For the benefit of those not on social media and who therefore may have missed this……
Further to yesterday’s blog (here) about the police search of North Glenbuchat Estate for missing golden eagle #338, Police Scotland has today stated that RSPB staff who assisted them on the search did NOT have covered faces (see twitter account of Ian Thomson, Head of RSPB Scotland Investigations, @Ian_M_Thomson).
So, the hysteria about ‘masked RSPB thugs’, ‘masked intruders’, and accusations that the RSPB is behaving like a ‘balaclava-clad paramilitary outfit’, whipped up by the likes of Bert Burnett (Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association) and other senior representatives of the game-shooting industry, was simply another failed attempt to distort the facts and create a diversion so that the focus of frequently ‘disappearing’ satellite-tagged eagles on grouse moors didn’t get the attention it merits.
We can expect more of this, in the run up to the publication of the forthcoming raptor satellite-tag review. The net is closing in on those within the game-shooting industry who continue to kill raptors, and they know it.
Photo of golden eagle #338 copyright Scottish Raptor Study Group
Raptor Persecution UK 
The estate staff who said they saw ‘people’ with the police wearing masks, are surely not the the same staff who said they can identify an eagle with a satellite tag on their land.
This new piece of information would suggest they need to visit Spec Savers for an eyesight check up.
It is unbelievable!!
Pleased that these protectionists of wildlife killing thugs, have been found out doing what they do best – distorting the facts xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
just goes to show that these up standing members of the community who of course have never even thought about committing wildlife crime will stop at nothing to deflect the finger of suspicion. One of the must have job requirements of a keeper, to say absolutely anything with a straight face. A classic example of you cannot believe anything and I mean anything they say. If lips are moving or fingers typing you can almost bet on the outcome being a distortion of the truth, untrue, a mistruth, perhaps even a bare faced lie. All they are doing is destroying any credibility they have left should there be any.
Standard Countryside Alliance tactic, the SGA have clearly been advised by them. If you don’t have any facts to back up you claims simply divert attention by counter claim of violence or masked thugs. Exactly the same with fox hunting. All sabs and monitors are violent masked terrorists according to them and yet can never back this up with any video footage or convictions whereas there are plenty of both from the hunting fraternity.
The more desperate they get the more wild the accusations will become. I wonder if dim Tim Bonner has been talking to them?
[Ed: comment deleted. Defamatory and off-topic]
What’s it got to do with him anyway if they want to wear a mask?
as with Hunt sabs who are only doing their best to enforce the law, they are made to seem aggressive when the shoes are most definitely on the other feet who back the landowners and those who get their kicks from shooting birds. And so this tactic is being used to give a made name to the RSPB. The tragedy is that these people want to kill just about any wildlife that moves.
It is not only the twitter brigade who are dealing in untruths, I believe. Here is an extract from the second Media House press statement:
“We may well have been able to assist the RSPB further with its investigation into why the satellite tag on 338 stopped working but its representatives were hooded and kept their faces covered when they visited the estate with police on Wednesday.”
Does this agree with the Police Scotland statement?
I don’t think so, and the last thing the police and the RSPB would need when investigating a suspicions event is help from the estate, surely. A disappearing raptor most years would throw suspicion on the estate and it’s workers in anyone’s eyes, provided they are logical thinkers.
Unless you follow the estate logic that there may have been other disappearances but they were all mysteriously failing tags and entirely coincidental, and need to be investigated. They are already being investigated, and I look forward to the results.
I also am not making an allegation against the estate in this instance, nor am I making a reckless and defamatory attack. No need for the estate to put the matter in the hands of it’s lawyers.
The net is closing in on these swines but will they wriggle out of it like they have been doing for years? The only way out of this is to have as many raptor protectors out there as there are gamekeepers. Christ knows the full extent of the horrors these people commit on our raptors and other wildlife.
No surprise there at all. Just Richardson/Burnett shit stirring and spouting bile and lies as usual!
Where are we able to access Police Scotland’s statement?
I am also interested to see the Police Scotland statement, RPUK can you advise if this is a written statement and where it can be found?
Sorry RPUK, ignore my comment, I see that the original article was updated
See Ian Thomson’s twitter account: @Ian_M_Thomson
Bertie B and his BS Boys Brought to Book! Just a short time ago Mr. B was demanding that the RSPB work with Land Owners and Gamekeepers. Wot ‘appened?
North Glenbuchat are not members of SLE and therefore not signed up to PAWS and the efforts to reduce wildlife crime. I dont think we know if their gamekeepers are members of the xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx SGA? It really is interesting that the SGA have instructed good old Bert to stop acting as an unofficial spokesman…. no doubt this edict came from xxxxx xxxxx. If you are going to employ an expensive PR company to deflect the bad news, they are going to want to be able to control and manipulate all of the media output.
I am looking forward to “Freddie Star ate my Hen Harrier”.
The problem is that the RSPB still think that they can work together with these people to resolve raptor persecution. All a bit odd if you ask me. I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature but one has to ask what exactly these people have to do before the RSPB finally decide that they can no longer enter into discourse with them. One does start to wonder whether RSPB Council has been nobbled.
They’d be better off suing them, surely all this talk of RSPB members being masked thugs and posting pictures of KKK costumes is defamation of some sort?
Ah well, I was on Bert Burnett’s Facebook page, discussing things and generally destroying their arguments today, but it looks as though I’ve just been blocked, as I can no longer access the page. Funny that!.
