There is dancing in the streets of El Rocio this morning as news spreads of the reprimand given to the UK government (esp Defra) by the EU over the poor job done by the UK to protect blanket bogs from burning. Blanket bogs don’t prosper under a scorched earth strategy and all this crap about…
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
A general election for the environment?
Have you spotted that there is going to be a UK general election this June? I bet you have. This will allow all the political parties to set out their environmental policies so that we can choose between them – in theory. Don’t hold your breath! I will be rather surprised if Labour has any…
My binoculars are not happy
It’s my binoculars’ birthday today – they are 41 years old. And they aren’t happy. It isn’t just that they are feeling their age, it’s the fact that just over 50% of my fellow Brits and TM the PM have fixed it that it is on my binoculars’ birthday that ‘we’ trigger Article 50 for…
A piece I wrote for The New European
This week’s New European includes this article by me on the potential consequences of Brexit for wildlife.
Defra: friendless, clueless and hopeless
The Defra 25-year Nature Strategy is delayed – that’s not a great surprise, Defra has more or less ground to a halt on nature. The delay will be due to several factors: there is no discernable interest in wildlife conservation from any Defra minister – nor any sign of aptitude, experience or knowledge of the…
A few things
A few updates and things that caught my eye or my ear: That excellent blog, Raptor Persecution UK, is 7 today – Happy Birthday! the dawn chorus is getting going – Song Thrushes dominate the sound when I pick up the milk bottles from my doorstep in the morning new US Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke,…
Reply from Defra
I wrote to my MP asking him to pass on my approval of what George Eustice, the agriculture minister, said about funding for grouse moors in his remarks at the Oxford Farming Conference. Here is the reply. It doesn’t say that much, but MPs, ministers, in fact all of us, like being told that we…
Brexit means?
Tomorrow our Prime Minister will set out her thoughts on what Brexit means – presumably beyond ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Are you fed up with Brexit already? Well, there are years and years to go so you’d better get used to it. She is expected to say we are heading for a ‘hard Brexit’ (according to…
If only…
David Mitchell, or David Mitchell Coren as we might call him, wrote an excellent column on telling the truth yesterday. One of his points, with which I agree, is that the good guys need to be squeaky-clean in this so-called post-truth age. We will only live in a post-truth age if we allow truth to…
Brexit, CAP and grouse moors 2
The disappearance of income support for grouse moors in a post-Brexit world is apparently on the cards – and is a sound policy route to follow as a small aspect of making our money work better for taxpayers, consumers and farmers alike. But the other side of the coin is that more money should be…