BY JOHN NASH Country Squire readers will recall Australia’s terrifying Black Summer, 2019/20, when massive bush fires burned some 35 million acres, destroyed an estimated 3 billion vertebrates (perhaps driving a number to extinction), wrecked scores of irreplaceable rock paintings, wiped out 3000 buildings and, sadly, 47 people died. The tragedy may have cost Australia as much as A$80 billion. Now research has revealed the … Continue reading A Burning Issue
BY SARAH GREENWOOD A note follows from Sarah to Dai Bradley (pictured twice below), who played Billy Casper in Barry Hines’ film ‘Kes’. Sarah met Dai/Billy at a showing of Hines’ film The Gamekeeper in Barnsley last month. Ay up Billy! Asta got tahm for a chat? A’ just want t’ clear summat up after that talk we ‘ed ‘t’other neet. at’t Civic It wor … Continue reading The Gamekeeper Revisited
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH I find it surprising how few rabbits I see round here in Lancashire – I think I have seen more hares. I am old enough (just) to remember seeing masses of rabbits on lawns nibbling the grass down to the roots. Then came rabbit Armageddon. I have been reading a book enticingly titled Myxamatosis by Peter Bartrip. This was a pandemic if ever there was … Continue reading The Rabbit Pandemic
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The magnificence of this country is that one never knows what pot of joy or genius one might find down a country lane or hidden away in some random-looking terrace. I suppose that those less appreciative of laissez-faire society would argue the flip side; that British tolerance and enduring liberties facilitate the opposite too. To be fair, ammo dumps are seldom but … Continue reading Webster
BY MURRAY F HUNTER Our much-loved Borders landscape is under attack from three directions by forces that someone sitting in an office – never having been to our area – could easily sign off as ticking all the boxes, as if that is the best we could do for the environment and global warming. The first is from wind. As I understand it, with permission, … Continue reading The Hills and Fields of Eskdale
BY RORY CRANSTOUN In an episode of Chopper’s Politics, I was unfortunately reminded of Boris Johnson’s plan to usher in a so-called ‘green industrial revolution’ in Britain. Obviously another crypto-globalist fever dream poorly wrapped in Conservative paper, the Tory drive towards ‘net-zero’ is nothing more than another example of the all familiar promises to greenify our society. ‘Green’ public transport. ‘Green’ electric vehicles. ‘Green’ buildings; whatever … Continue reading The Scouring of the Shires
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The drive from Gatwick Airport into the heart of the Surrey villages was a magnificent one. The network of winding country lanes from Charlwood across Dorking and through to the duck pond at Shamley Green were breath-taking on a summer’s day. So stunning that our usual taxi driver, Mr Ford – a driver of Vauxhalls – once told us that he drove … Continue reading Sign Creep
BY FRANK WRIGHT We have seen of late the spread of farmers protests – from the Dutch, who object to a third of their farmland being seized by politicians, to Italy, Germany, Spain, and Macedonia. This is a striking indication of the deep division between people and politics in the management system known as Western democracy. The issues which drive cultural conflict within nations are those concentrated in … Continue reading Collapse into Necessity
BY CAPTAIN ED SWALES Every rural and hunting Cumbrian certainly does. It’s part of their rural heritage. The famous early 19th century farmer and fell huntsman of the Lake District, lay undisturbed in St Kentigern’s Churchyard in Caldbeck from 1854 until one grim night in 1977, when his grave was desecrated and his remains disinterred by Mike Huskisson, an operative of the League Against Cruel … Continue reading D’ye ken John Peel?
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Land of Milk and Honey: Digressions of a Rural Dissident by Jamie Blackett is the sequel to his book Red Rag to a Bull, also published by Quiller Publishing, which our Chief Writer Jamie Foster reviewed back in May 2020. This is certainly the more nerve-wracking of the two books as it covers Blackett’s financial stresses and strains embracing the new creed … Continue reading Land of Milk and Honey
BY CAPTAIN ED SWALES In the aftermath of the resignation of Boris Johnson, could this be the opportunity to get straight to the point that has eluded the UK rural voter over recent years and get a proper review of wildlife management law and strategy? To start delivering for the Countryside? Now, more than ever, the support for whichever party champions the cause of the … Continue reading Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man?
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH There are loads of thistles round here but until I started looking closely at them I didn’t realise there were many different types. It is not always easy to identify them from books because they tend to concentrate on the flowers, which are pretty similar. It is the leaves which vary. These are the four main varieties I have found. First is … Continue reading Eating Thistles
BY JIM WEBSTER It all started innocently enough. Suddenly I could not download my emails. Now you might wonder why I should want to. Simple, rubbish broadband. If I use a client like Outlook I can still read my emails when I have no broadband, (like now, when we have a power cut so of course the router doesn’t work.) Not only that but if … Continue reading The Joys of Rubbish Rural Broadband
BY CAPTAIN ED SWALES “Have we got this right?” opined Finlay Carson MSP, the Convenor of the Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee, assessing the practicality of the proposed Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill; the committee’s aim to provide recommendations to Mairi McAllan, Minister for the Environment, to move this Bill into law. That was 3 weeks ago during the earlier sessions of the … Continue reading Hunting With Dogs (Scotland) Bill – The Alternative
BY SARAH GREENWOOD The truth about the ‘Trail of Lies’ cartoon produced by Keep The Ban, with Chris Packham and Peter Egan. The recent cartoon, ‘Trail of Lies’, produced by Keep The Ban group, is as slick a piece of marketing as you would expect from a one man band who founded an ‘organisation’ dedicated to bigging up its profile, and intent on making a … Continue reading The Founding Myth
BY NOEL YAXLEY 90 years ago a merry band of visionary activists set out to reshape where we could walk in the English countryside. This group of young workers — made up primarily of communists — staged a mass trespass on Kinder Scout, the highest point in the Peak District. Known as the Ramblers’ Rally, hundreds of men and women decided to join the gathering … Continue reading Ramblers in Clown World
BY GILES BRADSHAW Has there been a dramatic fall in numbers of badgers killed on the roads? The Badger Trust charity is running a campaign Give Badgers a Brake. (No this is not a typo but a pun). They want drivers to slow down and stop killing so many badgers. They invite campaigners to make the following post on social media: #Badgers are the number … Continue reading Badger Trust’s Dodgy Maths
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN Having lived in the heart of the sticks and the heart of London’s smog, and possessing the discerning female eye, I have observed a thing or two about the divergent quirks of male behaviour in their opposing natural habitats. Identifying the features and instincts of the opposite sex from both worlds is a practicable art: the country boys referred to being so … Continue reading Country V City Men
BY ROGER WATSON The Lake District, that jewel in the Cumbrian crown of England, is a case study in how mismanagement of what transpired to be essentially just another virus can lead to near economic catastrophe. After all, Covid-19 did the usual things that viruses do. Although not exclusively—it hastened the demise of people whose demise was imminent along with people in certain ‘at risk’ … Continue reading The Lake District: How to Turn an Emergency into a Catastrophe
BY JIM WEBSTER Now we live at the actual point within our postcode area that the postcode refers to. This can happen with you in a rural area. Rural postcodes here in the UK can be quite big. So from any given point in the post code you cannot see all the houses in it. But in our case, the point your satnav will bring … Continue reading The Rural Delivery Nightmare
