"The world isn't like The Wind in the Willows"


Guess who said:

"There's much more reality here (in New Zealand). Everyone's much more clued up to diseases. The world isn't like The Wind in the Willows."

and

"I get slightly bored with these rather high-profile public entertainers sort of bossing around on this stuff."

Yes, it's Cabinet Minister for the Environment Owen Paterson, speaking in New Zealand about the proposed badger cull in the UK and a very thinly veiled attack on Dr Brian May.

This is the same minister who stormed out of a debate on the cull in the House of Commons saying "I can't stand any more of this". Well, do you know what matey, I can't stand any more of you pal. If you cannot discuss this cull like an adult, if you cannot talk with reason, if you cannot behave like the public servant you are meant to be, then please resign. And take your self-serving mate Benyon with you.

Wildlife is not a commodity.

Listen to the impartial scientific experts and not those who are paid by those with a vested interest to cull badgers.

If somebody disagrees with your views don't storm off or dismiss them with your (not very clever or funny) put downs. Being a politician should suggest that you have intellect. Use it. If you don't possess it then get another job.

Please take a few moments to watch this short video - an impassioned naturalist 'telling it how it is'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnJQjtvngqA&feature=youtu.be

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Kwowww"

On Tuesday evening, at 20.05hrs, I was taking out the rubbish, when I heard a call from south-west of the house. I froze, knowing what it was at once, but scarcely believing it. I had listened to this call on Xeno-Canto many times, getting ready for such a moment but not really considering it something that I would hear over the back garden. After 15 seconds the call came again from the blackness, now directly over head. Yes, there was no mistaking it! Another 20 seconds it called a third time - now further away to the north-east... "Kwowww" A lazy drawl, part bark, part yelp. A Bittern. Nocturnal flight-call. I went back inside and played the call on Xeno Canto just to make sure that I had remembered everything correctly. I had. Bloody hell, a Bittern over suburban Banstead! And only a week after an Arctic Skua had blessed me just a mile or so away. Sometimes the birding Gods do smile on you. To some birders these two species are just small fry, mere starters to the main cou
Read more

Mike Netherwood

Image
I first met Mike Netherwood at Beddington Sewage Farm in early 1975, me being an ultra-keen and ultra-green 16-year old birder, he some 20 years my senior. Mike, together with Ken Parsley, were the remnants of a once much larger ringing group which carried out the trapping and ringing of birds across the open expanse of the sewage farm. Whenever I bumped into them, which I often did, they would both tolerate my many questions about what they had seen and trapped and listen to me waxing lyrical about my own observations. Over the coming months they showed me how they caught the birds, allowed me to witness the ringing and measuring of them and, if I were very lucky, allow me to help them out by holding mist-net poles, carrying bird bags or writing down (scribing) the data that they were collecting into notebooks. By the summer of 1976 I had joined them, proudly in possession of my trainee ringer's permit. For the next three years (until I 'defected' to Dungeness) I spent man
Read more

To tell it like it is, or not...

Image
I am grateful to Gavin Haig (Not Quite Scilly) who drew my attention to an opinion piece, penned by Matt Phelps, which appeared in the November issue of 'Birdwatch' magazine, entitled 'Positive Approach', which I have now read. In it, he suggests that there is too much negativity being posted on social media regarding the state of our birding world, which is then acting as a deterrent towards a younger generation in adopting conservation and wildlife study. He also suggests that a lot of this negativity is being generated by older birders, and that these old timers keep banging on about the 'good old days' which isn't helpful in encouraging the youth to pick up a pair of binoculars and get out into the field. Does he have a point? Now, I am undeniably an older birder, and I am also guilty of having posted, blogged, written and spoken about the slump in bird and invertebrate numbers. I also like nothing better than to revisit my notebooks and share in the hi
Read more