Means Worzel Gummidge was screwed if he ever came to Ireland.
[Dating myself there.:) ]

The plot thickens...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6965799/Natural-Englands-boss-faces-questions-links-group-pushed-ban-shooting-birds.html?fbclid=IwAR3lqj-lVhQoxQU1TB7wJ-61rENYk2JGhg2Zup0Lq1QUoISzQItMkVgNTyo

ogsjw wrote: »

I want to know what the punishment for an unlicensed scarecrow is.

And if 'Possession of an unlicensed scarecrow' can literally be a thing you can have on your criminal record.

Of it is, I want a criminal record, it would be absolutely class having that as a conviction:-)

He's saying he's getting death threats now!

https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/reality-tv/a27315070/springwatch-chris-packham-death-threats-shooting-campaign-good-morning-britain/?utm_content=buffer92091&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=mainfacebookpost&fbclid=IwAR32g7eorkqJTwRvthh9lwMoV9v_0WjItTa0tdaRDXaS4CGvSvK0t8dMBL0

Well said. Thank you.

No wonder near enough everyone in the UK hates the BBC.;)

tac foley wrote: »

Wouldn't be allowed these days, I'm sorry to say. The actor would have to be a chromatically diverse trans-sexual, and even that could be a problem - showing them as disadvantaged in the clothing department.

Na there’s be another crowd out there that’ll protest to say he identifies as a scarecrow he has rights. Scarecrows rights. Etc.

Nelson Muntz laugh HAH HAH!!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6987031/Michael-Gove-forced-cave-Tory-MPs-bird-shooting-permit-row.html?fbclid=IwAR2y_X1lMt-wINmysgR2mYySu6J7UdaO6gPY9LW-uZ5IWXmdDeDVlkMe59Q

Re: Mr Packham and his strange ideas.

EXCERPT FROM AN ARTICLE BY JEREMY CLARKSON;

This is the problem with conservation. Protect one species and it’s going to have an impact on another. It’s all a question of balance and being sensible. Which, I’m afraid, is hard when our government is being advised by a Swedish teenager and Chris Packham.

Packham is a wildlife presenter on the BBC, and I like him. He’s a good communicator, fun to be with, hugely knowledgeable about punk rock and able to tell a corn bunting from a reed bunting at 400 paces. He’s also a fine lobbyist. So fine, in fact, that, having teamed up with a former conservation director of the airborne wing of the Labour Party, the RSPB, he was able to convince the government’s conservation watchdog, Natural England, to announce that it is now illegal to shoot pigeons.

Now I’m not going to be silly about this. Last weekend, as the sun blazed down, I very much enjoyed sitting in the garden listening to the wood pigeons cooing away. It’s a sound that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. And I don’t hold with the argument that town pigeons should be hounded to extinction because they crap on your car. They do, but it’s not a big issue to get a hosepipe and wash it off.

However, I’m a farmer these days, and one of the things I grow is oilseed rape. I grew enough last year to make 100,000 bottles of vegetable oil.

This year, though, things are tricky, because a weed called black grass, which is immune to herbicides, is ravaging the crop.
And what’s left is being half-inched by pigeons. I’m told that I can try scaring them away with loud bangs and kites and statues of Jon Pertwee, but I’m also told by the Viyella army of local countrymen that none of these things actually works. You have to shoot them. And now we can’t.

Score one for Packham and Corbyn’s RAF. But hang on, because if there’s less oilseed rape, that means there’s less vegetable oil, which will drive demand for alternatives such as palm oil. And palm oil production is what’s destroying the jungles of Indonesia, and with them the orang-utan.

So what the do-gooders have done by helping the pigeon, which is as prolific as nitrogen, is kill more of Borneo’s endangered orange monkeys. And that’s obviously idiotic. Happily, there seems to be a solution.

For nearly 40 years farmers have been using a so-called general licence to shoot pigeons, because they’re protected under wild bird legislation, drawn up to save important stuff like the osprey and the golden eagle and so on.

In short, you could get permission to shoot certain kinds of common and unimportant wild birds, such as pigeons and crows and magpies, if it was bleeding obvious they were stealing eggs, pecking out the eyes of lambs or devastating crops. Well, thanks to Chris Packham’s lot, that permission has now gone.

There is one idea for keeping the pigeon under control. Simply remove it, along with the crow and the magpie, from the legislation covering wild birds. Then no special permission to kill it is necessary. It’s not as if this minor shift in the law would cause millions to take to the countryside each weekend in weirdo NRA combat strides, because to shoot a pigeon you need a gun, and you still need a licence for that.

But will the government allow a pigeon free-for-all? It should. It makes sense. We live in weird times, though, when governments in general and ours in particular are entirely detached from the real world. They seem to live in a universe full of unicorns and magic fairy dust.

