Speaker 1: Just stop it. Look we haven't said grace yet. Callum,
Speaker 1: you're there munching away corners. Look anyway, Look that the
Speaker 1: good ones amongst us will say grace for good times past,
Speaker 1: for our past, for horse and hound, and each fox found,
Speaker 1: for days of sport, champagne and port, for roden gum
Speaker 1: for rain and sun, for partridge and pigeon, pintail and widgeon,
Speaker 1: hound and horn, each dewy morn for wild salmon, and
Speaker 1: chalk stream cider beer and village green for country pubs.
Speaker 1: Thank God above for England's beauty and Christian duty, for
Speaker 1: every pint and every plateful. May the Good Lord make
Speaker 1: us truly grateful.
Speaker 2: Amen, decently, that was the very nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Are you spiritually refreshed after that? Are you ready
Speaker 1: to carry on munching away on your corner shop custachio sticks? Callum.
Speaker 2: Always he's giving me the sustenance I need to get through.
Speaker 3: Presumably if they updated that grace now, that have to
Speaker 3: be sort of a stanza about digging out cubs whilst
Speaker 3: being filmed by a communist who's got whacked out on
Speaker 3: triple sis, which is a drug. Are we doing well, aren't.
Speaker 1: We honestly, I'm absolutely off my nut on triple s eyes. Actually,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have triple s I woods
Speaker 1: on their farms or estates or land are absolutely off
Speaker 1: then out anyway, because it does the head in, because
Speaker 1: it's much more challenging to manage them well when it's
Speaker 1: a triple s then when it's not. So you know,
Speaker 1: there we go. It's a listen to us all, don't
Speaker 1: do triples eyes, kids, triple eyes, just say no quite.
Speaker 3: I recommend this show to people, you know, and then
Speaker 3: every time I do, they go, oh, I'll start with
Speaker 3: this one. No, don't start with that. I don't know
Speaker 3: how to get people started on the show. What is
Speaker 3: the gateway drug for country slide.
Speaker 2: Of course episode?
Speaker 3: And if they can handle it, Leslie Dolphin, maybe.
Speaker 1: It's probably something to be fair that that is it is.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like you know, day one when you
Speaker 1: join the army, they absolutely beast the ass off you.
Speaker 1: You're going, what on earth am I doing here? This
Speaker 1: is crazy? Why why have I joined this affair? Put
Speaker 1: them straight in with Leslie Dolphin and see if they are,
Speaker 1: you know, made of the stern stuff that we require
Speaker 1: from our listeners.
Speaker 2: The baptism of fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah it anyway. So what have you been up to, Richard?
Speaker 3: Have you been outside or have you been doing stupid
Speaker 3: book things?
Speaker 1: No, I've been largely doing stupid book things. I did
Speaker 1: yesterday go and talk to.
Speaker 2: The third Reich about why the curlyw is a good?
Speaker 3: Is evolved on who's trying to bring back the next one?
Speaker 1: It weren't quite like that. It was more I went
Speaker 1: to speak to some school children lace Than Primary school
Speaker 1: and then at the Old Valley Academy, which is the
Speaker 1: secondary school in Laystam and I talked to them about
Speaker 1: hedges and things that live in hedges. And then when
Speaker 1: I spoke.
Speaker 4: To the Guy magazine girls in the schools, they foolishly
Speaker 4: asked me how to write about landscape and the countryside
Speaker 4: because they've got a project on that, and.
Speaker 2: Who did you refer them to?
Speaker 3: Do?
Speaker 1: You know? Interestingly? I took a selection of books because
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was say that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you just read one about the countryside, nature and landscape,
Speaker 1: then you were missing a trick. So I took a
Speaker 1: selection of books by authors who I rate, and that
Speaker 1: was arranging from Henry Williamson through to Patrick Albraith, Patrick Lorry,
Speaker 1: Who else did.
Speaker 2: You always talk lovingly about Patrick Lorry? Yeah, from what
Speaker 2: I get from you, I think he seems like your favorite,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Him and Williamson actually, because both are completely slightly broken
Speaker 1: men in two different ways. Patrick Lorry I haven't met.
Speaker 1: I talked to him and correspond with him via email
Speaker 1: every once in a while, and I think he's a
Speaker 1: character who I believe his He lost the child and
Speaker 1: he and it was heartbreaking and heart wrenching for him.
Speaker 1: And I think that also people who live in geographically
Speaker 1: very challenging places because they are stark and harsh, I
Speaker 1: think that they are possibly made slightly up and down
Speaker 1: there in their psyche. And you can read that through
Speaker 1: everything that he writes. There is a melancholy through him.
Speaker 1: And I find the melancholy as well of Henry Williamson
Speaker 1: always very poignant because he was broken by the First
Speaker 1: World War. And yes, he turned into a raving fascist,
Speaker 1: but there was a reason why I turned as a
Speaker 1: raving fascist, because he was so determined that there would
Speaker 1: be no more war. He thought that was the only
Speaker 1: way out of it. And I find they're writing beautiful,
Speaker 1: fascinating one so I found myself in front of a
Speaker 1: bunch of school children saying, yeah, read these. The work
Speaker 1: of these is beautiful. But you know, I'm not held
Speaker 1: just one.
Speaker 3: I think we should point out that Henry Williamson is
Speaker 3: the older author for a Time gone By was a
Speaker 3: fascist in World War One. Patrick Lorry is a farmer
Speaker 3: in southwest Scotland. Current.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh you know, actually Lorry is not a fascist.
Speaker 3: No, I think I just wanted to make that separation clear.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, But I think both of them are
Speaker 1: driven to things because of personal trauma and the fact
Speaker 1: that they are so close to the natural world, which
Speaker 1: tends you to be rather fatalistic, I suppose. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, callum, I I do. I think he's he's
Speaker 1: a wonderful man, and he writes brilliantly, and I hope
Speaker 1: he does come out with a second book.
Speaker 3: Henry Williams unpresumably because I think he's dead.
Speaker 1: Well, yes he is, but he lived funny enough, I
Speaker 1: just went to the co op, which is right opposite
Speaker 1: where else and lived. No, he lived opposite the co
Speaker 1: op in Bottersdale, So you know it's it's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: you think this village here, there was where down the road.
Speaker 1: Constella is where you can buy a four co. Stella
Speaker 1: is where Basil Brown, he who on Earth, Sutton Who
Speaker 1: and Henry Williamson both lived and they lived there at
Speaker 1: the same time. So can you imagine the guy who
Speaker 1: on Earth, Sutton Who and Henry Williamson lived in the
Speaker 1: same village at the same time. I mean, that is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and it's a nondescript little old place and rather funny
Speaker 1: is that fact. Bottersdale also has a pub called the Greyhound,
Speaker 1: and the sign on the Greyhound is a Springer Spaniel,
Speaker 1: So you know what's not to like? That's as suffolk
Speaker 1: as they come in it.
Speaker 3: Was he as autistic Basil Brown as the way he
Speaker 3: was portrayed in that film off of Netflix, do you know,
Speaker 3: because it was like they were clearly portraying him in
Speaker 3: a certain neurodiverse light. Weren't they.
Speaker 1: Interesting? Fines paid him, didn't he grave fines? I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think that actually from what I'm told
Speaker 1: was that basically he was a digger, and so therefore
Speaker 1: he was a person who dug holes. And if he
Speaker 1: wasn't digging holes for sort of in inverticon, was buried treasure.
