It won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog that the strongest support for our e-petition for banning driven grouse shooting came from rural constituencies. We’ve known this for ages!! Just looking at England, for example, rural constituencies give stronger support for our e-petition than do urban ones: And this difference remains…
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NE use at all?
Just as Defra did not submit written evidence to the inquiry into driven grouse shooting – nor did Natural England. The fact that NE have been spending our taxpayers’ money on a detailed study of ranging behaviour and mortality of Hen Harriers since 2002 has not led them to think that they might have anything…
31 October
31 October is the date set for a debate on banning driven grouse shooting. The debate will be in Westminster Hall and will start at 4:30pm. Three hours have been allocated to this debate – which is a very long time for this type of thing. It may indicate the interest that MPs have noticed…
What Defra would have had to admit
After cogitating (aka as delaying) for a month, Defra finally told me it wouldn’t answer questions about its response to our successful e-petition on banning driven grouse shooting (123,076 signatures). The House of Commons Petitions Committee will hold an evidence session, jointly with the EFRA Committee, on this subject next Tuesday (see here and here)…
How Defra might have come to NO COMMENT
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Defra have felt unable to answer the questions that would put them on the spot over their inadequate response to our e-petition. I can understand why – their response, signed off by Rory Stewart, was hopelessly biased. They should now face questions from MPs over their position. This is a wholly fictional account (think Yes…
Scorched earth season in our National Parks
It’s the burning season in our National Parks. This scene is from the Peak District National Park, on an SSSI and in a Special Protection Area for Birds and is upstream of the Rivelin Reservoir where Yorkshire Water is spending £24m to improve Sheffield’s water quality (see here and here). Much of the catchment draining…
NO COMMENT from Defra
I emailed Defra a month ago to ask them some questions ahead of the grouse shooting inquiry. There were quite a lot of questions and Defra were clearly rattled by them as they waited until the very last minute before replying yesterday (see below) with the biggest ‘no comment’ I’ve ever seen. As I have…
Evidence session
A week today, between 215pm and 245pm, I’ll be giving evidence to a joint inquiry into grouse shooting by the Petitions Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. It’s not a long time, but we’ll see how it goes. You can see how it goes by attending in person or by watching on…
GrouseMoorExit here we come?
A You Gov opinion poll (2033 respondents questioned on 19 & 20 Sept) commissioned by Animal Aid shows that 48% of people would ban driven grouse shooting – only 28% oppose a ban. So when you take out the undecideds that’s 63% in favour of a ban and 37% against it. Since 52% is enough…
Defra firmly in the shooting camp.
There is a pro-grouse-shooting e-petition which is stumbling forward – it has almost reached 19,000 signatures after 7 weeks (in comparison, our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting got there in under half the time – who said driven grouse shooting is popular?). Defra has just published its response to this e-petition which is as…