The pro-grouse-shooting petition which closes at midnight tonight (it is being put out of its misery) has gathered some of its ‘greatest support’, not in the countryside but, in central London (see above, and here is the link).
One in 60 of their signatures comes from a single constituency, Chelsea and Fulham, and one in 20 comes from the following four constituencies: Chelsea and Fulham; Kensington; Cities of London and Westminster and Battersea.
This is hardly a surprise (see here, here and here) but the Countryside Alliance and others are still trying to come to terms with the fact that they are the townies!
For comparison, here is the map of the ‘ban driven grouse shooting’ constituencies (and note the difference in scale, and therefore of overall support) and a link to the map so that you can explore it at your leisure.
See also EPIC FAIL 1 this morning, and look out for EPIC FAIL 3 this evening.
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I’m sorry to have to disagree with you where you wrote that the “Countryside Alliance and others are still trying to come to terms with the fact that they are the townies”. They are not ‘trying to come to terms with it since they are in complete denial about this as they are about other issues.
Or is it that they see themselves as country folk because they also own a farm labourer’s cottage somewhere and use it for the odd weekend or short holiday?
” Yes it’s a lovely little second home, especially now we’ve bought the neighbouring cottage and knocked it through to make double garage.”
That’s what happens here in Sussex.
Started a landslide there, Mark: two new signatures between your two posts!
. I’ll explain it for you Mark, as for a supposedly intelligent man you seem to have trouble grasping the fact that as your 3rd attempt at a petition to get grouse shooting banned sunk without trace when discussed in parliament. there is no longer a need for a counter petition as there is no current opposition to grouse shooting continuing hence no more signatures. Simple really.
A bird – it couldn’t be better if you really believe that. Please convince all your friends of the same. We’re still here.
Agreed you’re still here, I was talking of parliamentary opposition of which there was precious little in the debate I watched. Where does such a crushing defeat in Parliament leave a petition that the vast majority of RPSB members couldn’t be bothered to even click on from the comfort of their armchair. Let’s not forget it was your 3rd attempt to make absolutely no progress at all to a ban even with the help of your friendly animal extremist group the league against cruel sports.
A Bird – do keep telling yourself that. I couldn’t be more supportive of you having that frame of mind. Are you trying to persuade me or yourself?
You failed to answer my question Mark , where do you go from here? The complete lack of parliamentary support for your ban must have been embarrassing in the extreme. To change the law you need parliamentary accent judging by the debate you have absolutely no chance. You were there you saw it unfold in front of you, the lib dems didn’t show up, the greens said their piece and left. Overwhelming support from MPs for the status quo. You keep saying we’re still here but not backing it up with anything, How long do your supporters need to be kept in suspense? Do you have a master plan for circumventing the parliamentary process, about as likely as a ban I would say!
A Bird – assent rather than accent.
Well, you sound very confident that we are going nowhere but you sound desperate to know where we are going.
Driven grouse shooting is bringing itself further into disrepute almost every day. The end is inevitable and will have been hastened by the petition, the evidence session, the hundreds of letters to MPs, and even by the debate. The Tory MPs who turned out were hardly a cross section of their own party were they? And they didn’t impress many in their own party – but I’m sure you know that.
You are obviously rattled yourself – and you aren’t alone are you?
Making grouse shooting unprofitable is the key to bringing about its .By stopping subsidies from the taxpayer would be a good start.
Makes you realise that a week is a long time in Raptor Politics! Strange that A. Bird hasn’t noticed that there’s a snowball rolling now and it’s heading right for him.
Was that the week when hen harrier Highhlander obviously “killed by gamekeepers” came back to life? That’s probably the snowball that has the same chance in hell as your ban on driven grouse shooting.
Adrian Bird do you always ignore elephants in the room? Please explain why tagged HH have such catastrophically worse survival rate than similar species tagged elsewhere with the same equipment? I’ve yet to hear any convincing reason for this other than illegal persecution – something that many other studies also indicate.
Apologies for my spelling, I’m sure we all knew what I meant. Unfortunately the only epic fail going on here is your attempt to get driven grouse shooting banned. Rattled not in the slightest, why would we be? What is there to be rattled about? You have singularly failed to show that you have any parliamentary support for a ban other than a very small number of the general public, I’m including the League against cruel sports in those, compared to total population, who have clicked on an Internet link. Most of the people in this country do not even know what driven grouse shooting is let alone care if it’s banned or not. Interestingly I conducted a straw poll of 10 people at work – not a single person had heard of you or your proposed ban and only 2 had heard of the wildlife Demi god that is Chris Packham, that tells me you have a lot of people to reach yet before the status quo is changed. The evidence session you mention was even worse for you than the debate itself. If that’s possible ! i agree that the hundreds of letters sent in support of grouse shooting will have had an effect and also the visits to MPs made by those in favour of shooting continuing unchanged. You have still completely failed to answer the basic question as to where you go from here, perhaps you don’t even know yourself, because your supporters sure as hell don’t know.
