I've just listened to a tirade by a Labour MP!!!!

It was about "Sporting Interests" in the countryside. He was attacking Grouse shooting (What a co-incidence, it's The Glorious Twelfth today), Pheasant shooting and Fox hunting. He was making stupid claims about "The Environment" and habitats.

He was claiming that the burning of Heather (on Grouse moors) damages the environment and habitats. Now then... there's a couple of ways of burning Heather, 1/ with the wind and 2/ against the wind. After establishing a regular cycle of burning, (every 15 years?), the idea is to burn with the wind for a "quick burn" so that the light growth is burned off but the roots and stems don't get damaged and the heather quickly produces new, healthy growth which the Grouse "like" and that the Heather doesn't "get leggy". Burning with the wind is also often done after a period of wet weather so that with a drying wind, the dry, light growth burns but the roots and damp ground is unharmed.

Burning against the wind can damage the roots and seeds as the burn is more intense and burns off leggy, woody stems but can also spread down in to the peaty layers.

Usually, controlled burning is done in sections in cycles, not the whole moor at once! As well as providing fresh new Heather by burning, many estates also lay down medicated grit to aid the Grouse and reduce parasites.

Moving on to Pheasant shooting, what that bloke didn't realise is that a lot of the countryside we see today is a mix of woodland and farm land and the way it is isn't a co-incidence. A lot of it was planned with "sporting" in mind. Without any "sporting" interests, the land would have been cleared of woods for farm land and there's be no "habitats"!!

Moving on to fox hunting, I've never been in favour of chasing a Fox for miles and letting the hounds rip it to pieces but again, a lot of the land was laid out with "sporting" in mind.

Now the tirade that I heard seemed to me to be more to do with clamping down on "The Rich" than anything to do with "The Evironment and Habitats". It sounded more like populist jealousy. If there were no gamekeepers, poachers of all sorts would have free reign to do whatever they wanted without fear of being seen or caught. Today, poachers are highly mobile and travel many miles to do what they do.

That ranting chap seems to want to tell landowners what to do with their land on the back of buzz-words "habitats, global warming, the environment" but seems to either forget or not know that the land is a mix of it all for good reason.

I wonder if he's also in favour of the "animal rights" activists? The ones that go round doing what they think will "stop" what they consider to be "wrong". They're the ones that went round releasing Mink from the Mink farms which have now spread everywhere causing damage to what was our existing wildlife. The same ones that have now started attacking Game farms and have recently caused the deaths of thousands of young birds.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were behind the shooting of (for instance) Red Kites trying to get the gamekeeprs the blame for it!!

Before anyone asks, NO, I don't go foxhunting, shooting Grouse or Pheasants.

So, it's over to the RT for comment?