Speaker 1: How much is a sausage and chip where you are?
Speaker 2: Too much? I took the kids to the chip shop
Speaker 2: the other day and it, honestly, it costs like Liberia's deficit.
Speaker 2: It was insane.
Speaker 1: Thing's too expensive now, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, sausage and batter?
Speaker 2: You buy one? You think I'm never going to financially
Speaker 2: recover from this?
Speaker 3: Now? It's crazy. I couldn't agree more. There is the
Speaker 3: cost of living crisis that Labor kept going on about
Speaker 3: is still alive and well now. And it's funny how
Speaker 3: they've managed to go and shut up about it because
Speaker 3: everything at supermarkets is just expensive and crap, and I
Speaker 3: don't exactly know why, but it is.
Speaker 1: I would argue.
Speaker 2: That it's not it's I mean a sausage and chips.
Speaker 2: You're basically just existing. I mean that's not cost of living.
Speaker 2: You ain't living eating sausage and chips.
Speaker 3: Wow, there you go.
Speaker 1: You see, we'll drive around the country quite a lot
Speaker 1: at the moment for our different work things, so we
Speaker 1: probably all have to frequent service stations. I literally can't
Speaker 1: afford anything in there now. I'd end up brewing up
Speaker 1: coffee with the the battery powered coffee grinder on the
Speaker 1: tailgate of the land Rover in the car park on
Speaker 1: a gas stove instead of going into startup or wherever.
Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah, it's yes. Everything is very expensive and wages,
Speaker 3: to my mind, haven't gone up. I can't suddenly turn
Speaker 3: around and go and charge you know, that much more
Speaker 3: for what I do. It just doesn't doesn't work. No
Speaker 3: one's every Everyone seems to be prepared to charge higher prices,
Speaker 3: and so you're going to have to lump here, but
Speaker 3: they're not prepared to pay higher fees for the services
Speaker 3: that you provide.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the day rates haven't gone up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same, isn't it. No, I'm just going to nip
Speaker 3: off and get a drink a sec and night be back.
Speaker 3: Hold on, hold on, do.
Speaker 1: You think he knows that we're recording? So, dear listener,
Speaker 1: this is what it's like most of the time. You know,
Speaker 1: we we have all of it, We have everything on
Speaker 1: screen in front of him. He knows it's recording. It
Speaker 1: says recording. There's a little counter there that says recording.
Speaker 1: It's flashed down five four three two one when I
Speaker 1: hit record, and here we are. This is this is
Speaker 1: real life. This is real time.
Speaker 2: What do you think he drinks? What's a summer quencher
Speaker 2: for Richard?
Speaker 1: Nigus laichi juice? I think juice laichi.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a bit out there, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It was going to be exotic, hasn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Do you know what he's done as well? He's put
Speaker 2: his he's put his mouthpiece close to his headphones, so
Speaker 2: all I can hear is myself be repeated back in
Speaker 2: a three second Suffolk delay directly into the microphone.
Speaker 1: Well, this is you know what you sound like now
Speaker 1: in an opulently appointed, hand carved oak extension conservatory thing.
Speaker 1: This is what you sound like.
Speaker 2: Via a microphone that was taken from a pound shop
Speaker 2: bargain bin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Richard, do you know that we're recording?
Speaker 3: Yes? And now I didn't. Sorry, we've been recording minutes.
Speaker 3: It's okay, that's all. That's all staying in. I'm back.
Speaker 3: I've just got myself an elderflower cordial it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're trying to guess what you were drinking. I
Speaker 1: should have had a good go at that, Amy guest.
Speaker 1: Lemon barley water, lemon barley water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see that in. Yeah, he's very old school,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go out and say that you're probably
Speaker 2: not a black currant fan. I think you're more of
Speaker 2: an orange elderflower. Call deal, and you know, the more
Speaker 2: botanical variety.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the right cross to the bank. Guns on
Speaker 1: pegs don't have this problem. They seem to be just
Speaker 1: polished all the way through Farmers Weekly.
Speaker 3: Why no, because they pre record all the stuff Farmers Weekly.
Speaker 3: It's all very slickly edited together. You know, there's and
Speaker 3: there's all recorded in chunks and guns on pegs they
Speaker 3: just sworn about in London and sort of where they've
Speaker 3: got high internet speeds. That's what I heard anyway, you know,
Speaker 3: basically they're just sat in some Kensington drinking den.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I heard that they were just entirely AI generated. I
Speaker 1: think Avian is an entirely AI generated model of a
Speaker 1: human being.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not real, it's
Speaker 3: not legit. It's not like us, you know, wats and all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, callum, have you had any VEG related disasters recently?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as of my last week's attempt at going
Speaker 2: to a shoot and then breaking down and having a
Speaker 2: what when what was it.
Speaker 1: That was a mechanical breakdown, not an emotional one this time.
Speaker 2: I mean you could use it across both. Really, where
Speaker 2: I was stuck on the A one twenty after the
Speaker 2: first long journey and my new car, which I bought
Speaker 2: from what did you call it? Deceased spec? Yes, got
Speaker 2: it on a very bargain price because the man stopped
Speaker 2: driving for a long time and then he died. And
Speaker 2: ironically I found a DVD in the Kenwood DVD player
Speaker 2: that said longevity through exercise, which I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: that worked or didn't work. The jury's out on that.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm imagining if he's dead. If he's dead, I'm
Speaker 3: going for it. It didn't work? Is that I?
Speaker 2: Headphones? So did we catch zero of what Niga said?
Speaker 1: Headphone? I don't know I heard it. I was waiting
Speaker 1: for you to come back in this.
Speaker 3: Is sheet's going off Champs.
Speaker 1: It might be Calum this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it might be me as soon as
Speaker 3: Callum comes on. Is he like stealing all our country Internet?
Speaker 3: Because when I'm speaking with you, it's all fine, Richard,
Speaker 3: But then Callum comes on and he like comes in.
Speaker 3: He did vote labor, didn't he? He did vote labor?
Speaker 3: Perhaps they've given them special internet that if you stealing
Speaker 3: our country internet, I'm good.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got very good rural internet here, but
Speaker 1: we are constantly in danger of it going off every
Speaker 1: time that the hedgecutter comes past, because there's a very
Speaker 1: droopy fiber optic cable, so at some point it's going
Speaker 1: to snag and all the Internet would disappear.
Speaker 2: Dear listener, if you could just spare the three pounds
Speaker 2: for you can get Richard Nigis internet that will allow
Speaker 2: him to continue to record like a normal podcaster. Podcasters
Speaker 2: in this country are seriously under threat, especially rural ones
Speaker 2: that can't have the Internet. You can support us via
Speaker 2: country slide, dot co do dot uk slash support.
Speaker 1: Thank you for a man who I've said this many
Speaker 1: times before, for a man whose income increasingly relies on
Speaker 1: his ability to sit in front of the laptop and
Speaker 1: type and send things through an Internet connection. He has
Speaker 1: spent more on wine in the last week I think
Speaker 1: than he has spent on laptops in the last year.
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be fair to stay.
Speaker 2: What's the matter? What's happening? Do you remember what was
Speaker 2: the thing with Victor Meldrew in it? One foot in
Speaker 2: the grave. Remember that.
Speaker 1: I do remember that, Callum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that that was actually like an autobiographical
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But obviously Richard Nigas is living that
Speaker 2: in a different timeline.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know Victor Meldrew's day job before
Speaker 1: he retired was a hedge layer. So, Callum, whilst we're
Speaker 1: waiting for him, do you want to keep on telling
Speaker 1: us about your car.
Speaker 2: So rich we might actually get a story out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, decease spec Come on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, disease deceased spec car. And I broke down on
Speaker 2: the A one two n T on the way to
Speaker 2: Simon Garnum, so I'll give you a little talk about that.
