You may remember last month, Chris Packham and Mark Avery had accepted an invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Jacoby of FieldsportsChannelTV at the Game Fair, only for that invitation to be revoked after several shooting organisations (including BASC, GWCT and the Countryside Alliance) objected and the Game Fair organisers were also fearful of ‘violence from shooters’ (see here).
In response, Charlie Jacoby was invited to conduct his interview at the Bird Fair (many thanks to Bird Fair organiser Tim Appleton for facilitating this). Charlie accepted the invitation, he and his film crew came along on Saturday, there was no violence(!), just a warm welcome from a 1000-strong audience.
Here’s the video, filmed by Charlie’s team:
The so-called ‘fact checks’ (ahem) were added later and Wild Justice wasn’t offered an opportunity to read those nor to comment/contribute.
It’s good that Charlie has begun to introduce a fact checking process in to his productions – that’s definite progress, although judging by some of the ‘facts’ he’s used here he still needs to learn how to separate fact from opinion.
It’s pretty clear from Charlie’s questions and commentary, if you accept that he represents the majority view of the game-shooting industry, that the state of denial is as strong as it ever was, particularly around the issue of illegal raptor persecution. That’s nothing new, of course, and is actually the main driver of this blog (i.e. to demonstrate that yes, illegal raptor persecution is still going on despite claims to the contrary) and is one of several drivers behind the latest petition to ban driven grouse shooting, which currently has 66,369 signatures and is still less than a week old.
If you’d like to sign the petition, and encourage others to sign it, please CLICK HERE.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Charlie is a likeable guy but realistically a complete clown who’s totally out of touch with reality and like much of the hunting/shooting lobby lives in a fishbowl of opinion where everything outside that sphere of influence is to be discredited or ignored regardless of the actual facts.
Likeable guy? Have you seen this
Obviously he’s a pro shooting nut so the term likeable is relative and when he’s on a charm offensive. I spoke to Jay after his interview on his funny little shooting channel and he kind of agreed. I think he’s an odious turd like all people who kill for fun but there’s something about him which is amusing, probably because he’s so pathetic.
“Charlie is a likeable guy but realistically a complete clown who’s totally out of touch with reality” – is a self-evident fact to anyone with any understanding of the issue. The way he just brushed over yawning inconsistencies and contradictions to his propositions was just breathtaking. His absurd proposition that Hen Harriers were doing okay on managed grouse moors was brought into sharp relief by Mark using the Bowland example. Where all the successful Hen Harrier nests have been on the United Utilities land, and that on adjacent and much bigger Abbeystead Estate, the last time a Hen Harrier pair successfully bred was 2007. This situation is entirely down to the fact that United Utilities allow the monitoring of Hen Harrier nests and breeding, and the Abbeystead Estate doesn’t. If the United Utilities Estate didn’t allow the monitoring of Hen Harrier nesting, there would be no successful breeding of Hen Harriers in Bowland. This speaks volumes about what is going on.
Charlie Jacoby, and his arguments have zero credibility. I can easily contradict everyone of the pathetic disinformation text that keeps flashing up on his very poorly produced video. But it’s just now worthwhile dissecting his false arguments for the crucial reason highlighted by Ruth, and that is “wilful blindness”. I could point it out, but every conservationist is already aware of this, and every grouse shooting supporter is in total denial of these inconsistencies, and will refuse to acknowledge these facts, no matter how many times me or anyone else points them out.
Good grief, likes the word “febrile” does old Charlie, although he seemed to be the one getting rather overheated.
No wonder Chris was looking exasperated towards the end. Wonder if he’ll read Ruth’s “Revive” report? Somehow I doubt that he will.
Thanks, Ian W.
For anyone else who’d like to read it, it can be downloaded here:
Click to access ReviveReport.pdf
I stopped watching when I saw the first edit. My reaction was – can I trust this? What else have they done to the video?
Next time have your own video recorded, call for crowdfunding to cover the cost of professionals.
Hi sog,
We did film it ourselves, and Charlie was aware of that, precisely so that the version he published couldn’t be ‘edited’. He hasn’t edited this video, it is exactly as it happened, he’s just added some text that he amusingly calls ‘fact checks’.
Thanks, a wise move.
I got a recording of it all too.
Just in case you got into a bit of an “edit war” where one side edits their video of an event to favour their view, then tries to claim the other side edited their video to favour their view.
Thank you for doing this and thank you for putting up this video for those of us who couldn’t attend this year.
