So Zac Goldsmith, after losing his seat to Sarah Olney, keeps his job in DEFRA by way of the House of Lords. How do we feel about that? I feel a bit torn because this method of filling posts looks rather open to croneyism of the worst kind – and what is Nicky Morgan doing…
Tag: Zac Goldsmith
Zac and Pow!
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park, 224 signatures in favour of a ban on driven grouse shooting) has been promoted to fill the void left by Therese Coffey. Zac has had one of the quickest ever promotions having come in to Defra as a Parliamentary Under Secretary at the end of July he is a Minister of…
And yet, we will miss Zac
And so we say farewell to Zac Goldsmith as an MP having been well and truly trounced by the electorate of Richmond Park (turning a majority of 23,000 into a loss of 1,900). Had I been a voter in Richmond Park I would have been torn between voting for the LibDems in order to…
Wildlife MP of 2013 – you choose
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…
Four tories
I was quite shocked by Owen Paterson’s performance on the Today programme on Tuesday in response to the Nature Check report (click here to listen, at 01:34 and 17 seconds). That is, shocked in the sense of outraged rather than surprised. The gist of Paterson’s comments was that the views of the 41 organisations signing…
Shuffle
The Bird Fair was great – and will have provided much inspiration for future blogs. I’ll come back to it soon but let’s change tack to politics. David Cameron, and everyone else, deserves a holiday, but the PM’s mind may be spinning over a rumoured reshuffle. Let me first say that I think that it…
Well done Zac!
Did you see Zac Goldsmith on Newsnight on Tuesday evening? If not, have a look (about 16 minutes in) because he was very good. As Jeremy Paxman sat in front of an image of green countryside Allegra Stratton spilled the beans on what the Treasury is thinking on the planning the system (read it here)….
Blue, green and Goldsmith.
Zac Goldsmith, describes (in yesterday’s Guardian) the view of some in the government, that ‘addressing the environmental crisis can only happen at the expense of the economy‘ as being ‘a flawed position‘. He goes on to attack the ‘hugely controversial proposals to reform planning‘ as being based on a weak argument since ‘With some 250,000…