Speaker 1: Are we going to see whether the starmer, prime Ministership, presidency,
Speaker 1: whatever it is last to the end of this recording.
Speaker 2: Well, isn't it exciting? I mean, it's been like an
Speaker 2: episode of Dallas or something, hasn't it.
Speaker 1: It's like an episode of Crossroads.
Speaker 3: Do I have to ask you questions about how what
Speaker 3: the hell is happening? I don't think anyone knows today.
Speaker 2: What is quite fascinating is I was out dry Stone
Speaker 2: walling today and I was without communications because I am
Speaker 2: in the deepest dales, and he was quite refreshing. I
Speaker 2: had no idea. I thought, you know, we could have
Speaker 2: been prime minister less and I could have been none
Speaker 2: the wiser or cared less.
Speaker 3: Can we doesn't one takeover from the other? Is that
Speaker 3: how that works? Can we just be like a non
Speaker 3: we just be like a captionalist ship at sea?
Speaker 2: Well, we've been a captain of the ship for quite
Speaker 2: a long while.
Speaker 1: To be fair, I think what it's proving is we
Speaker 1: are not a real country anymore. We haven't been a
Speaker 1: real country for a significant amount of time, and I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think we do actually live in a simulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this can't be real.
Speaker 2: Italians are starting to watch. You know, Italians now make
Speaker 2: jokes about you know, people who have lots of girlfriends.
Speaker 2: You see, who've had more girlfriends in Britain's are prime ministers? Know,
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous, isn't it like worse than the Italians?
Speaker 1: When the Italians are taking the piss that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no coming back from that, really, no, No.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, do you know we've had in Britain We had
Speaker 2: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair all went through and
Speaker 2: did about ten years each and then you got this lot.
Speaker 2: We've had seven prime ministers, seven in four years. Four
Speaker 2: years this fastic. Well, it'd be seven if if Starmer goes,
Speaker 2: which looks like are.
Speaker 3: They talking about potentially getting old head back? Apparently someone
Speaker 3: said that the other day. You know that he's in
Speaker 3: the he's in the running.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they brought Gordon Brown back, which I thought we
Speaker 1: had seen the last of Gordon Brown.
Speaker 2: But no, no, he's like, he's back, he's live.
Speaker 3: Brown does not go down well.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So no, it was I don't know, He's The
Speaker 2: honest answer, Richard, is that I think what might well
Speaker 2: happen is that this show is about an hour long,
Speaker 2: so we may by the time it's finished have a
Speaker 2: new Preme Minister, or by the time it goes live
Speaker 2: to our patrons on Thursday, we may have a new
Speaker 2: Preme Minister, or by Friday kiss start and may still
Speaker 2: be there. I mean it may be that he's actually
Speaker 2: sat there in ten down in the streets saying I've
Speaker 2: just got the curtain stub. That was no way I'm going, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's necessary.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say it's not going to happen to everyone. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: still there, still there in in weeks to come. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I just I just feel because there's not
Speaker 3: really I was looking at the the I was studying
Speaker 3: the form of the runners and riders, and yeah.
Speaker 1: You've been on poly Market placing bet, haven't you.
Speaker 3: What's tempted? I like the look of old Where's Anderson? No,
Speaker 3: not that one Wesley Snipes, No, the other the ship one,
Speaker 3: Wesley Streeting that one. Yeah, but then no one's got
Speaker 3: any confidence in that feller eva have they?
Speaker 2: No one's got any confidence anything. No one's even got
Speaker 2: a confidence the farts can be done without soiling their trousers.
Speaker 3: Somebody has described the Wesley Streeting takeover as shipping your
Speaker 3: pants and then changing your shirt. It it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Seem like badly you do it. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: lying down at the time, then there maybe collateral damage
Speaker 1: and the shirt, the shirt might need another go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's probably got somewhere in it.
Speaker 1: Because for context, we're recording this on Tuesday evening, so
Speaker 1: it's Tuesday, the twelfth of May. It's about quarter to
Speaker 1: eight now for various reasons, So if you're listening to
Speaker 1: this on Thursday or Friday, then yes, you know what's
Speaker 1: already happened, whether it's nothing or whether we're in civil war.
Speaker 1: And because of the nature of podcasts, you may have
Speaker 1: picked this up in twenty twenty seven somewhere and this
Speaker 1: is all history to you. In which case, can somebody
Speaker 1: cover my shift in the salt mine in the gooleg please,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I'm going to be able to
Speaker 1: make it. I've got a I've still got a gammy leg.
Speaker 2: And if anyone is actually going to send me a
Speaker 2: file in a cake, I like carrot carrots my favorite cake,
Speaker 2: So thank you very much, and I'm sure that I
Speaker 2: will fit right in in Pentonville. It'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I'll go for lemon drizzle.
Speaker 2: What with a file? Don't be silly with carrot cakes?
Speaker 3: Round, isn't it? Lemon drizzle you can get in that
Speaker 3: loaf tin, so like you get a decent sized file
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, what you're mistaken is the fact that the
Speaker 2: slight metallic tang that would be left behind by a
Speaker 2: file is canceled out by the carrot. If you have
Speaker 2: lemon drizzle, it would just be nothing but like a
Speaker 2: like sucking on lemons because it's a double tang. You know,
Speaker 2: you've got to think these things through before you put
Speaker 2: your prison cake requests out there.
Speaker 1: Callum, I'm glad you're back this week, Richard, so we
Speaker 1: don't have the utter bollocks that we were talking quite
Speaker 1: in previous episodes where you weren't here.
Speaker 2: Do you know, I have been very good. I always
Speaker 2: listen and Country Slime when it comes out on a Thursday. Well,
Speaker 2: I see, I do you know, because I just like.
Speaker 3: To hear I'm not on it. I quite like listening
Speaker 3: to you too.
Speaker 2: Really, I'm glad that's at least one of one of
Speaker 2: you that does.
Speaker 1: I've never listened back to any one of our episodes.
Speaker 2: That's a lie. Really, I'm sure there must be one
Speaker 2: or two. I mean, have we've done that.
Speaker 1: We're into the eighties.
Speaker 2: He's like, that's I mean, honestly, we've been. This podcast
Speaker 2: has been going longer than the Prime Minister and the
Speaker 2: one before that, and the one before that and the
Speaker 2: one before that. That's pretty cool. Really, you think, yes,
Speaker 2: where have you been me? All right, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: where I am. I've been on my adventures. I have
Speaker 2: been a bit like on my rural Rides. It's fantastic,
Speaker 2: right right, dating app we all need. No there's a
Speaker 2: there's a wonderful author who people might be surprised that
Speaker 2: I like, called William Cobbitt And William COBBITTT was a
Speaker 2: writer in the sort of late late eighteenth early nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 2: and he was a rural writer and a radical MP.
