Ian Botham, nickname Beefy, famous for routing an Aussie cricket team virtually single handedly in one day of a Test Match in the 1980s, using both bat and ball, and one of English cricket's finest moments (although the Aussies had their revenge on many other occasions) is taking a long overdue swipe at the champagne swilling charity workers running the bird organisation, the RSPB. I was a member of this society for years but came out some while ago as they sanctioned wind turbines and it seemed to me they might have received back-handers from the renewable investors and companies running the wind farms. This to me was simply a case of green eyes – money beats all. However, Botham lets us in on a few secrets – and they aren't pretty – go to www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2817171/Botham-hits-RSPB-dictators-SIX-… … which is a right googly. Right between the stumps.
Criticism of the RSPB in the mainstream media has been muted but the Daily Mail has a journalist not frightened to upset the apple-cart concerning CAGW, namely David Rose. He has form for throwing a spike in the wheels of the climate juggernaut in an attempt to derail the gravy train, and is intensely disliked by the Green Blob. The truth always hurts. Here we have the charity money tree laid bare. University students with degrees have been going into the charity business for some years now, probably as a result of the loss of real jobs due to the political destruction of heavy industry, mining, and other related industries with a high co2 footfall. Green suicide some say but it has left a gaping hole in the employment prospects of reasonably educated people and they have to squat down somewhere in the job market. The fact is that people with a degree have nowhere to earn a productive and useful way of earning a living and therefore they have had to cast their eyes on the charity sector. Charities have filled a niche. If you are ambitious, feel a right to a larger than average pay packet, you see nothing wrong with bottom feeding on the donations of other people, many of whom have or had proper jobs and have paid their fair share of tax returns.
One of the beefs of Beefy is that the RSPB turns a blind eye to the killing by the bird mincers of raptors and bats, and as an add on says they kill lots of non avian wildlife which they regard as pests – such as deer and foxes. They are not supposed to kill badgers – so there would be no figures in that area, but badgers will take nesting birds and we have actually seen this on BBC Autumn Watch (or was it Christmas Watch or something like that as these wildlife programmes are relatively cheap to make as the main characters don't come with a fee – they simply eat the nibbles laid out to attract them). He is saying they are hiding from the public what they actually inflict on wildlife at large in order to keep particular favourite species protected. Therefore it is interesting to note the comments appear to attract a uniform response by the great and the good to the effect that Botham and his son run a shooting estate and it is the pot calling the kettle black. However, shooting pheasants is no great deal as these birds are introductions and non-native species and simply would not exist without the shooting fraternity. It looks a lot like desperation from the RSPB faithful and their environmentalist chums in sin and it even looks a bit like a concerted campaign by a group of RSPB members to rubbish what Botham is saying. Shooting pheasants goes on all over the country and is one of the reasons we still have lots of woodland. As the price of wood from trees is so low as a result of cheap EU imports and most of what falls down in the wind is used for firewood as there is a lack of British sawmills nowadays, pheasants have turned out to be a valuable economic resource for woodsmen. Okay, toffs might do the actual shooting, and business syndicates may be involved, but the bottom line is that it provides money to enable woodland to survive. Woodland without earning potential would disappear very quickly underneath a housing estate. Pheasant shooting estates have preserved woodland, and therefore some forms of wildlife such as deer and foxes, but RSPB reserves are economical sink holes. Pheasant shooting woodland doesn't require the general public to donate – unlike charities such as the RSPB that have clearly become too big for their boots. It is true that walkers are not allowed to roam willy nilly over pheasant woodland and are forced to stick to public footpaths – but Joe Public does not have access to RSPB reserves at all. I've walked down a public footpath with a dog right in the middle of a shoot and they all had to stop until I had passed by. Public footpaths are an important part of civil liberty in this country and landowners do not close them off – although some of them try, mostly strangers to the shores. Visitors to RSPB reserves are not allowed to bring their pet dogs with them making them a big no no as far as walkies with Rover are concerned. At one of their star ship reserves on the Suffolk coast the reserve stops ordinary people from walking in what is wonderful walking countryside as the boundaries of the reserve fall smack in the middle and prevent a full days pleasure with the dog and the children, walking through heath land and woodland that stretches for miles. If Botham can be accused of hypocrisy so can the supporters of the RSPB position. They want an area to go and watch birds with their big clumsy cameras and tripods and Joe Public is largely excluded – unless he coughs up an extortionate amount of money to bring his family for a wander around the reserve.
