I’ve been to many Game Fairs but this was Henry’s first. He was a little bit nervous but he had a gaggle of burly minders with him. As well as myself there were Lawrie and Phil from BAWC and Alan Davies from The Biggest Twitch. It was a rather quiet Game Fair I felt, fewer…
Tag: skylark
Arise Sir John
The recently knighted Sir John Randall MP is a birder. Having stepped down from being Deputy Chief Whip he is now enjoying the freedom of the backbenches and the freedom to speak up for nature (note this speech he made in the Christmas adjournment debate from 1:40pm onwards where he touches on various subjects including…
Charles Clover’s £398
I like Charles Clover but I don’t (by any means) always agree with him. His column in today’s Sunday Times is entitled ‘Greedy farmers a-milking it, no turtle doves and no partridges either‘ and describes Peter Kendall as ‘the cocky ambassador of agri-business‘. Wow! Even I am more polite about PK than that! Charles Clover,…
British farming is failing
This week is Red Tractor Week – the red tractor logo belongs in a museum! The Red Tractor logo promises that it is ‘the symbol for quality food that you can trust‘. Despite Alex James and Adam Henson wanting us to ‘buy’ the tractor logo I’m afraid I don’t. I had a look at the…
Ralph Underhill cartoon and CAP nonsense from farmers (just pretend it’s Saturday)
The CAP coalition, led by the NFU, the CLA and the TFA, met at the Great Yorkshire Show on 9 July to reinforce their simple message to Government: Keep sending the cheques! The CAP coalition claims to represent the interest of the rural economy but is actually largely a bunch of recipients of taxpayers’…
The price of food
We come back to the price of food every now and again in this blog. It’s not a subject I know that much about but I’m happy to go along with the general consensus that we have cheap food and that food has become cheaper over the last 40 years or so. I read in…
Early Day Motion 603 – please help protect the National Wildlife Crime Unit
Red kites are ‘eating up lots of larks’ according to ‘real countryman’ Clive Aslet and our species has to intervene. But at least the Countryside Alliance admits, when faced with the evidence of an almost complete lack of breeding hen harriers in England, and Bowland Betty’s shooting in northern England, that the odd case of…
Book review – Birds in a Cage by Derek Niemann
I liked this book. Birds in a Cage is the story of four British prisoners of war, Second Lieutenant Peter Conder, Second Lieutenant John Buxton, Second Lieutenant George Waterston and Squadron Leader John Barrett, who, after WWII, went on to influence nature conservation practice and policy. It’s a remarkable tale which is beautifully told. On…
Not so blithe now
I entered three poems for the Rialto/RSPB poetry competition but, not surprisingly, none of them won a prize. I’ve always liked Shelley, red Shelley, for his lyricism but also for being a campaigner and an angry one at that. If he were back with us he might (or might not) write this: Not so…
More hope from Hope
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