Mark Cocker’s interview in Behind the Binoculars prompted this discussion with Lucy MacRobert on this morning’s Today Programme (2h 53m into the programme). Good thoughts (not sure how I missed it myself!).
But Mark and all the other interviewees said many more things too!
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I returned to Lucy’s guest blog on Mark’s blog. It’s worth a second read!
https://markavery.info/2013/05/15/guest-blog-facebook-nature-lucy-mcrobert/
Parents too worried to let their children out of sight and schools to busy trying to fulfill the latest iteration of the National Curriculum and to secure a good position in the league table. It’s a double whammy that deprives many children of face to face encounters with nature. Potentially there is also a third wham to the whammy in that many older naturalists started out collecting things from nature, be it frogspawn or birds eggs, but this route into a passion for wildlife is now blocked. I am not advocating that we should all send our kids out ransacking birds’ nests (heaven forbid!) but there can sometimes be a ‘look but don’t touch’ attitude that discourages youngsters from engaging with nature as they might wish without necessarily doing much to protect nature.
On a different subject, I watched the lunch-time news today and was astonished to hear the Energy Secretary Amber Rudd state that “…this government remains committed to being the greenest government ever”! If she really thinks that that is still a credible claim I can’t imagine what planet she has been living on.
I thought Cameron said they were getting rid of green crap?
With nonsense comments like Rudd’s they have obviously failed!
Jonathan – its a technique that has been all too successful for the Conservatives and relies on repeating something more often than others criticise it – we simply need to up the examples of why it isn’t true.