Tag: environment
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Guy Shrubsole. The Lie of the Land. Book review. Part II
The Lie of the Land. Who Really Cares for the Countryside? William Collins, 2024. I had thought to use these evening sky pictures purely as decoration for this post, then I thought they were inappropriate since land and sky are in a sense opposites of each other. But then I had the idea or even revelation…
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Guy Shrubsole. The Lie of the Land. Book review. Part I
The Lie of the Land. Who Really Cares for the Countryside? William Collins, 2024. This essential book follows on from the author’s superb Who Owns England?: how we lost our green and pleasant land, and how to take it back, William Collins, 2019, which forensically details who actually owns our countryside. Now he explodes the…
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Behind closed doors
Doesn’t this crude mock-up of the Downing Street door look sinister? I have already expressed my disgust at the words of Rachel Reeves here: The royal societies: RSPCA and RSPB – Animal Wild “I have no words to express my contempt for dangerous tax liar Rachel Reeves who has said that we need to learn…
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The Flow. Book review. Part III
In the ‘Eddy’ entitled ‘Flow’ the author is writing mostly about finding her mojo, getting into the zone, when it comes to kayaking but here she is on writing, first citing the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who published his Flow Theory in 1975, “describing a state of mind exemplified by trained and motivated individuals performing complex,…
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Good news for wildlife
In part at least. I thought I would follow Protect the Wild’s lead – they have just made a video recording some of the happier recent stories. It’s a reminder not to feel completely helpless and even desperate. I repeat the stories here. Snares are finally properly illegal in Scotland. I do wonder about enforcement…
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British Wildlife magazine August 2024
Volume 35, Number 8 Another terrific issue. I have illustrated this post with various recent wildlife photographs of my own. “The surreptitious westward advance of the Harbour Seal” is the title of the lead piece by Stephen Westcott. Harbour and Grey Seals were not treated as distinct species until as recently 1936. The former, which…
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Restore Nature Now and my local Lib Dem candidate follow-up
I remain an undecided voter, as apparently do many. No reply from Mr Dillon. Hmm. Not long to go now. I am sure he has plenty else to be doing, but if he doesn’t have a highly efficient team in place to deal with these things, that’s a worry. A local group, the Hungerford Environmental…
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Restore Nature Now and my local Lib Dem candidate
Yesterday morning I sent this e-mail to our local Lib Dem candidate. For more on the march, see: Restore Nature Now – Animal Wild Dear Mr Dillon, Thank you for your various newsletters, leaflets and hand-written letter. Anything but a repeat of (any of) the last 14 years is the main thing. My natural instincts…
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How They Broke Britain Part III
How they Broke Britain by James O’Brien, WH Allen, 2023 The chapters on Cameron and Corbyn are the least interesting so far because they are the least interesting, least Machiavellian characters. Cameron is simply a product of his education and the milieu in which he grew up. The private school system produces emotionally stunted people…
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The RSPCA and a king
The tireless Protect the Wild has deplored the appointment (perhaps I should say anointment, the royals seem to like a bit of anointing) of a king, Charles Windsor (i.e. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) as its new patron, describing him as an animal abuser. It is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, so I can…
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Beaver bombs part I
A review of the first four chapters of Black Ops and Beaver Bombing; adventures with Britain’s wild mammals, by Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall, Oneworld, 2023 This is a fairly detailed review without, I hope, too many spoilers (although there is so much good stuff it has proved hard to resist some retelling), of the…
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Tice’s Meadow Nature Reserve
I was kindly invited to join a tour of this delightful place recently, which hosts a fabulous diversity of habitats and wildlife, by another HART volunteer. It is located on the outskirts of Aldershot, providing what I tend to think of as an essential pair of lungs to an otherwise heavily developed area. We formed…