Conservationist Homeys

From Paul Cheshire at the LSE

One might argue that among the culprits, the conservation groups themselves have inadvertently played a leading role in getting us in to this mess. We desperately need land for housing. Thanks in large part to the misguided campaigns of conservation groups our planning system has been systematically not providing such land for two generations, pushing house prices and rents beyond the reach of young people.

Why does this mean that conservation groups share in the blame? Because not only have they been the most vocal and influential lobbyists against relaxing the planning restrictions on land release by one iota, but they have enthusiastically supported ‘building on brownfields’. Apart from being no solution to the housing land crisis, brownfield land is very frequently amenity-rich. The tragic irony is that the nightingales chose to breed on ex-MoD land (the Lodge Hill site on Medway’s HooPeninsula). So it is exactly the type of land the National Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) favour for development.
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The homies don't want any building anywhere, which is why they keep screaming "brownfield sites". They know the remaining brownfield won't be built on because it's not viable, but by pretending there's lots of it available can also preserve the greenbelt land.

I can think of one possible answer to that..

The BBC asks: Why are India's tigers killing humans?

There are about 1,700 tigers left in the wild in India. In the past five weeks, 17 people in four states have been killed by tigers. Jay Mazoomdaar investigates the reasons behind the current spate of killings…

One possible answer, which the article doesn't mention, is that thanks to do-gooding Westerners, with their fund raising and preservation nonsense, have ensured that there are more tigers (fewer being shot etc).

It makes you ashamed to be a Westerner, it really does. If there were still wild boars and bears on the loose in the British Isles, killing our livestock and dozens of people each year, would we thank the Indians if they put in an all out effort to stop us wiping them out?

Methinks not.

Other, equally ridiculous and implausible explanations are available

However, some experts believe the culling was also partly to protect grouse shooting interests

The 23,500-acre Abbeystead estate was bought in 1980 by a trust "on behalf" of the Duke of Westminster, one of the UK's richest landowners. The duke's Grosvenor Estate manages the Abbeystead estate, which hosts pheasant and grouse shoots.

The government has licensed an annual cull of lesser black-backed gulls on the Abbeystead estate on the Bowland Fells in Lancashire for decades, officially to stop water pollution. The estate was first allowed to cull the gulls in the 1970s on the grounds that droppings were polluting the watercourse. The licence to cull was last renewed by Natural England in 1999. But a former Abbeystead gull surveyor has admitted that the culling has been conducted, in part, to protect the "economy of the shooting estates". The species is known to eat grouse eggs.

But nice to see that the estate managers still believe in good old-fashioned politeness when it comes to being asked for a quote on the situation.

The Grosvenor Estate said: "As we are involved in a dialogue with Natural England together with other land-owners, about the management of Bowland Fells, including the Abbeystead estate, we are not in a position to comment."

Plastic bags

There was a fascinating article in the Saturday Times magazine about these faddy cloth bags with "I am not a plastic bag" written on the side.

Apparently, people in the UK get through about 290 plastic bags a year each. Further, it takes "430,000 gallons of oil to make 100 million plastic bags". Horrifically large figures, eh? What it means it, one gallon of oil makes 233 plastic bags, so each of us consumes one-and-a-quarter gallons of oil a year to feed his plastic bag addiction.

Seeing as the alternative use for that oil is driving twenty or thirty miles in a car, that seems like a pretty good swap to me.