The price of food

We come back to the price of food every now and again in this blog.  It’s not a subject I know that much about but I’m happy to go along with the general consensus that we have cheap food and that food has become cheaper over the last 40 years or so. I read in…

Conservatives in Defra – not doing too well really

I can’t find the Conservative manifesto from the 2010 General Election online but I have my copy to hand.  Here are some quotes from pages 95-97 with my assessment of how Defra has performed in nearly three years of being in ‘power’. ‘The most pressing animal health problem in the UK today is bovine tuberculosis…

Horse meat, Romania, vultures, Oscar Whisky, Owen Paterson and your taxes – all connected.

The connectedness of the world intrigues me.  I like making connections between facts, people, events, ideas. I’m getting a bit tired of hearing about the ‘horse meat crisis’ (eg here, here, here, here, here) only because it certainly isn’t a crisis when safe delicious horse meat is incorporated alongside safe delicious cow meat in our…

Last week’s news

It’s quite difficult to get past the headlines to understand the details of the EU budget agreement.  Yes the budget has been capped thanks to some good negotiation by plucky David Cameron but what does that mean – particularly for the environment? I bought the FT, Independent and Guardian on Saturday and found them no…

Miscellany

More birding bits and pieces: After my blog of last week I can now add peregrine to my M1 list (hunting over a field near Luton) and another ‘up-and-about-early’ red kite from the M1 somewhere in Hertfordshire (I think!). Birkbeck: I enjoyed giving a public lecture at Birkbeck on Friday evening – lots of good…