Defra – a shameful government department

One of the more reasonable aspects of the dreadful government response to our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting is that it regards the fact that there were a few more Hen Harriers this year (although many of the males disappeared of course) as encouraging. It is a little bit encouraging – but not very….

Henry visits the Countryside Alliance

The Countryside Alliance is full of real country people – like Sir Barnie White-Spunner (who ran for cover from the Lead Ammunition Group). They didn’t seem to be in when we visited last week with the red London buses , black taxi cabs, and commuters in a traffic jam on the Kennington Road.  Maybe they’d…

Lead and other poisons

In a couple of weeks time there will be a meeting in Quito of the Convention on Migratory Species. Sounds terribly dull doesn’t it? Well maybe it will be – but maybe it won’t. One of the areas to be discussed is poisoning. I wonder what position our government will take on such issues that…

Game Fair 3 – in photos

This must be about my 20th Game Fair, so I realised that when it said that it opened at 9am this was just nonsense – soon after 8am I had parked, got a lift on a trailer from the car park to the entrance, paid to enter and then started walking down the hill where…