Les Wallace’s petition has now received its expected poor government response. To be fair, it is quite a quick, poor response.
Therese Coffey and the rest of Defra say ‘No’. In fact they say ‘No, no need’.
I’ll be coming back to this later, probably today, as there are some very interesting aspects to it.
One of the interesting aspects that I have noticed is at the foot of the email that one receives as a supporter of the petition ‘The Petitions Committee will take a look at this petition and its response. They can press the government for action and gather evidence.’. They may need a nudge.
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What a disgrace this Government is, however, realistically, we expected nothing else but a poor response from a very poor Government. It really is amazing how far Ms Coffey will go to defend the vested interests of driven grouse shooting and all the slaughter of our wildlife that goes with it.
Look forward to reading the actual response but it does sound as though a nudge to the Petitions Committee could be worthwhile.
The result was predictable, and hugely flawed. Is the grouse shooting industry now part of the UK government? It does need a re-examination. It includes the words, as I and others have suggested it might:
Economic impact –
A report by the UK shooting community (Public & Corporate Economic Consultants report 2014: The Value of Shooting) concludes that the overall environmental and economic impact of game bird shooting is positive; the industry has estimated that £250 million per year is spent on management activities substantially benefiting conservation. For grouse shooting in particular, according to the Moorland Association, estates in England and Wales spent £52.5 million on managing 149 grouse moors for shooting in 2010. Scottish landowners manage a further 150 moors for shooting grouse. The industry also supports 1,520 full time equivalent jobs and is worth £97.7 million across Great Britain.
Yes I got this insulting response. Is there a bot that writes these insulting responses, programmed with machine learning, in sophistry. These response enrage me because they are so utterly disingenuous. The usual nonsense about there are differing views on shooting. Although strangely enough there can only be one view on the illegal persecution of raptors by grouse moor managers, and that is it’s illegal.
Steb – they are signed off by ministers so there is a person, presumably Therese Coffey, behaving in this bot-like and dismissive manner.
Yes contemptuous isn’t it?
Agree Mark that it is a poor response but that was to be expected from a government that appears to be co opted by the iindustry. To include in their response elements of an industry funded report as if it were gospel sort of shows that. Look forward to your, probably more measured, take down later.
Thanks Mark, just read it. Even worse than I was expecting. Totally failed to address the issue of better employment opportunities being displaced by DGS..well what a surprise….and tried to do what Andrew Gilruth did in a dodgy Shooting Times article, to move the goalposts by saying this is an economic way of maintaining a ‘habitat’, i.e the exact one created by DGS! They even regurgitated the PACEC report which the League Against cruel Sports (in better days) totally trashed. I have just got this and will need to mull it all over, but as it stands petition 2 is definitely on for later in the year and this time I hope the Labour Party and others see why they need to get fully behind it. In the meantime will draft a careful response, which might take a week or so as I’m about to go away for a training week. They are doing their best to muddy the waters with this reply, but it won’t work!
Well pretty much as expected. No mention of better employment opportunities for rural communities being displaced…what a surprise, reference to the ludicrous PACEC report and shifting the goalposts to say DGS is an economic way to maintain the ‘habitat’ created by DGS! Looks like petition 2 is on for later in the year. This time I hope the Labour Party and others see why they need to get fully behind it. Will mull this over for a considered response, but I’m away for a training week so maybe a little time before that happens. We all deserved better, but their attempt to muddy the waters will not succeed!
It is Government responses such as this, together with the dismissive way in which the Parliamentary debate in response to your own petition was handled, that directly leads to initiatives such as Wild Justice. Illegality is the issue here and the place to deal with it is in our courts.
Keep up the great work Mark, Ruth and Chris – we are all right behind you.
Wow! A complacent response is hardly a surprise but it takes the biscuit that they respond to a call for an independent study of the economics of grouse shooting by citing highly contested figures from extremely partisan vested interests. I’d say that amounts to sticking two fingers up at Les.
I read my response early this morning and I can’t agree that it’s poor.
It is ****ing abysmal!
Who are the eleven MP’s on the Petitions Committee. We need to point out to them that the report from the shooting interests quoted in the response is hardly independent. We need to make them fully aware of out views.