Speaker 1: He probably would have been digging holes to go fencing
Speaker 1: or something like that, so therefore he was just a
Speaker 1: good old boy. I mean, they had to teach Ray
Speaker 1: Finds to speak with a Suffolk accent because he although
Speaker 1: finds is Jake finds his brother is that he you know,
Speaker 1: and both are from actually for North. Both of them
Speaker 1: have lost it to such a degree that you don't
Speaker 1: hear it. So they had to get this bloke called
Speaker 1: Charlie Haylock to teach them. Although I was told in
Speaker 1: delighted tones by somebody from Uh, Charlie Haylock came up
Speaker 1: in the conversation you go, well, you know, he goes
Speaker 1: and teaches all these old boys to go and speak Suffolk.
Speaker 1: He goes and even from Suffolk originally, which in so
Speaker 1: it means you are damned. If you went from Suffolk originally,
Speaker 1: you're a thur inner.
Speaker 3: Hm.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's what I've been up to talking to kids.
Speaker 3: And speaking of neurodiversity and digging holes. You probably shouldn't
Speaker 3: be callum, and you're not allowed to mention anything to
Speaker 3: do with AI. We've already decided that.
Speaker 2: You'll have to I have to forgive my AI seizures
Speaker 2: that I've had this week.
Speaker 3: I've been on the phone with you for an hour
Speaker 3: today talking about a wen need anymore.
Speaker 2: It's been good chat, been good chat.
Speaker 3: Well technically employee at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, staff of two and one of them is not
Speaker 2: really me. I'm not allowed to talk about it, and
Speaker 2: it's really difficult not to talk about it because we've
Speaker 2: been doing some real fun things.
Speaker 1: Well you're not allowed to.
Speaker 3: I've banned him because it's born ring.
Speaker 2: Stop boring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk about real things out there and then talk
Speaker 3: about real things.
Speaker 2: What do you know what I did? I went and
Speaker 2: photographed the f A Cup Final.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's real.
Speaker 2: That was a real thing. What an experience to be
Speaker 2: at an f A Cup Final at Wembley. It's yeah,
Speaker 2: a mad, a mad place to find yourself in. The
Speaker 2: thing I love about photography is you really don't know
Speaker 2: what next week could hold for you. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: you could be rocking up to a baron's house to
Speaker 2: photograph his collection of toneaw clippings, and then the next
Speaker 2: week you're at an f A Cup final and the
Speaker 2: next week you know you're doing Lord Muller racing. It's
Speaker 2: just the maddest stuff. But yeah, f a Cup final,
Speaker 2: never done any anything quite like it. Not really geared
Speaker 2: up for it as much as I should be. But
Speaker 2: my brief was basically to show the ONM Beyonce and
Speaker 2: the cool stuff and the fans loving it. So I
Speaker 2: nailed it and it was really good and the clients love.
Speaker 3: It all right. So let's do a quiz now, which
Speaker 3: teams were playing.
Speaker 2: The blue ones? Yep, there was that, the blue ones,
Speaker 2: the dark blue one and the light blue one. And
Speaker 2: you know me, because I'm a big sports fan. My
Speaker 2: favorite thing about large sporting events is that usually the
Speaker 2: river banks a lot quieter. But you know, go sports,
Speaker 2: go sports?
Speaker 1: One?
Speaker 3: Is that the round one?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're thinking of the hand eggs the other one?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: And also I ended up photographing marrow in Toja the
Speaker 2: England laps.
Speaker 1: That's the Arrowy.
Speaker 3: Need subtitles?
Speaker 2: And a dog?
Speaker 1: Did he have Callum? Did he have a dog?
Speaker 2: He had a little spaniel, a little black spaniel that
Speaker 2: somebody sort of gave him And that was the biggest
Speaker 2: smile we had all day. As soon as someone handed
Speaker 2: him a dog. He was a spaniel specifically, he was
Speaker 2: loving it. So he loved it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, were you aware of the quite large protests
Speaker 3: happening elsewhere in the city on the same day as
Speaker 3: the f A Cup final or was that completely we
Speaker 3: were completely oblivious.
Speaker 2: To limiting the racist epicenter of the UK at present
Speaker 2: and getting the very train line that runs from the
Speaker 2: hotel that they've been setting fireworks outside, and and and
Speaker 2: probably put your council tax up by another one hundred
Speaker 2: quid a month. Yes, I was aware, and they closed
Speaker 2: the central line and I had to get replacement bus service,
Speaker 2: which took me an hour extra on top of my journey.
Speaker 2: I was very aware. There was quite a few people
Speaker 2: on my train that were that were draped in flags.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, there was, well, there was things happening,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it was that. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if it's sort of left versus right, but I don't
Speaker 2: think there was that big a turnout. What's his name,
Speaker 2: Johnny Johnny four names whatever he is called.
Speaker 3: Rob, Robbie Stewart, Stewart's Inquiry.
Speaker 2: Stuart Lexicon, Tom Tomlinson, that fella he he put out
Speaker 2: there was like three million people at one point. Someone's
Speaker 2: got a sparse gathering of people on Parliament Square so
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which one to believe.
Speaker 1: Well, there were the reports vary. I mean, he said
Speaker 1: there were million, which just sounds like a big number.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 1: I think he's gone to the same school of counting
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump and Diane Abbott went to. But the
Speaker 1: original count by the Metropolitan Police was sixty thousand, and
Speaker 1: then they went up to between one hundred to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand. Now, I was on the Countryside
Speaker 1: March back when the Countryside March was, and they know
Speaker 1: that there was four hundred for brilliant, wasn't it four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six thousand? People marched on that because
Speaker 1: they actually had counters, so they you know, so they
Speaker 1: could actually go and say this is the way to numbers.
Speaker 1: And as Richard says, well that was effective. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was good fun. You know, so hunting went, the post
Speaker 1: offices got closed. You know, everything that there was we
Speaker 1: marched for still got either band or shut. But the
Speaker 1: I think the weight of numbers that there is a
Speaker 1: It's funny. I don't like marches and protests and things
Speaker 1: like that. I just think that they're it depends largely
Speaker 1: what do you know for anything. I just think that
Speaker 1: when you're protesting, Yes, you're making your voice heard, but
Speaker 1: ultimately you're either going to go, oh look, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone's gone, gosh, there's a lot of people there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go and join them. I think what
Speaker 1: either happens is you go, you bloody idiot, you're getting
Speaker 1: in my way. And I remember when I was on
Speaker 1: that countryside march, some bloke, you know, in a in
Speaker 1: a sort of urban dress. He went, oh, he goes,
Speaker 1: get off my land, and I thought, actually that's very clever,
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, I'm walking up the mauth
Speaker 1: and we're all sort of looking a bit starry eyed
Speaker 1: and struck because we're in London. And get off my lap,
Speaker 1: you know, as in what you're doing in my manner,
Speaker 1: your dickhead. And I thought, yeah, actually that's true. So
Speaker 1: most people you either piss off or you inconvenience, You
Speaker 1: enrage some people who've got the opposite opinion. And do
Speaker 1: you go and say, oh, yeah, I'm now inspired to that.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean, I don't know, what
Speaker 1: do you think Richard is a march any use?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I always urge people towards the political
Speaker 3: and democratic process, even though I think it is now
Speaker 3: completely pointless. It's sort of it's the shittest process we have,
Speaker 3: but it's the only process we have, So you have that.
