The latest in a series of fumbling performances by the biodiversity minister. Would Therese Coffey ever have got her job if there had been an interview which explored the candidate’s knowledge and suitability for the role? It’s a relief that as a Parliamentary Under Secretary we only pay her £96,375 for such consistently sparkling performances….
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
Brexit
I’m sure you share my gratitude to our politicians that they have handled this difficult issue so well and that the environmental issues wrapped up in our future have been given such a high profile over the last almost three years. It makes me very proud of the UK.
Chris Davies MP pleads guilty
I keep a kindly eye on those MPs who spoke in the ‘debate’ over banning driven grouse shooting in October 2016. One, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire described me thus; ‘Only the other week I had the privilege of attending the evidence session on grouse shooting. Several right hon. and hon. Members have already…
Michael Gove for the few not the many…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NSoames/status/1111214357386575872 Michael Gove is currently the favourite in the Betfair odds to be next Tory Leader (ahead of BoJo in 2nd place). This is generally regarded as the worst place to be in the betting for Tory Leader this early in the running – front-runners rarely last the course. But he’d better look more…
Fully funded inside 10 days!
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Wild Justice’s legal challenge to the General Licences is fully funded thanks to over 1100 of you. Thank you very much! We transferred £4,000 from the Wild Justice bank account, of donations that had arrived by that route, to the crowdfunding site, earlier today and closed the crowdfunder. We now have all the money we…
Farmers Weekly corrects itself – after a nudge
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Farmers weekly, online, published a slightly irritating article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge over the General Licences last week. We sent them the following letter early today, and had a nice chat with them, and they’ve changed the article in response to our letter. Here’s the letter; Your article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge of…
The first environmental statement from the Independent Group?
A quote from Angela Smith MP, now Independent Group MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who is also the Westminster Parliament Species Champion for the Hen Harrier, following last week’s devastating critique of driven grouse shooting in a new scientific paper; Grouse shooting is facing serious scrutiny at the moment, especially in relation to the persecution…
Only farming ministers have to have some knowledge of their subject
I’m catching up on news items here as I’ve been away from my home computer and driving around the UK, or so it seems, for weeks. Robert Goodwill is the new Minister of State in Defra with responsibility for farming – he is a farmer (although his main crop seems to be dead people). Conservative…
168 hours ago…
A week ago we launched our crowdfunder on the crowdjustice page to fund a judicial review of Natural England’s decision to issue the general Licences GL04-06. Now we have raised over £30,700 of the £36,000 we need to cover our lawyers’ (highly discounted) fees, court costs and the possibility that we may lose the case…
The General Licences
Have you ever read the General Licences? Help yourself, here they are: GL04, GL05 and GL06. So the reasons why you might be able to kill birds under these licences are quite sensible. They include serious damage to crops and livestock. They include the prevention of disease. And they include the conservation of fauna and…