24 Replies to “Saturday cartoons – by Ralph Underhill”

  2. Ralph, love the cartoons but for the first joke to stand up you have first to generate the public opinion. 6329 sigs for Hen Harriers ain’t gonna do it and the rspb who really could bump that figure up have not done the biz to date. But I do live in hope.

    John Fowles, not so much a hero as a legend, once wrote of the church “it offers sanctuary but takes great care to ensure sanctuary is needed” (The Aristos) ie a job preservation strategy. I really do hope the professional conservationist is not in that games also?

      1. Maybe so but it is the largest ever government e petition. There is a lot of anger at NFU/Defra and I fully support the sabs and am helping to finance the badger resistance.

        2. ” it is the largest ever government e petition”

          Really? Bigger than the 1.7 million big e petition on road pricing in 2007?

    2. Ralph, Many thanks for that, I will devour over the coming days. You are the Ralph at the bottom of the page I take it?

      I was aware of the sig count for Badgers but that wouldn’t have served my purpose and is still a few million short as Filbert points out.

      The reports you refer to does indeed look optimistic and if only more of this pulling together would embed itself in the collective conservationist consciousness we might be able to really get things moving.

      Armed with all this “joined up” thinking as ammo maybe somebody like Brian May could pull together a Geldof style Live Aid/Band Aid mega concerts that attracts and educates the younger generations about the consequences of too much focus on extrinsic values which are not in their best long term interests?

      I don’t share Steve’s pessimism on the Tangled Bank page because he assumes we have to give up what we hold dear. Not necessarily the case. Material goods could be manufactured to last a lifetime but that does not suit capitalism version 1 release 0. But given the growing evidence that capitalism v1r0 is creaking (badly) then let’s simply skip v2 and move to v3 ASAP?

      V3 is described by many documents produced by the clever people and I simply quote their own words back to them.

        1. Mark, fooled ya – twas me Phil Davis. How we laughed just now, the long winter nights just fly by in our house!!

  4. Strange programme on tv last night. Chris Packham studying badgers then releasing them into the wild. What for, so the Government can kill them? Still a cynic until things improve. I became a cynic from a pessamist by trying to find intelligence in our local authority when it came to protecting wildlife and habitats.

    1. I take it that you heard the comment at the very end of the programme – one of the five cubs was found to have TB and was destroyed – did it pass TB on to the others? We’ll never know!

      1. You mean Secret World didn’t keep them in quarantine until they were tested? Jeez – NFH (Normal For Highbridge). I hope it wasn’t the one Chris Packham was snogging. And I hope he didn’t do a celeb happy clappy visit to New Road Primary School while he was there. I don’t think kids routinely get the BCG thing any more

  6. Hi Rick,

    Yep the same Ralph, wonder if it is possible to have an intrinsic band aid? you would really need to ensure all those are known for their commitment to wildlife, i am skeptical. For what its worth , my view is that there should be a renewed focus on local groups and individual actions. Many NGOS’s have drifted from their members, they are treated as income generators rather than a resource to help campaign. A big event is good for profile raising in the short term but is it what we need for long term commitment.

  7. Ralph, well Brian May is most definitely dedicated to Badgers and in my opinion the foodies such as Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver, Jimmy Doherty and Rick Stein are not only brilliant presenters but also dedicated to educating people as to where their food comes from. Throw in other A Listers from other high profile sleb culture and bingo??

    Great prog on at the mo – urban jungle showing urban groups in action but from my experience of a similar dawn chorus group I was connected with just don’t want to know when it comes to collective campaigning sadly.

    Live aid led to red nose day etc and I have to believe that some good has come of it through wider awareness by the general public who show amazing year on year support.

  8. I must pick you up Ralph your statement that NGO’s treat their members as merely income generators. That is frankly “Bollocks”.

    For a start a large membership gives you some clout with politicians and other decision makers. The RSPB membership of around a million is a bit scary as they are all potential votes and no political party has a membership that big. I concede that memberships of NGO’s are not big enough or they are not sold as big enough.

    We must not knock the NGO’s too much but remind them of their need to fight even harder but to achieve anything they need BIGGER memberships.

    Sorry I am on a high tonight because Norwich won!

