Wuthering Moors 32

Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Defra were supposed to reply today to my complaint over their late and uncommunicative response to an FoI request.  I had an email from them on Friday saying that they have now decided…

Should we be grateful?

Sometimes governments say they are going to do 20 daft things (they never put it quite like that) and then only do 10 daft things and they expect us all to be grateful.  There ought to be a word for it  – a Greek word – maybe there is – for a victory which you…

Conservatives in Defra – not doing too well really

I can’t find the Conservative manifesto from the 2010 General Election online but I have my copy to hand.  Here are some quotes from pages 95-97 with my assessment of how Defra has performed in nearly three years of being in ‘power’. ‘The most pressing animal health problem in the UK today is bovine tuberculosis…

Our forests

The government published its response to the report of the report of the Independent Panel on Forestry last week. You will remember that 38 Degrees launched a campaign to Save our Forests and more than half a million people signed the petition worded as follows: The government is planning a massive sell off of our…

Guest Blog – ‘Muzzled Watchdog’ to ‘Toothless Terrier’? by Helen Kirk

Helen Kirk has been described as ‘an indefatigable and tenacious environmental campaigner and amateur naturalist’.  For more than 30 years she has championed and helped safeguard the Humberhead peatlands, and the special plants and creatures that depend on them. She is the executive secretary of the Thorne and Hatfield Moors Conservation Forum and has recently…