Cheltenham Day 1 – the day of hope!

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…

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…