Moan, moan, moan----get it off your chest or have a chat

[mark smyth]

These people persecute birds of prey like hen harriers because the eat their grouse chicks. They seem to think this is their sole diet but it includes various small birds and mammals. Someone should shoot the queens pigeons!

[David Shaw]

Partridges & peasants in Norfolk.

[Maggi Young]

The Queen has racing pigeons, David !

[Lesley Cox]

I can imagine the hen harriers might attack the young partridges but the peasants? Or are they particularly small there, in Norfolk?

[Maggi Young]

Doesn't matter what the hen harriers may or may not attack, Lesley, they're on the protected endangered list and have the full protection of the law.... for what that is worth.

[fermi de Sousa]

The news about the shootings even made it to the morning news here!
"A palace spokesman said the prince was not involved in the shootings"!!!
cheers
fermi

[Martin Baxendale]

Lesley, me a republican? You need to ask?!!! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes....but of course it'll never happen, not in our class-ridden, snobbery-riddled, forelock-tugging, one-upmanship-obsessed society. I use 'society' in its loosest sense of course, to mean whatever it is we have left in this country after so many years of individualitis-driven Thatcherism, Blairsim and now Brownism (very difficult to tell the difference...just one never-ending social nightmare). 

[Martin Baxendale]

According to the Press Association, a gamekeeper at Sandringham was fined £500 last year for setting an illegal trap on the estate, in which a Tawny Owl got caught.  Hmmmm! I'd say that could be seen as indicative of a general attitude amongst estate staff, if not its owners, if ya get my drift.

[mark smyth]

A local estate owner is known to shoot Buzzards and Ravens

[Lesley Cox]

Doesn't matter what the hen harriers may or may not attack, Lesley, they're on the protected endangered list and have the full protection of the law.... for what that is worth.

I assure you Maggi, I wasn't suggesting that the harriers' attacking young game was any justification for shooting them. On the contrary, I'd be advocating the abolition of the shooting and other blood sports. That people kill simply for the pleasure of killing, seems to me to be obscene. The full protection of the law, here, there or anywhere I think, is only useful if the law happens to be in the right place at the right time and with the will to enforce it, no matter who it is, breaking it.

[Anthony Darby]

Unfortunately with a lot of criminals the only law that affects them is "thou shalt not get caught". If you want to see the worst excesses of the hunting & shootin' fraternity this side of the pond just go to Malta (and many other countries round the Med). Nature reserves are there to protect birds for the hunters.

[Ian Y]

me a republican? You need to ask?!!! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes....

Martin I am normally told to keep my mouth shut re politics and royals - too controversial or something.
But I am pleased to see that so many of you share my republican views.
There that was not controversial.

[David Shaw]

Ian, you typed that with your mouth shut

[Casalima]

I confess to being almost totally unable to enter the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew ... 

Chloë

[Anthony Darby]

Mmm. Talking of the PoW: why has no-one ever pointed out the fact that if you plant a row of concrete pillars along the side of a road and fail to put crash barriers between them and the roadway (c.f. every such road in the UK), if a driver loses it, a fatal crash will result.