Speaker 1: Right. Well, look, we're back at the game Fair again
Speaker 1: on Saturday, and we're once again in the heat trap
Speaker 1: that is the back of the GWCT stand. And I'm
Speaker 1: very pleased to say that joining me now is a
Speaker 1: good pal of mine, Jamie Blackett, who has just started
Speaker 1: a new organization called Grand Cry. Now, Jamie, can you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about yourself and then why
Speaker 1: Grand Cry Well?
Speaker 2: Richard, Yeah, thanks for having me here. And I farm
Speaker 2: in Dumfrieshe Peninsula sticking out into the Solway first, which
Speaker 2: is for those who know it is bird central. Really
Speaker 2: every curl you in Europe probably knows. Our foreshore passes
Speaker 2: through it on the migrations, as do the gee and
Speaker 2: we're blessed with a really good biodiversity, really lots of
Speaker 2: different birds, and that's important to me as a farmer.
Speaker 2: I'm a dairy farmer primarily, and the frustration for me
Speaker 2: is that over the last twenty five years I've done
Speaker 2: lots of conservation measures and most of them seem to work. Really,
Speaker 2: you plant a hedge, as you know, and I'm now
Speaker 2: actually at the stage of laying the hedges, and you know,
Speaker 2: you get yellow hammers and all the finches and whatever.
Speaker 2: You put up a length of dry stone wall, you
Speaker 2: get more wrens and wagtails and whatever. And you put
Speaker 2: up an owl box and you get a bar now
Speaker 2: who eats the mice coming out of the dry stone
Speaker 2: wall and the voles coming out of the hedge and whatever.
Speaker 2: But where I'm very conscious we are failing is with
Speaker 2: our ground nesting birds. I just can't seem to to
Speaker 2: get it to work. You know. We we dig wader
Speaker 2: scrapes and the laprins come along and they start to
Speaker 2: try to nest, and then something happens and then it's
Speaker 2: all a disaster. We put in, you know, meadows that
Speaker 2: attract the larks, and you know, we've had a little
Speaker 2: bit of success, but really it should be the lark
Speaker 2: song should be deafening really in the spring, instead of
Speaker 2: a little one here and there. And we all know
Speaker 2: the reasons for that. What I call the elephants in
Speaker 2: the room, the predators that we're not allowed to deal with,
Speaker 2: the huge spike in Beso predators that's just getting worse.
Speaker 2: The badgers, the goals, the problems with disturbance, and that
Speaker 2: we have right to roame in Scotland, and you know,
Speaker 2: I have no difficulty with that. I grew up there,
Speaker 2: and you know that, I'm actually quite proud that we've
Speaker 2: never had this sort of law of trest in Scotland.
Speaker 2: They have sides of the border, but it's got much
Speaker 2: harder to actually channel people where you want them to
Speaker 2: go away from ground nesting birds. People have got really
Speaker 2: sort of arcy about it now, and the law doesn't
Speaker 2: allow you to put up signs saying, you know, crowndnesting
Speaker 2: birds please go that way. People make a point of
Speaker 2: ignoring them. They throw the signs into the ditches and whatever,
Speaker 2: and it's just getting harder. And I thought, right, you know,
Speaker 2: there's no point in approaching the RSPB because they they're
Speaker 2: not interested in all this sort of stuff, and there
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be you know, the gw CT. We're
Speaker 2: behind the fantastic organization, but they're there to do research.
Speaker 2: They're not there to change public opinion or lobby politicians.
Speaker 2: So I thought, right, well, we will start an organization
Speaker 2: a campaign. Really, I mean it's a campaign. I don't
Speaker 2: really I don't really want to become an organization that
Speaker 2: that just exists in order to exist and sells Christmas
Speaker 2: cards and calendars and whatever. I'm not appointing any fingers,
Speaker 2: but we all know what I'm talking about. I want
Speaker 2: to I want to have a campaign. The response has
Speaker 2: been fantastic. We're going to have a panel of advisors
Speaker 2: with a wealth of experience, people like Colin strang Steel,
Speaker 2: former chairman of Songbird Survival, in Colkill, former chairman of GWCT.
