Wildlife doesn’t have a vote. If the interests of wildlife are to be served, then those interests need to be voiced by us and by our representatives in the various parliaments around the UK. Here is a list (alphabetical order) of six Westminster MPs who have made an impact on wildlife during 2013. Who would…
Tag: hen harrier
CAP consultation – here’s one I prepared earlier (and have updated slightly)
In each part of the UK, the governments are consulting on how the tweaked Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should be implemented. I have drafted my response to the Defra consultation and here it is for people to comment on. If you like it you can simply copy and paste it into the consultation and send…
Sunday Book Review – The Crossley ID Guide by Richard Crossley and Dominic Couzens
This review is part of a ‘blog tour‘ where yesterday, this book, The Crossley ID Guide, was reviewed by 10,000 Birds. This is a useful guide to bird identification aimed at beginners and intermediate birders. I guess I would put myself at the high end of intermediate as I know all the common birds…
Wildlife Crime – Westminster Hall debate
Westminster Hall debates are important ways by which Parliament can discuss matters of importance outside the House of Commons chamber. Earlier this month there was a Westminster Hall debate on Wildlife Crime sought by the members of the Environmental Audit Committee to give the Government a nudge after the EAC published their excellent report on…
RBBP – a treat
The report of the Rare Breeding Birds Panel is a treat, a delight, a pleasure. That’s partly because the Panel does a very good job in compiling the records and writing them up, and partly because British Birds does a good job in publishing them but largely because birds are brilliant! In each of these…
Naff new name – great new(-ish) magazine
I’ve been told to expect good things from the first issue of Nature’s Home – the new name for the RSPB magazine. Mine arrived yesterday and I’ve enjoyed reading quite a lot of it already – more than I have for quite a few issues of the magazine. I don’t like the name Nature’s Home,…
RSPB AGM
The 122nd RSPB AGM was held in London on Saturday morning. I think I have attended about 25 of them. An AGM sounds dull, and it obviously isn’t a bundle of laughs, but it is more interesting than most AGMs. Now I don’t have to answer any of them, I like the difficult questions from…
Toffs
A couple of days ago I suggested that the recent Defra minister Richard Benyon might be called a ‘toff’. This was greeted by a stream of comments angry on the toffish ex-Minister’s behalf. Let’s just get the meaning of this four-letter word out of the way first. Toff – a member of the upper classes,…
Shuffling two packs
The Government changes In Defra, out go Richard Benyon and David Heath and in come George Eustice (Con, Camborne and Redruth) and Dan Rogerson (LibDem, North Cornwall). I always feel sorry for those who are required to move on because their Prime Minister needs to adjust the left/right balance, the male/female balance, the north/south balance…
Badgers, Syria and democracy
I read an interesting blog last week by Matthew Taylor about whether ‘doing something’ is seen as better or worse than ‘not doing anything’. I am emotionally a ‘let’s do something’ type of person. If I see a mess I’d rather be doing something about it than not doing something – sometimes, even if I’m…