BBC makes another mistake over More or Less nonsense

I wrote a blog about a gross factual error (of many orders of magnitude) which was perpetuated by the BBCR4 programme, More or Less, which embarrassingly is a programme about people and organisations using numbers correctly – click here. I complained to the BBC – as I said I would in the blog. On Friday,…

Farming Today about 10 years out of date

I enjoyed the piece on Farming Today this morning where a farm was monitored for 10 years and by sensible application of agri-environment schemes its farmland birds increased and remained as profitable as farms around it. That’s obviously good news. And it appears to be a good replicate of the findings at the RSPB’s Hope…

BBC Radio 4 Today dips into the environment

I listen to the Today programme a lot – I’m awake at those hours and I’m interested in politics and current affairs. I sometimes wince at the tone and content of their environmental coverage. If this programme had the same standards of challenge and enquiry on environmental matters as it does on sometimes trvial events…

Farming Today on lead

Farming Today had a chat about lead ammunition this morning (7 minutes into the programme). Readers of this blog won’t have learned anything much (the research mentioned was covered here on 26 February, and Tuesday’s government announcement was covered on Tuesday) but in less than a month’s time this blog won’t be bringing you the…

Countryfile

I normally give Countryfile a swerve, until someone tells me there was something horrific on it, or the horrific thing is me, but last Sunday I had to watch it as it featured my adopted neck of the woods – the Nene Valley in Northants. It was quite good (as was the bit on fisheries,…

Farming Today, today

Three weeks ago Miles King had a Guest Blog here to shine a light on the outrageous planting of trees on a peat bog at Berrier in Cumbria and today Farming Today had a good piece (first 6mins of programme) on that case and the wider issue that it (and Miles) raised, about how careful…

Farming Today, today (2)

I heard two good things on Farming Today, today – this is the second. After hearing Luke Pollard talking fish, I heard another good speaker a bit later in Farming Today, Rosie Woodroffe talking Badgers. Now I do know Rosie a bit, not very well but a bit, and I have a lot of time…

Farming Today, today (1)

I heard two good things on Farming Today, today – this is the first. When I turned on I’d just missed the beginning of the programme and there was some bloke talking about marine fisheries. I didn’t recognise him but he seemed pretty fired up, spoke very well and as he talked I thought ‘I…

Farming today interview

Depending on when you read this, I may be just about to be on Radio 4 Farming Today talking about the Wild Justice legal challenge of gamebird releases (if before 0545-0555) or you were sleeping happily through it. I’ll put the link in here later. Here is the link (last 5 minutes of programme). I…

More or less amazing

The BBC Radio 4 programme (20 minutes in), More or Less, was asked by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about Pheasant numbers in the UK. Pat Thompson of the RSPB gave the figure, the most up-to-date figure available, of 47 million captive-bred Pheasants released into the countryside each year (but maybe not this year). And it is because…