Speaker 3: But I think marches work to a degree. I just
Speaker 3: don't like, well, this conversation we're having now, you can't
Speaker 3: say for certain how many people are there. I don't
Speaker 3: entirely trust anyone reporting from it, either unofficially or officially,
Speaker 3: because every kind of reporting has an agenda to it
Speaker 3: now as well, including despite having them as clients. The
Speaker 3: police would agree because it's part of community cohesion is
Speaker 3: to make sure that you portray a certain message. So
Speaker 3: we can't know what happened or what order it happened,
Speaker 3: and what was ignored and what was focused on because
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, it's all human biased decisions.
Speaker 3: So I think if you wanted to go, and you
Speaker 3: wanted to do it safely and legally, you should go.
Speaker 3: But I also don't think that it is the only
Speaker 3: option open to you, you know, And I don't think
Speaker 3: also you can make assumptions about why people are there,
Speaker 3: because you could have picked any ten people there and
Speaker 3: probably got twelve different answers about exactly which issues drove
Speaker 3: them there on that day. I think the only thing
Speaker 3: is with this that were kind of at a political
Speaker 3: point at the moment, which is a bit like the
Speaker 3: Brexit vote, that the Brexit vote wasn't really about Europe.
Speaker 3: It was about people felt they weren't really interested in
Speaker 3: sort of exactly the trade arrangements between here and Europe
Speaker 3: and freedom of movement and that kind of thing they had.
Speaker 3: We'd had thirty odd years of every news outlet saying
Speaker 3: Europe would let us do this, and the government happily
Speaker 3: going along with it, whichever government flavor it was. So
Speaker 3: when eventually you say, well there's this big thing in
Speaker 3: Europe that prevents us doing things. Do you want to
Speaker 3: get out of it? Everyone went, yeah, let's change it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well half the country did, and it wasn't really about
Speaker 3: the issue that was being voted on. I think that's
Speaker 3: kind of what's happening now, particularly people want to change.
Speaker 3: It's very difficult, I think if you're a political party
Speaker 3: most of them at the moment to say you see
Speaker 3: those people over there, they're completely amateurs and idiots and
Speaker 3: brand new and they've never done anything in the political sphere.
Speaker 3: You should listen to me because no matter which party
Speaker 3: I'm from, if I've been in the political establishment for
Speaker 3: over the last ten years, I've probably things up quite
Speaker 3: royally for you, because all of them have.
Speaker 1: I why it's up, and I won't up like the
Speaker 1: other ones because I'm better. Yeah, it's quite che.
Speaker 3: By Na Dean Dorries at the moment saying that the
Speaker 3: Online Harms Bill because now it's affecting reform, should be repealed,
Speaker 3: even though she was the one who actually did a
Speaker 3: soft wrap I think was part of her promo campaign
Speaker 3: for it. Yeah, anyway, we should probably have some sort
Speaker 3: of go back to a full on monarchy instead.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's the way. That's the way. So basically, can
Speaker 1: you watched a football match between two blue teams and
Speaker 1: one of the blue teams?
Speaker 2: No sports? Go blue team sports?
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, So there we go.
Speaker 3: Speaking of a monarchy, let's talk about oysters.
Speaker 2: Oysters.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, Well, there'll be a link to this out
Speaker 3: in the show notes people, But I would like to
Speaker 3: try your eye. Imagine a sort of you're hovering over
Speaker 3: the UK. You're up there at very high altitude, look
Speaker 3: down to the bottom left sort of the bit that's
Speaker 3: not quite the good bit which is Cornwall. But the
Speaker 3: bit before, which is Devon, isn't quite as good as Cornwall,
Speaker 3: but it's better than Somerset. We can all agree on
Speaker 3: that it does.
Speaker 1: Do the right thing. With a cream tea? Am I
Speaker 1: correcting that they put they put cream on first, then
Speaker 1: the jam. That's that's the better thing about Devon, is
Speaker 1: that right, Richard? That won't create any.
Speaker 3: I actually do agree with that the Devon way is better.
Speaker 3: But if I stay that in Cornwall, I'll be shot.
Speaker 1: He's been gone for so long.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Back to oysters, Yes, Berg, So you go down
Speaker 3: to the River Avon. Yeah, and then all the way
Speaker 3: down there's the there's a place called Batham and at Batham,
Speaker 3: man called tim Edwards was farming oysters and it's on
Speaker 3: the dutchy Cornwall land and the estate that owns the
Speaker 3: riverbed there, and they said no, you're not allowed to
Speaker 3: farm oysters here anymore because he was farming Pacific oysters,
Speaker 3: not our native oysters. And they could be sort of
Speaker 3: farmed in the intertital zone. You have these big cage things.
Speaker 3: They've got one of the men I straights up here
Speaker 3: in North Wales, and you farm them there and they
Speaker 3: are so that they're triploid, so effectively the sterile, and
Speaker 3: it's meant to be that there is no effect on
Speaker 3: the habitat from the farming, but they do escape at
Speaker 3: the spread to where they spread to other places, they
Speaker 3: break off and you get all sorts of things, but
Speaker 3: they don't they don't reproduce.
Speaker 2: What's different about.
Speaker 3: They're from the other side of the world. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: is the American signal crayfish compared to our native brown.
Speaker 3: That's what it is, except without the predation and the disease.
Speaker 2: Do they look different? They look all right, Okay, So
Speaker 2: one's like a standard white, the oyster we all know
Speaker 2: and love. And then what do these look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so native voices that the I suppose to call
Speaker 3: them more squish the flatter, whereas the Pacific oisters are
Speaker 3: big and jagged and sort of the size of your hand.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But he's been told he's not allowed to farm them
Speaker 3: anymore because they're non native, Okay, which is interesting, so
Speaker 3: on paper, not doing any harm. But the reason that
Speaker 3: Dutches say they've given them is that they are non native,
Speaker 3: which I find very very interesting.
Speaker 2: So I assume they're going to stop pheasant shooting, well,
Speaker 2: there be no more mont jack and gray squirrels will
Speaker 2: all go.
Speaker 3: Pheasant shooting starts with pheasant farming too a degree.
Speaker 2: Of course, So the native British pheasant.
Speaker 3: Is it a narrow wedge, you know, well native but
Speaker 3: non native.
Speaker 2: Artridge that will obviously not stick around.
Speaker 1: Of course, to be fair, where Sandringham is, they are
Speaker 1: no longer allowed to put pheasants down. But I think
Speaker 1: more to the point is that they let's think about
Speaker 1: their farming. They are actually farming, and I can assure
Speaker 1: you that on dutchy Land they have not all got
Speaker 1: on their farms native breed cattle and cheap so therefore
Speaker 1: it's a bit oxymoronic. So is it bad too? I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: So what's the downsides ecologically speaking of having a triploid
Speaker 1: i A something that can't actually spread. What is the
Speaker 1: downside of having a sterile non native species being farmed,
Speaker 1: which is still as a bivalve is cleaning the water
Speaker 1: there because that's how they do it. They filter it through,
Speaker 1: so they make that estuary cleaner. Is it any better
Speaker 1: or worse than if you had a native oyster? And
Speaker 1: can you farm native oysters? I don't know. I'd see.
