34 Replies to “Driven grouse shooting – your money.”

  1. I am disgusted that even a penny of my hard earned wages contributes to the mass slaughter of our wildlife!

    1. Andy – the answer to the question is that grouse moors are eligible for CAP payments in exactly the same way that nature reserves are.

      You are now banned from commenting on this blog. I’m not giving house space to someone as rude and unpleasant as you seem to have become.

  5. An interesting idea of Andy’s, actually. Grouse shooting has nothing to do with agriculture – it is ‘sport’ and as such surely should not be eligible for any future subsidies post Brexit & CAP ? And, of course, it won’t be anything to do with Defra, it will be the Treasury deciding and even a Conservative Treasury may well grab back money so clearly providing no public benefit.

  6. Reform of support to land owners is desperately needed.

    Now there is change on the horizon it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that any support provided from the public purse delivers public benefit for the many not the few?

    There is still work to be done despite the fantastic achievement Mark has secured by driving the juggernaut, the long distance drive ahead will be a long haul but where there’s a will there’s a way?

    A few points worth considering:

    1. Recycle public funds for public benefit?
    2. Support land owners / farmers (not agri-industry) where there is tangible and demonstrable public benefit?
    3. Reduce flooding risk to downstream catchments from mis-management of upland moors?
    4. Reduce cost of house and business insurance by achieving above?
    5. Reduce cost to water companies, passed on to consumers, to clean up of water quality as a consequence of mis-management of upland moors?
    6. If shooting estates succeed in achieving the threshold (still not agreed) of Hen Harrier and other raptors then they might become eligible for funding support, but access for monitoring would be a precursor as would a blanket cessation of illegal raptor persecution?

    Above are not in any order of priority nor are they exhaustive.

    Dialogue is definitely needed, all stakeholders should be allowed to participate in achieving sustainable uplands for public benefit? One might consider that those who have espoused compromise and professed to represent land owners but who have failed to be genuinely inclusive and failed to achieve outcomes over the decades of procrastination may no longer have valid credentials for inclusion in discussions?

    The involvement of conflict resolution ‘negotiators’ seems to be predicated on provoking conflict where it does not necessarily exist?

    But let’s be clear, voluntary options have failed regulation is increasingly looking the best option?

    Discussions should not be indeterminate, a solution needs to be achieved in a given time period, discuss what that might be? A month, a year, five years, another decade?

  7. Mark,

    “Your taxes help to pay for driven grouse shooting. Please sign the e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting.”

    Blimey I’m having nightmares about this stuff now!

    You’ll have seen Carole, Alan and myself noting the (total) lack of publicity given to the epetition by our local bird clubs/societys. I suggested your readers might contact their equivalents and urge them to highlight the campaign to their respective audiences. Maybe a better idea would be for you to email your entire readership?

    If you don’t already have a suitable distribution list then this article may help:

    https://www.msoutlook.info/question/772

  8. All shooting is subsidised in that gun licences cost less than the costs of processing them. Cameron refused to introduce an economic charge and held it at £50 when it should have been about 4 times that.

    1. Recall the figure of £192 being quoted somewhere, but costs will probably have increased and how many shotgun owners?

      The last batch of data I located easily (and over five years out of date) 580,653 shotgun licences issued to cover 1,358,522 shotguns. Why each shotgun should not be licenced is unclear, but even with those figures the treasury is around £82,452,522 light. So, the public through taxation has subsidised shooters yet again and the police budgets have had to stand these costs to the detriment of other areas of police and crime work?

      The case for subsidised sport (Driven Grouse Shooting) is just not stacking up here?

  9. Let’s not forget. The RSPB claimed £11,782,484.30 over the last 2 years in CAP payments. And out of that money they only spent £1525 on ‘animal welfare’. And only spent a mere £2k on ‘encouragement of tourism activities’ yet claim to be getting 500,000 school children to connect with nature. Pot, kettle, black??

