to hearing what action you intend to take and would also be happy to provide you with the reference to the case I have mentioned.

    Yours sincerely,

    …”

  2. About twenty minutes ago I got into a discussion with my cousin who lives in East Lothian about hill walking. He mentioned that he frequently goes up into the Lammermuirs, knowing that it’s big on grouse shooting I asked what wildlife he sees there…grouse and erm..sheep. That’s it. Never, ever any birds of prey. However, near where he lives plenty of them.

    1. It’s the same within and around the so-called Cairngorms National Park. Walking in Glen Ey and Shee this year, all that could be seen were grouse and sheep – oh, and one adder and two dragonflies. Grouse were everywhere. It was pretty dismal

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