Guest post on Friday – Peter Marren

Peter Marren will be the guest blogger here on Friday – commenting on the discussion that has sprung up here since he dropped a pebble in the wildlife NGO pond with his article in The Indpendent newspaper. And the offer is open to the Chief Executives of any and all of the wildlife NGOs to…

Chancellor mentions environment shock!

George Osborne felt confident enough to say it as he saw it at the Tory party conference yesterday. “Yes, climate change is a man made disaster. Yes, we need international agreement to stop it. Yes, we must have investment in greener energy. And that’s why I gave the go ahead to the world’s first Green…

Planning for wildlife

It was good to see this story in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.  The RSPB have a legal opinion from Nathalie Lieven QC, the environmental barrister, who has “ no doubt the draft NPPF lessens the policy protection for SSSIs”. I wrote in comments on this blog on 9 September the following: ‘Although European designations…

Never seen that before

Last weekend I revisited one of the haunts of my youth – a place called Steart or Stert.  And I’m going with Stert as I’ve always known it as ‘Sturt’ rather than ‘Steert’. As spotty teenagers at Bristol Grammar School we would, under the guardianship of masters  Derek Lucas and Tony Warren, make two autumn…

Veggie

Today is world vegetarian day.  Will that make a difference to you? I’ll be vegetarian today even though I am not vegetarian. But I am sticking to my self-imposed regime of four vegetarian days a week – and this year I think I am averaging closer to five rather than four. Why?  Well the reason…