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Author Archives: Miles King
Ten Years on – from Dark Days of Farming to a new Post-CAP future
Reading about yesterday’s launch of the Sustainable Farming Incentive Scheme – the post-Brexit post-Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) farming support scheme for England we’ve been waiting for these past nearly 5 years – sent me off the archives, where I found … Continue reading
10 years after the Forestry Commission wasn’t sold off, the bad old FC has returned
Cast your minds back, dear reader, Ten Years. I have deliberately capitalised these words so please don’t send me any grammatical correction comments. Ten years seems like an incomprehensibly long time ago, considering what we have been through in the … Continue reading
Forestry Commission ignores pleas and replants conifers after Wareham Heath fire
This press release was published this morning. Wildlife charities call for new vision after Forestry England replant conifers on precious heathland RSPB, Dorset Wildlife Trust, Plantlife, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and Butterfly Conservation have today expressed concern after Forestry England’s (FE) decision to replant pine trees on precious heathland in Wareham Forest. In the current ecological emergency, they urge FE to begin working with them on a … Continue reading
Vaccines and Variants point to two alternative futures.
Variant. The word takes me back to sometime in the early 1970s and this car. Someone in the London suburb where we lived had a pale blue one, and I was fascinated by it. It certainly wasn’t a beautiful car, … Continue reading
Posted in covid-19, covid19, Uncategorized, vaccines
Tagged B117, covid19, vaccines, variant
5 Comments
Attempted Coups, Pariah States and Brexit-Trump
Writing this in the aftermath of the attempted coup in Washington on Wednesday is difficult and perhaps premature. Difficult because I, like I am sure many of you, am still processing what’s happened, the enormity of it. Premature because President … Continue reading
What a Year
I think “what a year” is how most people feel about 2020. It started with us wondering whether we would crash out of the EU without a deal, and ended with a deal being rushed through Parliament not only without … Continue reading
Farming After Brexit: Golden Age or Great Betrayal?
It’s now just 30 days until we leave the transition period (we already left the EU last January) and, depending on how you look at it, are once again a Sovereign State able to take back control and make our … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture policy, Brexit, Uncategorized
Tagged Agriculture, Brexit, Farming is Changing
4 Comments
Green Industrial Revolution or Greenwash?
Earlier this week I imagined, not altogether seriously, how Boris Johnson came to create his Ten Point Plan for the climate, or the Green Industrial Revolution, if you like. At the time there was no detail other than the Prime … Continue reading
The real story behind Boris Johnson’s Green Industrial Revolution
Imagine the scene. Our fearless Prime Minister is holed up in his flat above Number 11 Downing Street, self-isolating. He’s fuming, having received a message from Dido’s fabulous test ‘n’ trace App, that he has been exposed to covid19, again. … Continue reading
Posted in Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Uncategorized
Tagged Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, green industrial revolution
9 Comments
All flesh is grass
Are we just slaves to a few members of the grass family – the gramineae? Is there something in these grasses that, like the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which elicits an increase in risky behaviour after infection, causes people to … Continue reading
Posted in grass, grasslands, Uncategorized
Tagged Berrier Farm, cereals, climate change, grass, Grassland, perennial rye-grass
3 Comments
a new nature blog 