The fact that you were willing to give him this platform speaks volumes for your conviction that you are in the right. Magnanimous in a way that the shooting industry could never be.
Let’s get that petition to 250k plus.
Some people seem to like Jacoby but I find him covertly agressive with the same sort of sense of entiltlement found in men that have suffered through Eton and other public schools not that I am aware if he attended one.
Ditto.
He is also a coward. He is one thing to the people who fall for his public school persona but another thing to his real audience.
On the clip above he said he wanted to use the Game Fair to question Chris on all those points he attacked Chris for. That was his whole argument against the censorship. When he had the chance to actually get a proper answer from Chris he somehow forgot to ask them. Funny that. In fact it smells very fishy.
Attacking someone when they don’t have the opportunity to defend themselves is just about as low as it get in my book.
He did exactly the same thing with the edits.
I guess it would take a whole book to challenge all the edits but i hope RPUK will make some attempt.
He can come on here and answer my criticism of him. I am sure he will say he didn’t have time.
Hi Prasad,
I’m afraid RPUK does not have the time to counter each ‘factcheck’. However, there will be a blog later this week about the alleged beating to death of a buzzard on Leadhills Estate. Charlie claimed not to have been able to find evidence of this incident, even though it was reported on Channel 4 news (see clip below) and featured in the RSPB’s latest Legal Eagle newsletter. There will be a more detailed report on this incident later this week that’ll be posted on RPUK.
Here’s the Channel 4 news clip:
https://www.channel4.com/news/calls-to-review-grouse-shooting-as-season-begins
Good to see Wild Justice giving Charlie J. the opportunity for the interview… Well done the three of you! This will gain a few more signatures!
Interesting they felt they needed to attempt to justify so much (added written comments), but that of course is because they know they’re fighting a losing battle. Why can’t they simply out the wrong-doers and put their house in order… we’d have a lot more respect for them. As it is, their house will be put in order for them, and can’t be soon enough!
If they outed all the wrong doers they wouldn’t have an industry. It’s systemically criminal.
Snide little reference there from Charlie to Chris Packham’s earnings – “I’d love to get on to the money…”.
One of the more disreputable tactics (just one of!) used by the raptor persecution apologists to discredit Chris is to suggest his campaigning is somehow just a vehicle to enrich himself (also occasionally levelled at MA). As well as being a nasty ad hominem that just distracts attention away from the real issues, this is utterly absurd. If Chris just wanted to earn lots of money he could save himself an awful lot of aggro and just stick to making anodyne nature programmes that carefully avoid rocking any boats. The reality is that Chris’s constant sticking his head above the parapet probably gives his agent the shivers as it is far more likely to jeopardise his broadcasting career than to enhance it. Add to this the credible risk to his personal safety both here and in places like Malta when he lends his support to campaigners there, and it is clear that far from seeking personal benefit, Chris is to be applauded for sticking up for his principles despite the personal cost to himself.
Well said, and given the obnoxious response Charlie Jacoby ‘A Packham of Porky Pies’ made to the series of films Chris funded and made about illegal and irresponsible shooting in Malta Chris’s good grace towards Jacoby was incredible, Chris must have seen that pathetic little film. Mr Packham is a far better man than I that’s for sure. You’d hope that Jacoby goes away from this having been shown what it is to be a better human being from the treatment he received from the interviewees and the audience, but the pathetic ‘fact checks’ show that was a vain hope.
I had to guffaw a few times, but I knew I was going to beforehand. Stripped of the utter nastiness he can show full on on the FC itself he came across as the huntin, fishin, shootin set’s equivalent of Alan Partridge. I almost felt sorry for him, somebody who clearly needed a good cup of tea and a nice lie down as they were a bit agitated and wasn’t thinking straight. Anand is right though on his home turf he’s utterly abysmal and could be a danger in starting to think he’s a total clown and not really bothering with too much, easy to do. The additional ‘fact checks’, putting in information that your opponents cannot respond to is also used by Charlie’s good pals the Pace brothers who do the abysmal ‘The Untold Story of…’ videos with their cheesy music and gamekeepers doing their best to sound as sweet, kind and innocent as girl guides. In their ‘Into the Wilderness’ podcasts they sometimes interview someone critical of huntin, fishin, shootin or promoting reintroductions and alternatives to traditional hunting such as rewilding. Afterwards they have a tendency to do further ‘research’ and before they air the interview, in the introduction add the extra ‘facts’ that of course the interviewee cannot respond to. The standard of journalism in this sector means what they do isn’t journalism it’s just propaganda and distortion – they can’t win straight well informed discussions and they know it.