Speaker 2: They say that he was the first literally lefty MP
Speaker 2: that we had, and he looked after the rural paw
Speaker 2: and stood up for their rights and whatnot. And he
Speaker 2: did this book called Rural Rides where he basically went
Speaker 2: around largely the south of England and commenting upon what
Speaker 2: he saw. And I'm sort of doing that at the moment,
Speaker 2: but I'm up at the moment up north. So I
Speaker 2: am currently researching for my next book. And earlier in
Speaker 2: the week I was looking at read beds, which were fantastic.
Speaker 2: So I was looking at read cutter and how reed
Speaker 2: beds are managed, and bittens and cranes and marsh harriers
Speaker 2: and bearded tits and all sorts of fantastic things at
Speaker 2: RSPB Lake and heath. And now I am sad looking
Speaker 2: out at the beautiful scenery of the And today I
Speaker 2: have been giving dry stone with a lovely chap here
Speaker 2: who owns an estate, who was showing me how to
Speaker 2: repair a dry stone wall. So I've got my hands
Speaker 2: dirty and it's sort of a bit like hedge laying,
Speaker 2: but with stone and no bill hooks or chainsaws. So
Speaker 2: I've been finding out things I knew nothing about and
Speaker 2: I now do know about them.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me is that what's the skill set
Speaker 3: needed for? Is it technique? Is it broad strength?
Speaker 1: VI?
Speaker 3: Is it material knowledge?
Speaker 2: What's the fascinating making? Right? Okay? So the dry stone
Speaker 2: wall is obviously it depends upon the stone that's local.
Speaker 2: So I've been between two dales and where I am
Speaker 2: at the moment there is limestone and there is also
Speaker 2: some slightly frangible sort of sandstone, and it depends what
Speaker 2: the stone is like in that local area. Because of
Speaker 2: course they didn't lug all these stones from down the
Speaker 2: bottom up to the top. They used a stone. Now,
Speaker 2: the stone walls there were no because okay, here's hold
Speaker 2: the front page, climate change denial time. It used to
Speaker 2: be a lot warmer here right in the Dales. So
Speaker 2: therefore a lot of the uplands weren't actually all covered
Speaker 2: in trees. They may have been at some point, but
Speaker 2: they were actually arable land. And so to make arable
Speaker 2: land work you have to be stone it. So they'd
Speaker 2: moved the stones out of this field so they could
Speaker 2: grow crops as well as Gray's livestock here, but to
Speaker 2: graze crops. So they moved the stones, and they thought,
Speaker 2: what's a good way of going and fencing in this livestock.
Speaker 2: You aren't going to grow hedges up here because it's
Speaker 2: too high. So what did they do. They used all
Speaker 2: those stones that they pulled out to the ground to
Speaker 2: start building dry stone walls. So I was stood today
Speaker 2: next to a Bronze age dry stone wall, which this
Speaker 2: one i'd actually tumbled down, But there's miles of them,
Speaker 2: and on this farm that I'm on, there's eighty miles
Speaker 2: eight zero miles of dry stone wall. And basically, if
Speaker 2: you don't repair a dry stone wall pretty damn quick,
Speaker 2: they start tumbling down very quickly. Then you've got a
Speaker 2: major job to do. And there are very big shortage
Speaker 2: of dry stone wallers. Most of the farmers do their
Speaker 2: own repairs, but you only learn from your father. So
Speaker 2: if you lose a generation out of farming they decide
Speaker 2: that they want to go into the game or something
Speaker 2: like that, the skill set dies. So there's all these
Speaker 2: dry stone walls and there's such an important part of
Speaker 2: this landscape, both you know, physically, historically, ecologically, and also
Speaker 2: of tourism. People just look at them. And I went
Speaker 2: into a tea shop today and twenty one different postcards
Speaker 2: on the wall, eighteen of those twenty one of all
Speaker 2: sort of showing dry stone walls. Yeh, get this, Richard?
Speaker 2: So I know that in Wales, yes, I get this.
Speaker 2: I know in Wales that the hedging grant is slightly
Speaker 2: lower than it is in England. Right, but get this,
Speaker 2: how much do you think that DEFRA will pay you
Speaker 2: to repair a dry stone wall in England. What do
Speaker 2: you how much do you think do you think of
Speaker 2: per meter per meter?
Speaker 1: Yeah, twelve pounds eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Callum, callum. How much do you think that a dry
Speaker 2: stone will great big lumps of stone that you've got
Speaker 2: to go and try and put back up a cultural
Speaker 2: and historical and ecological icon of the Dales? How much.
Speaker 3: The tiles on my floor cost? Sixty pounds per square meter?
Speaker 2: Delay? Yeah, that's good, that's good. That's good metric.
Speaker 3: That's my kitchen floor. So I'm going to say what
Speaker 3: he should be worth. It's probably one hundred pounds a
Speaker 3: square meter. Bear in mind that it's not as easy
Speaker 3: as putting some tile adhesive and slapping a tile on
Speaker 3: the top. So final answer, one hundred pounds.
Speaker 2: Okay. Amy has come in to the chat and she
Speaker 2: has said six pounds forty nine, which is the SFI price.
Speaker 2: So six pounds forty nine per meter bearing them on
Speaker 2: the head is thirteen pounds fifty two. But if you're
Speaker 2: still doing it and you're actually stuck in a higher
Speaker 2: level stewardship grant, it's thirty pence thirty p that's yes,
Speaker 2: thirty p per meter is what his Majesty's government think
Speaker 2: it's worth for someone as highly skilled as a waller
Speaker 2: to go and pay them via that thirty p.
Speaker 1: How many minutes is that on minimum wage?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, here's an interesting thing to do. We timed it,
Speaker 2: so we repaired a bit of wall which was about
Speaker 2: two meters wide. Sixty p's worth took skilled waller an hour.
Speaker 2: So there we go. That's that's how much the state
Speaker 2: values the uplands thirty p. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Is there not some kind of lawsuit that we can
Speaker 3: all get involved in where we take whoever this is
Speaker 3: to court for slave labor?
Speaker 2: We just want to go and take them out. So well,
Speaker 2: obviously the farmers are having to pay out their own pocket.
