The first day of the Cheltenham Festival. The Day of Hope! You’ve lost no money at all and there is everything to play for with plenty of time to add to wins or recoup losses (or indeed to plunge further and further down a slippery losing hill to financial oblivion – but this is the…
Tag: Cheltenham
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…
That was the week that was
I had a great time at Cheltenham and you had a great time with the excellent guest blogs here. Thank you to Matt Williams, Andrew Lucas, Sue Walker and Leo Fisher for four stimulating blogs. And thank you all for your comments on the blogs. I will come back to some of these subjects myself…
Well done RSPB, and the week ahead
Well done RSPB! In my Birdwatch column, the political birder, for March I wrote about the e-petition started by Chrissie Harper which asks for the law in England to be brought into line with those in Scotland in respect of vicarious liability for wildlife offences. Vicarious liability is an unfamiliar phrase for those of us…
Cheltenham preview
This blog is nothing to do with nature – it’s to do with the Cheltenham Festival which takes place in the Cotswolds next Tuesday-Friday. And that’s where I will be next week – but, never fear, the blog will go on. No-one could seriously claim that which large brown horse, with a small man perched…
It might be spring
My last two visits to Stanwick Lakes have been very spring-like, even if they were both in late February. Reed buntings were singing, if you can call that a song, everywhere, and skylarks, song thrushes and dunnocks were belting out their songs too. I heard Cetti’s warblers for the first time in quite a while….
The NFU elects…?
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Today the NFU Council will elect its new President, Vice President and Deputy President – except there is a fair chance that all three will be re-elected. The NFU has a very progressive voting system – in some ways. If you are the incumbent then you need to get an increasing proportion of the votes…
It’s mad!
Yesterday’s blog suggested a different way of paying by results for success in agri-environment schemes – regional top-ups for participating farmers if the regional farmland bird index rises. It’s a tricky thing to administer, perhaps, but it is essentially a good idea (in my humble opinion). This month’s copy of The Field – with an…
Pieces and bits
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Yesterday was a lovely day to pass through the Cotswolds on the way to and from Cheltenham racecourse – four short-eared owls, raven and red kite. No winners, but Big Buck’s ran up his 15th successive win. I did the Big Garden Birdwatch – I’ll blog about it next week – have you, yet? I…
Burgundy? Glass half empty
It has been a cold weekend, although mine has been warmed by a rather lucky profit at Cheltenham racecourse (my winning bet came as a result of the leader falling at the last hurdle – but there is just as little point in apologising for fortuitous wins as railing against ‘unlucky’ losses) and by the…