A series of quotes relevant to the environment and/or campaigning.
This week’s quote is from Michael Gove (born 1967).
I sometimes think that the In campaign appears to be operating to a script written by George R.R. Martin and Stephen King – Brexit would mean a combination of ‘A Feast for Crows’ and ‘Misery.’
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/michael_gove_760114?src=t_crows
Michael Gove is the Secretary of State for the Environment, a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party, led the successful campaign for the UK to vote to leave the EU, and is currently considering the future of the general licences as regards the lethal control of Carrions Crows and a range of other corvids and other birds (see here and here). Mr Gove is known to be a fan of the books of George R.R. Martin on which the series Game of Thrones is based (including A Feast for Crows) and, it appears, the writing of Stephen King including ‘Misery‘.
More on Michael Gove here and almost everywhere at the moment.
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Some, including RSPB, got excited when Gove gave out “good signs” at Rainham marshes*, but the cross-party Environment Audit Committee has since concluded the exact opposite on the reality** – a lesson there when politicians are making promises…
* https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/martinharper/posts/a-chance-for-the-new-environment-secretary-michael-gove-to-listen-and-learn-part-2
** https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/news-parliament-2017/draft-environment-bill-report-publication-17-19/
Stephen – my own view of Mr Gove is that he is a bright guy and a gifted politician – even though I often (usually?) disagree with him and wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him. If he stayed at Defra for ever then I think he would do some good things, and some bad things. I wonder how long he will stay in post…
I think Gove is able but not gifted. He only looks that way amongst his peers in the Gell-Mann sense. His nerdiness makes him a bit of a second-in-command, as I think even he recognises. I mean, if you wanted to be PM would you make reform of VAT/sales tax your key pitch?
That isn’t to say that he lacks strategic sense, it’s always worth asking ‘whom do your enemies fear’. And as a remainer, I fear Gove more than any of the others, because he might actually deliver Brexit.
I’ve never read anything by George R R Martin. Are they anything like J R R Hartley? Whatever – I can thoroughly recommend another nature book “A Feast of Snakes” by Harry Crews as a fitting Christmas present to anyone’s mother-in-law.
Put him in some fancy-dress shop medieval outfit and Michael Gove would not have seemed at all out of place in Game of Thrones with his penchant for back-stabbing, scheming n’ all.
Michael Gove has at least made an attempt to present the Conservatives in a greener light, unlike his predecessors who if anything set out to trash the environment. However, most of what he has done has been short term and cheap – no trouble with the Treasury. The real problems date back to before his time and the 25 year plan, swallowed by the conservation lobby who are still struggling to admit that this Government really isn’t on their side, which from the start was an obvious strategy to do nothing with promises for a bright future – which hopefully (from a Conservative point of view) might turn into a financial albatross for a future Labour Government. The truth is in the brood meddling – unable and unwilling to shake off the traditional allegiances (and party funders). Interestingly, I saw Tony Juniper raised the Flow Country (now 30 years ago) at a recent forestry conference – at the time it was the tip of the iceberg of forestry, just as brood meddling is of Natural England today. He has clearly not learnt the lesson (unlike the Forestry Commission, which as a result is 100 this year against all the odds) of just how long a bad smell can linger – and, of course, the ultimate irony that a couple of years ago it was only the FC that stood between the Hen harrier and its extinction in England.