Speaker 2: And it's one of the classic things that I am
Speaker 2: seeing in the research for this book is I'm looking
Speaker 2: at all these amazing skilled people who create incredible habitats
Speaker 2: and basically they're just ignored because they're just scum as
Speaker 2: far as politicians are concerned. And it's an eye opener
Speaker 2: coming here, just as much as it was an eye
Speaker 2: opener going to read beds, and I'm sure it will
Speaker 2: be an eye opener and countless of these things. So
Speaker 2: I'm very lucky to be doing what I'm doing at
Speaker 2: the moment, because I'm meeting lovely people who have highly skilled,
Speaker 2: very practical and they just wander around shaking their heads
Speaker 2: going oh yeah, but shit really listens it. But they're
Speaker 2: just quite pragmatic that their their lives are treated as
Speaker 2: thirty p a meter.
Speaker 1: It's this weird thing about the uplands of particularly. Just
Speaker 1: take England on its own. You draw a line that
Speaker 1: comes across from like Blackpool and just sort of skirts
Speaker 1: the top of Manchester and goes across to up a
Speaker 1: bit and maybe past York and to the coast there.
Speaker 1: Almost everything north of there is upland farming. Isn't every
Speaker 1: rural bit of it is upland farming. So it's the
Speaker 1: top bit of the weather map. It's just ignored entirely
Speaker 1: in terms. Because there was a thing recently for looking
Speaker 1: at upland farms that the DEFRA site won't take the
Speaker 1: calculations for the acreage of shared or tenanted upland grazing.
Speaker 2: No, correct, it won't.
Speaker 1: Take that huge acreage because it just says, oh you
Speaker 1: must be basically, or the Duke of Westminster if your
Speaker 1: graze on the open fell.
Speaker 2: It's a very bizarre way to run a country because
Speaker 2: I mean, but you're right, it's only when you come
Speaker 2: up here that you realize of what are forgotten but
Speaker 2: also thoroughly bullied part of Britain. It is because everyone
Speaker 2: wants a piece of the uplands. They all think that
Speaker 2: they know best, They all think that they and that
Speaker 2: they will say all sorts of things. I mean the
Speaker 2: thing that the amount of wildlife I've seen up here
Speaker 2: is phenomenal. I mean, you want curlews, that's they're up
Speaker 2: they're here. You know, they're literally getting mobbed by curlies.
Speaker 2: You want peewits, Yeah, that's where pee wits are. You
Speaker 2: want wheat tears, You want red grouse, you want black grouse,
Speaker 2: you want birds prey, They're all here. I mean that literally,
Speaker 2: the place is buzzing. You know, you went up, the
Speaker 2: pair of you, up to to to the more to
Speaker 2: watch the black grouse leg. You know what it's like
Speaker 2: up there.
Speaker 3: No shortage of wildlife up there.
Speaker 2: No which And you then go and start asking yourself
Speaker 2: what is it?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: What what have they got? And then you twig. Only
Speaker 2: when you come up here you go, oh I get it.
Speaker 2: No one lives here. So what you're going to do
Speaker 2: is you're going to go and bully them. And because
Speaker 2: quite often very wealthy men own the land but everyone
Speaker 2: else is working, you're going to try and hurt the
Speaker 2: wealthy men by ruining the lives of all these working
Speaker 2: class people. I see right, Okay, yes, that's how it works.
Speaker 2: In great well done.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to put together myn ex scribehound article. And
Speaker 1: so you know, you're wrestling with a sort of a
Speaker 1: how do I word this? And it's not a left
Speaker 1: versus right thing? Politics isn't that anymore. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of particularly this campaigning type of politics. You can split
Speaker 1: it down into at least one side of it is
Speaker 1: that type of person, the sort of person who would say,
Speaker 1: you know that all the uplands are somehow chemicals soaked wastelands.
Speaker 1: They're the sort of person who looks at every argument
Speaker 1: and says, okay, on this argument, does one side of
Speaker 1: the argument have more power in my perception of the
Speaker 1: world than the other? If so, then the person with
Speaker 1: more power must be evil. Yeah, And that's that's everything
Speaker 1: in their life comes down to. That is, does one
Speaker 1: person have more power than the other on this, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: the person I perceive to have less power is always
Speaker 1: in the right no matter what. That's kind of how
Speaker 1: a lot of this discourse goes. And you look at
Speaker 1: that and go, oh, it's bat shit. Oh right, I
Speaker 1: can't work with that because you can't convince somebody out
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: No, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: And the Uplands bit is really because you're coming. You're
Speaker 1: coming here, I am, and I'm introducing you to some
Speaker 1: of my my yocal friends who are both listening to
Speaker 1: this I think, so hopefully recognize yourselves.
Speaker 2: Be gentle with me.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take you as well to an
Speaker 1: area of outstanding naturally national beauty, or rather no natural beauty,
Speaker 1: not national beauty, now a national landscape. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to take you to the car park of one of those,
Speaker 1: because it's high on upland and it used to be
Speaker 1: sheep farming. It used to be shooting at one point
Speaker 1: as well, and now it's there for recreation. And we're
Speaker 1: going to sit upon the hillside and get covered in
Speaker 1: ticks and sit there with thermal imaging and not see
Speaker 1: anything apart from mountain bikers and dogs.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the only wildlife we'll see over huge acreages.
Speaker 3: Is that because just because of people.
Speaker 1: People, because the land juice has changed to recreation is
Speaker 1: the primary use for it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to just chat myself straight into a similar
Speaker 3: observation and it's going to divert wildly into into what
Speaker 3: I want to say.
Speaker 2: Now for.
Speaker 1: Good, let's make this a calum show.
Speaker 3: I took the hicic thermal out the other day and
Speaker 3: I saw two foxes and three cubs in a den
Speaker 3: down the back of someone's garden. So this is quite
Speaker 3: a nice little area. But they grazed horses on there.
Speaker 3: They've got lots of gypsy horses and there's now there's
Speaker 3: lots of them. They're they're tethered up and they get
Speaker 3: them and they move them every so often. And there's
Speaker 3: lots of horses on there. And there's there's some wildlife.
Speaker 3: The pond of which I spoke about probably a couple
Speaker 3: of episodes Ago offers a great habitat for wildlife and
Speaker 3: an old resident goose somewhere. He had a Pretto loves
Speaker 3: resident Geeze. He had a Doris somewhere, and they had
Speaker 3: three three goslins on the pond and not about three
Speaker 3: nights ago, I come out, had the hick fermal and
Speaker 3: I watched three of the fox cubs playing and two
Speaker 3: foxes and then on the opposite side of the field
Speaker 3: another fire, which I assume I don't really know much
Speaker 3: about the fox patterns, but like I guess the male
Speaker 3: probably goes out and has a little hunt around while
Speaker 3: the cubs and male.
Speaker 2: Has nothing to do with the rearing of cubs really,
Speaker 2: so that no, he's coming around trying to mate with
Speaker 2: the vixen because she comes into season more or less
Speaker 2: after she's.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid the animals a farthing Wood was not a documentary.