The Moorland Association just promoted a report that tried to undermine the findings of the EMBER report, which although it did not make any recommendations or pass any crticisms regarding muirburn for grouse shooting provided data that makes it very easy for others to do so. Even yours truly with nothing more than a crappy C grade in Higher Biology knew that its conclusions meant muirburn isn’t good for most aquatic life especially salmonid fishes. Two fishery scientist friends have confirmed this, so therefore there’s a direct conflict between driven grouse shooting and salmon angling which is interesting to put it mildly. Good for them then to rubbish EMBER, which is exactly what this new report tried to do. What it neglected to tell its readers that it was funded by the proponents of grouse shooting. I actually would have been shocked if it hadn’t, and the duplicity came as absolutely no surprise. The authors of EMBER have responded rather robustly, they are not pleased and I certainly don’t blame them. Not just the subject itself, but the tactics being used by the opposition to put their side of things across desperately needs to be publicly exposed, it may not be illegal (usually), but it’s a disgusting abuse of the democratic principle and free speech – lying. Here’s the response from the EMBER authors – https://water.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2019/08/Contextualising-final.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3KbO–91aonI43CWtTQosuo2qn9rrTtMOG-XtFtzfcSU52C4rS6fXrZrM
Well said, Les.
Supplementary Table 6!!! What a demolition of credibility!!! Wonderful.
It just goes to show that you shouldn’t mess with people who know what they are talking about.
What a XXXXX interrupting you folks all the time. Clearly insecure in his beliefs. And then adding the hogwash over the video – I despise these people.
And I see whatshername from the Moorland Disassociation learned nothing from HH day 2019 judging by the garbage on the FB page since.
These people just do not want to know.
Exactly – I was at college for two years getting an HND in Communication Studies and the one thing that really stood out in my mind from it was the terrifying concept of Cognitive Dissonance – people’s ability to ignore reality and manage to perpetuate their beliefs in the face of conflicting facts. Right there is the part of the human condition that created Auschwitz, and today makes some people argue it was actually a holiday camp for Jewish children, and the Holocaust is a hoax or that it was justified. When I first heard about the concept as a 19 year old it made my blood run cold and I understood so much of why there’s so much strife in the world, it’s incredibly dangerous and may well be humanity’s worst flaw. The huntin, fishin, shootin set is absolutely shot through with it, sat tags aren’t signalling illegal raptor persecution they are responsible for bird deaths, grouse moors are good for hen harriers, otters and cormorants will eat up all the fish if you let them. No matter what the context the propensity for Cognitive Dissonance is alarming, it’s never a good or harmless it’s an extremely bad habit that can lead to even worse things. Is it coincidence that our opponents aren’t exactly known for their tolerance of immigrants, people’s sexuality if it’s not their (professed) own, proud disdain of anyone on benefits, foreign aid…..Society as a whole should be very concerned about what’s going on here and it’s not good for any of us.
I tried to explain cognitive dissonance to a shooter on a moor on the 12th. You can see by his face he didn’t get it. https://bit.ly/2HehLbi
I was at the ‘interview’ at bird fair on Saturday – in some respects it was good Charlie Jacoby had the courage to come to Birdfair – the audience was very polite and welcoming – HOWEVER – if you listen to his comments at 15.47 seconds he refers to the trespassers as “rural terrorists” – is he seriously trying to build bridges or trying to get Chris/Mark/Ruth to say something he can twist…. I am really up for serious open discussion but this was quite pathetic
On a more trivial note I was a bit amused when his super-tanker analogy suddenly morphed into a jumbo jet in danger of over-shooting the runway :-) Charlie’s ‘febrile’ imagination is evidently populated by a plethora of large transport systems all struggling to deliver their passengers or cargo to the right place at the right time!
That metaphor was lost on me.
Is it bad apples or a supertanker?
Charlie comes across as a nice guy, sometimes a bit of a clown in his manner but don’t be fooled, remember the rural terrorists and note the complete disbelief in his manner when Ruth corrected the oft peddle notion that grouse moors are good for biodiversity, which of course they are not. I thought All three of Mark, Ruth and Chris did extremely well, without giving the dark side, because that’s what Charlie represents, much ammunition.
So I made a point of reading the first few “Factchecks”.
What they show is that Fieldsports TV are scientifically illiterate.
They can no more recognise factual information than the Eton/PPE class can recognise
the raptors they blast out of the sky over their desertified estates.
Without out a doubt the 3 of you came out topside. Well done.
