This book has little to do with wildlife and its conservation, just like two of its characters, Therese Coffey and her bestie, Liz Truss. However, unlike the late unlamented Secretaries of State for the Environment, Henry Morris, is a friend of wildlife and a friend of mine so I’ll happily plug his latest excellent book…
Tag: therese coffey
General election comments
I’d like to thank the Scottish Labour Party, the Lib Dems and Reform for delivering a massive Labour majority on such a small share of the vote. Voters in Scotland switched from SNP to Labour, voters in the southwest and elsewhere switched from Con to LibDem, voters all over the place switched from Con to…
If this is a big announcement…
This is the smallest, least consequential, big announcement you will ever see. Alex Sayer claims that she has been working with some of ‘the top people in government’ to launch a new group at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester (aka ‘the end of the line’ conference). She claims that she has got friends –…
Sunday book review – The Diary of a Secret Tory MP by Anon
This book did make me laugh out loud. And that’s quite an achievement because it attempts to satirise the awfulness of the current bunch of Tories in Westminster whose collective awfulness is almost beyond parody. Almost, but not actually as this author does a great job in exaggerating the behaviour and callousness and making it both…
Therese Coffey lodges in Defra on her fall from the top
I dreaded this as yesterday afternoon passed. Who would get Defra? Might Sunak bring back George Eustice? Might he even bring back Michael Gove? Or was it just possible he would notice that Dr Coffey had spent some time in Defra and, to rub in her fall from Deputy PM, give her Defra to manage?…
All change at DEFRA
What a difference a month makes – see here for a blog about who does what in DEFRA. Out: George Eustice (the real Cincinnatus of the regime change, returning to his farm), Zac Goldsmith (keeps his Foreign Office half-job but loses his environment role, despite the DEFRA website not having caught up with this change…
Defra fails nature – in the big things and the little things
If Defra were a school it would be judged inadequate, would be served a notice to improve and be put in special measures. But it isn’t, so it jogs on as the government department near the bottom of the political pecking order and with few friends in government or in the real world. Defra sprung…
Reshuffle
It is difficult to feel very worked up about the reshuffle. It is a reshuffle of a pack of knaves and jokers. At DEFRA, George Eustice remains – I feel more favourable to Mr Eustice than do many. It’s not as though I can imagine myself ever voting for him but he has served a…
What now, DEFRA?
Yesterday’s announcement by the Scottish government makes DEFRA look like it is still run by throwbacks to the Edwardian era. No DEFRA minister with responsibility for wildlife conservation has ever condemned wildlife crime in the terms that we heard from the Scottish government yesterday; not Richard Benyon, not Rory Stewart, not Therese Coffey and not…
Election watch (4) – the Number 65 bus
The journey from home to Kingston Academy is not one I’ve made before, nor probably ever will again but, for the record, the bit from Wellingborough station involves the tube to Richmond and the 65 bus from outside the station to the school (2.5 hours each way on a good day). But why? Yesterday evening…