Speaker 2: No, they are absent tee fathers.
Speaker 1: Yes, but it's difficult to spot that just from a
Speaker 1: simple observation though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there was there was another fox, or there
Speaker 3: was two foxes, I assume.
Speaker 2: He was trying to go and mate with the with
Speaker 2: the vixen who is feeding those.
Speaker 3: Cubs, right, Yeah, so I'm observing so in the space
Speaker 3: of what three hundred meters a large number of foxes.
Speaker 3: We've got like seven foxes in three hundred meters, which
Speaker 3: is quite a lot. And then I come I come
Speaker 3: along the next day and this is only a small
Speaker 3: field as well, come along the next day and all
Speaker 3: the goslings are now gone. They've taken all three of them.
Speaker 3: So we get lovely one lot of wildlife and the
Speaker 3: you don't know, it's the fox that took them. Could
Speaker 3: have been any number of things, but you get one.
Speaker 3: One crack at the whip and that's it. It's gone.
Speaker 3: And as a result you go there, you see deer
Speaker 3: that end up coming out of the wood because they've
Speaker 3: got nothing to feed on in the wood into into
Speaker 3: the field and they graze on the field. And then
Speaker 3: you've got the apex predator that is the fox, and
Speaker 3: then not a lot else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, probably some probably some jack doors, a few
Speaker 2: cruise map pis absolutely loads.
Speaker 3: To jack doors and crash.
Speaker 1: Miso predators.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's utterly pants, isn't it utterly pants?
Speaker 1: This is such the problem we have in the UK
Speaker 1: that we don't have the big apex predators. And no,
Speaker 1: that is not an endorsement of releasing wolves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get some links in there.
Speaker 1: Although I do think releasing wolves into the center of
Speaker 1: London might be quite good fun. We have all the
Speaker 1: sort of the middling predators which are generalists and they'll
Speaker 1: eat everything and when they get off one species or
Speaker 1: go on to another, which means they quite like being
Speaker 1: around humans because we leave a lot of waste behind
Speaker 1: and create a lot of food opportunities, and they can
Speaker 1: sustain numbers on anything. The problem is that anything is
Speaker 1: all of our songbirds, all of our red listed species,
Speaker 1: or everything that's smaller than them. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the problems of there's not good wildlife area and
Speaker 1: bad wildlife area. It's you will have wildlife in most places.
Speaker 1: It's just what do you want? What do we want
Speaker 1: for the country, what do we want to live here?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that question is always answered by management,
Speaker 1: and management involves people out there doing things which is
Speaker 1: often not well liked because it's not nature being left alone.
Speaker 2: Holy And I think one of the interesting things that
Speaker 2: I discovered when I was doing my bitten research and
Speaker 2: then to read BEDS is that I went to one
Speaker 2: supposedly exemplary one of the oldest nature reserves in the
Speaker 2: southern half of Britain, and it was devoid of many
Speaker 2: of the red listed species, and because of the way
Speaker 2: they managed it in a rewilding model, it was devoid. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: an RSPB similar habitat after the same species was hooching
Speaker 2: with these red listed species, I mean the reddest of
Speaker 2: red listed species, and when it comes to wetland birds,
Speaker 2: and that's because they did exactly a three legged stool
Speaker 2: form of management, i e. That they built superb habitat,
Speaker 2: they had exemplary food sources, and as they say, if
Speaker 2: you'd want a freedom of information request, you can see
Speaker 2: all their predator control records. Is they control foxes, which
Speaker 2: are the main predator for these two red listed species.
Speaker 2: You can mitigate against it because they keep this wetland wet,
Speaker 2: but they can still get there. And in the case
Speaker 2: of the crane, which they've got, which they didn't have
Speaker 2: to reintroduce, they built the habitat and the crane came.
Speaker 2: But they have a gestation period of three months for
Speaker 2: their eggs. Three months. That's ridiculously long for a bird.
Speaker 2: And they laid two eggs and usually only one will hatch.
Speaker 2: So therefore, if you have a fox pre date one
Speaker 2: crane nest, you've basically stopped that productivity for an entire year.
Speaker 2: So therefore the RSPB assessed it, and they probably assessed
Speaker 2: it far more than possibly we would do. But they
Speaker 2: have to because of the situation. Now they don't hide
Speaker 2: that they do this, but they equally so don't overly
Speaker 2: advertise it. And I think that's a shame because they
Speaker 2: have got the wildlife. You know, people slag off the
Speaker 2: RSPB showing me the birds. Okay, go to Lake and
Speaker 2: heath Fen and you will see them. It's remarkable. But
Speaker 2: they're got them because they have done the three legged stool.
Speaker 2: So I mean, hats off to the RSPB. They have
Speaker 2: done something. Just a shame that they're not actually quite
Speaker 2: ballsy enough at their head office level to say this
Speaker 2: is how we succeeded here because they slightly hide one
Speaker 2: leg of the stool, but they do it, and you know,
Speaker 2: the proof of the pudding is there for all to see.
Speaker 2: And if you want to see a pristine wetland and
Speaker 2: managed to perfection, Lake and Heathen is a place to go.
Speaker 3: These RAF bases seem to be absolutely stuff with wildlife.
Speaker 2: Curlews yeah everywhere if you want. I was approached actually
Speaker 2: about ten years ago by someone to do a curlew
Speaker 2: reintroduction project at Fleet Barn, I think, and they were
Speaker 2: getting because basically get this, you know, the curlew is
Speaker 2: an endangered threatened species. Well, the problem is curlews love
Speaker 2: the great big grassy areas by airports and raf places. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well the problem is a curlew's a pretty big bird
Speaker 2: and jets and big birds do not go very well together,
Speaker 2: so it's quite a sizeable airport in the south east
Speaker 2: of England was getting rid of curlews because they constituted
Speaker 2: a danger to life because they didn't want them nesting there.
Speaker 2: And someone said, would you go and try a curly
Speaker 2: you restarting project at flea Bomb and then we assessed him.
Speaker 2: We thought, no, it's not actually going to fit into
Speaker 2: the plan. But yeah, I mean, you know, so when
Speaker 2: you look at species reintroductions and stuff like that or
Speaker 2: recovery projects, is that you know. I'm surely everybody who
Speaker 2: probably is jumping on their flight to lands a rotty
Speaker 2: doesn't realize that you're doing so at the expense of
Speaker 2: the poor old curlews had his egg salted because you
Speaker 2: might possibly fly into the air bus and go and
Speaker 2: cause it to crash down in a fiery ball of flame.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who his full time job, he
Speaker 1: works for the mod and he basically spends a third
Speaker 1: of a day at one airfield, a third of a
Speaker 1: day at another airfield, and just moves between this little
Speaker 1: triangle of airfield. Wouldn't say where it is, but anyone
Speaker 1: who knows where the three airfields are close to each other.