Speaker 2: It's funny. So I went to go to his house
Speaker 2: and then I broke down, and we were going to
Speaker 2: do like an evening bit of fishing, and well, obviously
Speaker 2: I just broke down. So I'm on the side of
Speaker 2: the motorway. I tucked myself away in. They asked me
Speaker 2: if I was somewhere safe, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: not really. I'm sort of on a verge of the
Speaker 2: of a very fast dual carriageway and the only shelter
Speaker 2: I have is a rose bush, which, if you know,
Speaker 2: no lorries don't don't get stopped by sort of rose bushes,
Speaker 2: which also meant I couldn't climb It was so dense
Speaker 2: I couldn't climb up anywhere to get out of the way,
Speaker 2: just very dangerously close to the car. So obviously AA
Speaker 2: still took four hours to come and get me on
Speaker 2: a priority, high priority.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, you know I said kids in the car, They
Speaker 2: ended up just leaving, so that was that because there
Speaker 2: was you know, it was a half hour away whatever,
Speaker 2: so they ended up leaving kids in the car. They
Speaker 2: thought that was perfectly fine. Ended up towing me to
Speaker 2: a garage, and the garage had the car for like
Speaker 2: two or three days. I ended up having to get
Speaker 2: a lift back from the garage to home at like midnight.
Speaker 2: It then, what's the rest of the story. My brain's
Speaker 2: gone dead. Yeah, got back home. They took like three
Speaker 2: or four days to fit a new fuel injector and
Speaker 2: got the car back, and then I drove to the
Speaker 2: train station yesterday with a strong smell of fuel, and
Speaker 2: then I drove home with an equally strong smell of fuel.
Speaker 2: Lifted the bonnet up to see that there was fuel
Speaker 2: pulling in the top of the engine bay, which I
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about cars, but that's bad.
Speaker 1: Generally the fuel is meant to be in the contained system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I had guessed that. I'm not a car expert,
Speaker 2: but I know fee'll be bad.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So has it been resolved now?
Speaker 2: He's sitting on the drive. In the meantime, my dog died,
Speaker 2: So it's been It's been a tough one.
Speaker 1: If your wife leaves you now, you are a country
Speaker 1: and Western song, aren't you?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah? Do you leave me with a keen old now?
Speaker 1: And now we're going to try and check in with
Speaker 1: our Suffolk correspondent, Richard Nigus.
Speaker 3: Broad Sword calling Danny Boy, broad Sword calling Danny Boy.
Speaker 3: Can you hear me, Danny?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he's back, excellent, receiving you strength to hell?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yes?
Speaker 2: Did you turn it off and on again?
Speaker 3: Well, I've tried it with my phone. That didn't work.
Speaker 3: I tried it with all sorts of things. I don't
Speaker 3: know what the matter with it is.
Speaker 1: Miss.
Speaker 3: I think it were shut. I thought we had quite
Speaker 3: good internet. I do some things. Why I talk to
Speaker 3: other people, you know, with zoom and teams and things
Speaker 3: and it seems to work all right, But I don't know.
Speaker 3: It doesn't like this podcast. I think it's I think
Speaker 3: it's probably sabotaged. I think guns on pegs of sabotage
Speaker 3: the internet.
Speaker 1: In Finningham we are hitting the guns on pegs sort
Speaker 1: of seo quite well here on search terms, just on
Speaker 1: words used, we're doing quite well. Do you know that
Speaker 1: is a thing, Yeah, for podcasts and videos and YouTube
Speaker 1: and things like that, that if you say things like finance, finance, mortgage, mortgage,
Speaker 1: beauty products, beauty products eighteen to twenty five years range,
Speaker 1: and use all these keywords, it will be AI will
Speaker 1: pick you up and promote you more.
Speaker 2: I listened to the podcast the other day and I
Speaker 2: got an advert for a crypto thing. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: hopefully we've got a few quid for that big finance.
Speaker 3: I listened to an episode the other day and I
Speaker 3: got an advert sent to me for a beer soaked towel.
Speaker 3: So obviously dwell flonking is must be a search term
Speaker 3: that chap GPT now understands.
Speaker 2: You're like, you're like that key demographic that soon you'll
Speaker 2: be getting targeted adverts for like over fifties pension plan,
Speaker 2: funeral plans, and you'll probably get action slacks, you know
Speaker 2: the type of boards the Yeah, the slippers that have
Speaker 2: got the velcrow and you're don't have to do any
Speaker 2: sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Zip up tart and booty slippers with the integral heating.
Speaker 3: Well do you know, oh we forgot about the stair lift, yes, Stannard. Well,
Speaker 3: you know it's quite interesting actually, is that the day
Speaker 3: I turned fifty I started getting advertverts coming to me
Speaker 3: for Saga Holidays. So you know they seem to think
Speaker 3: I want to go on cruises and catch Legionnaire's disease
Speaker 3: whilst tall the Fjords of Norway in a boat with
Speaker 3: a load of sort of people whose hobbies are golf. No,
Speaker 3: not really, my bag man.
Speaker 1: I suppose that was a memorable day for you as well,
Speaker 1: because you know, you turned fifty. You looked up at
Speaker 1: the radio there was Margaret Thatcher just becoming Prime Minister.
Speaker 3: And obviously you know, I remember I was laughing that
Speaker 3: day I turned fifty. George Formby had just bought something
Speaker 3: out which made me chuckle. You know, he was on
Speaker 3: there on the stage at glaston Grill. No, he was
Speaker 3: on the stage at Glastonbury again, can let's go and
Speaker 3: kill the Nazis? He was going, No, he never did that,
Speaker 3: did he? But it seems to me that it's all
Speaker 3: right now. If you're going to be a pop star,
Speaker 3: I got to go and advise that you kill people.
Speaker 3: So when we're actually fighting real Nazis, then singers don't
Speaker 3: go and tell us let's go and kill Nazis. But well,
Speaker 3: do you know what I'm talking about that?
Speaker 2: I would say the sex Pistols and the punk movement
Speaker 2: probably did a little bit of political campaigning.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I think they did. I wouldn't disagree with that.
Speaker 3: I think that, however, they were certainly the alternative. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm old enough to remember when the punks used to
Speaker 3: be about for real, you know, I was what six
Speaker 3: seven years old when the sex Pistols suddenly arrived on
Speaker 3: the scene. And but everyone was just horrified that these
Speaker 3: people came about. But it is a fair point, you know,
Speaker 3: it hasn't been. It isn't a new thing that musicians
Speaker 3: do so things.
Speaker 2: This is the thing I like, they're all going on
Speaker 2: about it because it's you know, it's it's a slove newsweek.
Speaker 2: Other than World War three and that they all go
Speaker 2: on about it, but like I was just I was
Speaker 2: trying to think of controversial people. And then we had
Speaker 2: Morrissey now England for the English from the National Front Disco.
Speaker 3: That's pretty rough, but I suppose anti Semitism that's not
Speaker 3: you you know, that's not really quite normal. And when
Speaker 3: you then go and see a load of sort of
Speaker 3: Trustefarians all stand jumping around in the field shouting back
Speaker 3: that they, you know, let's go and kill the Israeli
Speaker 3: Defense Force. I think that was quite a new one.
Speaker 3: But worse still, worse still that chat Bob villain real
Speaker 3: name something double barreled comes from Ipswich. I mean, god,
Speaker 3: he's really let the suffolk side down. We're not We're
Speaker 3: not anti Seamites here, We're not, you know, it's how bad.
Speaker 1: Bob Villain's real name is Pascal Robinson Foster.
Speaker 3: Sands like the Cox for the second eleven second eight
Speaker 3: to eton, doesn't he It.
Speaker 1: Does sound like something from a sort of a Leslie
Speaker 1: Nielsen film.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a levels of ridiculousness that we have. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that the thing with like punks
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, if you were in London in
Speaker 1: certain scenes in the seventies into the eighties, they were everywhere.
