David Harsent has won the prestigious TS Eliot prize for poetry for his collection of poems, Fire Songs. He is, the judges said, a poet ‘for dark and dangerous days’. This might seem a little off-subject for this blog, although I do try to maintain the appearance of having a thin veneer of culture. However,…
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Too much crime, the Mutch case
Scottish gamekeeper, George Mutch, was yesterday sentenced to four months in prison for trapping a Goshawk and beating it to death. Mutch is the first gamekeeper to be jailed for killing raptors. Click here to see some of the video evidence that led to the conviction in December. It’s never a good thing for anyone…
Oxford Dictionaries asked to re-word
Internationally-acclaimed author Margaret Atwood, former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion and former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo are among 28 major literary and media figures who have today written to the Oxford University Press. They are calling for the reinstatement of a host of words connected with nature and the countryside that have been removed from…
Is there anybody out there…?
Is there anybody out there who would be prepared to write a Guest Blog for this site which made the case that pulling out of the EU would be good for wildlife, the countryside and the environment (or any one of them)? Anyone? I’d like to hear from you. But perhaps you simply don’t exist…
Defra – what are you for? 2
Defra, do you have a solution to the problems in the uplands documented by the Leeds University EMBER report? Remember? The report that established that the management of the uplands for driven grouse shooting leads to polluted water courses, probably increased flood risk downstream, loss of aquatic biodiversity and increased greenhouse gas emissions? This was…
Oscar Dewhurst – Red-breasted Merganser
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Sunday book review – Penguins – close encounters by David Tipling
Did you like the John Lewis advert? That is what Christmas is all about after all – which retailer has the best advert to get you spending your money. Which of the world’s 17 species of penguin was it? I’ve never seen a penguin in the wild, only a few in zoos, but then very…
More update
Every time I do an ‘update’ blog, as soon as it is posted, I remember all the other things that I meant to put in it, so here are a few more: 2014 was the warmest year on Earth ‘ever’ there will be a referendum in Malta on spring hunting – this spring. this was…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Mark writes: of course, children were the future in the past too, and the present isn’t so great.
Hare today and gone tomorrow?
Just when the grouse shooters thought that things might get a bit quieter for them, another e-petition related to grouse shooting emerges that is bound to get a lot of support. This one is directed at the SNH Director of Policy and Advice, Ron Macdonald, and asks SNH to protect Mountain Hares from widespread unregulated…