And now unblocked.
Yes …… interesting huff he got into Marco …… and the KKK pic has been removed. Most objectionable analogy ……
I’ve just revisited Bert’s Facebook page, and noticed a number of my comments towards the end of the discussion have been deleted. There was nothing controversial, and nothing libellous, but it’s as though he wants to give the impression that I don’t have answers, or can’t respond. Anyway, I’ve just added another comment asking why, so we’ll see how long that lasts. It went as such;
“Just a quick query to ask why some of my comments were deleted? I responded to each of your points, then when you stated that you were bringing the conversation to an end, I was going to comply with your request. I’s a very poor standard of open debate, when one side gets to delete the others comments. All I had done was ask for evidence on a number of issues, but it doesn’t appear as though you want to provide any. It’s as though you can’t do so, and/or you have something to hide.”
And that’s another comment that has been deleted from Bert Burnett’s Facebook page, one which was in response to David Holden, who used to use the pseudonym Hector on here. It would certainly appear that they are perfectly happy to censor innocuous comments, and do their utmost to airbrush comments whenever the question of evidence is asked.
So that’s that. Bert Burnett simply could not handle a few hours of open debate, and whenever evidence was asked for, it was refused on every single count, and when pushed for the evidence, the deletion of comments was preferred, rather than do the decent thing and support his arguments. I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not, because evidence is anathematic to those that solely rely on misinformation, distortion and blatant lies.
There really isn’t much point in continuing to persevere in trying to convert such closed minds, especially when comments will be deleted in such a pathetically childish manner, and that is exactly what the conservation organisations have been up against for decades. Stubbornly refusing to provide evidence, stubbornly denying that there is any persecution problem, despite overwhelming evidence that states otherwise, but much worse for the shooting industry is their stubborn refusal to make simple changes that would end much of the conflict.
I was prepared to give them some leeway, much to the chagrin of some of my peers, and for a number of years I have tried to suggest that a simple switch from driven grouse shooting to walked-up shooting, would end much of the conflict. But it all gets ignored, much of it deliberately by “leaders” such as the SGA, simply because these people do not want to change from their uneducated “country” ways, and they would rather continue with the zero tolerance approach to all predators, and the illegal killing of protected species, because that’s all they’ve been taught from an early age.
As mentioned in a previous post, sheer stupidity appears to be commonplace amongst the lackey sector of the shooting industry, and what they don’t seem to realise, is that all they are doing is creating greater problems for themselves for the future. And I say to that, screw them!
It could be argued that this saga raises legitimate questions about the credibility of published research in which the shooting brigade have been involved in the collection of data.
The Scottish Countryside Alliance has just posted an incredibly eccentric and desperate post trying to back track re the comments that have been made about the RSPB and uses quotes from James Randi (yes I said it was bonkers didn’t I?) to try and say that the followers of RPUK are cultists who’ll believe anything!?! Worth a look – beggars belief, they really are becoming desperate.
The post that the SCA has published was written by a well known pro-hunting troll who periodically tries to post on here (he hasn’t yet realised he’s been banned). His posts are generally incoherent rants and the time taken to try and decipher them would be better spent sticking pins in your eyes.
No surprise that the SCA has published it though – remember, these are the scientific heavyweights who tried to hoodwink everyone in to thinking that an obscure paper on the failure of satellite tags attached to Olive Ridley Turtles off the coast in India (a technical fault with the saltwater switch) was instrumental to understanding the cause of so many ‘disappearing’ sat tagged golden eagles in Scotland:
https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/obscure-sea-turtle-tracking-data-from-india-used-to-explain-disappearing-eagles-in-monadhliaths/
Thanks for that, on the ball as always.
This is sickening and quite rightly should be highlighted but lets get back to the basic problem .What has happened to that Eagle and how can we find it ?
Will DGS be banned before someone invents an indestructible traceable chip of some sort? I wonder.
I have said it before but it seems that technology is going to finish off DGS; with a little help from own-goal press statements from the grousers. Media spin-doctors who know nothing about the issue should help nicely.
Yer man Bert and his fellow criminal apologists have got themselves in a tailspin. They reckon the polis statement was leaked to you and they’re calling for action to be taken. Shame they cant read or are just thick. Its clear from your blog the source was on twitter and it was also retweeted by PAWs! Its good to see them thrashing around like a wounded animal. Thick morons.
I see Dave Adam on his “artistic” blog is saying that the police have not made a statement that no masks were used ( he and old Bert seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet) and that RSPB should not have put out that information. He is probably trying to salvage some pride after putting out those ridiculous photos of himself “keeking” through the eagle feathers , what is he on ?
I noticed that myself. If these people would just take a minute to digest what has been stated, they would have noted that Police Scotland informed a number of concerned organisations within PAWS, that the RSPB staff were not wearing masks or hoods.
But anyway, as per usual, the criminal apologists immediately jump to a nonsensical conclusion that bears no resemblance to the facts, or reality. As far as I can make out, a public statement was not issued by Police Scotland, and no-one suggested they did act in this way. So why the criminal apologists would deliberately choose to distort this simple message is anyone’s guess. It is as though they just can’t stop telling lies, such is the sociopathy that is prevalent in their industry.
In fact, Bert “The Censorship Csar” Burnett was even suggesting legal action against Police Scotland, because the litigious bullies in the shooting industry are adamant that the police have lied, so I hope that the police do make a public statement, if only to destroy another shooting industry lie.