Guest blogs

You could write one! I’m very grateful to all those who have ever written guest blogs here – they add variety (of style and subject) and take the pressure off me to find some words almost every day. I’d value some more guest blogs. Here is the very simple guidance on how to submit one…

Election watch (14) – A Labour plan for nature

At last! A serious and detailed plan for nature from a political party; 46 pages on how government can, and a Labour government would, save nature. Here are some quotes, rather a lot of quotes, from the document followed by my analysis of whether it is any good or not. I am pretty sure that…

Last chance to vote (until the general election anyway)

Voting for the Birdwatch magazine’s Birders’ Choice awards closes tomorrow – the end of November. I’ve written about soe of my choices: Guano Award Conservation Hero Book of the Year, News of the Year, Site of the Year Campaign of the Year But there are other categories and of course you don’t have to take…

Election watch (13)

I answered every question on this site about my beliefs and found that I was: 88% in agreement with the Greens 86% in agreement with the LibDems 83% in agreement with Labour 35% in agreement with Conservatives 29% in agreement with Brexit No surprises there then. But a bit of a relief! I thought it…

Friday evening

I can’t make this one so if you go, please tell me what happened. Venue details – click here.

No change at DEFRA

It could almost be the dead hand of Therese Coffey living on… It is, of course, wonderful that Rebecca Pow is the Species Champion for the Snipe (because of the Somerset Levels population in her constituency) but she is also a block on progress on raptor persecution and is the Minister in charge of Badger…

Election watch (12) – an important, albeit dull, sentence

The Labour manifesto contains this sentence, We will maintain and continuously improve the existing EU standards of environmental regulation. A Green Industrial Revolution. Environment. This promise does not appear to be hedged around (although hedges are of course good things). So I am taking this to mean that, if elected, a Labour government would seek…

Poor Field craftiness

There is a somewhat formulaic method by which the shooting press refer to Wild Justice. First of all, they hardly ever mention Ruth Tingay who is an integral and equal partner in Wild Justice alongside Chris and me. I wonder why they so often do this – it’s usually a man writing, maybe they just…

Election watch (11) – leaving parliament

In the excitement over who might be elected or re-elected to the Westminster parliament on 12 December we should just note those former MPs who are not standing for re-election. There are quite a lot of them – 76 in all. This includes four former DEFRA ministers: Caroline Spelman (a good Secretary of State), Richard…