The Lobbying Act is really important and quite complicated so I’ll do my best to explain some things here. It’s worth saying upfront that I have spoken to various friends in NGOs about this issue and it is very clear that the Act is making many charities extremely nervous about speaking out about any…
Year: 2017
Today fails to ask Defra Secretary questions on environmental protection
Michael Gove has just run rings around the Today programme (at 08:10, 2hours 10 mins into programme) in his first interview as Environment Secretary. He was asked about funding for farming and pointed out that he agreed with the Conservative election manifesto. That was hard! But he did say that he was meeting the NFU…
And after High Peak? Calder Valley and Carmarthen West
I was very pleased to see that High Peak returned to Labour on Friday. The seat looked winnable, although a bit of a stretch, and clearly it was. The former Conservative MP, Andrew Bingham, had consistently voted for increasing restrictions on campaigning, against benefit improvements, for cuts in welfare spending, against gay rights, against measures…
Where was the environment?
Discussion of environmental matters was largely absent from the general election campaign. This may be for the real but unfortunate reason that the environmental doesn’t hold much sway in elections. For those of us who are strongly motivated by environmental issues we have to realise that we are a rather small minority. But accepting that…
Farming Today? No thank you.
I received this email a little while ago from Farming Today: Dear Mark, We’d like to interview you this afternoon for BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today programme about the appointment of Michael Gove as Defra Secretary. Would you be able to go to a radio studio sometime between 1445 and 1545 this afternoon? It will…