Speaker 2: And we're going to get lots of heavyweight communicators who
Speaker 2: are going to be our ambassadors. And that's been a
Speaker 2: fantastic response. And I'm going to wait for them. We're
Speaker 2: going to dribble them out. They're going to announce themselves,
Speaker 2: but there are going to be some real heavyweight communicators
Speaker 2: who are going to do the missionary work. And you know,
Speaker 2: I just realized that nothing's going to change unless public
Speaker 2: opinion changes.
Speaker 1: And that public opinion, Jamie is the found that people
Speaker 1: are squeamish about prejudice control.
Speaker 2: I think there is that, and I I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean take badges. I mean it's become very politicized.
Speaker 2: I mean if one of these celebrity environmentalists fell over
Speaker 2: and bumped his head and woke up with complete amnesia,
Speaker 2: with his whole memory wiped and looked at things completely
Speaker 2: objectively with fresh eyes, he would probably conclude that we
Speaker 2: need to do something about the badges. But as it is,
Speaker 2: they won't do that because of the you know, all
Speaker 2: the culture wars and what psychologists call reinforcing behavior, and
Speaker 2: once people have sort of nailed their colors to a
Speaker 2: particular mass, it's very difficult for them to change their opinion.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, we've got a whole generation of
Speaker 2: young people who have grown up listening to certain opinion formers,
Speaker 2: and they would find it very difficult to countenance reducing
Speaker 2: the density of badgers from what is it ten per
Speaker 2: square kilometer or something down to the average in a
Speaker 2: normally functioning ecosystem with apex predators like wolves and bears,
Speaker 2: of about zero point one badger per hector. And it
Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily need to do it by lethal methods. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, they're talking about catching up lots of badgers
Speaker 2: and vaccinating them with his TV vaccine, aren't they Well,
Speaker 2: why don't they just sterilize them at the same time.
Speaker 2: It's a perfectly simple veterinary procedure happens in veterinary practices
Speaker 2: and on farms. The whole time, thousands of times a day.
Speaker 2: You know, if you just spade all of the badger
Speaker 2: sids that you're able to catch up or whatever, or
Speaker 2: maybe use gene therapy. You know, the technology now exists
Speaker 2: to inject a badger with a gene that will mean
Speaker 2: that they only have offspring of either one sex or
Speaker 2: the other forevermore or not forevermore. You can actually it's
Speaker 2: so clever. You can do it for two or three generations.
Speaker 2: So you'd suppress a population.
Speaker 1: That way, okay, because that's what you're after is suppression,
Speaker 1: I take it. I mean, you know you're a dairy farmer,
Speaker 1: so you've also got that specter of TB over you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's terrifying, yeah, I mean, I mean, Scotland is
Speaker 2: in theory TB three, but there is the occasional herd
Speaker 2: breakdown when some idiot buys in some cattle from a
Speaker 2: TB hotspot and it as a sort of flare up.
Speaker 2: But they've always been able to contain it. But there
Speaker 2: are so many badges now that if it did get loose,
Speaker 2: it would be very very hard to Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you have you noticed on your own farm that
Speaker 1: increase in badger numbers because I have to say, I
Speaker 1: noticed when I'm doing headero management plans, is the sheer
Speaker 1: number of sets now I'm seeing because we return to
Speaker 1: the same place year after year after year, and we
Speaker 1: can see that in Suffolk and there you are on
Speaker 1: the far other end of the country and you're seeing that.