A Bird – you will see where we are going – but maybe not before we get there. I think I can safely assume that you are not fully supportive of banning driven grouse shooting and yet you want me to lay out our plans here… Duh!!
Anyway, it’s good that you are completely certain that society will allow wildlife crime, increased flooding, unnecessary carbon loss, damaged blanket bogs, increased water treatment costs and reduced aquatic biodiversity to continue just so that a few can shoot birds for fun. Good luck with that!
So far your arguments haven’t amounted to a hill of beans, the so called evidence for them was dismissed out of hand by Parliamentarians, you have a completely different viewpoint from the biggest bird charity, the proven social and economic benefits of grouse shooting are massive, so far it’s all going to plan I would say wouldn’t you? I will have to wait to see what your next bright idea to get the ban in place will be, along with your supporters I suppose. Look forward to hearing about it when you have thought it up. Any response to the notion that most people in the society that you talk about, the ones the politicians represent , don’t even know about you or your campaign and certainly have more important things in their daily lives to worry about.
A Bird – you haven’t been paying attention have you? The RSPB has almost exactly the same view of the ills of grouse shooting as those who supported the petition to ban driven grouse shooting yet, wrongly in my view, favours a different solution (ie licensing). You’d be keen on licensing would you?
The fact remains, that 123,077 people supported a ban on driven grouse shooting and the grouse shooting industry could only manage 25,000 to support the hobby of shooting Red Grouse for fun. Grouse shooting isn’t popular its the hobby of Tory MPs by the look of it, and a pretty odd bunch of them at that, and although it may make fortunes for the few it has large costs costs to the many, and it isn’t admirable it is a hobby which is dependent on wildlife crime.
You can’t go back – banning driven grouse shooting is on the table. We did that.
A Bird – Your rants make you sound like a very worried person to me – if so many other people have more important things to worry about in their daily lives, perhaps you should join them.
Many thanks, Mr Bird, for telling 10 more people about the situation. They will think about it, discuss it with 10 more people, who will think about it and discuss it with 10 more…… ad infinitum. So thanks for helping!
There was no discussion of the issue, people just aren’t interested which is what you don’t seem to have grasped.
A Bird – just you really then? You and 25000 others against me and 123000 others. You have some catching up to do.
I wonder why Adrian Bird is prepared to spend his time writing responses and respones to responses here when he considers the campaign against driven grouse shooting to be an insignificant, busted flush? If he wasn’t rattled he wouldn’t even be bothering to read this blog let alone trying to persuade us that the campaign is having no impact.
Jonathan – exactly.
just a passing interest in how far people will go in pursuit of a lost cause I guess
A Bird – you mean a passing hobby such as driven grouse shooting.
M Avery, it’s been around for a while and the way your campaign is going looks to be around for a good while longer yet.
ridiculous to describe it as a lost cause. Every journey begins with a small step and Mark has taken us several steps now. Whatever replaces CAP will bring renewed public focus – agree with Oliver Craig and Mike points
Keeps me entertained! I see no evidence of anything to be rattled about and no one on this blog at least seems to be able to provide me with any!
Seems to me this is just identity politics and the targeting of minorities – the Driven Grouse Shooting ban is Trumpism bought to conservation politics.
Mark, you *may* get DGS banned although I personally doubt it and in any event not for many many years – have you seen the state of the Labour Party recently? They are the most likely to fall for the toff targeting line.
However in the mean time you risk just pushing people to extremes – both on your side and the other. However there is also the possibility that you’ll create pressure for change and improvement in DGS – I’d hope so.
However to foster any such change we need people in the middle and that’s where I think organisations like the Hawk and Owl trust that you so despise come in IMO. I think it’s a shame that you seem to take delight in them becoming weaker. I think that there’s a lot more that people involved with DGS could be doing to help make the uplands more diverse and sustainable.
We live in a multi polar world and while some issues are black and white – yes killing harriers is wrong – end of – their human context rarely is.
I think MPS are – rightly – very cautious of banning one thing to ban something else with which it may partly overlap. They tried and largely failed to ban hunting to ban cruelty – it’s hard to see how that’s worked. Banning muslims to prevent terrorism is another more extreme example.
So 0.1% want a ban and 0.01% oppose a ban – however that’s 0.11% who are undecided or either don’t care or know enough about the issue to click on a link on the internet. I stated below that I hadn’t signed either and I was tarred as being on the other side. I’m not quite sure what side that is!
“…. in the mean time you risk just pushing people to extremes” – the problem is that by the persistent, widespread illegal persecution of protected species and the tissue-thin denials and prevarications of their supporters, DGS estates show themselves already at the extreme. Conservationists have been ‘understanding’ and ‘reasonable’ for decades but have been rewarded for not being ‘extreme’ by the near extermination of HH in England and the illegal suppression of raptor numbers in general. Yet you complain that those whose patience has finally run dry in the face of consistent provocation are the extremists, not the law breakers. Nothing could better illustrate the hubristic arrogance and overweening sense of entitlement increasingly characteristic of supporters of the grouse shooting industry.