Underground cables are also especially vulnerable to climate change. Any significant rise in ground temperature significantly reduces their power handling.

Tim Apple stepping down the same day Tim Onion announces big news

Huge day for the Tim community is what I’m saying

THE COUNTRYSIDE ALLIANCE 'LIBERTY AND LIVELIHOOD MARCH' AND THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY - Early Day Motions - UK Parliament leave out from 'dogs' to end and add 'calls attention to the letter sent by Richard Burge, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, to all honourable Members; welcomes its reiteration of its longs...

It happened, it was disgraceful, but it could easily happen again.

Which I fully agree with. It's worth reminding the backlash against the fox hunting ban included many people who had never hunted, and never would - because right wing agitators framed it as an attack on rural life.

Do your own homework. Your opinions don't matter to me.

Which is exactly why presenting a thousand reasons, many of which are weak and could equally apply to various forms of farming, other non native species, even house building, etc. is not a smart thing to do if you genuinely want change.

Meh

Check the literature if you really care. The impact is very local - just as with free range poultry.

But it won't be.

Sure, but this won't be why it's banned. It will be either because of avian flu, or cruelty. Or both.

It won't be because pheasants aren't native, or because they have a varied diet.

Honestly, if pheasant shooting is banned, it will not be because pheasants eat frogs.

Or observe.

They certainly have significant impact on local environments, trashing hedges, allotments, corpses. But I suspect that most declines is their "prey" aren't a result of their predation, they just eat what is locally abundant, like most birds - worms, etc.

I'd be extremely surprised if any rigorous study has linked decline in any of the supposed prey of pheasants to them with any certainty. Point me to a published paper if I'm wrong.

There are probably a million and one reasons not to have commercial pheasant shooting. And about half a million of those aren't really about pheasants at all. This would be one of them. That they harbour bird flu is surely more significant?

I'm not a moron either.

If you manage your plot responsibly, it can be. I saw this little fella today near my garage.

Fuck off. Obviously.

Mostly it's what we don't do - cutting hedges.

It's also untrue. The wildlife is there, in large part because of how we manage what we have access too.

A couple of acres, in the middle of nowhere.

More seriously, I'm sure some folks would say that if I didn't have a cat I would probably have more dormice in my garden. That may well be true, but at least I have some dormice in my garden - unlike most of the folks who say we shouldn't have cats.

Fewer.

A common lizard warming itself on some building waste

Enjoy the sunshine

I was actually quite pleased by that. I don't often see stoats, but do see weasels from time to time.

I really don't see how it's useful to point out that they eat tiny creatures. After all, they couldn't eat those critters if they weren't there, so we should perhaps be grateful that they are.

We recently lost three guinea fowl. I assumed it was a fox, but my trail camera showed me it was a stoat.

I used to get messages from Google to tell me that some of my shared photos were popular. It seemed very random since the most popular were rarely very good, or interesting. But they had vehicles in them.

Millions thought he was smarter than them. Every one of them was right.

When a person loses 1 sense the others are heightened. That's why people who have no sense of humor have an amazing sense of self-importance.