Amanda Anderson has handled her own PR company and the public relations of the Moorland Association for several years – now she is the Director of the Moorland Association. But she seems to have rather lost her temper in drafting this letter to the Durham Times. Maybe her boss, Moorland Association Chair Robert Benson lost…
Category: SHOOTERS
GWCT at half-cock, shooting from the hip and mistaking its target
We all make mistakes but it would normally be expected that, when made, a more gracious acknowledgement of them might follow than that of the GWCT here. It is completely untrue to suggest that an earlier draft of the letter went as follows: Dear Sir William Langley’s comment piece on the RSPB had us rolling…
This time it’s the Storygraph
I spent yesterday at the NERF conference in Derbyshire but a couple of people talked to me about the latest anti-RSPB article. This weekend it was the Sunday Telegraph’s turn (and I got a mention too). It’s a very mixed-up piece. I’m not sure that the criticism of the relatively new, though not that new!,…
More vegetables please and less Beefy
I’m vegetarian four days a week and so I get a bit annoyed if I have beefy rammed down my throat all the time. It’s a bit unclear what the beef is that Ian Botham has with the RSPB except for the fact that they exist. He thinks they should tell the world that they…
I was going to ignore this but…
Read this, then this, then forget about it. ********************************************************************************************************************** But hang on a minute. maybe we shouldn’t just ignore this attack on the RSPB by the shooting community – for that appears to be what it is. And it is timed to appear just before the RSPB AGM. Sir Ian Botham owns a shoot and…
New disease spreading through Red Grouse population
Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust scientists have published a paper which says that ‘Respiratory cryptosporidiosis is a new and rapidly spreading disease in red grouse.’. This is a disease normally found in captive birds but the first case in the ‘wild’ was found in the North Pennines in 2010. Worryingly, this paper also states that…
Simon Barnes
The removal of Simon Barnes from The Times disappointed many readers of this blog. I am still getting emails about it from people in response to these two blogs – here and here. I had lunch with Simon a few weeks ago and I’m looking forward to reading his new book, Ten Million Aliens, which…
Gamekeepers
Yesterday evening’s blog did not overflow with complimentary remarks about gamekeepers – it could have done, but it didn’t. An occupation which evokes such strong and negative responses has an image problem – and that is true however fair or unfair are the comments. We don’t hear that much from gamekeepers in the debates over…
And it’s not even worth a bean to the economy
The grouse shooting industry is having a torrid time of it – and I can assure them that there is more to come. Grouse shooting is a ‘sport’ or an ‘industry’. Over the years it has tried to justify itself on the grounds that it either doesn’t do any harm or it does do some…
And so The Times says farewell to Simon Barnes
Today sees the last of Simon Barnes’s pieces in The Times – a subject about which readers of this blog have expressed their opinions forcefully (see here and here). Simon writes two wildlife pieces today (and there is some sport going on in Glasgow apparently) – one about the wonders of Sea Eagles on Mull…