Speaker 1: And his whole job is either to shoot things away
Speaker 1: and if they don't shoo away, to shoot them. And
Speaker 1: that's and that is you know, that is at the
Speaker 1: behest of the government, and it's for public, so it's
Speaker 1: actually a matter of national resilience and defense.
Speaker 3: They have something similar with with deer as well. They
Speaker 3: have like a if there's like a deer near a
Speaker 3: motorway that that looks like it could cause an accident,
Speaker 3: they send.
Speaker 1: Looks a bit shifty a dispatch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also I met a guy who worked for
Speaker 3: he works on behalf of Woman, I think it was,
Speaker 3: and his job was not only to shoot things that
Speaker 3: could potentially escape, but he had high calibers so he
Speaker 3: could take a rhino out should the eventuality happen.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's interesting, I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know somebody who has got a very exotic caliber,
Speaker 1: the sort of thing. It's one of those guns that
Speaker 1: looks like a shotgun, but it's actually a rifle. It's
Speaker 1: just a double barreled rifle because you really hope you
Speaker 1: don't need the second barrel, and he has that because
Speaker 1: there are a bison on the estate. And if a
Speaker 1: bison gets out, the first call is to him, not
Speaker 1: to the farm manager or anything else like that. It's
Speaker 1: X person down there to try and take out this
Speaker 1: bison that's got a head the size of a fridge.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's never happened, but just imagine that situation.
Speaker 3: You know that you could drive round with rhinos at
Speaker 3: the Woburn Safari Park thing. You can drive round, but
Speaker 3: like if one escaped to.
Speaker 1: This our day out, we should do it.
Speaker 2: It's good shooting. I'm shooting tiger whereabouts.
Speaker 3: Well I'm not sure you're allowed to shoot them, but
Speaker 3: I've just been informed by Eyes in the Sky Artie Pie,
Speaker 3: and elephant has escaped from Chester Zoo. What has escaped?
Speaker 3: Not today, but in a period of time, once upon
Speaker 3: a time an elephant scap.
Speaker 1: It's under the bypass is where they shot it. They
Speaker 1: buried it there.
Speaker 2: I believe there is.
Speaker 1: I believe, come on, Richard, keep power through.
Speaker 2: I believe that there is currently on the run a
Speaker 2: nine month old female cappy bara that called Samba.
Speaker 3: I saw the memes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cappy Barra on the run, running.
Speaker 2: Numerous sightings near the river, itching and surrounding villages. She
Speaker 2: remains at large with searches involving thermal drones, specialist dog units,
Speaker 2: and food baited traps. Now, I think it's quite an
Speaker 2: interesting thing. So they put all this resource into trying
Speaker 2: to recap a samba, the kappy bara, but Samba is called. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's going to be quite interesting actually because after the
Speaker 2: King's speech apparently it's going to be released that in
Speaker 2: the king speech, and I don't know how he's going
Speaker 2: to keep a straight face doing this.
Speaker 3: But Labor, if whoever the prime minister at the time
Speaker 3: is Samba is going to be our new prime minister.
Speaker 2: Kappy Barra would probably make a better fist, make a
Speaker 2: better fist of it, you know than Starmer.
Speaker 1: I mean, were chilled out.
Speaker 2: They don't even have to go and change any initials,
Speaker 2: do they. You know, it's brilliant. But I'm just thinking
Speaker 2: they have used dogs to try and track Samba, which
Speaker 2: after the King's speech will soon be illegal because that
Speaker 2: is using a dog or dogs to track the scent
Speaker 2: of a live animal. So therefore, under the new legislation
Speaker 2: they want to bring in for trial hunting, then Samba
Speaker 2: will stay free forever courtesy of labor. So there you go.
Speaker 2: These things have consequences. Things have consequences.
Speaker 1: Yes, as we were discussing weeks ago when we were
Speaker 1: in that little WhatsApp group of journalists talking about this,
Speaker 1: one of the things that might fall afoul of this
Speaker 1: is search and rescue dogs and human remain detection dogs. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you want, if you want to detect train
Speaker 1: a dog to search for human remains, well, you know
Speaker 1: they use these for like earthquakes and things like that,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, body recovery. Basically, it's pretty grim,
Speaker 1: but it is a thing that has to happen. You
Speaker 1: can't readily get access to decomposing human flesh to train
Speaker 1: the animal on for scent. So the way they do
Speaker 1: it is they use pig carcasses as an analogue of
Speaker 1: human flesh, right, And it's the thing of training dogs
Speaker 1: on animal scent is you have to now have a
Speaker 1: very interesting explanation as to why you're doing that, because
Speaker 1: you're not going to be tracking a live animal. On
Speaker 1: the end, of it. You could be tracking a dead
Speaker 1: animal and these it's already it's definitely a thing for
Speaker 1: deer tracking dogs. That's going to be a big problem
Speaker 1: there because if you're tracking a wounded deer or something
Speaker 1: that's run off from a vehicle incident or something like
Speaker 1: that on the eighth on they or something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's going to have all sorts of unintended consequences that
Speaker 1: we won't find out from for months, years, maybe from
Speaker 1: all of these stupid laws I see.
Speaker 2: So basically, we can no longer go and recover Samba,
Speaker 2: the Kappibara, we can no longer find dead or very
Speaker 2: nearly dead people, and we can't go and track deer
Speaker 2: that have been injured and are lying in pain waiting
Speaker 2: for one of foxes to come and help it across
Speaker 2: back across the road. It's with this, I don't think
Speaker 2: they've thought this through.
Speaker 3: Surely there'll be exemptions.
Speaker 2: Well that would, but you see, then there will be
Speaker 2: protesters who will say they're just going to use this
Speaker 2: as an exemption law. Because currently as it stands on
Speaker 2: Xmore and I think still the Quantox, they still they've
Speaker 2: admitted the fact that the stag hounds are still the
Speaker 2: only way to control the deer there. So therefore, rather
Speaker 2: than using a whole pack, they used two because that's
Speaker 2: within the law. But it's the only way you can
Speaker 2: control the red deer herds there because basically it's open access.
Speaker 2: You know that you have right to roam across xmore
Speaker 2: and the quantox. So therefore they use these hands. So
Speaker 2: that's going to get removed. I mean, I don't quite
Speaker 2: see how they're going to make these exemptions because a
Speaker 2: the people who don't want to see trail hunting anymore
Speaker 2: have always said the trail hunting is just a mask
Speaker 2: for illegal hunting activity. And Secondly, every single exemption that
Speaker 2: you have to make in a piece of legislation requires
Speaker 2: that piece of legislation or that little caveat in there,
Speaker 2: to be individually researched by a bunch of legal people
Speaker 2: to go and put it in to make sure it works.