Speaker 1: So you've seen that yourself, that there has become an
Speaker 1: unsustainable population.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is. And I think that helped
Speaker 2: by the fact that the fox population since we stopped hunting,
Speaker 2: is pretty much extirpated in our part of the world
Speaker 2: because of the you know, the technology of the night sides, whatever,
Speaker 2: and the fact that you know, you are allowed to
Speaker 2: shoot them. Yeah. I mean I think actually other generation
Speaker 2: we might talk about needing to protect foxes in rural areas,
Speaker 2: and I guess the badger, you know, no longer has
Speaker 2: that competition, and farming subsidi eyes badges quite a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, they kind of they're in the
Speaker 2: they're in the cattle sheds at night, sort of routling
Speaker 2: about and finding stuff to eat. And think farming needs
Speaker 2: to own the problem a bit more, perhaps and do
Speaker 2: more to keep them out. And they're omnivorous, so of
Speaker 2: course they're going to you know, they're the top, they're
Speaker 2: the top of the food chain, but they're also they're
Speaker 2: also eat just about anything, so you know, there's there
Speaker 2: is no stopping them. And I just wonder, you know
Speaker 2: how long it's going to go on for. But I
Speaker 2: can't go on forever surely, because you know, the future
Speaker 2: generations are going to say, what on earth were they thinking?
Speaker 2: You know, we've got all these badges and it's a
Speaker 2: zero sum game. You know, we've we've got no hedgehogs,
Speaker 2: no ground nesting birds. Are all familiar with the arguments.
Speaker 2: So at some point there has to be this sort
Speaker 2: of Emperor's clothes moment when everybody turns around and says, look,
Speaker 2: you know what, we're going to have to change things here.
Speaker 2: And I mean it is pretty unique in Europe. I
Speaker 2: think that you know, it's a British problem. The Germans
Speaker 2: still hunt badgers, I think, don't they? Yes? And I
Speaker 2: think you know, there's, as I say, there's going to
Speaker 2: have to be a Southern seed change. And so I'm
Speaker 2: hoping that grand cry, which will be probably lots of
Speaker 2: old people who are never We're never going to have
Speaker 2: to worry about standing for parliament or getting a job,
Speaker 2: or or keeping in with the governments and civil servants.
Speaker 2: We're not we're not part of the client state, and
Speaker 2: we can tell us as it is. And so that's
Speaker 2: what we're going to do, and you know, and we're
Speaker 2: going to change public opinion and bring forward that that
Speaker 2: Emperor's closed moment.
Speaker 1: Do you think one of the challenges is mean? I
Speaker 1: co remember as a child one of my childhood heroes
Speaker 1: was a gamekeeper and him take me out badger watching.
Speaker 1: And that was back in the days when badgers were
Speaker 1: rare enough that going and sitting up and letting dusk
Speaker 1: settle and watching a set come to life was a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing and it was quite a rarity. And this
Speaker 1: was a gamekeeper who took me out and to see this,
Speaker 1: do you think I mean? I can been watching it
Speaker 1: and I thought they're amazing, beautiful creatures, just like when
Speaker 1: you watch an otter and you think what a fantastic
Speaker 1: creature he is. They are charismatic species. When I look
Speaker 1: at I suppose a lap wing, you have to look
Speaker 1: quite hard until you realize their wonder and what amazing
Speaker 1: creature they are. Do you think almost one of the
Speaker 1: biggest challenges is the fact that most of these ground
Speaker 1: nesting birds are either quite dowdy, which is a defense mechanism,
Speaker 1: say with a curly or stone curly down and our
Speaker 1: neckle the woods, so you don't even see them really,
Speaker 1: or otherwise they're a bird, you know, big new is
Speaker 1: a bird. Do you think just that sheer charisma of
Speaker 1: some of these species, like badgers, like otters, ah, that
Speaker 1: they're just they're just too pretty for people to get
Speaker 1: past that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose there is this sort of cuddliness to
Speaker 2: them in the in the public mind. But I mean
Speaker 2: one of the problems. I mean, actually grand nursing birds
Speaker 2: are incredibly charismatic, but so few people now have actually
Speaker 2: as I have, and you probably have witnessed a black
Speaker 2: cop leg, which is you know, really one of the
Speaker 2: wonders of nature. Or actually that because of these sort
Speaker 2: of shifting baseline that we've had, I have experienced the
Speaker 2: magic of lap rings displaying in the spring and curlews displaying.