Speaker 1: If you were in I don't know, rural Somerset, they
Speaker 1: were nowhere. And I think it's we almost through media
Speaker 1: and through media talking about something from five years ago,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, or a film set in the seventies
Speaker 1: or eighties, they put stuff into that to say this
Speaker 1: is definitely shows London in the seventies. Look, we've got
Speaker 1: punks in the background, whereas they weren't as prevalent as
Speaker 1: those films make out. And that's probably what we're seeing
Speaker 1: here with all this is stuff like that is said
Speaker 1: all over the place in small areas. It's just this
Speaker 1: time it happened to be broadcast on the BBC, and
Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing here. So it's not something that
Speaker 1: was said for the first time. It's just hearing it now.
Speaker 1: But lots of other stuff is said by other people
Speaker 1: saying other ridiculous, bloody things.
Speaker 3: I think as well, there's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: backlash fine finally, a backlash against what is perceived as
Speaker 3: a bunch of rich, right on people, you know, spending
Speaker 3: four hundred quid on a ticket that is one of
Speaker 3: the few outdoor events that the BBC still cover. You know,
Speaker 3: they say they can't afford to go and do Oh no,
Speaker 3: we can't afford to do the Grand National. No we
Speaker 3: can't afford to do any ashes test matches. No we
Speaker 3: can't afford to do the Six Nations. But oh yes,
Speaker 3: we can send four hundred crew to this thing, all
Speaker 3: filled with you know, young people and bands being rude.
Speaker 3: We can afford to do that. And I think there's
Speaker 3: a bit of a backlashes that people. It's the same
Speaker 3: reason why Reformer high in the polls, and you know,
Speaker 3: Rupert Lowe came on and said, oh, we're all going
Speaker 3: to do this thing. It's not a party, but it's
Speaker 3: sort of a party and we're going to go. And
Speaker 3: there's loads of people who are just saying, I think
Speaker 3: we've had enough of all this. And in a way
Speaker 3: Glastonbury has taken the kicking for it rightly probably and
Speaker 3: wrongly as well, because I don't think everyone goes there,
Speaker 3: you know, with the intention of being a git like that.
Speaker 3: Bob Villain clearly were a knee cap. Don't be started
Speaker 3: on them, because you know, I've not got a great
Speaker 3: relationship with Irish Republicans, so therefore.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say, were your kneecaps.
Speaker 3: My knees, were my knees, I'll be fighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So talking talking of spending a lot of money
Speaker 1: to go to a field, you're off to ground Swell.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 3: I am off to ground Swell, which I have to say,
Speaker 3: I think is a fascinating show.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I think that it's it's basically, for those who don't know,
Speaker 3: ground Swell is the big regenerative farming show and it
Speaker 3: has huge numbers selling. Okay, well, region farming is the
Speaker 3: most important probably seed change step in farming of late
Speaker 3: is people who are trying to go and farm more sustainably,
Speaker 3: more environmentally friendly, just generally trying to go and farm
Speaker 3: with nature better. And it's it starts in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: relatively small, a lot of farmers just as you say, well,
Speaker 3: it's basically hobby farmers or hobby or farmers in sandals
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. As all the hippies go there,
Speaker 3: and it's now it's a very big event of which
Speaker 3: all the big boys go to and there's lots of talks. Yes,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of snake oil salesman saying, O would
Speaker 3: just add this sort of essence of seaweed to your
Speaker 3: field and your yield will go up. Or just plant
Speaker 3: nut trees everywhere. Don't worry, I won't get in the
Speaker 3: way of the combine harvest. But no, I think it's
Speaker 3: fascinating that. So I'm going to be talking there in
Speaker 3: the bookworm stand tent on Thursday. So I've already have
Speaker 3: spoken by the time you listen to this, talking about
Speaker 3: hedgerows and surprise price and my book surprise price.
Speaker 2: But no, it would be goodlet's it about hell, we.
Speaker 3: Already done that one. We will have done that one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I think it's I think it's gonna be a
Speaker 3: good show. And I guess it's like, you know what
Speaker 3: the game fair is for people who have some semblance
Speaker 3: of interest in in in the countryside. This is very
Speaker 3: much for people who've got a semblance of interest in farming.
Speaker 3: It's not cheap to go, but it has lots of
Speaker 3: very interesting talkers, guest sort of lecturers who will go
Speaker 3: and talk through their stuff. What they do this is,
Speaker 3: this is how I did this, and this is how
Speaker 3: it works. You could try this on your soil, YadA
Speaker 3: YadA ya. Yeah, I think on the whole. I give
Speaker 3: it a eight and a half out of ten as
Speaker 3: a place that's worth visiting once. If you're a real
Speaker 3: saddo like me and really into this stuff, I think
Speaker 3: it's a it's a thing to go to every year.
Speaker 2: Eight out of ten on the places you'd go to
Speaker 2: visit once scales.
Speaker 3: No, no, No, eight and a half. I said out
Speaker 3: of ten that you ought to go to once in
Speaker 3: your life. It's one of those things that if you
Speaker 3: only go once and take it for what it is,
Speaker 3: you know it's there to teach you, to show you
Speaker 3: how you can do this, and there's no point going
Speaker 3: and sort of not going because even if you save
Speaker 3: you're a very traditionalist farmer and you say, now I'm
Speaker 3: not going to go and get rid of my plow,
Speaker 3: Well go and see all these other guys going and
Speaker 3: see what the alternatives are. And if you are one
Speaker 3: of these anti anti farming sort of types, you need
Speaker 3: to go there and need to see what people are doing.
Speaker 3: And if you're a staunch environmentalist who believes you know
Speaker 3: the work at the end of the world is nigh,
Speaker 3: well let's go and see. And then you want to
Speaker 3: blame farming all the time as the reason why the
Speaker 3: polar bears are dying or something. We'll go and see
Speaker 3: grounds and see what people are doing who rather than
Speaker 3: just gobbing off and going on protests, go and see
Speaker 3: people who are actually doing something. And I think that
Speaker 3: that would be the answer. But I think Richard observed
Speaker 3: earlier on something very sensible about how actually the vast
Speaker 3: majority of people just aren't interested in what we do
Speaker 3: in the countryside, won't you.
Speaker 1: Richard, Yeah, the sort of it's also this horseshoe theory
Speaker 1: of online debate that the two polarized ends of the
Speaker 1: discussion end up arguing with each other because actually their
Speaker 1: positions are not too far apart. They are the extremes
Speaker 1: of the argument, but they're the ones always arguing with
Speaker 1: each other, and then the big group in the middle
Speaker 1: don't even know that there's an argument going on, or
Speaker 1: that they're just sort of The countryside is somewhere you
Speaker 1: drive through on the way between towns and occasionally visit.
Speaker 3: And do you think that this recent debate they had
Speaker 3: in Westminster on grouse shooting is a prime example of that.
Speaker 1: I think it is. I mean, it was a big
Speaker 1: while Justice brought it as part of their petition and
Speaker 1: forced a debate, and then there was a lot of
Speaker 1: defense from the shooting organizations in preparation for it, some
Speaker 1: of which we had I think a small part of, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, very tiny part of but you know, this
Speaker 1: podcast and particularly the efforts of more important people, more
Speaker 1: people have worked a hell of a lot harder than
Speaker 1: we have. Who know who they are, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: them later. They they all put on this very good
Speaker 1: defense of the ecological and conservation side of grouse shooting,
Speaker 1: and you know, it turned out to be nothing. But
Speaker 1: if you had been a member of our Patreon WhatsApp group,
Speaker 1: you would have seen a little bit of that discussion
Speaker 1: over the last couple of days, because that's one of
Speaker 1: the perks that you get by being a patron of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Then you can go to countryslide dot co
Speaker 1: dot UK forward slash support, as Callum may or may
Speaker 1: not have mentioned earlier, depending on how the edit for
Speaker 1: this podcast turned out, that's where you can go. You
Speaker 1: can find out how to sign up. It's only three
Speaker 1: pounds per month. It's not very much, but you get
Speaker 1: early access to the episodes, add free episodes and you
Speaker 1: get the all the bits that we cut out at
Speaker 1: the end that are possibly career ruining. And it has
Speaker 1: been interesting to see who has been signing up to
Speaker 1: hear what we say, because you know, we are very
Speaker 1: careful about what we say on this podcast, and we
Speaker 1: could lose our careers. So we're putting it behind a
Speaker 1: pay wall of three pounds because that will save it.
