They do things differently in Scotland – quite often better (but you’d never know from the rubbish that the SNP MPs are sending their constituents). Scotland has vicarious liability – denied to the English by a grouse-moor-owning Defra minister. Scotland is carrying out a review of losses of satellite-tagged raptors to investigate how many of…
Tag: grouse shooting
More wearisome science
Remember according to the not-so-talented Viscount Ridley ‘Hen harriers, which are ground-nesting birds vulnerable to foxes, are thriving in Scotland … in places where gamekeepers control fox numbers.‘ and grouse-shooter Charles Moore, ‘…most such accusations about the killing of hen harriers are false’ and ‘hen harriers do better on kept moors than on unkept ones…‘. Well,…
World Birding TV launches
A new international internet birding magazine, World Birding TV, has just launched. Guess what? Episode 1 includes coverage of our campaign to ban driven grouse shooting and we get the chance to see and hear Amanda Anderson looking unconvinced and sounding unconvincing. Henry is filmed at the Bird Fair and a gamekeeper finds evidence of…
Spectator blurred vision (2)
The not-so-talented Viscount Ridley, writing in the Spectator, reproduced the tall tale of breeding wader numbers that was also used by Ian Botham in his stumbling discussion with Chris Packham on the Today programme. We also know that the BTO quickly distanced itself from any approval of these quite fantastic claimed numbers of breeding waders….
Spectator has blurred vision (1)
You may remember (or you may not, which is why I am reminding you) that I contrasted the view of Hen Harrier biology of Charles Moore, Spectator columnist and grouse shooter, with that of published science by the RSPB (Compare and contrast, 23 August)(see the data above and Mr Moore’s comment at foot of…
The SNP standard response – Firm Briefing 9
Before tackling the tricky issue of SNP MPs in the Westminster parliament, let me just say that support for our e-petition has been very strong in Scotland: it has received c12,000 signatures from Scotland out of a UK total so far of 118,000 – that’s c10% of all signature compared with Scotland representing c8.4% of…
The standard Labour Party response – Firm Briefing 5
This appears to be the letter which the Labour Party is using to reply to your emails about a debate on driven grouse shooting. The red words have appeared in one MP’s response whereas rather more of them miss out that bit! However, for those of us who signed the e-petition to ban driven grouse…
The PM didn’t say this – but she should
We will see. The Conservative Party positioning on the hobby of driven grouse shooting is currently pretty much unreservedly in favour of it and apologists for it. When Defra, under the previous Prime Minister of course, responded to our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting after it passed 10,000 signatures, the then minister at Defra,…
Writing back to your Conservative MP – Firm Briefing 4
Thank you to everyone who has written to their MPs in the last week – there are well over 275 of you so far and you have contacted almost 200 MPs. Fantastic effort. Thank you! If you want to join the gang – here’s how. To make the most of your contact with your MP…
The BBC and driven grouse shooting
The week before last there was copious coverage of driven grouse shooting before, on and after the inglorious 12th in the media – quite a lot of that was on BBC channels. This post is about how the BBC handled it and whether or not they were fair. I’d give the BBC only 5 out…