National Trust – High Peak

At last week’s conference at Newton Rigg, the Director General of the National Trust (and former top-mandarin at Defra) Dame Helen Ghosh spoke. I know Helen just a little, having met her in her Defra role but the longest time I have ever spent in her company was when I showed her around the RSPB…

That flame should be fizzling out

Natural England are in a bit of a mess over the uplands – you might say they have been bogged down. NE had to dump their vision for the uplands of England because landowners – perhaps including their Minister at the time (Richard Benyon) – didn’t like it.  They went back to basics and looked…

LEAF – turn over a new one

On Monday I went to the Linking Environment and Farming President’s conference in the headquarters of HSBC in Canary Wharf.  I have a lot of time for LEAF, although there were a few moments on Monday when I thought I might have stumbled into an NFU conference instead of a LEAF one. How long should…