I couldn’t help smile at Jeremy Paxman’s opinion of Therese Coffey in this article from last year. But it was Paxman’s remark that Defra was… … a place of political purgatory, where ambitious politicians suffer torments in hope of preferment somewhere else https://www.ft.com/content/17bedfec-da71-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482 …that really caught my eye. We’ve had some shocking ministers in Defra…
Tag: Liz Truss
Gove does good
In an article in today’s Guardian, Michael Gove writes ‘While there is still uncertainty in the science, it is increasingly pointing in one direction. Not to act would be to risk continuing down a course which could have extensive and permanent effects on bee populations. That is not a risk I am prepared to take,…
Dr Coffey’s reading list (9)
Comments Off on Dr Coffey’s reading list (9)
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister at Defra. When Gavin Gamble’s e-petition in favour of banning driven grouse shooting passes 10,000 signatures (and it stands at over 9600) then Dr Coffey will need to sign off a government response. In order that she does not make Defra look even more foolish than they do…
Reply on lead ammunition from Therese Coffey
I wrote to my MP on the subject of lead ammunition back in August. I’m grateful to my MP, Tom Pursglove, for forwarding my letter to Defra and now for sending me the following reply from the Parliamentary Under Secretary, Therese Coffey, as follows; My response to Mr Pursglove is already on its way…
Gove the environmentalist?
The speech by Michael Gove today is just fantastic – but is it fantastical? I don’t really care whether he believes what he says or not, I just care whether he implements his quite detailed words of today during his time as Secretary of State for the Environment. Since 2010 we have had one pretty…
A Gove for good?
Michael Gove is a consummate politician and he’s no fool either. There are also rumours that he is quite keen on wildlife and the countryside (though he has managed to keep this fairly well-hidden to date). The new and dynamic Secretary of State for the Environment is about to make a speech at WWF’s HQ…
Seriously rattled – and rightly
In a long rant the Countryside Alliance shows just how rattled it is by the challenges to driven grouse shooting. It’s all the usual stuff, in fact it’s quite a useful refresher course in the Alliance’s lack of solid arguments on the subject. But it’s interesting to think about why the grouse shooting folk have…
Conservative party manifesto
The 2010 Conservative Party manifesto was quite good on the environment but the 2015 version was pretty awful. How does this one shape up? Here are my thoughts on likes and gripes (restricted to the environmental issues): Good things: it’s a nice blue colour ‘The United Kingdom will lead the world in environmental protection. As…
Manifesto week
By the end of this week it will be manifest how poor is the grasp of environmental issues by our leading political parties. I am not expecting that any of them will reach the standards of the Green Party’s environmental manifesto. The Liberal Democrats: usually have some good things on the environment in their manifesto…
If only…
David Mitchell, or David Mitchell Coren as we might call him, wrote an excellent column on telling the truth yesterday. One of his points, with which I agree, is that the good guys need to be squeaky-clean in this so-called post-truth age. We will only live in a post-truth age if we allow truth to…