Speaker 2: So the hunting trail hunting ban, which sounds on paper
Speaker 2: just to be a sort of oh yes, King speech done,
Speaker 2: is actually going to cost millions and pond millions of pounds.
Speaker 2: And then the first time that anyone goes out and
Speaker 2: says I'm going to go and try and track this
Speaker 2: deer because I think I shot it, got shot it,
Speaker 2: I can't find it and get seen, and then they
Speaker 2: have to call them. It's going to cost it's basically
Speaker 2: to stop people chasing a bit of fox piss soaked
Speaker 2: rag about the place is going to cost about one
Speaker 2: aircraft carrier. This is ridiculous, dear, as.
Speaker 1: You can see from the very recent May local elections,
Speaker 1: by the fact the massive landslide of Reform, who you
Speaker 1: know have mixed opinions on this podcast about them, but
Speaker 1: we are a broad political church here. You can see
Speaker 1: from the fact that Reform took that landslide, then Reformer
Speaker 1: clearly the party who were trying to ban trail hunting,
Speaker 1: because that's what the public.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: It's the either way. So it's maybe not as much.
Speaker 1: Maybe all this stuff that is going to cost huge
Speaker 1: amounts of money is only of interest to a few people,
Speaker 1: and there are much more pressing issues that people keep
Speaker 1: wanting to be fixed which are just being completely ignored.
Speaker 1: So maybe we aren't a real country.
Speaker 2: I think you're correct from what you said from the
Speaker 2: opening is we aren't really a real country. And what
Speaker 2: has happened is that people are just throwing dead so
Speaker 2: many dead cats around, which of course we can't trail
Speaker 2: hunt anymore. They're throwing so many dead cats around to
Speaker 2: just try and avoid the public's gaze of the fact
Speaker 2: that we aren't a real country, that it's just all
Speaker 2: falling to bits. I mean, so, perhaps Callum's suggestion that
Speaker 2: Samba the kappy Bara for prime minister, we could start
Speaker 2: that campaign right now, you know, as an interim prime minister.
Speaker 2: Until twenty twenty nine, Britain has voted in a cappy barra.
Speaker 2: At least it would give the Italians genuinely something to
Speaker 2: laugh at, because you want to believe what the English
Speaker 2: and Dunea's time they hear forty in a cappy bar
Speaker 2: don't Is that how Italians speak.
Speaker 3: As I don't think so.
Speaker 2: No, they do in.
Speaker 1: Suffolk with the lettuce versus list trust thing which lasts longer?
Speaker 1: Is this lettuce? Or yeah, so can we do? Which
Speaker 1: lasts longer? Dharma as prime minister or Samba the Kapabara
Speaker 1: out on the run?
Speaker 2: Who's going to be captured? Thrown back in a cage? First?
Speaker 3: Yeah, back on, back, back where they belong. Gordon Brown or.
Speaker 1: Well, Gordon Brown was the sort of the the mid
Speaker 1: season sort of twist in the tail. Wasn't he that
Speaker 1: no one expected him to come back? No, Harriet Harmony, Yes,
Speaker 1: Harriet Harmon has never supported anything terrible in her life.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Anyway, research that yourselves, people, we've had we have had
Speaker 1: a piece from one of our forestry listeners, whether we
Speaker 1: can talk about this so last year and I think
Speaker 1: I think it's the second one they've done, but this
Speaker 1: is the Raal Forestry. So they did their breaking Point survey,
Speaker 1: which is an anonymous survey goes out to people contractors
Speaker 1: working in the forestry industry, and it's basically, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about certain things? How do you feel about
Speaker 1: the way safety is managed in forestry? How do you
Speaker 1: feel about the way that the public perceives you? What
Speaker 1: are the things that are stressing you out? What do
Speaker 1: you feel good about? What do you feel bad about?
Speaker 1: And it's quite an interesting list of questions, and we're
Speaker 1: going to link out to it in the show notes.
Speaker 1: You can go and read it yourself. But it's a
Speaker 1: very very interesting report. So the report came out a
Speaker 1: little while ago, but it's starting to get a bit
Speaker 1: more traction now and I've got some some sort of
Speaker 1: takeaways here because it's the sort of too long, didn't
Speaker 1: read summary of this is things aren't going well in
Speaker 1: the woods with the chainsaw people. And it's not just
Speaker 1: like everything like forestry is basically tree farming and everything's
Speaker 1: a bit rough. It's forestry is really trouble, and particularly
Speaker 1: forestry contractors. It's looks like there's there's progress has been
Speaker 1: made in sort of structure in structuring forestry and making
Speaker 1: it so that there is a better structure for who's
Speaker 1: doing what and where and how how you work with
Speaker 1: a landowner and how you work with the agencies and
Speaker 1: things and stuff like safety and training. And there are
Speaker 1: few unqualified well basically no one unqualified out there now
Speaker 1: should be working. But people are up to date on
Speaker 1: the qualifications and working safely. It's not transforming though, over
Speaker 1: into people feeling better about the industry. And the big
Speaker 1: one is financial insecurity, which I mean neither Richard and
Speaker 1: I really work in forestry, but we get paid by
Speaker 1: the same landowners. And you know, we were talking about
Speaker 1: MPs earlier. I think it would it should be that
Speaker 1: all MPs get paid any you know, whether whether it's
Speaker 1: their salary or whether it's their sort of their stipend
Speaker 1: that they get for various things. They should be paid
Speaker 1: that at the same interval that the Crown Estate pays contractors,
Speaker 1: the same sort of delay between it, because anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever tried to be paid by large landowners, particularly the
Speaker 1: government ones, it can take weeks, months and querying about
Speaker 1: small things or it just gets lost gets lost in there.
Speaker 1: So you've got that. But meanwhile you've got very expensive
Speaker 1: machines that need to keep turning and keep burning fuel
Speaker 1: in order to pay off their monthly fee. Because often
Speaker 1: again a bit like farming, these huge machines are at
Speaker 1: least or you're paying them, you're paying them down. You've
Speaker 1: got to pay out thousands and thousands of pounds whether
Speaker 1: it leaves the yard or not. So you've got to
Speaker 1: keep working, but you've got to get the money back
Speaker 1: in for the work you were doing, and you can't
Speaker 1: be chasing the money. So financial insecurity is a big one,
Speaker 1: because also you've got to pay the people working on
Speaker 1: the ground, and the stress trickles downwards just that the
Speaker 1: money should. And mental health strain is another one as well,
Speaker 1: because that's a combination of you doing something dangerous in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, you're not sure why you're doing
Speaker 1: it because the country doesn't seem to appreciate it, the
Speaker 1: public doesn't seem to appreciate it, and you're working for
Speaker 1: somebody who maybe is focused on other things and that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the big things from this.