    1. Andrew – welcome to this blog and thank you for your first rather confused comment.

      Who has forgotten anything? Who is a pot? Who is a kettle? Do you know anything about CAP payments and the conditions that apply to them?

    2. I think this illustrates an almost comical (or deliberate, perchance?) misunderstanding of how the agricultural support system funding operates. I think you should go and do some more learning…

      On the other hand, given the extent of the work on the ground that I have personally seen, if your comedy figure is correct, then the RSPB must miracle workers of the highest order… well done them!

      Maybe one day I will join up.

        1. Still no answer? Come on Andrew it makes it look like you are just trying to avoid answering.

      2. When you ask a question I will answer. Which will come across a tad strange to most of you dealing with likes of Packham and avery.

    4. Ahhh..you’re in a tag team with Andy R, how sweet. Trying to make sense of your nonsensical comment, but ‘animal welfare’ doesn’t necessarily mean conservation work, in fact almost certainly doesn’t, and ‘encouragement of tourism activities’ is a totally different thing from encouraging children to connect with nature. Think you’ll find the latter is education not tourism. Do you genuinely not understand or do you pretend not to so you can just keep going with the pathetic anti RSPB bilge?

  10. Is this the same Andrew Fox who’s put videos on Youtube demanding answers from Mark and Chris Packham under the name of ‘Fox in the field by Andrew Fox?’

    Re Mr Richardson – Perhaps he’d like to explain his comments regarding birds of prey that ‘need to be sorted’ and threatening Tweets about red kites, instead of demanding answers?

    1. I hope Mr Richardson can also provide us with a link to a video he made about how wonderful grouse moors are for wildlife, I just can’t find it any more. He interviewed a keeper on one and I swear you could barely hear either of them having their nice wee chin wag for all the waders calling. Incredible! If I were a suspicious person I’d think the calls were dubbed on. They seemed to be louder than the human dialogue in spite of it being closer to the microphone. Also although it was to promote ‘conservation value’ of driven grouse shooting neither participant, as I recall, made a reference to those waders which almost rendered their conversation inaudible. Funny that.

  11. Mark, as of yet you have not responded publicly to the questions that have been asked of you. Your main aim seems to be that of spreading mistruths and pulling on heart strings to gain momentum of an unjust cause. If you are able to provide me with figures to the contrary of the ones I am providing then please do so. Publicly instead of hiding behind your blog. As, to date, you have been unable to provide any concrete evidence that backs up your misinformed theories.

    1. Andrew – this blog is public. Couldn’t get any more public.

      In this, your second comment here you call me a liar – remember, this is public.

      I don’t have to answer any questions but I usually do – particularly if they are put politely. I’m not a public information service you know?

      But you didn’t ask a question. What was your question?

  12. Why is it acceptable for a charity to accept nearly £12m in subsidies in the last 2 years for providing nothing of substance? Especially when the have £99m in cash reserves. But when an estate as a whole claims it for conservation and providing a food source it’s unacceptable.

    So flip it round. What about the people that are unknowingly and unwillingly funding the RSPB through the same system?

    1. Andrew Fox – I wouldn’t accept the premise of your question. And I don’t know how much the RSPB gets these days (and can’t remember the figures from 6 years ago when I worked there as they didn’t go into my budget unfortunately).

      If you had been at the Sheffield conference on Friday you would have heard me say that I’d like to see CAP money (post-Brexit money) directed more towards the uplands than the lowlands, and more directed towards delivering public goods such as clean water, carbon storage and reduced flood risk than the current system. If you had been in other conversations you would have heard me say, as I have on this blog, that I’d be very happy to see support payments (the income support or subsidy part of the CAP money) capped so that large landowners don’t get ridiculously high payments and that more could go to grants to deliver public goods. It’s not a small subject and it’s one I will come back to many times in future. You sound slightly less ‘ranty’ now though – that’s good.

