Defra, as Natural England, say that they need more time to answer my questions.
I don’t accept that they do.
But it would obviously be rather strange if after all this time, and extra time, I don’t get some very detailed and full answers to my questions.
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Quite candidly, Mark, are we hearing anything about anything from NE at the moment, which includes news on an appointment of a Chief Executive? If NE was a commercial entity one might even suspect a merger or a takeover was under consideration!!
With the possibility of the English Hen Harrier breeding population being lost this season ( see my own Blog (http://www.birdingodyssey.blogspot.com/ entries for1st and 8th May ), I have seen no public statements from NE on the matter whatsoever.
At least one might expect some expression of concern, even if the situation proved to be better than it seems. Is this what we expect from the advisers to the Greenest Government ever and the nominal defenders of our conservation faith and wildlife heritage?
Again, from forest sales experience, I’d anticipate that what you eventually get will be well worth putting up on the blog because of all the ‘state secrets’ that have been ‘redacted’ – which means blanked out with a black felt pen.
As I said previously, in my public service I always worked on the assumption that anything I said or did – with the possible exception of GENUINE commercial issues (like prices paid for timber) and staff issues – might well become public property. As you well know some of the actions/statements could have resulted in a lively debate – but there were certainly not dirty deals which I’d have fought to prevent exposure to the light of public scrutiny.