Owen Paterson is paid for being the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. On Saturday morning I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and one of the items was about Paterson’s remarks to The Times about biodiversity offsetting. It seemed that Paterson had used woodland as an example…
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Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill.
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Selfie, selfie, selfie.
There’s an app for it…
Do you have a smart phone? Mine is smarter than I am! Do you have a wonderful array of apps (applications)? I can check the live football scores, check the runners or results of the racing, look at a map of where I am, convert $$ to ££, have a bet, look at Facebook, Twitter,…
On track so far…
We are only a couple of days into 2014 but it is going quite well so far. I have spent time with friends and relatives, made a profit on betting, had some walks, eaten well and drunk well too – if only I had won the Really Nasty Horse Racing Game in the first few…
An oldie and a baddie.
There were two copies of The Oldie in Avery Towers over Christmas and everyone who glanced at either of them noticed that ‘That man Ingrams is moaning about Red Kites again’. Richard Ingrams has form on this subject but this time he seems to be blaming the decline of the Kestrel on Red Kites. Actually…
Disgusting of Tunbridge Wells
Sir I note with concern that there is ample evidence that birds from Romania and Bulgaria are already visiting our fair shores. Bird ringing recoveries demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that poor birds flood in to Britain from eastern Europe in search of an easier life. These ecological migrants, as we should call them, are even…
Nature goes unhonoured
I didn’t notice any names closely associated with nature in the New Year’s Honours list – did you? Although the idea of ‘honours’ is ridiculous I am always pleased when some of the good guys get a gong. I really couldn’t see any this time around – did I miss them? Would you nominate anyone?
What will 2014 bring for you?
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s fun to have some idea of what you plan to do in the year ahead. Here are some of my ideas. They’ll change through the year, no doubt, as they did last year. January – encourage as many people as possible to invite their MP to their houses to do the…
Wildlife NGOs in 2013
This year has been difficult for our wildlife NGOs. Money is tight and the government is hostile to nature. The Grasslands Trust disappeared from the Tangled Bank of wildlife NGOs and many others have had to cut their expenditure (and their staff). There have been encouraging signs of NGOs working more closely together – most…
BTO thrushes coloured in my local picture
I went out over the Christmas period to count thrushes for the BTO. The winter thrush survey hasn’t really caught my imagination, and I don’t hold great hopes for it producing fascinating results, but the BTO asked me to do it and so I did it gladly. It wasn’t onerous – a bit of countryside…