This piece of evidence is a spanker!
The Revd Toddy Hoare does appear to be a real person, and evidently a real character.
You could write to your MP about the debate on driven grouse shooting today (see here).
Gems from the written evidence 5 – Revd Toddy Hoare
I’m always suspicious of ‘real characters’. In my experience, it’s a cover for getting away with murder……..
Good grief!
Looks like the comedian who plays “Robin Page” has come up with a new character. 🙁
I had to read this twice to work out what he was actually saying. He appears to be batting for both sides in places. ( Or is that the wrong phrase? )
Yes, lots of character, but what else? Is this guy a bit of a Boris Johnson?
I like the one from Richard Amos LTD (GRO0199)
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/petitions-committee/grouse-shooting/written/39954.html
Here are the relevant parts:
Our architectural and surveying business is heavily dependent on grouse estates
and
If grouse shooting was banned some of the cottages would go empty
Supporting the former part of their argument they write:
I run an architectural and surveying business with about 25% of our work load being for the grouse estates. We plan and organise the construction and maintenance of buildings and roads on the moors.
We have six people in our own company but the clients also employ ground workers, joiners, builders, electricians, plumbing and heating contractors on the projects
So there is the rural idyll myth busted by a grouse supporter. Road construction and building houses on grouse moors, that is what Driven Grouse Shooting is about, and in the words of a driven grouse supporter too. It is not about preserving the countryside, it is about tarmacking it and building on it, and that is a major source of their business. Some guardians of the countryside, eh? That is in direct contravention of what the estates and gamekeepers say (and by the way, don’t think we don’t know that the word went around that any keeper and beater whose name didn’t appear here’s coat is on a shoogly nail) about their wild, open, and undeveloped countryside.
I know the verb ‘to shoogle’ but didn’t realise it had its own adjective. ‘Shoogly’ is my word of the week!
Just how many planning applications do we see for hill tracks on grouse moors…..very few because they are not usually grouse moor tracks, they are agricultural tracks. If they were only for grouse moors management then they would need planning consent.
In addition to my other comment in this thread, I’d like to praise Mark for his mental fortitude in reading through all these responses. He is a stronger person than I am for being able to do so. I tried, but the sheer venom, cruelty, not to mention rehearsed responses from the pro-shooting lobby just has destroyed me. Sorry, Mark, I read about a third of the way through and had to give up and go have a good cry for the sad state of humanity.
I must say though, I’m struck by the amount of people who have said they went out and bought some uneconomic land and hoped to turn it into grouse shooting. It seems moorland speculation is the new housing bubble or the buying of pub freeholds. We all know how both of those bubbles ended up.
Like Random22, I’m overwhelmed by the intransigent, arrogant speciesism in the pro-grouse-shooting views expressed in the written ‘evidence’ I read – anathema to my values. I appreciate Mark selecting gems from both perspectives. I set out intending to review the lot myself and compile some sort of tally of for/against with selected quotes but the publication list keeps growing and RPUK says there are over 500 submissions (https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/westminster-debate-on-driven-grouse-shooting-the-evidence-session/) er, gulp, so my cheeky question for Mark: is one of your splendidly edifying spreadsheet-type analyses with accompanying colourful chart on the horizon? And please keep debunking the mince in hopes that someone in government is verifying the ‘facts’.
Indeed; the written evidence makes for a nice corpus of text for mining. I’ve got my scripts ready to run for when it’s all released. It all seems quiet at 467 items today so maybe that’s yer lot?
Very entertaining!Is there really any risk of anybody taking this tosh seriously?
Some will because it suits their purpose?
At the risk of repetition what if anything will be synthesised from all these submissions, will they be checked for facts?
Never mind Brexit! The real threat to the British motor industry, apparently, is the move to ban grouse shooting!
I can confirm he’s real – he was the vicar of my childhood parish!
It’s worth taking seriously because it goes to the cultural underpinning. Though that stops after the first four lines. And he is fundamentally wrong, probably because of his religion. We do not hold dominion over anything.
Well at least this confirms that,although on the decline, Cuckoos are definitely out there!