Speaker 1: But that that money.
Speaker 2: Goes towards that makes be less inclined.
Speaker 3: To do today.
Speaker 1: He ate the sales, he ate the sales. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to tease our enemies into giving us three quid. And
Speaker 1: we've got our WhatsApp group in there as well, so
Speaker 1: you can join that WhatsApp group and you can.
Speaker 2: It's Twitter, good Twitter, good.
Speaker 1: Twitter, pre covid twitter, pre musk, Twitter where any sort
Speaker 1: of rural topics that discose. Some people share photos of
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and I put up a drone landscape
Speaker 1: photo of where we lived last night. And then there
Speaker 1: was a conversation about politicians and conservation, and then someone's
Speaker 1: talking about roguing out oats and what else have we
Speaker 1: got in there? At the moment someone's asking about diet
Speaker 1: and is the were the diets of our not of
Speaker 1: our very recent ancestors. In the British countryside. Was it
Speaker 1: healthier than we have now because of less access to
Speaker 1: diverse foods? You know, there's all these topics of conversation
Speaker 1: going on, so you really do need to join that
Speaker 1: if you're listening, But you won't get any adverts, although
Speaker 1: you still get the bit like this where we're asking
Speaker 1: you to sign up for the Patreon but you're already
Speaker 1: signed up to This day is in.
Speaker 3: Good adverts, the good adverts. This is good. This is
Speaker 3: a bit more like you know, you know, we're back
Speaker 3: in the seventies. You used to have those public service
Speaker 3: information films and so.
Speaker 1: You know you still have about that.
Speaker 3: Oh we see you. You're too young, aren't you. Yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well basically what used to have back in
Speaker 3: the seventies you had these things called public service information
Speaker 3: films and they used to come on and they would
Speaker 3: advise children like not to go into electric substations. But
Speaker 3: they were wonderfully gory. Jimmy frisbee, he throws a frisbee
Speaker 3: up in the air and he climbs up onto onto
Speaker 3: a electric power station and then gets fried. And and
Speaker 3: you had like the grim Reaper stood by the side.
Speaker 2: Of old people in Facebook groups. They absolutely love looking
Speaker 2: back at nostalgias, not like it was your mind day. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kids used to throw frisbees into service stations. I read
Speaker 2: a thing about about the Blitz and how kids used
Speaker 2: to get locked in freezers and dying because they used
Speaker 2: to play around in freezers and they had locks on them.
Speaker 2: Just climb inside, have a little jolly up and then
Speaker 2: nobody would hear them. Screen.
Speaker 3: We didn't have freezers during the war.
Speaker 2: Cool deear we bridges bridges if.
Speaker 1: You if you like this kind of thing I was.
Speaker 1: I just want to plug for no other reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plug plug your thing gone mate.
Speaker 1: Scarred for lifebooks dot com and they have a podcast
Speaker 1: as well, and they've done a couple of books all
Speaker 1: about this about how if you grew up in the
Speaker 1: sixties through to the eighties, you were terrified by the
Speaker 1: government through information, so everything from nuclear war through to uh,
Speaker 1: who was going to help me cross the road? Was
Speaker 1: it Gary Glitter?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: That was was the Green Cross co Shaking Steves shaking
Speaker 3: Stevens Hey better still better still? Learn to swim? Rolf Harris.
Speaker 3: Rolf Harris was stood by the sat by the side
Speaker 3: of a pool. Okay, when I was a kid. My
Speaker 3: dad just threw me in the billabong and that's how
Speaker 3: I learned to swim. Now you need nad Ale to
Speaker 3: help you. And he's got him sort of holding this
Speaker 3: girl in the water and helping her to swim. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not being funny, but see, actually here is an
Speaker 3: interesting thing. My brother is thirteen years older than me.
Speaker 3: He said that Gary Glitter lived in our dustbin, right,
Speaker 3: and because we thought he was rubbish, all right, and
Speaker 3: he used to take me out into the garden, hold
Speaker 3: me by my ankles over the bin and say I'll
Speaker 3: go to send you to Gary Glitter. Right. Fast forward
Speaker 3: twenty years and we now realize if Gary Glitter had
Speaker 3: been in that bin and there was a sort of
Speaker 3: you know, eighteen year old bloke dangling a small child
Speaker 3: over over a bin saying Gary, come and get Richard,
Speaker 3: he'd have gone, yes, come and be in my gang.
Speaker 3: He would have been a whole different sort of public
Speaker 3: service information film. I'll tell you that for nothing, not
Speaker 3: the sort you want to do.
Speaker 2: You want to know a really really funny little anecdote.
Speaker 1: Go on, please anything after that? Anything, take us away.
Speaker 2: My aunt. It's not that funny actually, but now it
Speaker 2: is quite flakey. My aunt got run over, yeah, with
Speaker 2: the green Cross code and she was reading it and
Speaker 2: not looking where she was going. So she got over
Speaker 2: it really badly damaged her foot. And now she's got
Speaker 2: one foot slightly shorter than the other.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, there you go. You know who the Greek
Speaker 3: cross cove man was, don't you?
Speaker 1: Darth Vader wasn't it? It was Darth Vader, Yeah, proper West
Speaker 1: country MANA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was. And so they obviously they did a
Speaker 3: voice over because he was called guy called David Prows, right,
Speaker 3: and he spoke like that, right, and I won't always
Speaker 3: be there when you cross the road. And so he
Speaker 3: did all the he did all the voice and stuff
Speaker 3: for Darth Vader. And then I think when they actually
Speaker 3: looked at the rushes and they went and said, you're
Speaker 3: a terrible man, Darth Vader. And I don't think Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse is in it to be fair, but anyway, because
Speaker 3: a princess, a terrible princess, Leah is talking to this
Speaker 3: sort of you know, evil dark lord of the of
Speaker 3: of of wherever he is, Darth Vader, and he then
Speaker 3: comes out and go, you're going to reveal or you're
Speaker 3: secrets or I'll go and use my special grid up
Speaker 3: on you. And that's why they had to put a
Speaker 3: different voice over the top because he you know, he
Speaker 3: looked quite menacing, but soon he his mouth, he just
Speaker 3: sounded like he was a roadie for the Wurs.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Britain's best rural podcast.
Speaker 3: Excellent after these messages anyway, So I think have.
Speaker 2: We covered off with colored perfect script.
Speaker 1: Cars, injectors, roses by roadsides, ground swell.
Speaker 3: And getting your foot run over by the green Cross
Speaker 3: cross code, gar Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter. That's just the
Speaker 3: sort of things these are. These are the cutting edge.
Speaker 2: The title for this episode be Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris
Speaker 2: and other things we care not to talk delicious and
Speaker 2: other things our parents told us not to talk about.
Speaker 1: We hear these things when people about people and neurodiversity
Speaker 1: and ADHD and things like that, and there saying why
Speaker 1: is that ADHD suddenly everywhere? And one of the arguments
Speaker 1: for that is no, it was always there, it was
Speaker 1: just it came out in other ways. I think this
Speaker 1: podcast is a kind of proof of that principle.
Speaker 2: Are you trying to say, I'm just.