Speaker 3: We've got that forestry episode, which gives you a pretty
Speaker 3: good picture of what it's like to be what the
Speaker 3: public perception is of forestry and what the realities of
Speaker 3: actually doing forestry is like. So that will give you
Speaker 3: a much better picture of if you go back and
Speaker 3: listen to that one, much better a picture of where
Speaker 3: forestry people are at, so you can understand and it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's certain jobs that that you do it because you
Speaker 3: love it. But it shouldn't be as hard as it is.
Speaker 3: It shouldn't be, you know, there should be you should
Speaker 3: pay people like everybody else gets paid, just because it
Speaker 3: has to go through one place and go for another.
Speaker 3: And the structures, yeah, odd shouldn't mean that they have
Speaker 3: to have cash flow issues and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 3: we know what it's like to be self employed and
Speaker 3: stress about stress, stress about everything. As as all of
Speaker 3: us are.
Speaker 1: Sent four emails today saying could you pretty please pay
Speaker 1: that invoice for all that work idea that you're ignoring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my French robot always helped me do that.
Speaker 2: Today, I think one of the biggest challenges that as well,
Speaker 2: that is slightly under the radar, is that and we
Speaker 2: can see this from our many forestry people who are
Speaker 2: patrons of country Slide and you see them on if
Speaker 2: they post something on x or they post something on
Speaker 2: God Forbid Blue Sky, which some of them, the masochists
Speaker 2: go on. Is that just this sheer amount of abuse
Speaker 2: that they get just for doing their job, because the
Speaker 2: default setting of people who most people who give it
Speaker 2: a toss about woods is that the people who give
Speaker 2: a toss about woods think that the moment you start
Speaker 2: a chainsaw, it's the sort of it's essentially abuse. So
Speaker 2: therefore they're getting a load of shit from people who
Speaker 2: know nothing about what they're doing, the why, the positives,
Speaker 2: and so therefore not only they have indigunza this is
Speaker 2: what I do, but if they go and show their
Speaker 2: work off, people are basically saying, well, that's awful. You're
Speaker 2: worse than pole pot for doing that. So it compounds
Speaker 2: all of the real world issues by the time that
Speaker 2: social media, if you do it right, is reaching out
Speaker 2: and saying I'm doing this, what do you think of this?
Speaker 2: Do you like it? And you know, if you were
Speaker 2: I don't know, a sculptor, you're going to put something out.
Speaker 2: Most people aren't so callous unless you're sort of Dianamal
Speaker 2: troll to go and say that's crap. It looks nothing
Speaker 2: like a penguin. I don't know, I'm just the first
Speaker 2: bird that sprung to mind. But if you go and
Speaker 2: cut a tree down, you get forty three supposed experts
Speaker 2: telling you're either doing it wrong or saying that your hitler. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty shit, really, isn't it?
Speaker 1: And what we see it's weirdly. It's if we were
Speaker 1: a better podcast would have planned this out to be
Speaker 1: circular in our thoughts, but no, we're not. It just
Speaker 1: happens randomly. It's this thing of people see a space
Speaker 1: and they expect it to do all of the things
Speaker 1: at the same time, and it can't because one of
Speaker 1: those things counteracts the other. So plantations, plantation, woodland, deer
Speaker 1: go through it, foxes love it. You get some stuff
Speaker 1: in the canopy, but it's not the same as say
Speaker 1: one of the woodlands the edge of Flea Barn or
Speaker 1: somewhere on Wick and Vineyard or something. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the woodlands there has been managed for centuries. It's
Speaker 1: a tree bank. It's a place you've put some trees down.
Speaker 1: They've turned it into big woody bits, and then you'll
Speaker 1: go through and you can cut them down and make
Speaker 1: things from those big woody bits. After twenty thirty forty
Speaker 1: to fifty years. It was always intended to be cut down.
Speaker 1: It wasn't intended as a wildlife reserve. But you can
Speaker 1: have it somewhere else that could be that. But then
Speaker 1: you can't make that somewhere that you go for you
Speaker 1: turn into a paintball center or a mountain pipe place,
Speaker 1: or make it the busiest woodland just outside of the
Speaker 1: M twenty five, because it won't be great for wildlife.
Speaker 1: Then you've got to have somewhere for the people, somewhere
Speaker 1: to do the industry bit and somewhere to have wildlife.
Speaker 1: And if it's a bit of an overlap, fine. This
Speaker 1: is the problem with how people see woodlands though they
Speaker 1: see them as these places where you should do everything.
Speaker 1: And I kind of blame the early twentieth century Aamion JRR.
Speaker 1: Tolkien sort of view of woodlands. Woodland, yea forest is
Speaker 1: this big mysterious wilds and have adventures and things. Yes,
Speaker 1: but we cut all of those down for World War
Speaker 1: One to make pit props and stuff and duckboards for
Speaker 1: the trenches. So that's why the Forestry Commission was formed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties. The first of the Forestry Commission planted,
Speaker 1: was not harvested until the nineteen thirties. That was nineteen
Speaker 1: forties fifties, and then they planted it again, and then
Speaker 1: that was harvested in the seventies and eighties, and then
Speaker 1: a lot of it was sold off and that's where
Speaker 1: we are now. But all all of those things were
Speaker 1: planted and then sat and harvested to make things from
Speaker 1: And we've just was it yesterday day before in nationalized
Speaker 1: British steel, because it is now finally realized that actually
Speaker 1: making raw materials in your own place is actually quite
Speaker 1: a good idea rather than relying on maybe importing it
Speaker 1: from somebody you may or may not be at war
Speaker 1: within the future. Let's through that were trees.
Speaker 2: The fascinating thing with with Betford Forest, you know that
Speaker 2: was planted on the poorest land that they could find.
Speaker 2: And so Thetford Forest. Now people would be thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: isn't this wonderful, But like I say, it was planted
Speaker 2: as a working wood forestry because it was there to
Speaker 2: replace those the timber that we had used in the
Speaker 2: First World War. And they planted it in the Brecks
Speaker 2: because it was cheap. It was the cheapest land and
Speaker 2: it actually belonged to a top and it belonged to
Speaker 2: an impoverished off and they said, we're going to take
Speaker 2: this off you and whether you like it or not,
Speaker 2: you are going to have Thetford Forest place there. And
Speaker 2: the gray partridge went, this is shit. And so the
Speaker 2: largest head of gray partridge in the UK was there
Speaker 2: in the Brex. It was perfect for them because you
Speaker 2: couldn't farm it as such. It was heath, it was
Speaker 2: wild heath, and I went, I was going to play
Speaker 2: on that. And I saw the same repeating pattern here.
