UEA desecration update

Following Monday’s guest blog by Prof Tim O’Riordan there has been a Guardian Country Diary piece by the marvellous Mark Cocker and the Norfolk Wildlife Trust has also stirred itself to voice concerns. Add your name to a petition here.

Good news – we’re heading for a debate

I had an email this afternoon confirming that the House of Commons Petitions Committee has agreed to schedule a debate on our e-petition! The date is not yet confirmed and we’ll have to wait a while for that, but the important thing is that there will be a debate in the Westminster parliament on the…

Grouse moors and flooding by Chris Packham

How does shooting grouse for fun connect with the misery of having your home or business flooded? It’s no coincidence that the constituency that has provided the most signatures for our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting is the Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker MP, 762 signatures).  Calder Valley has been flooded several times in recent…

How far have we come together?

I thought hard about whether or not to launch a third e-petition on the subject of banning driven grouse shooting – and then I did. The current e-petition closes at midnight in two weeks time – and started five and a half months ago. I have no idea how many times I have refreshed the…

August – a top month

Signatures on our e-petition Can you remember how many signatures our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting had, as we entered August? 68,000. And we left August with 118,000. That’s 50,000 signatures in a month. Did I mention that we had momentum? Wasn’t that phenomenal? Hen Harrier Days, the Inglorious 12th, and the Bird Fair…

Conservatives and Firm Briefing 12

The Conservative Party is acting, in parts, as if it is a branch of the Countryside Alliance or BASC on the issue of grouse shooting – sometimes even using their literature as Conservative policy (or referring to the not-so-talented Viscount Ridley‘s article as a basis for policy). However, I should tell you that there are…

SNP need to do their sums – Firm Briefing 11

The dire nature of the replies of SNP MPs to their constituents was highlighted in an earlier blog. There are signs that the SNP are beginning to get their head around this issue and adjust their position. Several SNP MPs have been told in no uncertain terms, some face-to-face, that they need to smarten up…

Update on signatures

The rate of acquisition of new signatures has dropped off quite a lot – understandably. Note progress in Ribble Valley – up from #17 to #12 in just a week! Here is how the constituencies with over 300 signatures stand: Calder Valley 758 High Peak  545 Ross, Skye and Lochaber  499 Bristol West  493 Inverness,…