Speaker 1: It's like herding cats. Anyway, we have a topic sort
Speaker 1: of which is started by Richard's latest Scribe Hound piece.
Speaker 1: Not my one about psychedelics and mandrad root and things
Speaker 1: like that. Richard had one about well it's not quite
Speaker 1: the duplicity of politicians, but it was a bit of
Speaker 1: a scoop. So can you explain what it is and
Speaker 1: where you got it from?
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. The reason it is a scoop and
Speaker 3: it's one of these things that falls beneath fell beneath
Speaker 3: the radar because the Labor Party had such a monstrous,
Speaker 3: great big majority of the last general election. I discovered
Speaker 3: courtesy of meat. I was sent to press release by
Speaker 3: the GWCT asking me if I would write an article
Speaker 3: or pitch to some of the newspapers I write for
Speaker 3: about some of the research that they have done ostensibly
Speaker 3: and particularly their Otterburn study, which was very very interesting.
Speaker 3: In this Otterburn study, what they did was they were
Speaker 3: trying to prove that predator control is essential if you
Speaker 3: are going to save red listed species. And upper Otterburn
Speaker 3: up there in the far North, they did a twenty
Speaker 3: year study over three thousand hectares of moorland and they
Speaker 3: carried out predator control for half of that time, for
Speaker 3: ten years, and they counted the breeding success of various species.
Speaker 3: Then they stopped doing the predator control. They had exactly
Speaker 3: the same habitat exactly the self saying food sources, so
Speaker 3: there was plenty to it. And what they discovered is
Speaker 3: the decade after the predator control had ended that golden
Speaker 3: plover numbers had dropped by eighty one percent, snipe by
Speaker 3: seventy six percent, red grouse by seventy one, lap wing
Speaker 3: forty nine percent, curly you by twenty four percent, and
Speaker 3: the poor old black grouse and gray partridge up there
Speaker 3: had gone extinct completely. So Andrew Hoodless, who's the gwct's
Speaker 3: head of research, basically said, well, there we go. We've
Speaker 3: proved that these species drop off a cliff if you
Speaker 3: haven't got predator control. That then tied this up with
Speaker 3: a similar piece of research they've been doing for thirty
Speaker 3: years at Loddington in Leicestershire, at the Allerton project there,
Speaker 3: and they found that in some circumstances when they stopped
Speaker 3: doing the predator control that declines had happened by ninety percent.
Speaker 3: So they qed basically said, and I think this is
Speaker 3: The killer is that if you think so much of
Speaker 3: the work that I do and you do Richard is
Speaker 3: funded to a greater or lesser degree by government grant.
Speaker 3: What they were basically saying was that if you don't
Speaker 3: have predator control in yes, you're going to lose all
Speaker 3: these species. But also for everybody this matters because it's
Speaker 3: a complete waste of tax payers money because you ain't
Speaker 3: ever going to get the successes because basically these things
Speaker 3: get eaten by Corvid's foxes, muster lids, gray squirrels, brown rats.
Speaker 3: That's it. So it was. It was a pretty cut
Speaker 3: and dry piece of research, right, So that was it
Speaker 3: was interesting. They presented it they being the GWCT, presented
Speaker 3: it to DEFRA. Def went, yeah, this actually does make
Speaker 3: a huge sense. They then DEFRA went and gave it
Speaker 3: to at the time Steve Barkley was the was the
Speaker 3: DEFRA Secretary of State back then. Because the Conservatives are
Speaker 3: in he said, yes, this makes absolute sense. The House
Speaker 3: of Lords Lord he went yeah, yes. Robbie Douglas Millery went, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 3: We're with this. This seems completely The sciences is spot on,
Speaker 3: The money makes sense. We're going to do it now.
Speaker 3: They then gave it to Rishie Sunac's office, and that
Speaker 3: happened to be full rather unfortunate that Sunak had just
Speaker 3: announced that we're going to have a general election, and
Speaker 3: one of Suonak's spad's parliamentary advisors she ran our eye
Speaker 3: over it and went, oh, dear, no, no, no, we
Speaker 3: can't possibly put this one forward because we're going to
Speaker 3: have headlines reading farmers paid to kill wildlife by Tories.
Speaker 3: We couldn't possibly have that, and it will probably cost
Speaker 3: too much anyway. So Sunak decided to veto the idea,
Speaker 3: despite the fact all the science said it that His
Speaker 3: Secretary of State Ford Dephra said, this makes sense, Boss.
Speaker 3: The House of Lords will with it. Yes, this makes sense,
Speaker 3: Prime Minister. Yet Sunak, who everyone's saying what a great
Speaker 3: friend to grouse shooting is and all this, like, well,
Speaker 3: clearly he's not that much of a friend for wildlife.
Speaker 3: So it's very easy. And I'm the first to jump
Speaker 3: on labor saying, you know, Rachel Reeves kills yellow hammers,
Speaker 3: I think quotes Richard Nigis. But it's also he's the Lorax.
Speaker 2: He speaks for the trees.
Speaker 3: The Tories are just as bad. They were so petrified
Speaker 3: that they might have had a negative bit of pr
Speaker 3: that they overturned this. So we're still going with DEFRA
Speaker 3: funding which is essentially bad for wildlife and it's not
Speaker 3: cost effective for the taxpayer, courtesy of a bit of
Speaker 3: pearl clutching from the previous Prime minister. So I wrote
Speaker 3: about this Inscribehander. But I think it's interesting is that
Speaker 3: I've now asked this question of I've sent this article
Speaker 3: to the current DEFRA Secretary, I've sent it to the
Speaker 3: spokesman for Reform, I've spent it, sent it to the
Speaker 3: shadow DEFRO secretary, and I wait to see their responses,
Speaker 3: which would be the follow up to it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a Mondo e nucciese the thick
Speaker 1: of it? Yes, that's pretty much a documentary, yeah, of
Speaker 1: what Whitehall and Parliament is like, from everything I can
Speaker 1: tell and from everyone I know who works there, who
Speaker 1: shouldn't be telling me things but they do. This is
Speaker 1: sometimes when I come into conflict with people in our world,
Speaker 1: when we talk about policy and saying, you know, well,
Speaker 1: we had this politician up here and they thought this
Speaker 1: is no they told you that they might actually think
Speaker 1: about themselves what they'll actually do when their boss or
Speaker 1: when their party says you need to stand in front
Speaker 1: of a camera, stand up in parliament and say this
Speaker 1: or write this down and say this is your policy
Speaker 1: will be decided either by a spad, a specialist advisor
Speaker 1: as you said, or a think tank who have been
Speaker 1: paid to do something like that, or how rebellious they're
Speaker 1: backbenches at that time, depending on how important they are.
Speaker 1: As Kish Staarhmer found out last week, the.
Speaker 2: What politicians as well other industry to have a hell
Speaker 2: of a lot of sway lobbyists they do.
Speaker 1: Lobbyists, Yeah, well that's comms and pr people and specialist comms,
Speaker 1: but they're sort of plugged into the SPADs as well.
Speaker 2: This not a sentence I'll never get tired of hearing.
Speaker 1: No, but it's it's almost like this corporate thinking is
Speaker 1: there in has been there in government for a long time,
Speaker 1: at least twenty years now. And when I moaned about
Speaker 1: and say, well, it's not just tories or labor or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's this entire system. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: That the labor thing, like why did labor get in power?
Speaker 2: Because exactly as you say, there's people that have had
Speaker 2: politicians say oh yeah, we're going to do to their face,
Speaker 2: probably largely conservative politicians that didn't do exactly what they
Speaker 2: said to their face. Quite a lot of these politicians
Speaker 2: are just blatant liars. So then everyone voted labor, well,
Speaker 2: largely a lot of people voted labor because they're all
Speaker 2: full of shit. That's mostly why you've got Keir Starmer.