Speaker 1: So do you think that's part of your job as well,
Speaker 1: is to introduce the public, the wider public, to farms
Speaker 1: like yours. You know, I've never actually been up to
Speaker 1: your farm, and I've known you for quite a long while.
Speaker 1: I've never been up to your farm because if I
Speaker 1: go north of Norfolk, my airs go pop. As you
Speaker 1: well now, But is it something that you also think
Speaker 1: that if you're going to go and explain the story
Speaker 1: of why perhaps some of the decisions that you're after
Speaker 1: by government quite drastic, they would see them as Do
Speaker 1: you think it's also part of your job is to
Speaker 1: go and basically be a bit of a pr agent
Speaker 1: for the curly, for the lapping, for the golden plover,
Speaker 1: for the for the black grouds, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think definitely a grand cry. We've just started
Speaker 2: now really with our sort of social media campaign which
Speaker 2: is sort of building very slowly, but we'll be putting
Speaker 2: in a lot of stuff up. I put one of
Speaker 2: the first things I put up actually was I've just
Speaker 2: been up in the Western Iles. I went to Iowa
Speaker 2: Yea to play golf.
Speaker 1: Plain no pilgrimage for you got.
Speaker 2: We did do a bit of a pilgrimage to set
Speaker 2: Columbus Monastery as well. There were these corn crakes calling
Speaker 2: in a hay meadow, and it's years since I've heard
Speaker 2: of corn creak. Of course, now you can whip your
Speaker 2: phone out and record it. And I put that recording
Speaker 2: up there, and I said, you know, just stop and
Speaker 2: listen to the magic of the corn crake. And of
Speaker 2: course you know that they were everywhere on the mainland.
Speaker 2: Now they're just on an island where, yeah, there are otters,
Speaker 2: but and occasionally there's a mink, but the islanders deal
Speaker 2: with that pretty quickly. But there aren't any badgers. And
Speaker 2: I couldn't actually see many many crows either. And you know,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be wonderful if we were able to get
Speaker 2: corn crakes back on the mainland. But at the moment
Speaker 2: really you're talking about, you know, the problem is a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't know these birds because you either
Speaker 2: have to go and go to an actual island separated
Speaker 2: by sea or a sort of artificial island where there's
Speaker 2: a badge of fence. Yes, And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the problem, a lot of the complacency is that
Speaker 2: some of these organizations are actually quite pleased that the
Speaker 2: only place you can see some of these birds is
Speaker 2: on their reserves where they've spent their millions and millions
Speaker 2: on erecting a badge of fence. And they and they're
Speaker 2: secretly using some of their money to do lots of
Speaker 2: predator control which they don't which they don't talk about.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting actually, because I mean less the RSPB.
Speaker 1: There's two fantastic reserves near to me. One is a
Speaker 1: mens Men which they use as their flagship, and as
Speaker 1: you say, that is completely ring fenced by predator fence,
Speaker 1: and it's in our fisial population. What is interesting is
Speaker 1: over at Lake and heath Fen, where they recreated a
Speaker 1: reed bed on what was actually a carrot farm. There
Speaker 1: is not ring fenced, and they are quite overt about
Speaker 1: the fact that predator control is part of their regime
Speaker 1: because they have cranes there. I mean, they have a
Speaker 1: very high population of bittens too. But they've managed to
Speaker 1: find a bird which is actually more charismatic than the
Speaker 1: foxes that they are shooting, so therefore as a tick
Speaker 1: in the box, which is why slightly when I asked
Speaker 1: you that question. And this might be a challenge because
Speaker 1: our buffers like us are actually pretty useless at making
Speaker 1: films of stuff. I mean, I've seen your wonderful films
Speaker 1: when you go and talk to camera and half the
Speaker 1: time you've got it upside down. When you first start off,
Speaker 1: the words are fantastic, but you have shot your feet
Speaker 1: or something. So one of the things that we might
Speaker 1: want to go and do is we almost need some
Speaker 1: younger folk possibly who do know what this phone thing
Speaker 1: is in our hands, which and it's not just for
Speaker 1: making phone calls or sending rude WhatsApp messages toward army buddies.
