Live in Scotland? Then put pressure on the SNP.

19 Replies to “Live in Scotland? Then put pressure on the SNP.”

1. Prospective MP’s dont usually come to my door. It may be the Scottish Green Party poster that puts them off. I’ll leave it down this year and see if I can entice a few of them in. As well as wildlife crime I am keen to talk to them about a national energy policy, rewilding and education and the role that nature should have within it. The SNP will probably get in again (Black Isle) but where is the joy in life if you cant make your MP squirm?

   1. Callum – indeed, and promises made on the doorstep can be used in future.

   2. While you’re at it you could raise the issue of legalised cesspits otherwise known as the Scottish Aquaculture industry. As damaging and as abhorrent as raptor persecution is it pails into insignificance compared to the global effects of poorly regulated Government cash cows – Scottish fish farms. If only fish had fur or feather (though I’ve heard the farmed specimens aren’t too far away from that now). Shame we don’t read too much (if anything) about that on these pages. No money in a book Mark?

      1. Perhaps you could write something on the subject?

      2. Why don’t you ask the ‘conservationists’ in the huntin, fishin, shootin set why they aren’t doing more about Indonesia becoming one giant oil palm plantation, Carpathian old growth forest being turned into tables, dodgy pesticides being licensed or fracking? Think you’ll find people contributing to this blog are and about much more including fish farms. However, if a society permits an ecological and moral crime such as killing rhino for their horn or slaughtering birds of prey for people who like to shoot other birds for fun then there’s little chance of winning when there’s a more material reason for wildlife and the environment being trashed.

         Pretty pathetic tactic to try and demean people who are doing something by implying they don’t care about anything else when in fact the real culprits are those who do absolutely nothing. Of course that’s what some vested interests want – apathy. Would those fieldsports participants currently spitting feathers over fish farms be doing so if it wasn’t for the fact that they are blamed for poor sea trout and salmon runs? I don’t recall them raising their voices about fish farms more than twenty years ago when we were beginning to worry about their effects on the marine environment. In fact Michael Wigan in his book ‘The Scottish Highland Estate’ implied that environmental concerns over fish farming were due to jealousy at their rapid growth and success. Phoney righteous indignation is not clever Cogswell.

         1. Not an unexpected reply from one of Mark’s simpering sycophants. You criticize specific ‘sets’ because it fits into your single dimensional, binary, myopic view of the world – all groups fit into a category for you, not made up of individuals with their own thought processes, but a collective hive mind of blood-lust, and that’s what infuriates me more than anything when I read the poorly informed comments on blogs such as this. I can tell you now there are people who hunt, shoot, fish or whatever who are just as appalled at the continual raptor persecution as you, you don’t own the monopoly on resentment of this kind of blatant disregard for the law. When individuals such as yourself, and other such similar sycophants spend a little less time attempting to divide and a little more effort into unifying outrage we may all have a little more success, with certainly a louder voice than currently exists. It is because of comments such as yours, and others I read on various blogs that I never put my name to the petition to ban DGS, not because I care for grouse shooting – I couldn’t give a monkey’s about it, but because all too often something I do take part in is thrown into the general mire of resentment by the poorly informed, hard-of-thinking.

            1. Cogswell – I feel it is always your irresistible charm that wins us over the most.

            2. Touched a nerve did we? You need to read over my comments mate – you’ll see I was once a keen angler myself, but got pissed off at the mainstream reality which was at serious odds with the ‘conservationist’ hype. It’s experience not myopia that has informed my opinions and that’ll be the same for all of us ‘simpering sycophants’ on this blog, you mistake respect and mutual interest/support for the brainless witterings you get on a certain Scottish ex gamekeepers facebook page. There’s a difference but I doubt you’d appreciate that so was expecting the SS comment at some stage, pretty predictable. The good anglers, keepers and shooters are very, very quiet and they need to speak up we’re waiting for them to do so, but can’t wait forever – don’t blame us for their reticence. Incidentally you never answered any of my points did you, I expect you couldn’t?

2. Fingers crossed there should be a petition in the very near future asking the Scottish government to commission a full and independent study into the true economic worth of driven grouse shooting including role of subsidies, possible damage to recreational angling (EMBER report) and displacement/exclusion/marginalisation of other activities such as ecotourism and large scale natural flood alleviation work (riparian tree planting, insertion of large woody debris in streams and getting the beaver back!). Given that no other country in the world outside of UK has had or is trying to have driven grouse shooting such a study is likely to show why. If the jobs and rural economy argument falls through for DGS what defence will it then have?

   I really do think the wind is starting to blow against the estates up here, their overall credibility is not helped by maintaining ludicrously high red deer numbers that as well as keeping the hills bare of trees are killing people on the roads. That even trumps flooding people’s’ homes for arrogance, expecting the hoi polloi to risk their lives (a friend in Assynt has had three collisions with red deer so far) in the name of your ‘sport’.

   The grouse moors in Northern England are probably on firmer ground for now, but that’ll weaken with any progress against them north of the border. With everything from a slight change in current management to full blown ecological restoration there’s a tremendous scope for hundreds of thousands of hectares of this country becoming so much better for wildlife and associated educational and recreational opportunities without making any real negative impact on genuine economic productivity, rather the opposite. If the conservation organisations work in coalition this could happen much more quickly – in Scotland this has already happened with calls for better deer control. I think there’s actually reason for optimism if new directions of attack can be found and there’s more genuine partnership. The killing of that hen harrier was disgusting, but let’s hope it galvanises action, many of the estate supporters are advocating the legalisation of what we saw as a necessary part of their industry. If it is then it’s a perverse business we are better of without.