Speaker 3: Because I agree that now.
Speaker 2: I would hazard a guess that forty of the population
Speaker 2: is just voting, not voting for labor, voting against bullshitters
Speaker 2: that sit in an office tell you one thing to
Speaker 2: to the face and then don't deliver on any of
Speaker 2: the promises they make.
Speaker 1: I think the ian the labour getting in last time
Speaker 1: is pretty much most people can accept that it's not
Speaker 1: necessary that labor ward and it's that everyone else lost.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they're slice carried on the scene.
Speaker 1: This So this is this is the future of politics.
Speaker 1: And we've got this thing with reform at the moment,
Speaker 1: and there's a new hang on. We've got another party
Speaker 1: started this week and then and then a right wing
Speaker 1: movement as well. Yeah, so the populist right between in
Speaker 1: Britain I think is spread over about six parties now
Speaker 1: because there's Homeland and reform and I've lost track of
Speaker 1: what the others are. I'm largely a political now in
Speaker 1: sort of I don't like anyone. I'm just sort of
Speaker 1: cauld you be agnostic with hate. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: I'm more interested in the system overall and how the
Speaker 1: system works. And this thing I mean, sort of that
Speaker 1: thing that Richie Sunac does not surprise me at all
Speaker 1: because it's almost it's a scoop, and it's a really
Speaker 1: good scoop, and it's it's a massive part of how
Speaker 1: policy is affected. Yes, but that has to be reflected
Speaker 1: on the other side as well. When people are trying
Speaker 1: to make trying to lobby for farming, lobby for the countryside,
Speaker 1: lobby for conservation, they have to understand how the system works.
Speaker 1: And this whole thing of we just show people the
Speaker 1: science and then they'll get it. Yes, unless one person
Speaker 1: looks at it and goes, yes, science doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: don't think people are like you killing foxes and years
Speaker 1: of research is wasted.
Speaker 3: Utterly, utterly. That it's the thing that the guy who
Speaker 3: actually wrote the policy or the law, the jargonese in
Speaker 3: law for the Hunting Act was an Orthodox Jewish chap,
Speaker 3: very well respected Silk, and he said that when he
Speaker 3: actually penned the copy for the Hunting Act, he said,
Speaker 3: he goes. I realized, he said, for the first time
Speaker 3: in my life, I was making law not for the
Speaker 3: people but for the sake of the governing party at
Speaker 3: the time. And he said, that is not good law.
Speaker 3: So he's utterly disinterested in fox hunting. He's got nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it. But he realized that laws were
Speaker 3: being made not to improve the welfare of foxes, but
Speaker 3: just to basically pander to a group of labor MPs
Speaker 3: who at the time thought this will kick the toffs.
Speaker 3: And I think too often you become you know, obsessed
Speaker 3: by with Sunak. Clearly here his spad was worried. The
Speaker 3: biggest worry in her head was that there would be
Speaker 3: a headline Tories paying farmers to kill wildlife. That's what
Speaker 3: they worried about. It wasn't actually that they were worried about.
Speaker 3: The wildlife was failing, or indeed worse still, if you're
Speaker 3: going to be completely you know, financially driven by that
Speaker 3: tax payers money, that so much of that budget of
Speaker 3: our cash which goes on paying for mugs like me
Speaker 3: to do what I do, and farmers drilling AB eight
Speaker 3: and ABY nine, creating new ponds, creating meadow lands. YADDR
Speaker 3: is all for nothing because we don't actually see biodiversity
Speaker 3: gain because it gets eaten by generalist predators, of which
Speaker 3: there are too many. And that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: And even if you are an ardent rewilder, you would
Speaker 3: agree that, because that's one of the reasons why they
Speaker 3: want to release wolves and links everywhere, is because they're saying, well,
Speaker 3: the wolves and lynx will reduce the deer population, but
Speaker 3: also they will either kill or disperse the predators that
Speaker 3: we have because there isn't this natural balance. We don't
Speaker 3: have an apex predator here anymore. Well, okay, so let's
Speaker 3: say they're right and the answer is wolves and lynx
Speaker 3: until such time as they are all released, then surely
Speaker 3: we're still the only people standing. So therefore, whether you're
Speaker 3: an rewilder or you're more like us that you are
Speaker 3: a sort of intervention is three legged stool conservationist. We
Speaker 3: all agree that we have an over abundance of generalist predators,
Speaker 3: and it's very interesting and I think it goes back
Speaker 3: to what Richard was saying is that on the whole,
Speaker 3: I don't think that the general public are that interested
Speaker 3: in nature really, and politicians probably pick up on that
Speaker 3: and that they're more worried about the fact that the
Speaker 3: public are only really interested in nature if it's seen
Speaker 3: that nasty men are going to be killing it. And
Speaker 3: it's a sad old state of affairs.
Speaker 1: I mean, going back to this bad thing, it's easy
Speaker 1: to overlook how much personality and personal desire just in
Speaker 1: one or two people really dictates policy. Now, to take
Speaker 1: a jump over, you've heard of the Boris wave of immigration,
Speaker 1: so this was sort of mid lockdown changes in immigration
Speaker 1: rules that Boris put through Dominic Cummings, who was a
Speaker 1: spad I suppose was his quote for Boris was that
Speaker 1: he wanted Dominic to open the floodgates on immigration and
Speaker 1: visas because he wanted the Financial Times to like him again,
Speaker 1: and that was that was that was his quote about
Speaker 1: why he wanted that to happen. A lot of the
Speaker 1: lockdown stuff came down to the decisions of two or
Speaker 1: three people. I mean, this is all a matter of
Speaker 1: record now, and this isn't some conspiracy theory. Not it's
Speaker 1: just you know, this is en Hansard, this is this
Speaker 1: is recorded. It's just everything moves on so quickly we
Speaker 1: forget about it. But a lot of this stuff really
Speaker 1: does come down to people's personal desires and how they
Speaker 1: think the world works. So if somebody thinks that people
Speaker 1: won't will never get behind the idea of legal predator control,
Speaker 1: then that will be off the table forever, because I'll
Speaker 1: never ask the public either. And surveys have always been wrong.
Speaker 1: A survey says this, well, out of we rang three
Speaker 1: hundred people who were at home all day, in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day and have got time to answer
Speaker 1: a thirty minute survey. Right, That's it's not really exactly
Speaker 1: it's not a good section of society.
Speaker 2: I always feel like they should say, of the three
Speaker 2: hundred people that just happened to be the sorts of
Speaker 2: people that answer surveys, we found out, and it would
Speaker 2: be a far more telling set of data.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't Yeah, And all the polls and all of the
Speaker 1: predictions and all of the media pundits saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is definitely how the election will go. I said something.
Speaker 1: I think I might even said it on this podcast.
Speaker 1: A few episodes ago that if you were surprised by Brexit,
Speaker 1: and you were surprised when Trump got in the first time,
Speaker 1: and then you were surprised when Trump got in the
Speaker 1: second time, maybe you should change where you get your
Speaker 1: thees and media information from, because if you constantly are
Speaker 1: surprised by these things, the people you're listening to haven't
Speaker 1: got a good track record. And i'd almost you know
Speaker 1: this thing about augmented realities coming where everyone will have
Speaker 1: a set of electronic contact lenses or glasses or something
Speaker 1: that will show data around people. You know, you can
Speaker 1: use it for Google Maps, and I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: kind of bird that is. I want to have a
Speaker 1: little stat above everyone's head that shows how often they're
Speaker 1: correct in their predictions. You know this, this person is
Speaker 1: only correct in their predictions seventeen percent of the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Stop listening to that person.
Speaker 3: I can agree more. I mean, it's it's quite amusing.