Speaker 1: Is that we actually could do with some people going
Speaker 1: and having some footage of as you say, because we
Speaker 1: want to and I say we because you called me
Speaker 1: to talk to me about this and what I thought
Speaker 1: of it, and I thought it's an excellent idea. And
Speaker 1: we almost need some people who are adept at filming
Speaker 1: stuff so that we can show that majesty of a blackgrows,
Speaker 1: like because you see it every day we're farming where
Speaker 1: you do. And I think that's probably and it's and
Speaker 1: it's a credit to you that you want more people
Speaker 1: to be able to see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's God. It's so difficult because you want
Speaker 2: them to see it. Well, on the other you don't
Speaker 2: want them to just hep, you know, the birds. But
Speaker 2: I'm actually going to see if I can couple against
Speaker 2: some money to put up some hides and encourage people
Speaker 2: to actually put up some hides on stilts and things.
Speaker 2: So okay, because believe it or not, we've got an
Speaker 2: unconfirmed sighting of it or hearing of a bitten.
Speaker 1: Oh really with us fantastic spring.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it wasn't mean it was some birdo who was
Speaker 2: at the top end of our farm where we have
Speaker 2: got reed beds all along a burn because I've fenced
Speaker 2: them fenced it off years ago and now they're really
Speaker 2: quite extensive reed beds, and you might have been hearing
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 1: Moved, probably the cows in the distance.
Speaker 2: I mean, but what I did see not long ago
Speaker 2: was a white stalk Okay, yeah, in our fields that
Speaker 2: was obviously lost trying to find nep or somewhere.
Speaker 1: And you're on a major migratory route. And also, this
Speaker 1: is one thing I wanted to ask you what I've
Speaker 1: got you here. You've changed your dairying system, haven't you
Speaker 1: quite dramatically? Are you seeing I know you you've you've
Speaker 1: written about how the fact that it's it's a more
Speaker 1: sustainable method of farming for you. Have you seen an
Speaker 1: upturn in wildlife since you changed that system?
Speaker 2: Definitely? Absolutely, I mean a few years ago, I would
Speaker 2: have agreed with the RSPB mantra about the starling being
Speaker 2: a threatened farmland bird that we hardly ever seen. Now
Speaker 2: well not nemore. Have you know? We've We've got hundreds
Speaker 2: and thousands probably of starlings.
Speaker 1: And why why have they come back?
Speaker 2: It must be because of the soil health. I think
Speaker 2: that they're finding finding stuff to eat and then all
Speaker 2: the little bugs and beasties and insects and the soil
Speaker 2: and us. You used to lift a stone, which I
Speaker 2: do fairly frequently, because we've always got a dry stone
Speaker 2: wall on the go. And there might have been a
Speaker 2: slug underneath it years ago, but what you usually there
Speaker 2: would be nothing. Uh, And now you're always guaranteed to
Speaker 2: have loads of beetles running your own.
Speaker 1: So that's something that you would say, because you said,
Speaker 1: we've focused understandably on predators control frequently things that we
Speaker 1: aren't allowed to control, either lethally or as you suggest,
Speaker 1: using slightly more sort of less permanent means. You call
Speaker 1: it the four legged stall, don't you have? I do?
