Prof Werritty slags off Chris Packham on Game Fair panel (not really)

For anyone wondering what’s happened to the elusive Professor Werritty and his report on grouse moor management and recommendations for reform, you need look no further than last weekend’s Game Fair.

According to Fieldsports Channel TV’s facebook page, Professor Werrity [sic] was on a panel slagging off Wild Justice along with Robin Page, Andrew Gilruth (GWCT) and host Charlie Jacoby, who had the nerve to say that Wild Justice Director Chris Packham “doesn’t want an honest debate” when Chris (and Mark Avery) had already agreed to be interviewed at the Game Fair but were banned at the last minute after BASC, GWCT and Countryside Alliance were scared of ‘violence from shooters‘ and/or scared of hearing the truth.

Of course, like many things that appear on Fieldsports Channel TV, it bears no resemblance to the truth whatsoever. Of course Professor Werritty wasn’t there on the panel – the third panelist was none other than Ian Gregory, the PR gun hired by wealthy grouse moor owners to smear the name of the RSPB via an outlet called You Forgot The Birds (YFTB, remember them?!).

We’ve written before about how difficult it is to distinguish between YFTB and GWCT, as both rely so much on propaganda and misrepresenting actual scientific evidence, but to confuse Ian Gregory with Professor Werritty is stretching things a fair bit!

It’s not clear why it happened but we did note Professor Werritty’s name on the lecture theatre schedule – perhaps he’d also been invited and then subsequently uninvited for his ‘extremist’ approach to scientific research, but someone forgot to blank out his name in their haste to remove Mark’s and Chris’s (zero marks for Tippexing skills, by the way).

[Photo: Ruth Tingay]

It’s interesting that the panel comprised two PR professionals and one old bloke who’s well known for his spiteful & persistent attacks on Chris via Twitter. This was billed as a ‘keynote debate’ on the grouse moor management review group (Prof Werritty’s work) but was nothing of the sort.

The ‘debate’ (it wasn’t a debate) was live-streamed and you can watch the last 20 minutes of it on FieldsportsChannel TV’s facebook page if you can suffer listening to those three for so long.

Since last weekend’s Game Fair, Charlie Jacoby has now been invited to this year’s BirdFair to interview the three Wild Justice Directors on stage in the main event marquee (Sat 17th Aug).

Mr Jacoby has apparently accepted.