Category: Uncategorized

We’ll miss him when he is gone won’t we? I am grateful to Martin Harper’s blog (always worth reading) for pointing me in the direction of Peter Kendall’s last speech as NFU President at an Oxford Farming Conference. He couldn’t resist having a badly-judged dig at the RSPB, which should bring home the message to…

In the streets around where I live, before Christmas, there were teams of workmen renovating the ‘council’ houses.  Sometimes these groups had eastern European accents, sometimes they were from the foreign land of Wales, and sometimes the Northamptonshire accent was playing across the pot-holed streets of my neighbourhood. There was quite a lot going on…

This news item is interesting – a potential community buy-out at Leadhills brought to us by Raptor Persecution Scotland. I’d chip in £50 to the community, as would many other birders I guess. John Armitage’s e-petition has taken a bit of a leap forward in the last few days and is now at 7596 signatures. …

It’s frustrating being a member of the Labour Party.  I share Labour’s values but they just don’t seem to be applied to rural issues, and, as you have probably noticed, I live in a rural area and care about the countryside and its wildlife. Labour is, for my liking, far too dominated by urban intellectuals …

My blogs about Owen Paterson’s remarks on off-setting (here, here and here) and Ralph Underhill’s cartoon on the subject (here) seemed to have struck a chord.  All the blogs have received excellent comments (I like David Hodd’s comment on the last blog – wish I’d thought of that!). If you would like to send a…

I’m back! At least I think I am! My broadband has been off for days (but luckily I could parasitise friends’ wifi at times) but is now on again (or did I speak too soon?). Yesterday evening I tried to persuade the Nottingham RSPB Local Group to support bird conservationists in the rival city of…

…hasn’t got internet at the moment.

…offset Owen Paterson? Not sure about offsetting him, but if he were to set off into the far distance he would not be missed.

In a surprise move the government announced a series of offsetting policies. Michael Gove moved to close down Oxford, Cambridge and Durham Universities but offset these losses by opening a large number of nurseries for children. Education charities said ‘It could work, you know’. Sports Minister, Helen Grant, announced that no-one over the age of…