I was left quite disappointed by the interview and i think it was a result of a very poor standard of questions.
They weren’t questions as such but way for clever cheeky Charlie chappie to get his snide remarks in for his real audience.
I was left with a feeling afterwards of being covered in smoke.
So to blow that smoke away i decided to look at what he actually said. What were those points that i missed completely in the fog.
1. Starts off by asking how many in the audience support grouse shooting. And then snides that off as somehow a biased opinion. Having an opinion against grouse shooting is automatically wrong? What was the point he was trying to make? His last snide remark, was ‘I am going to be going off that way’. I think he was confusing ‘Fairs’.
2. How angry are you question. This was a strange thing to concentrate on and start with. Not the facts of why they were angry but concentrate on their emotions. Wish someone had asked him if he was angry.
3. Interrupts ‘Not quite a handful…. it has been a stable population for quite a long time’. Chris nails that falsehood.
4. Interrupts with snide remark about Chris being ‘creative.’ Wow!
5. Onto Mark ‘Express you anger’. Is this guy for real?
6. Interrupts ‘Are the 47 chicks on grouse moors [fact check needed] annoying for you….’ . Trying to turn the debate from fact to emotions again.
7. Tries to interrupt again when Mark tries to answer.
8. Tries to interrupt again after a handful of words from Mark
9. Tries to interrupt again after a handful of words from Mark
10. Tries to interrupt again about 3 times after a handful of words from Mark
11. Tries to interrupt again. Says we don’t have much time. [if he shut up we might have]. Mark continues trying to finish his sentence.
12. Finally gives up and lets Mark finish his point.
When Marks gets very feisty and really banging the nail in saying that Moorland owners love this bird especially His Grace. Successfully interrupts too late with ‘I have to shut you up there’.
13. Onto Ruth. ‘We are equally appalled that raptors are killed on grouse moors’. Ruth’s face says it all.
14. Claims ignorance of criminal estate with ‘I wish you would tell me’. Right. Please open yourself up to a law-suit.
15. ‘Your line is you know who they are’. Snide scepticism about Ruth’s statement being ‘a line’ without any supporting evidence or without asking a specific question about the evidence from the blog.
16. Incomprehensible rant about this year’s arrival of a ship and a tug boat. Not a question but somehow trying to belittle Mark, Ruth and Chris as being in a rubber dingy with loudhailers. Point lost on me completely.
17. Back to Chris ‘You had trouble finding good quality raptor prosecution cases’. This is just laughable and to illustrate the audience laughs and Mark opens his arms in astonishment. This last couple of months has been, apart from the Black Isle massacre, the worst series of incidences in a very short space of time. I won’t get into the Freudian slip of what he means by ‘quality’.
18. Rubber dingy ‘makes a lot of noise.’ Democracy mocked and rocking the boat mocked.
19. Tries to interrupt Chris when he starts listing an ‘ongoing litany of persecution’
20. When Chris says they are out of control interrupts ‘This is not true’. But gig applause for Chris and from then on applause is stopped and Chris very generously in my opinion agrees and stops it.
21. Long rant about how stupid it is to use Fenn traps. Yeah, duh. Mark nails it later.
22. Gets confused think Mossdale was a Fenn trap thereby avoiding Ruth’s answer. He genuinely didn’t seem to know about that Pole trap. Does he know anything?
23. Incomprehensible rant about Fenn traps being stupid and ship moving around.
24. Seems to think the moors are full of people watching gamekeepers. I wonder how many people it would take to cover all the grouse moors in the UK in the way he describes. I don’t even know if a million would do it and the peering through windows is the stuff of paranoia. Dead hares on trees and those poor innocent victims, the gamekeepers. Chris nails this too. Spontaneous applause and laughter.
25. ‘Minutes silence about your dead crows. I’m sorry about that’. What? He is making fun of a criminal act. ‘Might have been a neighbour’. Is he somehow saying that Chris deserved this? ‘But we will leave that, it’s sour grapes’ so it can’t be queried.
26. When Ruth asks him if he is suggesting that they are making things up, a incomprehensible 1 and a half minute rant that gamekeepers aren’t sensible.
27. In that rant suddenly the low ‘quality’ cases are transformed into ‘3 really good cases.. you have had 3 fantastic cases’. What does he mean ‘you have had cases’. It implies that these cases are somehow owned by Ruth etc. ‘Even an eagle over Balmoral’ and implies that because Balmoral is mentioned in Mark’s book that ….and leaves that implication unanswered. Gets distracted (deliberately?) by his compliments of Mark’s (and Chris’s and Ruth’s) books and fails to finish his point because he then moves back to the stupidity of gamekeepers and back to the millions of people on grouse moors every day. Continues rant with traps being interfered with. Finished off with overshooting the runway and from 2017 ‘we are moving the problem around’. I am sure you are Charlie. That i agree on.
