I love it when the tadpolers wheel out their chair, Ian Coghill, to say something. I know we are in for a real laugh. Here’s his latest rambling offering which might have a point but feels more like a circle to me.
The issue isn’t Chris Packham it’s the BBC and how they are ‘as far away from the real countryside as they can get’ apparently. Note the careful avoidance of the word metropolitan.
Although it’s not about Chris, Coghill seems to think that Chris was bigging up the RSPB in his BBC Wildlife article but it was quite the opposite – Chris was quite critical of several wildlife NGOs and I’d like to remind you that it was one of the RSPB’s finest hours in recent years when they posted this response which basically says ‘Chris is on our side – he’s allowed to criticise us from time to time – he’s entitled’.
So, although I doubt whether the Woodcock killer and the tadpole defender will move on, let’s move on shall we?
We could move on to the end of the page where we find that GWCT is asking for support of £10,000 so that they can lobby MPs. They are rattled aren’t they?
https://postimg.org/image/l1mz1ohf5/
‘credible, scientific evidence’ [holds breath]
Not to mention producing and distributing literature. Is that OK now, ‘cos it wasn’t yesterday?
Sorry why do they need £10,000 to lobby MP’s. Surely that would only get you Neil Hamilton.
Looks to me as though Chris Packham is too high profile, but doesn’t seem to be stopping the BBC ‘evolving’ another presenter in Martin Hughes-Games who has spoken up.
That, as doesn’t seem to be understood in the GMCT article, is the distinction… you don’t get asked next time and are quietly replaced or your role gets squeezed… whereas with an employee you’d have to go through proper procedures to be dismissed.
Needing to brief politicians with credible, scientific evidence? It might interest old chubby Bonner, also save his organisation money, to understand that credible, scientific evidence has thus far failed to win over the opinion of a single politician. Mind you if you distort the credible scientific evidence or, and I hate to say this, lie about it, well then this can work.
Ian Coghill seems to assume that landowners, land managers and farmers represent the totality of those who live in and value the countryside. Most bizarre is his claim this group is “treated as a whipping boy” by elements in the BBC. The evidence for this seems to be their continuing episodic employment of Chris Packham. It ignores the countless uncritical puffs on Countryfile, Farming Today, that programmes like ‘Spring Watch’ studiously ignore controversial topics even when touching upon related areas and that local news programmes are frequently uncritical and indulgent in their reporting. It also seems to assume that being “divorced from country life” equates to not indulging in blood sports.
Remind me, Charities are not supposed to lobby and advocate, weren’t the Govt trying to introduce legislation to prevent that? G[WC]T are a Charity?
I seem to recall the RSPB and probably others being investigated for such activity? Who was it criticised the RSPB for not spending all their income on actual tangible conservation as opposed to ‘infrastructure?
As you say, you just couldn’t make it up ….
As Douglas suggests, some MPs might be wanting ‘football figures’? We should keen an eye on those declarations in the Registers of Interest?
This is only Chapter 2 of the ‘Petition Action’, pity help them in terms of the long haul for real change? Will they publicise open and transparently the progress etc. as Mark does?