Speaker 1: I'm going off to do some exploration about oyster farming
Speaker 1: and I haven't yet been so I know nothing about
Speaker 1: oyster farmer. Is it possible, Richard? Do you know could
Speaker 1: you put a native oyster?
Speaker 3: I think you probably it was technically possible. It might
Speaker 3: not be economically viable, and it might Farming native species
Speaker 3: is a hard one anyway, yes, because then you've got
Speaker 3: the harvesting, because you can you can propagate them, but
Speaker 3: then you've got to harvest some of this. Obviously. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's the harvesting that the needs a license than any
Speaker 3: Most often you need a license or you have sort
Speaker 3: of a limit of what you can do. Specific oces
Speaker 3: are class as invasive invasive, so like rhododendron like well,
Speaker 3: weirdly here on the North Wales coast see book thorn,
Speaker 3: which sort of the coastal version of and as classes
Speaker 3: an invasive. It's native to the UK, not really native
Speaker 3: to North Wales. You've got it on your side of
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's very eastern, but they've it's classes it's invasive
Speaker 5: on sand dunes, particularly here because it was planted in
Speaker 5: people's gardens and things and it colonizes the sand.
Speaker 3: Dunes right next to it. So I think that's sort
Speaker 3: of the argument. It's an invasive non native. It's like,
Speaker 3: so somebody look out, it might go hang on, that
Speaker 3: person's farming Japanese not weed. We should not have him
Speaker 3: do that. But it's a bit bit of a I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's a bit of a shame, this one
Speaker 3: little thing.
Speaker 2: Smell a rat. I want to know what the what
Speaker 2: the actual reason is, because that sounds to me like
Speaker 2: a classic I just say that. Excuse yeah, I just
Speaker 2: I can't see. Someone must have got the idea and thought, well,
Speaker 2: if we're going to say that, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things we do that aren't native and don't align with
Speaker 2: that thought process. But clearly they didn't.
Speaker 3: And there's a there's a whole point with this that
Speaker 3: is that the there is the official statement we've got
Speaker 3: here from the Duchy. Presumably they pass it down the
Speaker 3: left hand side to the oppress officer, but the Duchy
Speaker 3: of Cornwall has a long standing commitment to responsible land
Speaker 3: and marine management. By fasing out Pacific oysters in our estuaries,
Speaker 3: we are acting responsibly in line with direct discussions with
Speaker 3: Marine Conservation. I don't know why that's making a noise. Sorry,
Speaker 3: marine conservation societies, government policy, and our own environmental stewardship commitments.
Speaker 3: We have been in conversation with all of our license
Speaker 3: holders on this topic since twenty twenty three and will
Speaker 3: remain willing to work together support native oyster farming and
Speaker 3: other forms of environmentally responsible agriculture. Now I wonder whether
Speaker 3: this is the only guy that does this and he's
Speaker 3: the one that's kicked off and gone to the news,
Speaker 3: or is it that lots of others have and he
Speaker 3: is the only one. I don't know, but it just
Speaker 3: seems like a very interesting thing that the non native
Speaker 3: part of it, of a commercial activity, has been picked
Speaker 3: on for this. So watch that space, I would say,
Speaker 3: with the royal properties as we sort of change over
Speaker 3: from Charlie to William.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, we do know because it was announced in
Speaker 1: the press that the Prince of Wales is currently selling
Speaker 1: off I believe one fifth of the assets or is
Speaker 1: liquidating one fifth of the assets of the duchy so
Speaker 1: that he can increase housing and nature recovery on duchy land.
Speaker 1: Now that is an across the board, quite a broad brushstroke. Now,
Speaker 1: it perhaps should be explained that the Duchy of Cornwall
Speaker 1: exists because when Prince Edward I, the son of the
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria, because she clung onto life for such a
Speaker 1: long while that he was well, basically he's more or
Speaker 1: less impoverished because and he had to keep going to
Speaker 1: mum for money. And so when he became the king,
Speaker 1: he said, no, law more will the Prince of Wales
Speaker 1: have to go and go on bended knee. So the
Speaker 1: Duchy of Cornwall, and as a private income, was gifted
Speaker 1: to each Prince of Wales in perpetuity. And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: the Princes of Wales have been pre switched on cookies.
Speaker 1: But particularly and when we say cookies, I mean who
Speaker 1: doesn't think of the dutchy original biscuit. The King as
Speaker 1: he now is, when he was the Prince wal was,
Speaker 1: he made the duchy this amazingly effective thing. And I
Speaker 1: believe that William, the Prince of Wales now is his
Speaker 1: own man and he's doing his own thing. So if
Speaker 1: he is trying to liquidate assets, is it actually that
Speaker 1: he said, well, you don't fit into my plans for
Speaker 1: basically my business that I have got in trust until
Speaker 1: young Prince George becomes the next Prince of Wales. So
Speaker 1: perhaps he thinks he is I mean, it may be
Speaker 1: that they're trying to window dress a bit of always
Speaker 1: or non native species. And if he's saying that, look,
Speaker 1: we don't mind you farming bivalves here, but we want
Speaker 1: you to do native ones, which probably I presume would
Speaker 1: be muscles, then crack on. But we're not having you
Speaker 1: going and doing something which potentially could be ruinous to
Speaker 1: wider native biodiversity. And there is that there is a precedent.
Speaker 1: When you think about you know, signal crayfish that they
Speaker 1: have been disastrous, you think about salmon farming that's been disastrous.
Speaker 1: I would actually say that in typical palace fashion, they've
Speaker 1: tried to window dress something which is utterly correct, and
Speaker 1: some poor chap who has been earning, is living, has
Speaker 1: suddenly been put out of a job. But because his
Speaker 1: boss is the Prince of Wales, he gets to winge
Speaker 1: about it publicly and people feel sorry for him. Yet
Speaker 1: the countless numbers of farmers who have been put in
Speaker 1: utter penury because of this shower of a government are
Speaker 1: all called tofts. So in a way I actually feel
Speaker 1: that I'm not a monarchist at all. Obviously, as you
Speaker 1: can tell, I feel that probably the Prince of Wales
Speaker 1: has done the right thing because he has said, do
Speaker 1: you know what, this isn't right? We can do this
Speaker 1: a better way. But there's always somebody that when you
Speaker 1: change something, who gets the shitty end of the stick. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is that poor oyster farmer in heaven. That's my view.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sort of agree with that, but overall, I
Speaker 3: think I prefer sort of a feudal or sort of
Speaker 3: a monarchic system, because the person might make crap decisions,
Speaker 3: but at least they have to live with them in
Speaker 3: that with their people that're in that job for life,
Speaker 3: whereas a politician sort of incompetently makes a decision because
Speaker 3: it makes people think they'll like him, and then yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: he sods off after four years to a guarantee job
Speaker 3: somewhere else.
Speaker 2: We paid for it fifty grand.
Speaker 3: Edward the Seventh as well, interesting chap, you know, possibly
Speaker 3: impoverished because he spent most of his time shagging his
Speaker 3: way around in Europe and for a way to go,
Speaker 3: though famously had a chair made for him so he
Speaker 3: could have sector two women at once.
Speaker 1: The pleasuring chair.
Speaker 3: Yes, French cabinet makers. Soubrier made it for him. So
Speaker 3: go and look up Edward the Seventh's love chair. It's
Speaker 3: quite an interesting yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, like how Nikola Tesla he used to he never
Speaker 2: wrote things down because he used to think of the
Speaker 2: design in his head and basically fully build it out.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to think without googling it.