   1. I’d leave the bit about recreational angling off if I were you. The sport has been dirtying its image lately with repeated calls for culls of various sorts on piscivorous birds (including the osprey itself) and otters, not to mention the knee-jerk “anti” stance on beavers. Its inclusion may put people off signing, as they’d see it as just another branch of the Hunting, Shooting, and Fishing brigade trying to hijack a conservation movement (partly that is due to the Grouse Shooting Lobby’s own actions in subverting moorland conservation) so it might be counterproductive to include until the fishing lobby firmly and publicly breaks with the HSF orgs and smacks down the sport members who keep calling for culls.

      1. I’m disgusted with what’s been going in too many angling circles re calling for culls and the outrageous ‘ecological’ arguments being used to support them that makes Songbird Survival look sane (read ‘Predation: an ecological disaster?’ Downloadable from the Predation Action Group website, and you’ll see exactly what I mean).

         However, that’s a good reason to refer to the possible effects muirburn has on water quality and fishing – its representative bodies have met the EMBER report’s findings with deafening silence whilst vilifying wildlife that has co-evolved and co-existed with freshwater fish for millions of years. If the petition gets a hearing I will do my best to point out that recreational angling may well be in conflict with grouse moor management and this is another example of DGS getting preferential political treatment with apparent complicity of those who should be representing anglers whilst copying the anti predator rhetoric in a different context (and is the beaver the equivalent of the mountain hare?).

         I share your disgust I assure you, I gave up fishing more than twenty years ago because I couldn’t stomach the hypocrisy of those who called themselves conservationists while advocating the most horrendous damage to wildlife and the natural environment if they thought they would catch an extra fish out of it. There are a very few genuine anglers/naturalists/conservationists who hopefully will back up the points made and show that not all field sports are or should stand shoulder to shoulder.

3. The SNP appear to be a very mixed bag when it comes to interest in wildlife crime/land reform. Some are pretty strong on the condemnation but then you have Fergus Ewing, friend of the SGA and the shooting estates and he is right at the centre of scottish government.One bright spot here is the fact that SNP really need the support of the Scottish Green Party who appear to be on the rise [19 councillors in local elections]…perhaps they can put on the necessary pressure?

   We should always remember here that all that is being asked for is the application of the Law, not some revolutionary change to our society. Appalling that we are still waiting for this.

4. I suspect most people are bemused by the pixelating of the individual in this extraordinary video. It may not be legal evidence but unless someone can demonstrate its a fake there seems no reason to obscure the person featured.

   Leading on from that, we all seem to have great faith-and blame- in our politicians – but they didn’t actually shoot the Hen Harrier. It was the guy with the gun on land belonging to an individual, no doubt his employer. It strikes me as increasingly strange that even on this blog and raptor persecution we are always given the name of the estate, but very rarely the name of the owner. Whatever responsibility the politicians and legal system may have, there is also individual responsibility. A key tactic in the Flow Country dispute was to name the celebrities who were investing in the damaging afforestation of the Flow Country – it was probably one of the decisive factors in an effectively fought campaign. In that case there was no question of illegality: the tax break was entirely legal, it was just the actions resulting that were wrong. It is also almost certain that the individuals like Terry Wogan had no idea that their legal tax avoidance was causing environmental harm.

   Whilst more traditional estates are well aware of what goes on new city/business owners are likely to have handed management to a professional grouse moor manager and may have little idea exactly what that involves – other than them making it clear they want a lot of grouse over the guns. Even more so the guests. Also, there are a lot of foreign owners who genuinely may be unaware of some of the actions that go into producing their grouse. They may not care – but they may start caring if their names are linked to what is going on on their estates.

5. Maybe a move which does not rely on the legal process is to name and shame the estates, their owners and users. In the case of this alleged crime the person in the video could be named if “alleged” is used. This would bypass the dodgy legal system. The law is of course blind, usually to the crimes of the well connected and the well off.

   1. “the well connected and the well off”

      A trip to the Doctor can be illuminating – how else would I know about the existence of their parallel universe except by reading the curling grubby germ-laden pages of Wiltshire Life in the Waiting Room?

6. As well as communicating with the SNP officially, I also use Twitter to get the message to them. Be aware though, that they have a brigade of people who spring to the defence of the SNP whatever the topic!. Their defense on this occasion has been to tell me to contact the people who apply the law, as it is not the politicians who are responsible! I pointed out that frequently politicians act when there is a large enough public outcry and that is what we are trying to create. Although you might think enforcing the law was something that politicians would be responsible for!

7. The whole issue comes down to land ownership and above all the kind of people who own it. Our supposed national parks are a joke. Until we get rid off Sir James Braindead and his peers we are banging our heads against a wall.

8. I sent a tweet to Liam McArthur (Liam4Orkney) the Lib Dem MSP and spokesperson for Energy and Justice. He sent a reply saying he has written to the Justice Secretary and Lord Advocate. I am not holding my breath that anything will come from this but I think we also need to push the parties in opposition too. They are allowing the governing parties to get away with their failures to sufficiently address wildlife crime. This incident helps make what is happening on our moors clearer to our politicians who struggle to comprehend the scale of problem of driven grouse shooting and raptor persecution.

9. Very well written, Its nice to read your article. Thanks for great share.

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