Better than games

Tuesday was the centenary of Robert Falcon Scott‘s expedition reaching the South Pole – five weeks after the Norwegians had got there first. But Amundsen did get there first, and he has a claim for having got to the North Pole first too, before dying in a plane crash in the Arctic in 1928 when…

Still in denial

Guy Smith, just an ordinary farmer (not!), was doing his usual thing of trying to undermine the Farmland Bird Index on Farming Today yesterday.  He has been making the same points for years and he knows perfectly well what the answers to them are.  But this time he seemed to have quite a lot of…

What the eye doesn’t see….

If local farmers were killing hundreds of birds every year then there would be uproar,  but if you can’t see those deaths then it’s easier to ignore them.   I was pleased to hear that the Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority closed some areas of a local fishery after news of the deaths of hundreds…

Trusting in nature?

Last week I wrote a blog, mildly questioning the NT’s own claim to be one of Europe’s leading nature conservation organisations.   That blog ruffled a few feathers but also seemed to strike a chord with quite a few readers of this blog.  I was very grateful to David Bullock for his reply which was…

What did the Romans never do for us?

I wondered what it was like in Roman times as I headed up Ermine Street to the south bank of the Humber. The legions probably didn’t have to judge when to overtake a large lorry as they headed north from Lincoln, and when they got to the estuary they had to make a ferry crossing…