Speaker 3: Your love chair.
Speaker 2: Everybody, everybody sit there in your head. We'll just take
Speaker 2: a second. We'll just take a deep breath and just
Speaker 2: imagine a chair in the particular shape which would allow
Speaker 2: a person to make love to two women at once
Speaker 2: with I assume one genital organ.
Speaker 1: That's that's why it didn't work like that. He used
Speaker 1: something other than his primary genital organ. He used other extremities.
Speaker 1: My hand thinking, look at my hands, Look at this flushed,
Speaker 1: reddened face, my toes, they could.
Speaker 3: All be used when rather you didn't without nails.
Speaker 2: I thought, because your background was so white, is why
Speaker 2: your face had gone so pink. But your hands are
Speaker 2: also white, So that means that your face, maybe the inside.
Speaker 1: Insides, are are all wonky, aren't they checked?
Speaker 2: I checked the other week. I did a hex match
Speaker 2: to your face. I think in a farroh and ball color.
Speaker 2: You were Nancy's knickerbockers, which is just slightly off of
Speaker 2: a rose.
Speaker 1: Back Nancy's.
Speaker 2: You were like a nice sort of not nearly a
Speaker 2: crimson pink boiled lobster.
Speaker 1: Yea. Interestingly, just to point back on your your thing
Speaker 1: in the cold Chester oysters, so in calums manner.
Speaker 3: Actually the news story not the shagging chair, right.
Speaker 1: Not the shagging chair. Back onto what you were talking about.
Speaker 1: Cold Chester oysters are grown and massive conservation efforts are
Speaker 1: actively restoring their natural wild populations in marine consivation zones.
Speaker 1: So therefore down in Essex they are at Colchester oysters
Speaker 1: they are actually using the native ones because if you
Speaker 1: think about it, oysters used to be so prevalent and
Speaker 1: common that they were the working man's food. They beef
Speaker 1: and oyster pie and and things like that were Cockney's food. There.
Speaker 1: Look at the Thames, it's still full.
Speaker 2: I went to Mersey Island for a little day trip
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, really nice down there, and
Speaker 2: there's just you go along the on the little foreshore
Speaker 2: bit and there's there's oysters everywhere, crunching over oysters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was it was a thing that there
Speaker 1: was the working man's food, and it was quite funny
Speaker 1: that how they're now considered.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was lobster was originally used as a fertilizer.
Speaker 1: Main lobster was basically when the main lobster became a thing,
Speaker 1: because I'm very clever businessman thought well we got a
Speaker 1: lot of.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. So they were catching as a byproduct,
Speaker 1: and they went, what we're going to do with these
Speaker 1: I know we'll do. We'll tell all the people don't
Speaker 1: come from around here before the days of social media
Speaker 1: and everyone knowing what was going on because you've only
Speaker 1: got to google it, and you said, oh, this is
Speaker 1: really rare thing called the main lobster, and it went
Speaker 1: really okay, yeah, and it's like really expensive. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: it'd be a bit like saying look, I've got this
Speaker 1: stuff called dog shit to all the cat owners. They go,
Speaker 1: well dogshit, and he goes, oh, yes, it's brilliant. You
Speaker 1: want to have dogshit, but in your garden it'll be
Speaker 1: brilliant for this stuff. And you believe it because it's
Speaker 1: something that you haven't seen. And if you come from
Speaker 1: the Midwest, this idea that there is when refrigeration first
Speaker 1: camera and you and you sold it that. But back
Speaker 1: to your oyster thing, I think that there must be
Speaker 1: hats off in a way, although I feel sorry for
Speaker 1: any farmer or any business person who has built up
Speaker 1: a business that say yeah, absolutely, go ahead, that's great
Speaker 1: because you're doing loads of employment and all that blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and then all of a sudden somebody
Speaker 1: goes and says, no, you can't do it. Ah. But
Speaker 1: let's be honest, it's exactly the same as being a
Speaker 1: coal miner, is exactly the self same as being a
Speaker 1: person who is a professional hunt servant, And it's probably
Speaker 1: the way things are going the way that it's going
Speaker 1: to be being a professional gamekeeper. Some knob head somewhere
Speaker 1: has decided we don't want you to do this, and
Speaker 1: so therefore they legislate against it. Give it a bit
Speaker 1: of window dressing that it's all good for the environment.
Speaker 1: But because it happens to be this particular instance, it's
Speaker 1: the next in line to the throne. The individual who's
Speaker 1: being put out of a job is being made to
Speaker 1: be this individual who let's feel sorry for it. So
Speaker 1: I think asked the story.
Speaker 3: I remember we had We used to go to other
Speaker 3: countries and sort of put color them in pink and
Speaker 3: have them as ours and tell people they're not allowed
Speaker 3: to have that job they're managing that land any more.
Speaker 3: We were told that was wrong, We're not allowed to
Speaker 3: do that, but it's okay to do it here anyway.
Speaker 3: Talking about decolonizing the curriculum. Yes, what's this thing about trees? Richard?
Speaker 1: Oh, do you know? I have been googling this thing
Speaker 1: century the tree Equity score, right, and so I follow
Speaker 1: this thing the tech and.
Speaker 3: I've paid all off on my debts, so I've got
Speaker 3: a good one of those now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tree Equity Score. It does sound like an advert
Speaker 1: actually on GB News, doesn't It is you on GB
Speaker 1: News they have the funniest adverts ever. It's basically people
Speaker 1: who listen to GB News and they really like it,
Speaker 1: and then they go, I know what we'll do. We'll
Speaker 1: advertise on GB News and they're going to say, are
Speaker 1: we going to be able to sell this thing on
Speaker 1: GB News? I don't care. I'm just going to do
Speaker 1: it anyway. But Tree Equity Score does sound like that.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something you'll get a free Parker pen
Speaker 1: just if you go and inquire anyway, did you know
Speaker 1: what I'm going to tell you this? I have no
Speaker 1: bloody idea what the tree equity score is because I
Speaker 1: have tried to navigate their stupid system. But I have
Speaker 1: a sneaky feeling that it's a bit like Cat Frampton's
Speaker 1: peat map of doom. In other words, I think it's
Speaker 1: a load of old cobblers, because I think it's something
Speaker 1: to do with a national standard in each UK country
Speaker 1: to help make the case for investment in areas with
Speaker 1: greatest need. I think by investment they mean planting more
Speaker 1: trees because that aren't green enough. Yeah. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do is they are desperately trying
Speaker 1: to go and put trees everywhere to how have.
Speaker 2: They blocked out fairy like by the kilometer or is
Speaker 2: it like tow region.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to put in your home address and then
Speaker 1: it will tell tell you what your score is. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's largely as far as I can see,
Speaker 1: basically urban areas of telling how many trees are there
Speaker 1: and how many, in their opinion, we should be there
Speaker 1: one tree. I do not get at all how this
Speaker 1: thing works, because as soon as you come out of
Speaker 1: a out of an urban area, it stops. So I believe, Richard,
Speaker 1: you haven't got a tree equity score. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: I'm retord, I haven't got a tree equity score. I
Speaker 3: am looking out of the window in the office, and
Speaker 3: I can see I've got about seventy trees, yes, half
Speaker 3: of which I've planted.