      But it seems as though you are asking the wrong person – shouldn’t you ask the RSPB how much they get, how much is subsidy and how much a-e grant, and how they spend it?

      I think you are agreeing with the point that I made to that very rude man Andy Richardson – do you know him, I wonder?

      1. Andrew,

        Many thanks for the YouTube’s. Wonderful comic timing it must be said, David Brent meets Guy Smith – comedy gold.

        Keep it up!

  13. Regarding Rodericks question, I believe it is land managers that apply on the basis that most moors have low intensity grazing. Given that the money is spent on the same land that the shooting is carried out on and it’s not difficult to see how it benefits grouse shooting.

    Also found this below interesting. Taken from http://www.savills.co.uk/promotions/grouse-moor-news-2014/cap-reform-and-moorland-management.aspx

    “The largest gain will be seen on moorland entitlements that will rise by around £26/ha to deliver a payment of about £56/ha. BPS will introduce greening, compliance and with these requirements will deliver 30% of the payment and should be counted as a top up within the new BPS system.
    The basis of greening includes three main areas:
    Crop Diversification
    Protection of Permanent Pasture
    Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs)
    Certain businesses are excluded from the scheme and the rules around land that is kept in condition suitable for agriculture without activity is an area to watch especially on sporting estates, yet detail is awaited. Other areas of change include the introduction of a Young Farmers Scheme, which is designed to help young farmers setting up in business and will deliver a top up payment to the value of entitlements for a five year period.”

    BPS is the basic payment scheme. Not sure where animal welfare and tourism fit in :-/

  14. Andrew.

    To find the answers to the questions you’ve posed on some your videos, can I recommend the book: ‘Inglorious – Conflict in the uplands’ by the guy who owns this blog? It’s around £9.99 from Amazon. Well worth a read, and would save you the bother of making videos. Let’s be honest, a random, angry stranger, standing alone in a field, reading a script and demanding well known people and organisations, answer your questions isn’t a good look. You claim to look at ‘facts’ without referencing any sources, you don’t say who you are, or what organisation you represent, and you don’t offer any capacity in which your questions can be answered.

    Even the farcical ‘You Forgot the Birds’ are less anonymous.

    Also, if you want answers from the RSPB, you really should be asking them, don’t you think?

  15. The often quoted figure of £56/ha paid out on activated moorland entitlements is only part of the story. On many grouse moors the Pillar 2 payments often exceed those paid out under Pillar 1. Under the new Countryside Stewardship Scheme the annual payment for ‘Moorland Management’ is £43/ha, and often this is supplemented by a £16/ha payment for ‘Livestock exclusion’ (by this they mean only 4 months so still plenty of opportunity for grazing tick attracting sheep) and £10/ha for ‘Management of moorland vegetation supplement’. The latter supplement is often paid in order to encourage the reintroduction of rotational burning.
    Then there are one-off capital payments for fencing, stone walls, bracken control, machinery access tracks. As yet there are no capital payments for building grouse butts…

    1. We need, or perhaps the parliamentary briefing in prep. needs to ensure that there are accurate figures of the value of estate subsidies from the public purse, included?

      Follow the money as they say. Direct and indirect costs all need factoring in. They need to be evidence based figures not soft social science anecdotes loved by some, in fact a volte-fact from some of the speakers in Sheffield when faced with unpalatable facts.

  16. If I may, I repeat that we need a complete overhaul of land subsidies. They need to be able to demonstrably provide public benefit.

    Mark made many good points over the last couple of days in Sheffield, as did other speakers.

    The continued failure, despite protestations of the many not their few bad apples, to stop the illegal persecution is resulting in dark, dank corners having bright lights shone on them and scrutiny will provide areas for reform – Angela Smith MP threw down the warning that we’re now in the “last chance saloon” ….

    So, whilst politicians might well prefer compromise and voluntary arrangements, she was emphatic that the illegality had to stop and the word precursor was used, so …. the “juggernaut” continues!

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