Free comment

Mark 8 Comments

Let’s try this and see what happens.

Use this post to comment on any events of the last week or so. It would make sense to start your comment with a heading but after that, whatever you like provided it is fair comment and in good taste.

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8 Replies to “Free comment”

  1. HS2, Natural England and the High Court – interim update for those who are interested

    Those interested by my recent guest blog on here (‘HS2 and Natural England – Partners in Crime?’) might be interested in the following update.

    A challenge to NE’s decision to issue a bat licence to HS2 to fell Jones Hill Wood using an ‘extreme’ application of licensing policy 4 was indeed brought.

    Last Friday, Justice Lang after reviewing the papers issued an order for HS2 to stop works at Jones’ Hill Wood until a hearing could be held into whether Claimant and protestor Mark Keir should be given permission for judicial review into Natural England’s decision.

    On Monday, at the urgent request of HS2, another judge, Holgate J, varied the order and instructed the parties to submit papers for an expedited hearing in the High Court on 23 April.

    That hearing went ahead in front of Holgate J yesterday. Judgment is expected to be handed down on Monday. Meanwhile the injunction preventing further tree felling or other activities at the site continues.

    Whichever way it goes, and if Mark permits, I will probably comment on the hearing and the result via guest blog next week/weekend.

  2. I noticed on the GWCT Facebook page a question about Badgers. “Is predation by Badgers contributing to local declines of ground nesting bird populations” Have your say, well talk about anti Badger vitriol, they ARE DEFINITELY responsible for the national decline of all waders especially Lapwings and Hedgehogs. Red Kites and Otters are apparently also major contributing factors in GN bird declines too. These people know this because they can quote individual incidents and clearly don’t understand that research is needed to prove an effect at population level, they’ve seen it so it must be true any suggestion of otherwise is rubbished along with that major culprit of Badger protection Chris Packham. Apparently Chris is responsible for the law protecting Badgers and those of us who don’t agree with their position are either or indeed both ignorant townies and left wing animal rights extremists. You find the same on any entries about Otters how they are the worst thing to happen to our rivers and will wipe out ALL fish, water birds and then start attacking pets and children I kid you not. This anti predator vitriol and complete ignorance of predator-prey relationships is very common it seems and extremely disheartening, not of course that it alters my perspective at all. However there may be a case for looking at the effects of Badgers on ground nesting birds perhaps somebody is doing it or has done it and I’ve not come across it yet, BUT I doubt I’d be alone in not believing any done on the subject by GWCT. It is very clear that there are a huge section of our population that have no understanding nor wish one of how predator-prey relationships work, that is an educational problem.

  3. Where to start…
    I am fed up with ‘woke’ (dreadful word) organisations like the National Trust who feel it necessary to rewrite or apologise for history. Get over it and look forward. Who cares that Jane Austen drank tea with sugar, etc, etc. It was generations ago, not today.
    Also Extinction Rebellion who think vandalism is the only way to get heard. Lots of us protested in the 60s but didn’t feel the need to smash up buildings such as HSBC.
    And finally, would everyone stop thinking they own the countryside when they do nothing to look after it. For heaven’s sake farmers feed you and you should thank them every day when you sit down to eat.
    Rant over.

    1. No-one is re-writing history, just shining a light onto areas that have not been illuminated.

      Can’t speak for XR

      Countryside is not farmer’s it is ours. Neonics to produce sugar beet for fast food making people ill and shorten lives. Barley covers more cropland in Scotland than anything else; whisky and animal food-utterly unnecessary to keep us fed! Oilseed rape for paint manufacture…doesn’t feed me. Subsidy for sheep is me paying for hobby farming! My local watercourses are clogged with sediment, field dust across the houses and gardens, no care for their own capital. Roadside verges trashed by machinery made for the prairies.

      Not much to thank farmers for.

      Rant hardly even started.

      1. With respect to crops and food:

        Sugar beet seed treatment was a minority use for neonics, and no farmer sold sugar beet to the public. Neonics were legal on winter cereal seed until 2018. You would have to be very skilled and surreptitious to malt your own barley and brew and distill your own whisky. To make it feasible for the general public to bake its own bread at scale you would have to engineer a pandemic and enforced leisure-time.

        Oilseed rape varieties used for edible oil have needed intensive conventional breeding to lower glucosinolate and erucic acid to tolerable levels for humans and animals. A major use for new and recycled rapeseed oil is in biodiesel and specialised varieties are grown to supply industrial feedstocks – none of which you would want to eat or drink. Linseed oil has been used in industry for a very long time and although deranged people do find linseed edible, in our house it is known as “constipation in a jar”. In New Zealand, it is known as “Nutter Tucker”, probably because its fans suck cricket bats or chew linoleum. As far as I know, no-one drinks paint other than unsupervised toddlers.

        None of these foods or products are manufactured by farmers so I find it bizarre that they attract blame for them.

  4. I think this an excellent idea. There is a wealth of talent and expertise evident in many of the commenters on this blog. That this has been little used today is probably more down to you having caught people by surprise. Do give it a try again next week.

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