Speaker 1: Okay, I haven't got a tree equity score either, probably
Speaker 1: because it might the Internet might have been blocked out
Speaker 1: courtesy of the oak tree that is shading me at
Speaker 1: the moment. I don't know. But the long and the
Speaker 1: short of it seems to be that what it's do
Speaker 1: is this arbitrary thing that if you haven't got lots
Speaker 1: of trees, then somehow it's really bad. Now I noticed
Speaker 1: that one of the things if you go on this
Speaker 1: map and you zoom down to London, right, is that
Speaker 1: obviously all that's it's terrible. You know, London hasn't got
Speaker 1: enough trees. But that's a load of old pony because
Speaker 1: in history London.
Speaker 2: Lots of plane trees everywhere.
Speaker 1: Of course that's but it's also, oh no, they don't
Speaker 1: like plane trees.
Speaker 3: I heard the seventh chair.
Speaker 1: I heard someone wings about that was because I tell
Speaker 1: you it was. It was that buffo numb Ben Goldsmith.
Speaker 1: He was saying that all plane trees should know plant
Speaker 1: more plane trees. The London plane you say, oh, they're
Speaker 1: a foreign hybrid. Now that's true, true, But I mean
Speaker 1: this is a foreign hybrid that back, well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what a foreign hybrid. That's some sixteen forty or
Speaker 1: something like that. I think was when they produced this tree,
Speaker 1: and that it sucks in more carbon and can live
Speaker 1: with pollution and it's wonderful. But he didn't like it
Speaker 1: because it produced some pollen that apparently gave him asthma.
Speaker 1: They call it chelsea lung, which probably highlights the thing.
Speaker 2: But anyway back, the London plane also does miraculous things
Speaker 2: when it gets hot. When it gets hot, it actually,
Speaker 2: instead of getting that heat what's it called the heat shock? Yeah,
Speaker 2: where Jettison's it makes more water and actually calls the
Speaker 2: city down, so it has a net positive. It doesn't
Speaker 2: get the heat shock and closed down and drop all
Speaker 2: its leaves by like the end of July.
Speaker 1: You absolutely make the point. Yet this is the same
Speaker 1: Ben Goldsmith that thinks that species that went extinct because
Speaker 1: they were incompatible with modern Britain should be reintroduced. But
Speaker 1: a species that more or less evolved courtesy of the
Speaker 1: fact that it could live with our polluted cities he
Speaker 1: thinks should be got rid of.
Speaker 2: So there we go, get rid of them, and we'll
Speaker 2: all go back to the London smog like the good
Speaker 2: old days, and we can all feel really bad. Not
Speaker 2: only can we not hear our electric cars, but it
Speaker 2: will be hit by them because the London streets will
Speaker 2: be sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: what this is is yet another stick to beat us
Speaker 1: with to say that we must plant more trees. Now,
Speaker 1: the one thing I will say, I have been up
Speaker 1: last week where I spoke to you from up in
Speaker 1: the Dales. First of all, I was in wednesley Dale
Speaker 1: and Swaledale, and then I went up to Weirdale.
Speaker 2: Weird sounds the only place that actually sounds like it
Speaker 2: could exist the other one.
Speaker 1: But there are all places where, if you let loose
Speaker 1: these freaks who want to plant trees everywhere, much the
Speaker 1: same as where Richard lives, and they're older, plant trees
Speaker 1: in the uplands because that's where they should be. I
Speaker 1: saw marks there of when that trees haven't been in
Speaker 1: our landscape for such a long while that a lot
Speaker 1: of these places have forgotten what trees should be. And
Speaker 1: so therefore I think that the Woodland Trust, who I
Speaker 1: do have time for, but stop making stupid shit like
Speaker 1: tree equity scores, because it's exactly the same as what
Speaker 1: Kat Frampton told us about that pathetic carbon peat map
Speaker 1: thing that Natural England produced is it's just bunkum. It's
Speaker 1: it's trying to dictate in some stressing something up with
Speaker 1: a wash of green, that they're going to take over
Speaker 1: your lives and destroy you. That's as far as I
Speaker 1: can see of it, Richard.
Speaker 3: I've got quite a dispiriting rant to go on for
Speaker 3: this calum Do.
Speaker 2: Do you think I'm just looking two places near me?
Speaker 2: I've got the full one hundred trees school, Okay, I
Speaker 2: mean with mighty.
Speaker 3: Close if you live in an arboretum, don't you.
Speaker 2: We're mighty close to repping forest.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was exactly that Surrey. Surrey is still
Speaker 1: the most wooded county in England. In Surrey, for pity's sakes,
Speaker 1: it's it's because and why is it the most wooded county?
Speaker 1: Because the soil is so ship there that you couldn't
Speaker 1: really use it for farming. And Hertfordshire was a joke
Speaker 1: because if you look at read sense and sensibility, isn't
Speaker 1: it where they're based In Hertfordshire they were considered bumpkins
Speaker 1: because they lived there. And again it was this rural enclave.
Speaker 1: It was full of trees because why well, you couldn't
Speaker 1: farm anything there. So therefore I had no prosperity put
Speaker 1: nut trees on. But they used to in Surrey before
Speaker 1: it became stopbroken belt. When steam engines are put in,
Speaker 1: you grew nuts trees on there. So it's the most
Speaker 1: wooded county in Britain because basically you plant trees with
Speaker 1: a landish shit. So there you go.
Speaker 3: Okay, so what's your take on this column?
Speaker 2: I mean, we don't we like don't we like numbers?
Speaker 2: Don't we like I know this might not inform. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you've got there is probably quite a bit of bullshit.
Speaker 2: But I can see if I look in my general vicinity,
Speaker 2: I can see areas which look like they could do
Speaker 2: with a few more trees.
Speaker 3: So I'm always a little.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what what's going to do well? In
Speaker 2: certain places? Sometimes I think when you like well managed.
Speaker 2: So at the moment we seem to have a large
Speaker 2: amount of wildlife that has nested and built nests in
Speaker 2: places that is not compatible with sustaining wildlife. So last
Speaker 2: week was all the goslings have been eaten by the fox.
Speaker 2: Two days ago I saw ten chicks off of some
Speaker 2: mallards and they're all gone now, all ten. The coup
Speaker 2: had a chick yesterday. I haven't been back down the pond,
Speaker 2: but I'm saying so far, so far we've had three
Speaker 2: goslings and ten mallard chicks. They're all gone, so I
Speaker 2: assume that the coot chick's probably gonna full foul of
Speaker 2: the same fate. But they're a bit they're a little
Speaker 2: bit smarter and a bit craftier. The goslins are just stupid.
Speaker 2: They're up on the side and they're they're easy pickings.
Speaker 2: I'm really surprised that the mallards all of the chicks
Speaker 2: were gone within a day, and I'm hopeful that the
Speaker 2: coop chick might might come through. But also the missus
Speaker 2: had a run in the other day where she found
Speaker 2: a mallard egg in the road and the two mallards
Speaker 2: going off because there was cars all up on the
Speaker 2: side of where the school is. So planting trees and
Speaker 2: encouraging wildlife in places and areas where they can't really
Speaker 2: sustain wildlife, it's a bit of a shit idea, isn't it.