Speaker 3: Actually they have You know if I sometimes listen to
Speaker 3: gb news radio and it's it's quite entertaining. But they
Speaker 3: basically get sort of three relatively right wing people and
Speaker 3: one random socialist on to try and defend the government
Speaker 3: or whoever, and you know the way that this is done,
Speaker 3: you would honestly think they, oh my god, is there
Speaker 3: nothing this government gets right. If you actually then look
Speaker 3: at other things, you think, well, some of it's clearly
Speaker 3: not completely buggered up. But if you just listen to
Speaker 3: gb News, then you're going to think, well.
Speaker 2: This is awful.
Speaker 3: You know, this is just the worst thing that's ever
Speaker 3: happened to this country. And I don't know, I think
Speaker 3: we get persuaded because we live in our own little
Speaker 3: bubbles of our belief system and whatnot, and that clearly
Speaker 3: becomes such a massive problem when you've got people like
Speaker 3: SPADs who can convince an intelligent man like Rishi Sunak
Speaker 3: that you can go and literally ignore science, and you
Speaker 3: can literally ignore the advice of your best placed minister.
Speaker 3: You know. Steve Barkley, love him or loath him, was
Speaker 3: at the time the minis Secretary of State for Dephra
Speaker 3: and he thought this was a good idea. The lords thought, yes, illegally,
Speaker 3: this will work, and yet still he turned it over
Speaker 3: because basically they look through the prism of is this
Speaker 3: what the public are going to want to hear? And yeah, how.
Speaker 1: Awful that you said? You said prism there and it's
Speaker 1: optics as the words used. So callum, we outside of
Speaker 1: your work with sort of the field and shooting times
Speaker 1: where you're talking to I don't know that what people
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast a lot when you're talking to
Speaker 1: normal people, how how diverse are their opinions or how
Speaker 1: oh how far off this mark are they? Oh?
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 2: Do you know what?
Speaker 4: I So I'm under a strict NDA, so I can't
Speaker 4: say anything to but you're doing yesterday, did I did
Speaker 4: asue and it's all twenty somethings, and.
Speaker 2: They're just it's a completely different London twenty something and
Speaker 2: it's not like there's a shortage of those. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of those people, and they don't the sort of
Speaker 2: stuff that's coming out of gb News. They would look
Speaker 2: at it like it was a comic, you know. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't tow them with the brush of like they're all
Speaker 2: vegans and sort of that sort. But they're all very
Speaker 2: left progressive young people really, and so that worldview is
Speaker 2: so incredibly different to I don't know, but the older
Speaker 2: generation of a more rural area. So I get to
Speaker 2: see quite a lot and also I get to see
Speaker 2: things like this actually in Parliament. I do quite a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff for usually private business that are holding
Speaker 2: roundtable discussions in Parliament about all sorts of different subjects
Speaker 2: and as people from all areas. It's really good to
Speaker 2: see when you get certain things like I did a
Speaker 2: whole thing about women's health and it was a really
Speaker 2: important discussion and it didn't really matter because it wasn't
Speaker 2: a political divide, doesn't matter if you were left right whatever.
Speaker 2: It was just a problem that needed solving. So you
Speaker 2: get people to come together for certain things like that.
Speaker 2: But I think wildlife is the way wildlife and all
Speaker 2: these sorts of problems. It just depends how you see
Speaker 2: the world because young people will do anything to get
Speaker 2: exposure to wildlife, have more of it in their sort
Speaker 2: of in their national parks and stuff like that. And
Speaker 2: you know they want to go down and have a
Speaker 2: picnic at the weekend and go to Richmond and see
Speaker 2: a load of deer, whereas they have had spent the
Speaker 2: time seeing that the deer destroy all the trees and
Speaker 2: that it's actually a problem, so they don't know and
Speaker 2: go on Twitter. Now have a look at Packham and
Speaker 2: have a look at all of the stuff. He said
Speaker 2: about the grouse shooting thing, a look at the clear
Speaker 2: complete misunderstanding of ecology, biodiversity and all of the things
Speaker 2: that happen in the moors. In fact, we should definitely
Speaker 2: plug your episode, mister Prido of Moreland Matters. Go back
Speaker 2: and check that episode if you haven't seen it already,
Speaker 2: because it's really important. It will give you a lot
Speaker 2: of what you need to know about this grouse thing.
Speaker 2: But go on that and you just see there's a
Speaker 2: fundamental misunderstanding for all the people on the Packham thing.
Speaker 2: They don't understand about predators. They've got this a lot
Speaker 2: of misinformation about I'm not saying that no raptors have
Speaker 2: ever died at the hands of gamekeepers, because I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's true. I don't know. But they've got
Speaker 2: this narrative that all gamekeepers do is go out kill
Speaker 2: a load of raptors, cause havoc, burn the moors and
Speaker 2: put smoke into the air that's causing pannage with fire,
Speaker 2: and that everyone that shoots anything isn't doing it for food.
Speaker 2: They don't understand the fact the economic impact that you
Speaker 2: took away grouse shooting, what it would have to rural
Speaker 2: communities not even considered it. It's not even on the radar.
Speaker 2: It's completely not a thing. All they see posh ol
Speaker 2: top gun smashing the grouse out of the air.
Speaker 1: That's on the raptor control thing. It's used to get
Speaker 1: when when broadcast out to the why the public was
Speaker 1: mostly through newspapers, you had to issue retractions if you
Speaker 1: publish something that was completely bottling us.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: And with the raptor persecution thing, yeah.
Speaker 2: Raptor persecution dot org dot utah. Yeah, so oh yeah,
Speaker 2: the reputable source that is.
Speaker 1: Around completely unbiased, anonymous. But that's I mean, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it's as biased as a grouse shooting place, I suppose
Speaker 1: in theory. But just to look at the numbers, the
Speaker 1: people have shot raptors, and raptors have been killed on
Speaker 1: grouse mills. There have been prosecutions for it. You can
Speaker 1: go and look it up yourself. But if you go
Speaker 1: away from the.
Speaker 2: Car, even if you're prograss, we'd all we'd all say
Speaker 2: that that's terrible thing to do.
Speaker 1: All the organizations, all the people do so. But what
Speaker 1: isn't shown is that when they say, you know, hen
Speaker 1: Harrys have been killed, and then there was this one
Speaker 1: gre keeper who was prosecuted or actually was thinking it's
Speaker 1: somebody working for a keeper or somebody volunteering. What isn't
Speaker 1: shown is that more raptors have been killed by pigeon
Speaker 1: fanciers and pigeon racers. They hate them bird collectors, bird
Speaker 1: egg collectors because they want the nests, they want the eggs,
Speaker 1: or they actually want the eggs of other things. So
Speaker 1: gamekeepers are actually quite low on the pecking order, and
Speaker 1: any shooters are very low on the pecking order when
Speaker 1: it comes to wrap to persecution. The problem is that
Speaker 1: that isn't a helpful narrative when you're trying to deal
Speaker 1: with the public because more people or fewer people have
Speaker 1: got a gamekeeper in the family than have a pigeon fancy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: particularly that's it's so you've got that one. And then
Speaker 1: there's the other thing of hen harrier that it hasn't
Speaker 1: been shown to be killed. It's just it was tracked
Speaker 1: and it disappeared on this grouse moll. Well, most of
Speaker 1: the north of England on a hill is some sort
Speaker 1: of grousemall the big chunks of it. So that the
Speaker 1: data is not in your favor. There if you're a
Speaker 1: hen harrier, you're more likely to disappear on a grouse
Speaker 1: more than not.
Speaker 2: But so when they turn they sometimes.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are killed in county lines ruggs things have been
Speaker 1: dumped on grouse malls as well, but that's not really
Speaker 1: a grouse grouse predation issue exactly.
Speaker 3: The but you've got the track one of those, so.
Speaker 1: They've got the GPS trackers. The problem is that the
Speaker 1: GPS trackers are about as reliable as my ability to
Speaker 1: stay on topic, and they just drop off.
