Walking round in circles?

The CLA describe their own report on access, wittily named The Right Way Forward, as hard hitting; I would describe it as dyspeptic. The report’s Executive Summary is not very descriptive but is quite florid in its language.  Almost everything, it seems, ‘defies logic’, needs an ‘injection of common sense’, is ‘unjust’ (to landowners), requires…

A busy week

Congratulations to the re-elected NFU President, Peter Kendall, whose speech at the NFU Conference was described as ‘shocking and regressive‘ by one of his own members on this site on Wednesday.  That farmer said he voted for the NFU in the Nature of Harming ‘award’ and writes rather harshly that  ‘Peter Kendall is a PR…

Badgers – slow Paice

On Wednesday, Defra announced their next slow pace towards a large amount of badger-bothering.  What they said wasn’t very much and wasn’t very clear. It seems that some time in the autumn, that’s autumn 2012, there will be a six-week trial of farmer-led badger killing in two ‘pilot’ areas of southwest England which are yet…

Jim Paice doesn’t make stewardship pledge to taxpayers

The Defra Agriculture Minister James Paice told his fellow farmers that he wanted them to be able to opt out of their current agri-environment agreements if CAP reform changed the rules.  This seems fair enough to me.  I can’t quickly find his words on the Defra website but the Farmers Weekly report them here.  Mr…

Talking naturally

You might like to listen to this podcast of a chat between Charlie Moores, Tristan Reid, Nick Moran and myself.  It’s about 50 minutes long and it was great fun to record last Tuesday. How the CLA saved the bittern (Ha Ha!), what you should remember when out birdwatching, where you should put your casual…