Speaker 2: So are you ready to yeah, unleash, I'm going to
Speaker 2: say my too long didn't read is I am? I
Speaker 2: like numbers, and if numbers inform good decisions, that you
Speaker 2: can use the data to plant more trees. I think
Speaker 2: net positive. I like it. I like the numbers. I
Speaker 2: like that it can inform good decision making with practitioners,
Speaker 2: and I will caveat this with practitioners in the countryside
Speaker 2: that actually know what they're talking about, not just ah,
Speaker 2: your score is sixty, let's make it ninety.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then I also think that you need to make
Speaker 2: sure that you encourage wildlife and trees and plant things
Speaker 2: in places that can sustain actual wildlife, because it's pointless
Speaker 2: having clutches and clutches of ducks and chicks and birds
Speaker 2: and stuff if they're all going to get eaten by
Speaker 2: apex predators in the wrong places and poorly managed land. Okay, Prido, go.
Speaker 3: Right to tell this story properly, I have to go
Speaker 3: back to the Spanish Civil War. No, okay, three levels.
Speaker 3: There's three levels to this. One is that there's this
Speaker 3: perception that we've cut down all the trees, that we
Speaker 3: don't have any trees. In nineteen fifty, Britain's tree cover
Speaker 3: was six percent. Now it's about thirteen and it's probably
Speaker 3: actually a bit more because we're we're still not very
Speaker 3: good at mapping it and that really doesn't include hedgerows,
Speaker 3: it doesn't include all the other stuff. So about thirteen percent,
Speaker 3: So we've overdoubled in the last seventy five years, and
Speaker 3: that's the bit that everyone's been paying attention to as well.
Speaker 3: The thing that really lost as our tree cover was
Speaker 3: the Industrial Revolution and the First World War. Those two
Speaker 3: events dropped our tree cover right down because we turned
Speaker 3: the trees into into the things that we were going
Speaker 3: to burn or build some out of, or used to
Speaker 3: prop up the trenches, whilst we gave Jerry a good hiding. Yes,
Speaker 3: so in about seventeen fifty tree cover was about ten
Speaker 3: to twelve percent. Because we don't really know, I having
Speaker 3: to go off old maps and things, but we've basically
Speaker 3: restored ourselves to before the massive deforestation event of British
Speaker 3: civilization over the last two thousand years. So we've done
Speaker 3: very very well at recovering our trees. Now there's an
Speaker 3: argument to be said that a giant sit caplantation, even
Speaker 3: though it's a great tree farm, isn't great for everything.
Speaker 3: But you know, we're there in terms of tree numbers.
Speaker 3: We've got it the but that's not Most people don't
Speaker 3: know that because if you look at any of the
Speaker 3: stats or any of the common tree that we've cut
Speaker 3: all the trees down, but there's loads. So you have that,
Speaker 3: you've got the thing that Callum pointed out that trees
Speaker 3: in urban areas don't really work. Trees in parks work well,
Speaker 3: but a random tree in the middle of a sort
Speaker 3: of at the edge of a road junction or something
Speaker 3: like that, most people decided they didn't want it there
Speaker 3: because well, it got in the way of the prams,
Speaker 3: and the roots lifted the tarmac and the leaves came
Speaker 3: down on people's cars and all the sap, and particularly
Speaker 3: when you look at black poplars and the female black poplars,
Speaker 3: all the sap from there dropped onto people's cars and
Speaker 3: were sticky, and they didn't like that, so they cut
Speaker 3: them down. Branches fall off, they get cut down. I
Speaker 3: mean there are huge crews, Richard, don't they Yes, exactly, well,
Speaker 3: there's huge crews of arboris who do quite good have
Speaker 3: quite a good living all across London, just constantly parlarding
Speaker 3: and pruning London plane trees in the back gardens of
Speaker 3: people's houses. So people don't tend to want trees in
Speaker 3: towns on that. Individuals do, but actually when it comes
Speaker 3: down to it, they don't want them. The private landowners
Speaker 3: don't want them, and the council really don't want them.
Speaker 3: So you have that. The third thing is the Woodland
Speaker 3: Trust of charity. But like all charities, like all social enterprises,
Speaker 3: like all of these things that have to compete for
Speaker 3: grant money and for donations, you are incentivized not in
Speaker 3: some sort of crafty nudge nudge wink wink. You know
Speaker 3: we all know the real score here way, No, literally,
Speaker 3: in the grand applications, you're incentivized to have public support
Speaker 3: for what you do. You also need to find a
Speaker 3: problem to solve. You don't get grant money for just
Speaker 3: doing a good thing. You have to identify. This is
Speaker 3: a huge problem and all the local community whatever supporters
Speaker 3: solving this problem. Mister Lottery, can I have one point
Speaker 3: five million to solve this problem. Now that mindset is
Speaker 3: built into the grunt applications, you can't get around it.
Speaker 3: It's also there in the mindset of most charities, and
Speaker 3: that the structure because that's the main funding model, which
Speaker 3: means when you look at RSPB, RSPCA, any rs whatever
Speaker 3: you wanted, Woodland Trust, WILDLFE trusts, any charity that evolves
Speaker 3: sort of land or wildlife, all of the problems now
Speaker 3: have to be about people's access to that thing, because
Speaker 3: you have to say to people a bit like the
Speaker 3: Right to Rome campaign, you don't have access to that thing,
Speaker 3: but if we get money, or you give us money,
Speaker 3: or you give us support, you get that thing. Weirdly
Speaker 3: and waiting waiting for the first charity to say, the
Speaker 3: people of Birmingham Coventry don't have ready access to a coastline.
Speaker 3: So what we're going to do is charge the Bristol
Speaker 3: channel further up so that they're within five miles.
Speaker 2: Of the coast.
Speaker 3: Well quite get rid of most of Warwickshire witch, but
Speaker 3: you don't get coast equity scores. Do you where you say,
Speaker 3: the people of Lincolnshire or less. Well, actually Lincolnshire is
Speaker 3: not bad, but le say have low coast equity because
Speaker 3: they're a long way from the coast. If you're in
Speaker 3: the middle of a town where there aren't many trees anyway,
Speaker 3: you are going to have a low treequity. But that's
Speaker 3: where most of the people are. So it's a very
Speaker 3: clever thing the Woodland Trusts have done here, which is
Speaker 3: they said that thing that you are guaranteed to not
Speaker 3: have access to, we need to solve and will solve
Speaker 3: that by you giving us money or as getting money
Speaker 3: from other people. They also get to go to funders
Speaker 3: and say here's a huge problem, evidenced by the fact
Speaker 3: look at all these people and people in the inner
Speaker 3: city are often they have lower income, they don't own
Speaker 3: their own houses, they don't own huge property. I think
Speaker 3: there's a stat on the Woodland Trust website that says
Speaker 3: wealthy neighborhoods and two point three times more likely to
Speaker 3: have to have trees nearby. But they're including rural areas
Speaker 3: as wealthy neighborhoods. Well, this is the old thing about
Speaker 3: rural poor people don't exist because they still have to
Speaker 3: spend a lot of money to live. The whole thing
Speaker 3: is a myth. The whole thing is a fake, but
Speaker 3: it is a fake that is designed by the charity
Speaker 3: system and the social enterprise system. I know this because
Speaker 3: I've been a trustee of a charity, I work with
Speaker 3: charity as I've been on the other side of this funding.
