Some news and some blogs

Things that have caught my eye in a busy week: at least two pairs of Bee-eaters have hatched young at East Leake – and Mark Thomas from RSPB was on Today this morning talking about it (he’s very good with the media) official announcement of the West Pennine Moors SSSI (a few fields were snipped…

Gove the environmentalist?

The speech by Michael Gove today is just fantastic – but is it fantastical? I don’t really care whether he believes what he says or not, I just care whether he implements his quite detailed words of today during his time as Secretary of State for the Environment. Since 2010 we have had one pretty…

The new Gove – ‘I am an environmentalist’

  Michael Gove’s speech ‘The unfozen moment – delivering a Green Brexit‘ is very, very good.  It’s, by far, the best speech made by a government environment minister since at least 2010. Not only is it erudite and clever, it shows a better grasp of the issues than his two immediate predecessors could muster after…

Farming subsidy debate gets moving…

We’ll have to see what ‘Green Brexit’ Gove actually says today, and then watch like hawks (harriers, eagles, kites and falcons) what he actually does.  But there is clearly something afoot when the Today programme stirs itself on the subject of agricultural payments (click here and two bits – at 08:10 and 08:55). The first…