BY NIGEL BEAN Below follows Nigel Bean’s submission to Lord Walney’s independent review into political violence and disruption: “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide information and views into the rise of extremism. The independent review appears to be heavily biased towards far left and right wing extremism, both of which are largely unwanted side effects of our political system and sensible politicians … Continue reading Submission to Lord Walney
BY NIGEL BEAN & PAUL READ Attempts by the animal rights extremists and their supporters in both the Scottish Parliament and Police force to secure a hunting prosecution ahead of the Scottish elections – to be used for propaganda purposes – ended in dismal failure on Thursday 29th April. The Scottish Greens’ manifesto commitment is to ban pest controlling with packs of dogs, driven grouse … Continue reading Huntsman Lee Peters Show Trial Fail
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The last fortnight has been rough on the chickens. One cockerel and a hen stolen away by a wily fox. My young son guilty for not counting them all into their enclosure at night. Eleven is a good age to learn responsibility for others, as well as how to help provide. More chickens, a ledger and an incubator are on the way. … Continue reading Beyond Red Crows
Online education has been around for years, though the infrastructure and acceptance of it have exploded in the past two to three years. While nearly everyone benefited from it during the government-mandated shutdowns, it has the potential to close the accessibility gap for certain populations. Most notably, it can aid rural students of all ages. Here are six reasons why remote learning could be a … Continue reading Remote Learning for Rural Areas
BY CSM STAFF WRITER The Charity Commission have certainly not helped the countryside with their apparent willingness to permit every extremist animal rights group to claim charity status. It’s natural for these fundraising groups to seek out mainstream credibility and to appear at least half decent to the outside world. With charity status they claim respectability and tax free income. They are more likely to … Continue reading Really? Is that Charity?
BY MARK CRUDGINGTON Have the British shooting public been led into a miasma of confusion that may lead to the end of the shooting of live quarry as we know it? In modern cancel culture the opportunity to “ban” time-tested methods to assuage a “green” agenda seems increasingly common. In the case of lead in ammunition there have been reports produced for years on the … Continue reading Lead into Darkness?
BY DR KAUSTAV BHATTACHARYYA In a recent book on Anglophiles, I came across the essay on English pubs by George Orwell, ‘Moon Under Water’ which was irresistible and charming. George Orwell is the quintessential British writer who covered all things British from the ‘Empire’ to the ‘Pubs’ with felicity and in plain, simple and comprehensible language. The essay is about an imaginary country pub named … Continue reading My English Country Pub
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The countryside versus the town is a phony battle that has been conjured repeatedly over the ages, mostly as an excuse by opportunist charlatans and self-preservers who generally had a foot in both. Nonetheless, there is something increasingly perverse about those who rarely leave the perimeter of the M25 casting judgement on those distant swathes of green where their crops are grown, … Continue reading The New Countryside Roar
BY RUPERT MATTHEWS Our rural roads are plagued with people disregarding speed limits. Cars, vans and lorries race through our tiny villages with little to no consideration of the danger they put themselves or others in as they do so. Fatal accidents are four times as likely on rural A roads as they are on urban A roads. In village after village, the speed limit … Continue reading Tackling Danger on Rural Roads
BY RUPERT MATTHEWS With a dog of my own, the endearing Mr Fluffles shown in the photo, I wholly appreciate how heart-wrenching the theft of your animal can be. Pets after all are members of the family. In the last few months of lockdown, there has been an alarming rise in pet theft here in rural areas of Leicestershire and Rutland – but the same … Continue reading Dog Thieves Stalk Our Countryside
BY STEVE GRANT Body cameras and dashcams for gamekeepers. Have things descended to this? As reported last week, BASC revealed the results of a new survey which showed almost two-thirds – 64 per cent – of gamekeepers across the UK have received abuse and threats purely because of their occupation. Among the 1,000 responses to the survey are shocking reports of gamekeepers receiving death threats … Continue reading Gamekeepers’ Body Cams & Dashcams
BY NICK PEARCE Disturbing news has been passed to this magazine – that gangs are going around the countryside pretending to be council workers and cutting down trees for profit. A resident nearby Torbay Golf Course sent in evidence of oak trees missing from the road next to the course. Over three days a team felled these trees and no one seemed to intervene. The … Continue reading Is Treejacking a Thing?
Dear Editor, I have followed your magazine’s recent exposés of the mountebanks masquerading as representatives of animal rights. I commend you and your writers for giving light to the truth. May I suggest that as well as following the money, you also look in depth at my old employer the BBC and show just how it is responsible for repeated attacks on the countryside. Yes, … Continue reading BBC & the Countryside
A website called Hunting Leaks – with links to the convicted fraudster Jay Tiernan* of Stop the Cull – is doxing hunt subscribers and their businesses. Extremists are encouraged to hassle those on the list. To justify its criminality, the group accuses the Countryside Alliance of holding a database on saboteurs – this, they insist, makes their action an appropriate response. Of course, if the … Continue reading Aubrey Thomas’ Hunt Sabs Ka-Ching
BY RUPERT MATTHEWS In 2019, rural crime cost the UK £54.3million, the highest total cost in eight years with every region in the country seeing an increase in rural crime. Rebecca Davidson, Rural Affairs Specialist for the NFU, wrote the following in the NFU’s 2020 Rural Crime Report: ‘Rural crime is like a wave as organized criminality spreads through our villages, farms and fells, affecting … Continue reading Reviving Rural Policing
For many of us, the idea of owning a pet is a fairly obvious way of getting more out of life. Yet, far fewer people consider getting a horse of their own than those that get a cat or a dog. While this might not be the right type of animal for everyone, there are still some very good reasons why owning a horse is … Continue reading Why Owning a Horse Could Be a Good Idea
BY C4PMC Staged ‘set ups’ have become an increasingly popular tool of activists and campaigners across the country, particularly if they have celebrity support. What started as a favourite trick of animal rights extremists has now spread to anti-lockdown protestors and other conspiracy theorists, who use these tactics for a quick headline-grabbing image, with little consideration to the consequences. Yesterday across the UK media a … Continue reading Justice Perverted by Set-Ups
BY NIGEL BEAN & PAUL READ Peace and goodwill to all men or so the Christmas saying goes. And in keeping with this tradition of warmth and compassion, this Christmas This is Hunting UK put out on their Facebook page a glad tiding reminding their followers to think of hunt staff and unpaid helpers at this time of year: “In recognition of all those who … Continue reading Festive Malicious Communications
BY ED PEMBERTON Some seventy years ago this country had some of the worst slums anywhere, and cities devastated by aerial bombing. There was a real need for new housing and it was met by something that used to be known as Planning. But Planning seems to be a dying art. Places such as Thornbury, a historic market town in South Gloucestershire, already overwhelmed by … Continue reading White Paper, Whitewash & Hypocrisy
BY KEER LONSDALE I love the English countryside and have done from a very young age. Even as a tiny tot the ramshackle mud-heap of a farm yard, or the smell of muck-spreading, or the racket of a twilit rookery, or the gentle patchwork of fields and hedges stretching to a misty distance, were to me signals of my proper habitat, my rural home, the … Continue reading Countryside Culture Wars
