This piece from the Daily Mirror’s environment editor is a cracker.
We’ve come a long way in the last few years – can you imagine such an article being published a decade ago – no way. And with quotes from RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and CPRE? Opposing the environmental damage caused by the unsustainable intensive management of grouse moors is now utterly mainstream.
The only people standing in the way of progress are the recidivist grouse moor owners and those running the DEFRA omnishambles. This government’s bid to present a green face to the rest of world on biodiversity conservation and tackling climate change will both be dogged by the slow, inadequate and hopeless measures introduced by DEFRA in a green pretence of tackling moorland burning.
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Now that really is a great late birthday present. Excellent.
Very well said The Daily Mirror, could not have said it better myself. This Westminster Government is an utter disgrace as we have said many times. What they say they will do and what they do not do is about as wide as the Pacific Ocean.
However I don’t think we should be too distracted too much by an utterly despicable set of rotten politicians at Westminster. It seems to me that Governments in Scotland and Wales are much more reasonable and more open to listening. The forth coming Scottish elections are obviously very important in this respect. Let’s hope the SNP and the Greens get back with a bigger majority. That would, I hope, mean there would be a good chance of the introduction of tough licensing of driven grouse moors in Scotland.
Yes if the Tories get win in Scotland it will be a retrograde step for licencing and may not happen, not that I’m a huge fan of the SNP but they do seem the best option in conjunction with the Greens. Of course a big NO to the discredited Salmond.
Note the litany of blatant lies from the DGS mafia in the comments. Now it’s apparently “woke” (the favourite word of fascists) to tell the truth.
Yes really pathetic, not an original thought between the lot of then, just a set of empty squawk boxes to regurgitate DGS lies and idiocy. Their ludicrous use of ‘woke’ showed that they’re the ones jumping on band wagons, actually cringeworthy. It’s much the same that you get now with the features that appear in local papers about otters moving back into local rivers and lakes. As sure as death there’ll be a big surge in anglers using the associated social media (and I imagine the Letters Page in the newspaper) to batter other readers with notifications that other wildlife will now be decimated by otters including pics of them attacking ducks and swans. Any reasonable anglers will be drowned out by the rest.
I thought this article was brilliant and particularly noteworthy on making repeated references to the flood issue. If the general public starts realising DGS increases the risk their homes, workplaces and businesses will be flooded then only MPs with a political death wish will stand up for shooting lots of birds for fun having priority over keeping homes dry. The issue is the public getting keyed on to this – the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and others need to be as proactive, or just plain honest as this wonderful article was.
It is very good news. Let’s hope they keep it up.
Interesting taste the search engine optimiser things you have in shirts though. In the interests of full disclosure, do you own any shirts like that? It’s a matter of the public’s right to know!
We need to get better in the NGO world at placing the blame. Blaming Defra isn’t effective: half the country don’t know what it is or what it stands for, the other half see it as a bland bureaucracy.
Do we really think policy inaction is caused by incompetent bungling civil servants failing to deliver grand political ambitions to restore our uplands? Or is it that the politically influenced ministers don’t want radical action to upset their landowning voters and colleagues? The latter seems more likely to me.
We need to name and blame the ministers who are actually making these decisions, along with the PM that appoints them. They’re all helpfully shown here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs
Let’s get better at directing our blame, and our credit when they get things right.