Truss, Eustice and de Mauley are back. Rory Stewart is regarded as a bit of a waste in Defra by the Spectator! Labour is expected to keep the Defra shadow ministerial team intact.
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
Lost leaders
The people have made their choice and we all have to live with it. The environment faces a tough time over the next five years and that means that those who care about it, not enough of us, need to raise our voices and do even more to fight for nature. I went to bed,…
Time to decide – a voter’s guide
It’s a fascinating general election which has been preceded by a tedious and shallow election campaign. None of the political parties, certainly not the ‘Big Two’, come out of the campaign with much credit. It’s been a ‘heads down’ rather than an ‘eyes up’ campaign, with little analysis, little laying out of political philosophy and…
Plaid Cymru manifesto
Plaid Cymru seems to be the party of Welsh farmers rather than the party of Wales – or Welsh taxpayers. It favours a continuation of the CAP that keeps 80% of Welsh farmers in business with direct payments. That’s pretty blatant. Plaid supports a regressive form of income support funded by the rest of Wales…
SNP election manifesto
I think I understand why the SNP manifesto ignores the environment almost completely – it’s because wildlife, forestry, agriculture, planning, fisheries etc are all devolved matters. The Scottish parliament already has a very high level of power over these things. However, in a manifesto which says that the SNP ‘will use our influence at Westminster…
UKIP election manifesto
UKIP believes that our ‘history is the envy of the world’ (a rather dubious statement in itself) and maybe that’s why the election manifesto doesn’t point to a very clear future, at least as far as the environment is concerned. The first place, that I noticed, that ‘environment’ crops up is in the section on…
High Peak – a marginal which should have Hen Harriers
High Peak is a marginal which has been the seat of Conservative Andrew Bingham (see here for some information about his voting record) since he won it from Labour in 2010. Mr Bingham asked a question about the publication of the Hen Harrier non-joint non-plan back in November 2014: To ask the Secretary of State…
Green Party manifesto – the call for a peaceful revolution
I guess we’d expect the Greens to know something about green issues so it is reassuring that they do. After the Conservatives treated the countryside as the place that their mates own where they go to kill things at the weekend, and Labour treated it as the place which the Tories own where there are…
Conservative manifesto – they forgot the countryside too
I’m really rather surprised. Five years ago the Conservative manifesto was streets ahead of the others in its treatment of rural, wildlife and some environmental issues. That doesn’t mean I agreed with it, but one could see that someone, somewhere, had given it some thought. I was expecting the same this time around, and I…
Labour’s nature deficit
Whenever I am feeling a bit out of sorts with the Labour party I read the words on the back of my membership card which says ‘by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone’. I believe that stuff. The trouble is, when it comes to environmental issues, I am…