I know that some of you here have expressed and interest/opinion in the shenanigins foisted on the shooting population of the UK, Northern Ireland included, of course, so I thought I'd post this letter from BASC.

It's a LONG read, but it does cover everything proposed by the new legislation, and shows it up for the mismanaged, misguided crock of s****e that is is.

https://basc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2019/05/BASC-General-Licence-Submission-FINAL.pdf

Mr Packham is as popular as a f*rt in an elevator.

nova23 wrote: »

I like crows

Watch the first 3 mins of this.
https://youtu.be/EaMa1WHZOUs
I admire crows for what they are which is a highly intelligent and successful scavenger and predator. Mice literally don’t do any harm to anyone but people have no problem killing them if they are in there home, similarly there should be no problem killing crows if they are causing an actual problem.

The reason Chris and most other people want deer culled, is the same reason they want cyclists and pedestrians culled.'they get in the way of their cars !',
as simple as that.

Dai John wrote: »

Driving near Cashel today and saw a huge flock of crows, must have been a thousand or two. Is this what the future holds left to the likes of the pink and fluffy brigade ?

We'll seen as the Green Party and Social Democrats done well in the local elections, we may have to worry about a lot more than crow shooting I'm afraid.

kunekunesika wrote: »

The reason Chris and most other people want deer culled, is the same reason they want cyclists and pedestrians culled.'they get in the way of their cars !',
as simple as that.

In the UK there are an estimated 74,000 deer/vehicle collisions annually, resulting in 100,000 people injured and some 20 deaths. In the USA the average death toll is 200 people annually. It is also a fact deer play a major role in the spreading of Lyme disease and various other ailments to both man and livestock. This makes deer both Great Britain and the USA’s most dangerous animal.
Read more at https://www.shootinguk.co.uk/shooting/deer-stalking/deer-population-55310#qTIzdzVG51tqVHP7.99

useurowname wrote: »

Shooting crowd in the UK have only themselves to blame .. .

I'm not sure if I agree with your post, firstly it was not unregulated, it may have been badly regulated in both the spirit and the wording of said regulations but certainly not unregulated.

Yes in this case the anti's exploited a poorly worded and enacted piece of regulation / directive, but it was not because of what the shooting community had done in respect of public image. Most of society are on the fence about alot of things, happy to go about our day to day activities once no one f#cks with us, so its very easy for a small vocal element, the squeaky wheel, to drum up support, pseudo or not, for thier causes. Even if the support is in the minority based on national figures, tens of thousands of voices are louder then a million silent thoughts, and once inacted, decreed etc, etc its very hard or slow to change.

There is a hugh triving field sports culture in the UK which straddles both the comercial and hobby participation. Land management coupled with vermin / game controll on the face of it, is more actively applied there then you would find here.

Vast areas of land are given over to crop production (for many years these crops were alien to the farming community here) Residential and migratory pigeon flocks would target these crops at various times of the year and therefore required justifiable controll.

Bring the two together and you will obviously have a happy union, land managers controling rdsmage / loss and hunters getting bags. Large bags of pigeons and crows should help educate those uninformed as to the actual reality of the problem flocking birds on the environment wether husbanded or natural.

Unfortunately we will always be targets for the looney fringe no matter what publicity or media we engage in it will be seen as wrong. So no, if the hunting community want to share thier experiences via media and especially when its legal then why not? We can't hide ourselves in the shadows, this only makes us out to be something that is suspect, secretive and distasteful.

What I laugh about is, it is in fact mother nature that is the great destroyer and not ourselves. Anecdotal (some where there are facts!) would suggest that the hard winters or irregular seasonal weather conditions will kill off more pigeons then the hunters, this is usually observed by the hunters themselves at various times of the year. But the inevitable always happens when the conditions become favourable again the grey hordes return in force.

I was one of them.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/13/natural-england-forced-shooting-license-u-turn-government-reinstates/?fbclid=IwAR3SwFuiqOgkhMqe4Qdw2sXni8ZfT_YWhLpzF1pwfPfE4O1CIEBNukNONTY

DEFRA re-introduce the old General Licence system ( with a few localised exceptions)

To be honest, I'm surprised Gove made such a decision in the middle of a leadership battle.
Suppose it shows what demographic he reckons will be most beneficial to him.
Never rated him as Min of Ag.

I know he hasn't a chance, but Boris could find it hard to make appreciable gains on the 30 odd % he's already got.
Gove was an absolute tit in his assessment of Brexits effects on farmers, I believe.
(also, Bringing in a law that allows you sack a teacher who ever took drugs, and then expecting to be PM after a bit of experimentation himself shows a typical arrogance and disconnect)

Not surprised at all

https://www.countryside-alliance.org/news/2018/7/chris-packham-takes-cash-for-bbc-access