The implications in that long rant require a whole page and i would be entering libel territory. Listen to it carefully if you haven’t already.
28. Raptor persecution is ridiculed as ‘all this publicity is err, err for it’s own sake err is fine. This kind of pantomime mumble ‘im really angry [mumble] all that kind of..’ Chris puts him out of his misery.
29. To Chris concerning proper dialogue ‘You have the whip hand,’. Really explain that please.
30. Doubts and ridicules Chris when he says ‘we have never been anti-shooting’ when in the introduction all three of Wild Justice said they were not. I emphasise that is a Wild Justice statement.
31. Let’s Chris speak for a while then tries to interrupt when he gets too good. Chris continues.
32. Then the bit that probably annoyed me most. He tries to now get the audience to clap. Control freak at work. Chris doesn’t allow that manipulation. Brilliant.
33. Mark picking him on a few things is ridiculed as being ‘such a schoolmaster’. Ridicule of facts and trying to appeal to audience. It worked someone in the comments almost felt sorry for him
34. Interrupts with ‘First time in history when they suddenly decide to use the most public way of not really killing a raptor are you sure’. There are so many ways this is wrong. First of all who says it is the first time, secondly who says it they were all deliberately targeting raptors (although the ones in the nest certainly were), thirdly he is insinuating something that would probably get me blanked out for libel, fourthly he is so happy in the crime reports to site evidence of falling crime but when crimes are pointed out it is too many to be true, talk about cherry picking, fifthly and part of the previous how can an increase of incidences ever be used as a reason for them being invalid. That is insane or or is it just shooters logic?
35. Tries to interrupt Mark’s list of incidences. Then when Mark finishes says without any evidence that ‘we are going to have to disagree about that’. Disagree with what? Mark just listed a bunch of incidences? Then he says my science is as good as yours.
36. Confuses Mark with the labour party but continues as though it didn’t matter ‘same idea’. Illustrating his total disregard for facts.
37. ‘Lovely cuddly Dominique Dyer’. Tries to draw them on hunt sabs. Doesn’t work although i am sure he thinks he scored some kind of point. Has he heard of the concept of free speech. ‘It is rural terrorism for us’. Crocodile tears flooding here.
38. Makes light of death threats again. I think he is getting confused here because mass trespass is terrorism but death threats are very jolly. Weird bit but i’m sure it made sense to him.
39. Don’t understand the bit about Mark getting 20,000 acres. For a while he gets less snidey and ask what WJ would like to do with land. First time there was a clear straight forward question at 17m in.
40. Interrupts Mark on state control has to nail his Tory colours to the mast.
41. Interrupts Mark to answer his own question about Nationalisation and Land Reform. probably thinks that is a point for his listeners. Big bad commie Mark.
42. Interrupts again with his science = Mark’s science. Mark nails him with climate change denial comparison. Still says ‘My opinion is as valid as yours’
And with that comment at 18.44. I rest my case. The guy is a total [word of your choice].
To summarise those first 19 minutes.
1. gamekeepers aren’t stupid so it can’t be them. The implication is that it is someone else.
2. The old but glorious argument. ‘It was me guv but honest i’m a reformed character ever since i just got nicked’.
3. My opinion is a good as your science.
Did i miss anything?
That Union Jack was weird!
P.S. When i wrote that i was disappointed that wasn’t any criticism of Mark, Ruth and Chris. They were fantastic. Just wish it had been much longer and less rushed but i understand there must have been time restraints.Jacoby’s insinuation that the recent spate of Fenn trap incidents was due to someone other than gamekeepers (does that mean us?) was just laughable but also infuriating. Apart from all the factsd to the contrary his argument that there are millions of people on the moors watching goes both ways.
The rest of his argument was to stick his fingers in his ears and talk over you. A more perfect example of wilful blindness would be hard to find.
Sorry to go on but there is only one thing that makes me as mad as the killing itself and that is the people who pretend it isn’t happening and who propagate that xxx.
I think that the most telling thing about the mentality of the two sides that this episode reveals was that Charlie Jacoby entered a lair of what some in the pro-shooting lobby have called ‘animal rights fascists’ to a “warm welcome”, without (I believe) any concerns about his safety or security and was allowed to have his say. This contrasts damningly with the Game Fair fiasco.