The toffs pointing their guns in the air and blasting the pheasants as they come over the trees are just part of what shooting estates are all about. The season is short and most of the year these are fairly tranquil places apart from the odd walker as public footpaths invariably cross any kind of woodland in this country, although I can think of a few exceptions to the rule. One of these is a wood that is owned privately and the person concerned is only interested in the wildlife and the occasional harvest of firewood. He doesn't need the woodland to make money – it is all part of his leisure time. Okay if you can afford it. Another nearby wood is owned by a celebrity TV chef and any roe deer or muntjac that has the audacity to walk into it is very quickly shot and prepared for his restaurant kitchen. However, most of the other wildlife is free to come and wander – including nesting songbirds and badgers, foxes and buzzards, kites and sparrowhawks, pigeons and wood voles, and so on and on. Private estates preserve wildlife just as much as wildlife trusts – or even the RSPB. They allow trees to prosper in all their variety – where else would you find a hedge full of hornbeam or a track lined with field maple. The environmentalist lobby appear to think they have a monopoly on concern for wildlife. Not true. You will see lots of mistletoe on big estates, very often on specimen trees that have lived for hundreds of years. The economics of mistletoes has declined in the modern world. Much cheaper to import it from elsewhere than nurture it or climb the trees to cut it – think of Elf and Safety (and tin pot bureaucrats protecting their rear). There wouldn't be any mistletoe if it wasn't for the estates as it is economically not viable to grow and harvest it as a crop.
Have a look at a few other internet sites and see what harm the so called protectors of the countryside have inflicted on the wildlife of Europe and North America with their big money spinning renewable operations, siting wind farms on mountains in Scotland in golden eagle country, red kite country in Wales, and Bald Eagles and Ospreys in the US and Canada. It tells us one thing – environmentalists are not in the least bothered about wildlife. Not one jot. All they are concerned with is co2 and the theory of CAGW (which is not happening and is never going to happen as the earth system is based on water not a trace gas). Songbirds across Europe are in terminal decline and that decline has increased with the building of wind farms. Bat colonies have been decimated. It is only a matter of time before the Blob begin telling us they are on the verge of extinction – yet it is their own infernal wind machines that are killing them off.
What Botham leaves out is all the more interesting as he avoids confronting the RSPB over climate change when that should have been his number one target. They are subsidised by the renewables industry and by the big investors such as hedge funds and this can only be in order to keep their mouths shut and not let on that wind turbines kill hundreds and thousands of animals every year from raptors to bats and flocks of starlings. Roosting starlings were a common feature not so many years ago but now you have to travel miles to see them – and lots of other people turn up too as it is becoming such a rare sight. The RSPB have monies as a priority – not the birds in the wild (unless it is an iconic breed they use in advertising for donations). The money to pay the high salaries of the people that run charities is one sink hole – but so too is the pension pot. Even after accepting the devil's shilling the RSPB is so inept it still manages to create a massive pension hole that they cannot close without resorting to harvesting the donations. How many people have died and left a legacy to charities that has been used to shore up their finances – financial problems that come about as a result of paying inflated wages to the people running them. This applies not just to the RSPB but to the big charities in general. The real travesty is that these people are completely non-productive as all the actual work is done by volunteers. Paying big salaries is not sustainable – it will eventually choke them. Little charities are fine. Go to http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2014/11/10/birds-and-windfarms/ … or www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/scotland/388269/environmentists-and-an… … and wind farms and human health issues at http://joannenova.com.au/2016/03/its-irresponsible-to-research-health-ef…
See also http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/releases/wind-farms-to-wipe-out-ca… … which makes you wonder why so called nature lovers are so fond of renewables. It seems that David Bellamy is still out there somewhere campaigning as his name cropped up a few days ago on some site or other. The BBC punished him for criticising wind farms – read these posts and see why he put wildlife before his job at Auntie. He had scruples – something the BBC seems to be lacking. It has an agenda instead, one of which is supporting CAGW, something that is clearly highly exaggerated and unlikely to become a major problem at any point in the future.