Speaker 3: And this is not just it's not just like the
Speaker 3: def repeat mapp or though that's a very good similar
Speaker 3: it's also the same game that the RSPB are playing
Speaker 3: with what they said about morelands today and the wildfire
Speaker 3: and the smoke and things like that, saying it's actually
Speaker 3: it's grousemoores and that's why they need to be licensed. Well,
Speaker 3: in Wales we have one grouse more and it's the
Speaker 3: size of a postage stamp. But we have lots of
Speaker 3: wildfires too, But that must be sheep farmers instead. But
Speaker 3: that's a different campaign. It's not this week's campaign. This
Speaker 3: week it's grousemoores. So you have an incentivization to find
Speaker 3: a problem and tell the wider community this is your
Speaker 3: problem and we can solve it for you if we
Speaker 3: get this thing. So tree equity is a marvelous piece
Speaker 3: because a problem that can never be solved, and really
Speaker 3: for most cases, actually it's a problem that's already been
Speaker 3: solved because we've doubled our tree cover. So it's I'm
Speaker 3: actually quite impressed with them. It's, you know, begrudgingly you
Speaker 3: look at it and go, that's quite good. It's like
Speaker 3: it's like the Nazi is overcoming an imagine O line,
Speaker 3: like they're giving all their giving all the soldiers' speed
Speaker 3: and making sure they didn't stop. You go, well, it's
Speaker 3: probably not a good thing, but actually it's quite a
Speaker 3: good strategy.
Speaker 1: Do you think that. I mean, I've got a say,
Speaker 1: I've got a sneaking like thinking, I've got a sneaking
Speaker 1: like for the for the Woodland Trust, because I think
Speaker 1: that there is eighty percent of them have got an
Speaker 1: admirable aim. I don't like the fact that they think
Speaker 1: the woods should just be planted and they stay in
Speaker 1: perpetuity untouched, because that's just bonkers, because that's not what
Speaker 1: woods in Britain are bank But do you think, as
Speaker 1: you've explained it there, Richard Woodland Trust thought when they
Speaker 1: set about they say, haha, here's an old cash cow
Speaker 1: that I'm going to milk till she's dry. Or do
Speaker 1: you think that they're almost so determined that their own
Speaker 1: farts don't stink that they actually believe all this chizzle?
Speaker 3: Uh different people. There's a marketing arm for all these
Speaker 3: charities and the larger charities, which is basic marketing and fundraising.
Speaker 3: It's what they need before they've plant the tree, before
Speaker 3: they're giving the tree, pack out or whatever you need
Speaker 3: to get the money in. They are quite shrewd generally.
Speaker 3: They know the score, they know what's happening. You have
Speaker 3: then lots of people working on the ground, volunteers, conservationists,
Speaker 3: stuff like that. There they're all people who, I do think,
Speaker 3: to one degree or another earnestly believe in the mission.
Speaker 3: And they know it's not perfect what they're trying to
Speaker 3: achieve with their charity, but they believe in that mission
Speaker 3: and they'll get behind it because they've never seen the
Speaker 3: fundraising side of things. And then you have people who
Speaker 3: are being paid the executive level and they sort of
Speaker 3: they've seen both sides of it. They go, sod it,
Speaker 3: I'm forty seven, I'll just hang on for the pension.
Speaker 1: Ah, Yes, probably true, And I'm I'm sure that is
Speaker 1: the case, because I mean most of the people you think, Callum,
Speaker 1: you know you've met Mark Mauers, and what a wonderful
Speaker 1: chap he is. I'm at day from the Lake and
Speaker 1: heath Fen Reserve and you would not meet a better man.
Speaker 1: You know, they're at Lake and heath Fen. They have
Speaker 1: quite literally been the savior of the inland bitten and
Speaker 1: the crane lives because of these people. Yet, are you
Speaker 1: going to say, well, that's going to inspire me to
Speaker 1: go and join the RSPB. No, because I can only
Speaker 1: think of those individuals who are the slightly cynical marketeers
Speaker 1: and senior executives who are either intentionally or I don't know,
Speaker 1: not by perhaps not wholly by machiavellian intent, but they
Speaker 1: are detrimental to the countryside and to wider wildlife because
Speaker 1: they are using the countryside and wilder wildlife as a
Speaker 1: tool and a machine to achieve their goal, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately to keep their organization going. So perhaps you think, then, Richard,
Speaker 1: that the tree equity, whatever it's bloody called, is largely
Speaker 1: just a very clever marketing tool to keep woodland trust relevance.
Speaker 3: We're talking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: We always say about negative, negative news stories and stuff
Speaker 2: make better publicity. But you can spin you can spin
Speaker 2: both narratives on this. You can put this because the
Speaker 2: success stories of anyone that's got a good score thanks
Speaker 2: to the Woodland Trust. But then they can also pick
Speaker 2: out areas with you know, a sixty score out of
Speaker 2: one hundred or whatever it is, and then say, oh,
Speaker 2: look how terrible these places are. With our help, we
Speaker 2: can do this, and this is how we get funding.
Speaker 2: The average in the area is ten times more than this,
Speaker 2: and you know, this is what we can do. So
Speaker 2: they're able to spin up good storytelling to get funding
Speaker 2: out of it's just a clinical marketing view.
Speaker 3: There's quite a good alignment there, isn't there. Because it
Speaker 3: makes you think that if there's a good tree equally score,
Speaker 3: it must be the Woodland Trust that did it, not
Speaker 3: any private landowner or any farmer or the foresters. Just
Speaker 3: before we finish, think it's good that we highlight that
Speaker 3: our team of patrons and our loyal fans who support
Speaker 3: it and give us a bit of extra money and
Speaker 3: you know, pay their well the sort of that they're
Speaker 3: buying their place in heaven, aren't they by they are
Speaker 3: some of the most intelligent people on earth, as well
Speaker 3: as evidenced by our WhatsApp.
Speaker 2: Chat there's a few Croyon eaters that.
Speaker 1: Were obviously let's move the forestry people to one side
Speaker 1: and let them go and play with the play. Do
Speaker 1: stop eating it? Nick, No, it's not Sweetie's play do.
Speaker 1: But yes, I would like to actually, because it may
Speaker 1: not have escaped your attention, that there is a by
Speaker 1: election about to happen in the sort of Wigan area
Speaker 1: and Saint Andy of Burnham of the North is going
Speaker 1: to be shuffled in who they think will get it,
Speaker 1: and he is standing against a young man who is
Speaker 1: an erstwhile rural engineer, NHS worker and now plumber who
Speaker 1: may sound like a labor candidate, but no, he's the
Speaker 1: reform candidate against it. So it's the sort of head
Speaker 1: to head Buttons and Ness, who is one of our
Speaker 1: most loyal and long standing patrons, came up with this
Speaker 1: immortal line. It's the Maker or breaker Field by election. Yes,
Speaker 1: Maker or breaker Field. Well done this.
Speaker 3: We're including this as a sort of a timestamp to
Speaker 3: make sure that it's properly recorded. So that was on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: the nineteenth of May, that was. That was first postmark.
Speaker 3: It's a bit like the gap Tooth Tit Wizard, I
Speaker 3: think for the Lanski the Walter Titty Walter Titty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've now got its maker or breaker field
Speaker 1: for uh.
Speaker 2: It's actually died and the headline was the Lady's not returning.
Speaker 3: Somebody of a sat on that for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you know what I miss her?
Speaker 2: Boys, it's time I've got the headline.
Speaker 1: Go on, I've been waiting for it for that long.
Speaker 3: Onto the after show, Goodbye,