Speaker 3: It's also if you've ever have you ever covered for
Speaker 3: shooting times or anything callum falconry, Have you ever done
Speaker 3: anything with peregrines?
Speaker 2: No, I did go and go and see a man's
Speaker 2: fun's birds to prey.
Speaker 3: Okay, well if you go and see I wouldn't tell
Speaker 3: me why if you go and see these falcons flying.
Speaker 3: They use the same trackers basically on these peregrines because
Speaker 3: they go up and up and up and up and up,
Speaker 3: and they've got them on a little GPS unit. And
Speaker 3: then quite frequently the peregrine decides stuff this, I ain't
Speaker 3: chasing what you want? They see something else, and they
Speaker 3: go and bugger off into the middle of and so
Speaker 3: to try and get these precious and very expensive birds back.
Speaker 3: These falconers then go charging off in their cars, chase
Speaker 3: afterwards and follow the tracking system. Now, one of the
Speaker 3: things that is most interesting is that you're putting You know,
Speaker 3: birds are very finally tuned. How do they go and
Speaker 3: fly is by a wonder of evolution but also very
Speaker 3: fine weight distribution. So if you want your bird to
Speaker 3: be in hunting fetal, they wave them very intricately. And
Speaker 3: you're suddenly going to go and put this tracking device
Speaker 3: on a bird of prey and then you release it
Speaker 3: back into the world again. It is carrying essentially in
Speaker 3: bird terms, a full sort of parachute regiment worthy burgen
Speaker 3: on its back. And so therefore they don't fly quite
Speaker 3: so well. And I don't care what any person who
Speaker 3: claims how important these are on the GWCT do a
Speaker 3: huge amount of bird tracking for science. But these birds,
Speaker 3: when you put a track on them, they are at
Speaker 3: risk of predation themselves. And the number of birds of
Speaker 3: prey that kill other birds of prey is very high.
Speaker 3: In fact, I watched a marsh harrier killing a cock
Speaker 3: hen harrier over the Raiden marshes near my old home
Speaker 3: stumping ground as outside Southwold, and watched it happen. And
Speaker 3: so therefore you you've suddenly got this thing that isn't
Speaker 3: quite as agile as it used to be, wearing this tracker.
Speaker 3: And yes, it probably did die over a grousemore, because,
Speaker 3: like Richard says, geographically speaking, there's lots of grousemalls over there.
Speaker 3: So it's you know, it's it's it's science will tell
Speaker 3: you that this has died over a grousemall. But what's
Speaker 3: killed it is neither here nor there. It's it's that
Speaker 3: that is not explored and and it doesn't fit a narrative.
Speaker 3: The thing I don't get and I don't get about
Speaker 3: this wild Justice campaign is that they are focusing on
Speaker 3: birds of prey right about driven grouse shooting. What is
Speaker 3: their suggestion, what is their recommendation that should happen to
Speaker 3: these moors then, because if at the moment of grousemore
Speaker 3: stops being a grouse more and it just becomes a more,
Speaker 3: it's a worthless in cash terms, and there's no income
Speaker 3: coming in for it. So who's going to do all
Speaker 3: the conna work.
Speaker 2: Do you want to know what I got?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: One of the comments was gone that they should switch
Speaker 2: it to like eco tourism where everybody wants to photograph. Now,
Speaker 2: let me tell you I've run enough photography events. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you try and sell a photography event at fifty
Speaker 2: quit a ticket, you might struggle to sell your ticket still,
Speaker 2: right if you think someone's going to pay one thousand
Speaker 2: pounds to go and photograph some grouse and a lineup
Speaker 2: of ten with all of these mate, you've got.
Speaker 1: Yeh yeah, yeah. There's the only photography workshops that still
Speaker 1: sell for some reason are the art nude photography workshops,
Speaker 1: which is a different kind of bird. Really, that's the
Speaker 1: literally there's old men and camera clubs will pay for that,
Speaker 1: but they'll also they'll have ten grand of equipment in
Speaker 1: their car and then quibble about paying the seventy five
Speaker 1: pence to park and park out on the road instead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to go and photograph something.
Speaker 3: It does. The costs don't add up. And also, let's
Speaker 3: be perfectly honest, is that if you say were to
Speaker 3: get one more working like that, it's like the same
Speaker 3: situation with NEP. Now NEP washes its face financially because
Speaker 3: they're in Sussex. You've got this one place that's been rewilded,
Speaker 3: and people go and pay money to go on birds
Speaker 3: Afar ease and exit through the gift shop and all that.
Speaker 3: But if you've had the neighboring farm also decided to
Speaker 3: come a nep and run that business, and then the
Speaker 3: neighboring farm to that, and then the neighboring farm to that,
Speaker 3: it's not going to wash its face, is it, Because
Speaker 3: you've suddenly flooded the market. And so therefore this idea
Speaker 3: that you could turn the whole of the uplands of
Speaker 3: England into some sort of ecotourism center is clearly cloud
Speaker 3: cuckoo land, and it doesn't work. And I don't think
Speaker 3: really anyone actually doesn't buy the fact unless they're completely
Speaker 3: blind that the management of grousemores is bloody good for
Speaker 3: a load of red listed species, as highlighted in that
Speaker 3: Otterburn report that the GWCT. Did you know you look
Speaker 3: at those numbers of red listed species that plummeted as
Speaker 3: soon as you took a gamekeeper off that land. Now
Speaker 3: the only way you can afford to pay the gamekeeper
Speaker 3: is by the grouse shooting it ain't going to work,
Speaker 3: as you say, unless we go and perhaps you do
Speaker 3: heather based nude photograph feet. Could that work? I don't
Speaker 3: fancy doing it in November, I'll be honest. Well I've
Speaker 3: done it, but that was about the house to look
Speaker 3: good naked.
Speaker 2: I actually photographed the gentleman's ankles on the moor at Otterburn.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's any any good for you.
Speaker 1: May was the rest of him clothed or.
Speaker 2: It was Crispy boots Crispy Boots advertorial piece and it
Speaker 2: was on the moor up there we walked the more
Speaker 2: in a pair of boots.
Speaker 3: You you photographed my ankles, haven't you quite a few times?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah?
Speaker 2: And if you subscribe to the Patreon you can see
Speaker 2: those photos of Richard's filthy ankles. For just three pounds
Speaker 2: a month you get so much extra. You can also
Speaker 2: donate on kofe. The link is down in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Can you photograph my ankles? One bough?
Speaker 2: Oh mate? Have you got cankles? So? Have you got
Speaker 2: actual ankle?
Speaker 1: Have you not seen my calves? The bigger than you're
Speaker 1: pretty thigh? Yeah? Say it again but slower, no, right,
Speaker 1: we're going to go off and record the after show
Speaker 1: bit now, which is a bit that patrons only get
Speaker 1: where we've got some Shenanigan's there and we didn't have
Speaker 1: time to talk about Ash die Back like Amy wanted
Speaker 1: us to. So maybe Callum and I can do that
Speaker 1: next week. Next week you won't have Richard Nigus on
Speaker 1: the podcast because he's going off on his annual family
Speaker 1: holiday to where shall I say? He's going Mongolia. That's
Speaker 1: where he's going to. He's off to live in a yurt.
Speaker 1: He's going to start on the outer move towards the end.
Speaker 1: I've got, I've got, I've got an out he's going to.
Speaker 1: He's going to the.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm off to go the Mongolian rim and uh
Speaker 3: and it would be it'd be great, won't it. I
Speaker 3: can't wait. I'm going to charge across the steps on
Speaker 3: a pony. I'm going to be following in the footsteps
Speaker 3: of Genghis Khan and yeah, and I fully intend that
Speaker 3: when I come back, I will be the master of
Speaker 3: most of the days of Asia. So worship hears a government