Standing up for Nature
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…
I was pleased to see that in Martin Harper’s blog yesterday (which is always worth reading after you’ve read this one) that Martin encouraged RSPB members to sign up to the epetition on vicarious liability. I expect that the RSPB will give this a bigger push in the New Year and I will let you…
December isn’t a great month for butterflies (but then November wasn’t a great month for nature as a whole), although, of course, they are all (apart from the painted ladies and red admirals) still out there as eggs or pupae or some other clever way of getting through the winter if you really want to…
On one of the last day’s of my trip to the USA I watched a killdeer calling in alarm as a man, unwittingly I think, disturbed the bird from its chicks. The bird’s cries cut through the mist of the June Gloom on the California coast – I won’t forget the sound of them as…
November was a dismal month for nature in our country – just dismal. This week the Westminster government issued figures showing that farmland birds were at an all time low but didn’t bother to comment on what they might do about it. The Chancellor had a swipe at the environment and announced a review of…
The nastiness of George Osborne came out when he mentioned ‘endless social and environmental goals‘ in his Autumn Statement yesterday. George is keener on economic goals – although not so good at reaching them, so perhaps we can see why he doesn’t want any other goals to miss. As predicted in this blog yesterday (just…
George Osborne doesn’t get the environment and he doesn’t seem to like it. These are the most relevant parts of the Coalition Government’s (yes, the LibDems are in there too) thoughts on the Habitats Directive (which was largely written by that ultra-leftie, Stanley Johnson (yes, Boris’s sire)). This passage comes from that part of the…
It’s more than 18 months since the current ministers walked confidently into Defra’s headquarters at Nobel House after the May 2010 General Election (with one change of Lord in the interim). I’m glad that we have not seen too much chopping and changing of ministers under the Cameron (Clegg) coalition government, as that rarely leads…
Francis Maude is widely regarded as the hard man of the Cabinet Office – if you look at the photographs of Cabinet Office Ministers he can’t even manage a proper smile, more of a ‘I’m coming to get your quangos‘ leer. Having said that, Oliver Letwin, who is a cultured gent and so tends to…
George Osborne felt confident enough to say it as he saw it at the Tory party conference yesterday. “Yes, climate change is a man made disaster. Yes, we need international agreement to stop it. Yes, we must have investment in greener energy. And that’s why I gave the go ahead to the world’s first Green…