Speaker 2: I mean it started slightly tight and cheek, but it
Speaker 2: was it was I was having a real trouble. I
Speaker 2: mean the access officer actually done free gallery Council access
Speaker 2: officer was being incredibly helpful. But the certain individuals within
Speaker 2: the village that adjoins us, we're just being bloody minded
Speaker 2: about walking, you know, wherever they wanted. I I was
Speaker 2: trying to foster this sort of were some lap rings
Speaker 2: nesting in this field and the people were just walking
Speaker 2: in it. I was trying to channel them, and the
Speaker 2: access officer was actually agreed with me. He said, yes,
Speaker 2: landowner here is doing his best. He's trying to divert
Speaker 2: a foot bath and I'm supporting ins. But they were
Speaker 2: having nothing on it of it. So I thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we've got to somehow get into the public
Speaker 2: consciousness that disturbance is a problem. And so I started
Speaker 2: talking about a four legged stool. You know, we're all
Speaker 2: familiar with the three legged store, but the fourth leg
Speaker 2: is minimizing disturbance in the spring. And of course that
Speaker 2: times with at the moment we've got guy Shrubs Soul
Speaker 2: and his merry men you know what to right to
Speaker 2: Rome and in England, and I've written various articles from
Speaker 2: a telegraph pointing out the anomaly that actually Scotland is
Speaker 2: a country with no law of trespass where we landowners
Speaker 2: have been encouraged to put in paths, and people that,
Speaker 2: with a few exceptions, have been really good about using footpaths. England,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, is a country with the widest
Speaker 2: network of footpaths anywhere in the world, but people weren't
Speaker 2: used them. They want to walk off peace.
Speaker 1: Do you think in Scotland? I mean it's a small nation.
Speaker 1: You're what five point five five point eight million people,
Speaker 1: do you think I mean, do you think that actually
Speaker 1: that when I lived in Edinburgh there seemed to be
Speaker 1: a slightly closer association. More people you would see would
Speaker 1: go out hill walk. There'll be more people who would.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the people of Scotland, as I
Speaker 1: saw in Wales, they had a greater affinity and understanding
Speaker 1: of wilder places. Were we doing Inland?
Speaker 2: So definitely? I mean in any city in Scotland do
Speaker 2: you only have to look up and you can see
Speaker 2: the hills, you know, particularly a lot actually not so
Speaker 2: much in Glasgow, but and the population is much closer
Speaker 2: to the land, and I think perhaps that's why it
Speaker 2: works to a certain extent, less people and broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: a greater sympathy for what farmers are trying to do
Speaker 2: in Scotland, there is sides of the border where there
Speaker 2: is a far more metropolitan population.
Speaker 1: Left field question. You very bravely and quite madly stood
Speaker 1: in an election alongside George Galloway. What on earth is
Speaker 1: going wrong with the political system at the moment and
Speaker 1: can you see any good coming out of it for
Speaker 1: farming and the environment with all this utter bonkers that's.
Speaker 2: Going on in the moment, Well, it is pokers and
Speaker 2: I feel I really feel for by far farmers in
Speaker 2: England because in Scotland we're actually I never thought I
Speaker 2: would say this, but I mean, I mean the Nationalist
Speaker 2: government is corrupt as we've seen and inept, but they
Speaker 2: are because the SOP relies on winning quite a lot
Speaker 2: of rural seats, genuinely rural seats. They probably actually have
Speaker 2: a slightly more sympathetic farming policy. We're still getting a
Speaker 2: single farm payment in Scotland, for example, which they're not
Speaker 2: in England. But in England, Drinks, I mean, arable farmers
Speaker 2: are just giving up and selling their farms through the
Speaker 2: record record numbers of farm sales, and the most particularly
Speaker 2: arable farms and it seems to be just we've learned
Speaker 2: nothing from history. It's sort of back to the thirties
Speaker 2: when there were whole swathes of East Anglia where there
Speaker 2: were negative rents, there were landowners paying tenants to farm
Speaker 2: their land just to keep it in some of good order,
Speaker 2: stop it reverting to scrub and I could really see
Speaker 2: that we're heading in that direction if something doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you mentioned time with George Gallery and I
Speaker 2: we disagreed on lots of thanks obviously because we're in
Speaker 2: different ends of the political spectrum. But what we did
Speaker 2: agree was that the SMP were completely out of control,
Speaker 2: not being held to account, and journalists were afraid to
Speaker 2: ask the important questions. And we thought we would go
Speaker 2: around lobbing large stones into into ponds and create create
Speaker 2: a bit of a stir and change the narrative about
Speaker 2: the SMP. And I think we did succeed in doing
Speaker 2: that because I mean, obviously Nicholas Sturgeon brought her nemesis
Speaker 2: completely on herself, but even before that was happening, people
Speaker 2: because journalists were and actually politicians in the mainstream parties
Speaker 2: were shamed by us into actually being a bit braver.
