I do like Steve Bell’s Guardian cartoons – they usually make me laugh although I know they won’t be too everyone’s taste. Was this one stimulated by the Sunday Express headline a few weeks ago which stated that ‘Queen saves countryside’? Would cormorant now be added to the list?…
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Euro 2012 – the political and environmental lessons so far
Sixteen countries started the Euro 2012 journey and now their number has been reduced to eight. Three of these 16 countries were non-EU countries and all have exited the competition. Eight of the original countries use the Euro as their currency (France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) whereas eight do not (Croatia,…
Going cuckoo – or gone cuckoo?
We are within days of the summer solstice and I haven’t had my spring yet! There’s plenty of time for there to be a baking hot summer but I am not necessarily expecting it. And it’s turning out to be a funny old spring/summer. For a start, England have played two games of football and…
Road to Rio+20 and road to Euro 2012
Over the last few weeks, and into next week, I have been a guest blogger on the RSPB website; blogging about the Rio+20 conference from a variety of perspectives. And yesterday, the RSPB got a much more eminent guest blogger to chip in – Deputy PM Nick Clegg who is going to the Rio conference. …
Five short jobs, since it’s quite likely to be raining
1. Support Plantlife’s campaign to make verge-cutting ecologically literate. Have a look at these photographs from Nigel and Lois Harbron of a small patch of what is essentially a flower meadow which poses no threat to road safety and is bureaucratically scalped every year. 2. Spend two minutes to get a bank to give $5…
Better than an octopus? We’ll see…
With Euro 2012 now under way our minds will turn to football – won’t they? 13 of the 16 teams are members of the EU and therefore have designated sites as Special Protection Areas under the Birds Directive and Special Areas of Conservation under the Habitats Directive. After the last World Cup where a German…
This cut is a deep one
Today Plantlife launch a campaign to stop councils destroying the wild flowers of roadside verges through inappropriate cutting. The wild plant charity says that they have been inundated by complaints from the public about verges being cut this year just as the flowers appear – giving them no chance to set seed. Plantlife Chief Executive,…
Bring in the bunting…
In amidst all that buzzard-bothering nonsense of the last couple of weeks an important restatement of the absolutely obvious was made: farmland birds have declined steeply and there is no obvious redemption in sight. The most recent science on the subject was a report produced from national bird monitoring schemes across Europe, including the UK,…
Seeing the wood for the clouds
It hasn’t been a great spring, I feel a bit grumpy about the awful weather. It means that I haven’t seen as many butterflies as I would have liked so I’ll be looking to catch up whenever the heat wave strikes (as surely it will). At the weekend I went out looking for Wood White…
Bonfires and beacons
Despite the soggy weather, beacons have been lit across the UK to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Spare a thought for the inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha and their Jubilee beacon. When the most remote Jubilee beacon in the world was lit, its flames were fuelled by the bodies of invasive species of plants. Work to…