    1. It’s not boswolox’s Derek, they don’t listen to their members, when was the last time they surveyed their members? I don’t remember even the two NGO’s I’m a member of asking me for “feedback”.
      Look at your second paragraph you just proved yourself that the membership is more of a tool to effect influence, fair enough, I’d rather be a tool for good then bad, but they don’t choose to use that tool for the epetition’s in regards to raptors etc, they pick and choose when, and sometimes that appears to be for their campaigns only and not one’s started by others..some members and ex-members are calling they’re screaming for the rspb to get stuck in and co-operate/campaign with others, get involved MORE at local level in regards to building/planning/road infrastructer/rail, but they’re not…I’m really not knocking NGO’s but in your third paragraph yous say they need bigger memberships to achieve resluts, that’s boswollox’s succesful campaigns ranging from human rights to conservation have been started by small groups and sometimes individuals look no further then the original RSPB, small group of women in a male dominated world!

  9. Hi Derek, your love of Canaries (the long term survival of which I am very much in favour of) tells me you will undoubtedly know me as the inventor of Green, Pure Green, a substance so potent in the collective imagination they named a political party after it.

    I was also instrumental in the saving of my Lord Blackadder’s bottom from the vengeful intentions of the Baby Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells, but enough about me.

    Yes, the Pure Green Party whose potent campaigning, night after night on our modern day soon to be superseded flat screen TV sets, against the ecocidal tendencies of contemporary capitalism with compelling stories of alternatives to globalisation led the current coalition government to cunningly describes itself as “the greenest government ever”. A plan so cunning you could clean your teeth with it!

    However, when this little ruse was rumbled by Baronet Porritt in this critique http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/greenest_gvt_ever.pdf they came up with another wheeze and started proclaiming “the economy is healing” after two quarters of potent growth in Gross Domestic Product. As a result an estimated 55 million people will no doubt be shouting hurrah! and rushing out and buy more stuff, blowing up yet more bubble and continuing the downward spiral.

    Now I am a man of considerable intellect and would like to propose a test of your theory, something along the lines of young Ploppy in an earlier post. Which is:

    We take Circus Maxima’s pointer to the EndEcocideEU (Ecocide is the destruction of ecosystems. Together we can stop it. One law to change it all.) petition and monitor the signature counts (overall and by UK component) over the next week or four.

    I’ve worked out (because I’m clever) that this magnificent blog attracts quite a few staffers working for the various environmentally concerned NGOs including one boasting 1 million voices for nature. On that basis we can surely expect the target figure of 1 million End Ecocide sigs (currently 45681 of which 7868 originated in the UK –same ball park as the Hen Harrier petition !) to be exceeded well before the petition closes in 143 days time if they do their job properly. Thereby thwarting Messers Cameron, Milliband, Clegg, Osborne and Balls in their continued cunning but ruinous suppression of the environmental agenda.

    Btw, many thanks for Paul Lambert who has something in common with the clever people – I can’t understand a word he says!! The mighty AVFC are benefiting however so what the hell.

  10. My dear Lord Percy I feel I must know you but I have little understanding of what your are taliing about so your comments too have been filed under “Bollocks”. On The Ball City.

  11. Mark, piggybacking here to send a response to your pIece in August’s British Wildlife. If it’s bad manners apologies.

    NGOs working together? Gardening for Wildlife is a case study in them not doing so. I am a member of the Wildlife Gardening Forum – on the day of their last conference a few weeks ago RSPB announced their wildlife gardening initiative, no one at the conference from RSPB and no mention of the initiative from anyone who was there (except me). Now the RHS and the WTs are having a wildlife gardening week in October! You can’t see the joins because there aren’t any.

    Standing up for wildlife? The BBC seems to still use RSPB as their go to NGO, at least on the Today programme. When I was at the National Office for a time theWTs seemed to share that position, thanks to our DG at the time. Maybe now the RSPB need to be the trouble shooters for the rest of us.

    Finally the follow-up to the State of Nature (which by the way I thought was old fashioned in its approach). The lobbying gagging bill coming to Parliament this week, if it becomes law, would make publication awkward if it fell within a year of an election.

  12. Are Peter back to the realms of sanity. This is exactly the problem that gets me. NGO’s only co-operate from a distance because they know they are competitors for so much. They compete for our support as members, for our donations and worst of all for big pots of money from grants etc. In the case of the Wildlife Trusts you have in theory 47 charities all competing for the same money and in some cases membership.

    How can we get that potentially sleeping giant doing more for wildlife if they do not REALLY work together?

    Which organisation is going to be brave enough to lead the way?

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