In a fair piece of reporting, the Daily Telegraph covered the arrival of our e-petition at over 100,000 signatures. That was yesterday wasn’t it – seems ages ago now! Nice photo of Henry too! He’ll be unbearable! Ian Gregory of YFTB, who has done so much to help get us to the 100,000 signature threshold,…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
The not-so-talented Viscount Ridley
Matt Ridley and I were friends a long time ago, but we haven’t seen each other for quite a while, and although I would gladly share a bottle of claret with Matt, we might start talking politics, climate change or grouse moors and that might spoil the mood. I remember we had a very good…
Hebden Bridge
Have a look at this article and photographs from the Ban the Burn protest at Hebden Bridge. Good luck to them! Calder Valley remains the constituency with the highest number of signatures on the e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting – 679 of them as I write. I wonder whether, assuming that we get a…
Bad losers and partly to blame
It was bound to happen – the internet trolls are claiming that the recent rush of signatures for our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting has been fraudulent in some way. Ho, ho ho! There certainly has been a rush of signatures, and the speed of growth of the e-petition has taken me by surprise…
Inglorious Duncan Thomas of BASC
Duncan Thomas works for BASC – he is their North of England Director. His Twitter handle is @DuncanBASC. Mr Thomas will, I understand, be on Countryfile this evening talking about grouse shooting. Over the last year and a bit Mr Thomas has shown a rather persistent interest in my finances (nothing to see here!). In…
Petitions
There have been 20,500+ petitions submitted during this parliament. 13,700 of them were rejected – we weren’t. Of the 6,800 or so not rejected – only 293 have passed the 10,000 signature barrier (we’ve done that twice – in this parliament). Of the 6,800 or so not rejected, only 47 have reached 100,000 signatures…
League Against Cruel Sports press release
Parliamentary debate expected as surge in petition signatures to ban driven grouse shooting reaches magic 100,000 Support for a total ban on driven grouse shooting has rocketed with a key petition achieving the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a debate in Parliament. As the grouse shooting season opens, support for the e-petition – set up…
Tim Melling – Pied Flycatcher
Tim writes: my sister moved to Snowdonia last year and invited me across to stay. I was surprised and delighted to find she had both Pied Flycatchers and Redstarts as garden birds. The Pied Flycatchers were particularly showy and there was lots of light too as the leaves had not yet opened to block the…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
100,000!!
We did it – 100,000 of us (so far). Thank you! I hope someone has a screen grab I can add here later (above – although it went past in a blur and I’ve been sent several slightly photoshopped ones like the above – thank you) but now I’m off to get a train home…