My lasting memory of this pantomime was the look of disdain on Ruth’s face throughout – ’nuff said.
So 47 harrier chicks fledged in bowland, what a load of rubbish were does he get his facts from
Only five nests in bowland t hat reared/raised 22 chicks this year All on UU and none on the surrounding estates
I was very interested to hear Ruth cite “wilful blindness” as the pivotal factor in the illegal raptor persecution issue at HH Day. I entirely agree with her, and in my experience it is the pivotal factor in all environmental matters, from climate change to biodiversity loss. Vested interests simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient truths, no matter how much evidence there is. You can point out all the inconsistencies and contradictions in their arguments, and all the inconvenient evidence, and they will just absolutely refuse to acknowledge it. This is what makes all constructive dialogue absolutely impossible.
You cannot have any meaningful dialogue with anyone, any group of people, when they just absolutely refuse to acknowledge what the verifiable facts are, and they repeatedly persistently advance arguments based on false premises, entirely contradicted by the evidence, and then refuse to acknowledge this when you point this out. This is not debate, it is an attempt to browbeat us into defeat, facilitated by the fact that they have the friends in high places who make all the decisions. The driven grouse shooting industry do no have any cogent or valid arguments, and their strategy consists purely of repeating absolute falsehoods, facilitated by the fact that their friends in high places will refuse to budge, and hope that the public remain largely ignorant of the facts.
The simple fact is that Charlie Jacoby lost the argument in the first few minutes, and just continued to make false assertions and try to talk over Chris, Mark and Ruth, every time they said anything inconvenient he had no answer to. Unfortunately I found the video completely unwatchable because of the false assertions in text which kept flashing up, each of which I could easily demolish.
Overall, what the driven grouse shooting industry do not understand, is that conservationists have got no other option but to campaign for the banning of driven grouse shooting, entirely because of this total arrogant refusal to acknowledge the facts. We cannot stomach dealing with such arrogant purveyors of blatant in your face falsehoods and false argument.
Always worth remembering that we are talking about people capable of carrying out the most appalling acts of cruelty against wild birds and mammals, on a routine, calculated basis. To even ask about “how angry does this make you” shows a shocking lack of respect as well as understanding – unless he was grandstanding for an audience of shooters/”vermin controllers” who actually seem to enjoy the discomfort caused to decent folk.
Could only watch a couple of minutes of this arrogant xxxxx xxxxx , really not convinced that this is the way ahead- being so polite ,some might say subservient to an aggressive bully. Mind you what I would have liked to have done to him would set our cause back years.
Did anyone else notice the comment Jacoby made right at the end of the video (25.40) “I think you’re calling for the new Highland clearances…”? Excuse me?! This is an egregious insult to those ordinary Scottish families that suffered real hardship and loss under this appalling act of 19th century social cleansing. To claim any kind of comparison with a ban on driven grouse shooting redefines crass.
It’s an example of grotesque cultural misappropriation that goes way beyond mere ignorance of the facts, and the odious flippancy with which this whining claim to victimhood was tossed into his closing remarks simply makes it all so much worse. The idea that the very people who caused the clearances so they could replace humans with sheep and then shooting for their own amusement could now think that they are now somehow on the receiving end of having their lives and livelihoods ‘destroyed’ because they can no longer kill things with guns in their time off is deeply offensive.
And before Jacoby or anyone else claims what he meant was the ‘clearance’ of the gamekeepers and their families from the Highlands let’s just remind ourselves that the Lairds had their henchmen back in the day who kept their jobs and homes while they evicted everyone else from the land. Scottish rural communities would be so much better off today if their countryside was opened up for a wider variety of eco/wildlife and other recreational activities that would boost pubs, hotels, B&Bs, shops and other businesses. The current ‘Lairds’ and their henchmen are still keeping Scotland from the Scots.
I think Jacoby should be made to explain this remark or apologise. If this is a meme the CA & Shooting lobby want to push as a defence against banning DGS then it needs to be exposed right away for the rank affront it is to Scotland, it’s history and the people who were affected. Any MSPs who are looking in on this need to take it into account when making future policy.
Ruth Tingay, I would love to see an interview /discussion just between you and that pompous idiot. He definitely didn`t feel comfortable and kept changing tack by going over to one of the others. Your honest direct approach, backed by facts and knowledge had him wheeling and gibbering. You were very good out there and the look of disbelief on your face at this man`s denial, said it all loud and clear.