Speaker 2: I looked out over the Dales today and I keep
Speaker 2: hearing all these people saying, we've got plant trees all
Speaker 2: over there because they have this misty eyed vision of
Speaker 2: the wild, wild wood. And I stood today alongside a
Speaker 2: bronze age stone wall, right and that was part of
Speaker 2: this absolute spider's web of stone walls is around here,
Speaker 2: which indicates that this place in the Dales here has
Speaker 2: been farmed in much the same way as it is
Speaker 2: still farmed now since neolithic times. Right, And somebody has
Speaker 2: gone because we, like we've read Winnie the Pooh, we
Speaker 2: want to have the wildwood there. And so you're going
Speaker 2: completely pissing all over four thousand years of human history
Speaker 2: and evolution because some dickhead thought that the fricking animals
Speaker 2: of farthing Wood, Winnie the Pooh and other assorted children's
Speaker 2: books written at the turn of the twentieth century were
Speaker 2: a how to guide to manage the landscape. It's to
Speaker 2: forget what human beings are. We are, yes, we are interventionists,
Speaker 2: but the woodsman is a creator as much as a destroyer,
Speaker 2: and certainly a curator of places. I feel sorry for
Speaker 2: those guys because I think that people are very quick
Speaker 2: to go and say, oh, you trans have you got
Speaker 2: mental health challenges because of all the nasty people being
Speaker 2: nasty to you. Let's go and just start a political
Speaker 2: party called the Greens, and we're going to look after you.
Speaker 2: And you go, what you're a forester and you've got
Speaker 2: mental health problems because everyone's a wanker to you on
Speaker 2: Twitter and no one pays you one time, and your
Speaker 2: kit's really expensive. You can't get everything because we're the
Speaker 2: Green Party.
Speaker 1: It's shit.
Speaker 2: Tree, yeah, tree murdering bastard. You get all you deserve.
Speaker 2: Really weird, isn't it. It is?
Speaker 1: And we're not even it's not even an eco left
Speaker 1: versus sort of sensible working man on the land thing.
Speaker 1: You even the right or the old Right or the
Speaker 1: New Right or whatever they frig the cord now they
Speaker 1: don't seem to really understand that as well. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is my argument for it. This is a national defense,
Speaker 1: a national resilience issue, just like food, just like energy,
Speaker 1: just like security of borders, just like all of these
Speaker 1: other things. Timber is really useful. You can take it
Speaker 1: as a raw material, store it for a long time,
Speaker 1: stack it really high, it just sits there, and then
Speaker 1: when you need to make it into stuff, you can
Speaker 1: turn it into useful products really really quickly, and make
Speaker 1: stuff from it really quickly, temporary, move it around the country.
Speaker 1: It's great. We don't have enough saw mills, we don't
Speaker 1: have enough small saw mills certainly that used to handle
Speaker 1: all this stuff, so we need more of those. It's
Speaker 1: a bit like the Avatar issue for livestock farming and
Speaker 1: the saw mills that we do have, the really big processors.
Speaker 1: They are the equivalent of the supermarkets in farming. They
Speaker 1: have got used to this global market of stuff and
Speaker 1: the most important thing for them is can they supply
Speaker 1: the end product to the consumer as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: in which case they don't care where it comes from.
Speaker 1: They don't care whether it comes from Canada, it comes
Speaker 1: from Scandinavia, comes from China, It doesn't really matter. As
Speaker 1: long as they can get the stuff in and use it,
Speaker 1: then they don't care whether it's actually coming from a
Speaker 1: local place, which is why you need a higher level
Speaker 1: body to say, Okay, strategically, what are we doing with timber?
Speaker 1: Do we have enough people working in this industry all
Speaker 1: of this stuff? So that's yeah, that's my polemic, that's
Speaker 1: my argument. But go and read this breaking point survey.
Speaker 1: It's it's very interesting. It's not the most cheerful.
Speaker 2: Ready, no, and show a bit of love, or better still,
Speaker 2: just show a bit of understanding. You know, I think
Speaker 2: that some of the guys tried to do this sort
Speaker 2: of positive forestry then on social media, which was a
Speaker 2: noble effort, but I doubt that many people will actually
Speaker 2: look at it positively because they if they inhabit the
Speaker 2: worlds of social media, most of them have already made
Speaker 2: up their minds that they are negative about forestry, and
Speaker 2: you won't change my mind. It's an entrenched view point,
Speaker 2: like an entrenched viewpoint about many. I wrote a piece
Speaker 2: for the Critic that came out last week started this month,
Speaker 2: and I was asking the question, you know, our reform
Speaker 2: actually the New Green Party because they and it was
Speaker 2: it wasn't a puff piece for the Reform UK Party.
Speaker 2: What it was was asking the question is that if
Speaker 2: you support farming and you buy the point that if
Speaker 2: you make farming in the black, then the countryside can
Speaker 2: be green because it's got trickled down. And I thought
Speaker 2: that's quite good. And the editor, who is a very
Speaker 2: intelligent man, far more intelligent than us three, he said,
Speaker 2: that's a really balanced thing. He said, it's actually, you know,
Speaker 2: it's food for thought. I put it up there and
Speaker 2: there is these rabid idiots because it had the word reforming.
Speaker 2: I think that's literally what they just did and went, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like white blood cells responding to an infection.
Speaker 2: Just just read things, expand your mind and if you disagree, fine,
Speaker 2: if you disagree, come back with a yeah, a sensible counterpoint.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a It's a good way to
Speaker 1: end this main show. Sadly, our co host Richard.
Speaker 2: Needs to leave. Yes, I'm very sorry for the after show.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's this ball that you're heading to.
Speaker 1: Is it looks quite fancy because the costume choice you
Speaker 1: have here on camera is is bold. I think the
Speaker 1: pink and the line at the same time is I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can put it off. It's the
Speaker 1: Cod Peace challenge really.
Speaker 2: You know, look I saw what Zach Polanski was wearing
Speaker 2: and then said I want a bit of that. So
Speaker 2: you know it's it's.
Speaker 3: Cod Peace, Cod Peace or Cod Price Cod Time high today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Richard is off to his northern version of
Speaker 1: the end scenes of Eyes Wide Shirts. Yes, except involves
Speaker 1: more dry stone walling and maybe a curview, and Callum
Speaker 1: and I go off to the after show.
Speaker 2: Goodbye, everybody, Goodbye.