Speaker 2: And I'm hoping that grand cry And I haven't actually
Speaker 2: spoken to George bad and he's not much of a
Speaker 2: murder and I don't think he'll be he'll be joining
Speaker 2: married men, but I probably will do a podcast with
Speaker 2: him on it. But but I'm hoping that we will
Speaker 2: get similar sorts of people who are not afraid to
Speaker 2: speak truth to power, as they say, to point out
Speaker 2: the elephants in the room, and to bring about this
Speaker 2: change with public opinion that we so badly need about
Speaker 2: conservation and you know, saving our grand nesting bags. As
Speaker 2: we speak, the Cagords are on Far, the village of
Speaker 2: nephew Bridge is being evacuated. Peak District is on far.
Speaker 2: Are the sleeve something or other in Ireland is on far.
Speaker 2: You know, the the changing the sort of matter of
Speaker 2: the chickens are coming home to roost. And we actually
Speaker 2: need to be talking about this stuff and not are
Speaker 2: not faffing around with you know, sort of turning the
Speaker 2: party line on while we need we need to We
Speaker 2: need to actually demand legislation that will hold landowners to
Speaker 2: account if they allowed the fuel load to get to
Speaker 2: a point where they cause a complete biodiversity wipeout as
Speaker 2: is happening on guess what lots of RSPB reserved.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so if we were to our listeners were
Speaker 1: first port a call and you would like them to
Speaker 1: visit to learn more about grand crime. Although we've done
Speaker 1: a very deep.
Speaker 2: Diving hopefully as a catchy title, Google it does what
Speaker 2: it says. Google it. You'll find us on Instagram, on Facebook,
Speaker 2: which we'll get on Twitter shortly. I haven't managed to
Speaker 2: sort that out yet. There's a website where we're we're
Speaker 2: putting a few articles on all and if we could,
Speaker 2: if we can get lots of followers, then we're in
Speaker 2: a position then to start doing the petitions, you know,
Speaker 2: the demands for judicial reviews, all all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and and we can actually and and what I'm going
Speaker 2: to do is is sort of bang out a bit
Speaker 2: of a speak to us, this sort of panel of advisors,
Speaker 2: of whom you will be one, Richard, I hope and
Speaker 2: you get a sort of manifesto together for what we
Speaker 2: want for grand nesting birds, uh, you know, dealing with
Speaker 2: the predators and the disturbance and the wildfiles and all
Speaker 2: the problems that we all know exist and that people
Speaker 2: in the RSPP privately will acknowledge, but but aren't brave
Speaker 2: enough to say it publicly. But if they've got, you know,
Speaker 2: some pretty heavyweight people saying it regularly on social media
Speaker 2: and on the on the radio interviews and debates and things,
Speaker 2: hopefully they will be shamed into changing their position publicly
Speaker 2: and we and we'll actually start to get somewhere.
Speaker 1: Superb Jamie Blackett, thank you so much much coming on
Speaker 1: the show. He's been lovely to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Richard, thank you