My favourite local farmer, Duncan Farrington, has been developing new delicious products with his prize-winning cold-pressed rapeseed oil. This Chilli and Cumin dressing is delicious – and I know it comes from a local farm with high environmental standards too. Duncan tells me that he didn’t see a Turtle Dove on his farm this year…
Category: Uncategorized
A Bluffer’s Guide to Agriculture Policy (3)
Forget how we got to this place, the consensus is that it’s not the best place possible and so Brexit gives the UK a better opportunity to come up with a better way of spending taxpayers’ money on land management. Michael Gove has latched on to the mantra of ‘Public money for public goods’ as…
Loads of money!
I see that I started being a Blackwell’s affiliate in March 2017 – about 18 months ago. If you buy books from Blackwell’s using the links in my posts (mostly in book reviews) then I’ll get a small cut of what you spend. That’ll obviously be nice for me and it may allow you to…
#PeoplesManifestoforWildlife – what they say
the Countryside Alliance don’t like it – although there is no indication of what they think is wrong with the document except that Chris Packham had a lot to do with it! Both Tim Bonner and Liam Stokes took to Twitter to be snide about Chris (and I guess the rest of the contributors, but…
Listen #ThePeoplesManifestoforWildlife
You can listen to several of the authors of chapters in The People’s Manifesto for Wildlife on the LUSH Soapbox in a podcast by Charlie Moores. The voices are : Chris Packham Maya-Rose Craig Carol Day Amy-Jane Beer Bella Lack Dominic Dyer Miles King Dave Goulson Ruth Peacey myself
Unpublished, but talked about, grouse studies
Last year I wrote about the grouse shooting industry’s habit of speaking in public about what are allegedly the results of studies that suit their case but where the findings are not in the public domain. In 2016 we had Ian Botham and Matt Ridley referring to a report which has still not been published…
A Bluffer’s Guide to Agriculture Policy (1)
I wonder what the new Agriculture Bill will deliver for us (and I’ll come back to who ‘us’ is later). When (if) we leave the EU then we will also leave the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) which has been a much-criticised part of our lives for more than four decades. If we are to say…
Some news items
sad news from Malta – the great Joe Sultana passed away on Tuesday, aged 78. Joe was a passionate campaigner and advocate for birds on Malta and in the Mediterranean in general. He led BirdLife Malta for many years and his son, Mark, is now BirdLife Malta’s CEO. Campaigning against bird killing (much of it…
Then and now in Private Eye
This is from the 1990s (a reader believes)… And this is from the latest issue…
Defra doesn’t have a clue
Defra doesn’t have a clue about who the Secretary of State has met recently. That’s the most charitable interpretation of their behaviour. In March this year (Defra have the date wrong in their response) I asked Defra the following questions: What meetings has Michael Gove had with Ian Coghill (GWCT) and/or The Ninth Marquess of…