The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) has a track record of submitting pointless petitions to the Scottish Parliament that needlessly tie up valuable parliamentary time (e.g. see here).
[‘Pointless’ as in had the SGA done its research it would already know that what it was proposing was already established policy].
Another pointless SGA petition crashed and burned yesterday, this time after almost two years of consideration.
This one (Petition number PE1966) was lodged on 7 September 2022 and called for, ‘The Scottish Government to formally recognise local knowledge and ensure it is given full consideration alongside scientific knowledge throughout consultation, decision-making processes and in policy development, specifically within the conservation arena‘.
It was lodged at a time when the SGA felt more aggrieved than usual, on the back of the Scottish Government announcing that it intended to bring in grouse moor licensing to deal with the decades-long criminality associated with the illegal killing of raptors on Scottish grouse moors. I’m guessing that the petition was timed in a desperate attempt to influence the passage of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill. If that was indeed the intention, the SGA failed miserably.
The text of petition PE1966 was what I’d call a word salad – lots of scientific-sounding sentences that looked like they’d been cut and pasted from various academic sources but when strung together were neither coherent or convincing. You can judge it for yourself here:
Obviously PE1966 was received with great enthusiasm by the Petitions Committee, whose current membership includes the SNP’s Fergus Ewing MSP, who also just happens to be an SGA-member, has previously described himself as “a friend in Government” [to the SGA] and has controversially donated to the SGA’s fundraising auction.
In addition to Fergus Ewing, the Committee is chaired by Conservative Jackson Carlaw MSP, whose questionable behaviour, along with that of Fergus Ewing, has been the subject of an earlier blog (see here).
The Committee took the opportunity (as is its role) to ask questions of NatureScot and the Scottish Government about the SGA’s complaints, including a missive from Fergus Ewing about why the SGA wasn’t represented on the NatureScot Board (yes, seriously!).
The responses from both the Scottish Government and NatureScot easily rebutted the challenges and effectively handed the SGA it’s arse on a plate – you can read the various correspondence letters here. (Click on ‘Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee Consideration‘ and then click on ‘Written Submissions‘).
This resulted in Petition 1966 going absolutely nowhere and it was formally closed during yesterday’s session, but not before Ewing & Carlaw had a chance to regurgitate some slurs on the SGA’s behalf.
I find it somewhat ironic that the SGA is complaining about its views not being taken seriously by politicians when a number of its members have, for several years, openly engaged in the most vile and misogynistic online abuse of some of Scotland’s politicians, especially towards former Minister Lorna Slater and former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Here’s one of many recent examples, this one published in March this year:
This deeply offensive tweet was viewed 422 times on Twitter and received one repost and 5 likes. Not a single person challenged him about it.
Posted on Twitter under the name of Bob Connelly with a username of @curlybob69, this person describes himself as a Perthshire gamekeeper and he’s wearing an SGA pin badge in his header photo:
An identical profile is used for a Facebook account under the same name:
This looks like the same gamekeeper called Bob Connelly who featured in an article published by The Courier a couple of years ago, which laughingly asked, ‘Are gamekeepers victim of a hate campaign‘??!! (see here).
I wonder if it’s the same Bob Connelly who is listed at Companies House as a Director of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association’s Charitable Trust?
Is posting repugnant, misogynistic online abuse towards a female politician fitting behaviour of a charity Trustee? That would be a question for the SGA.
Is posting repugnant, misogynistic online abuse towards a female politician fitting behaviour of a Director of an organisation that’s demanding parliamentary time, attention and recognition? That would also be a question for the SGA but also for the politicians.
Is posting repugnant, misogynistic online abuse towards a female politician fitting behaviour of a shotgun certificate/firearms licence holder? That would be a question for the Chief Constable of Police Scotland.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Wow. That petition is remarkable – it’s an openly dogmatic attack on the scientific method.
It’s a slightly more erudite version of the type of response I repeatedly encounter when I challenge an unevidenced – and often ludicrous – opinion on social media. A typical assertion would be that, say, songbird declines are the result of raptor reintroductions.
You patiently rebut the assertion, explaining your arguments and linking to your data – in this case, pointing out that the commonest songbird predators are Sparrowhawk and Peregrine, that both are actually declining according to BTO Trend data, and that neither has been artificially reintroduced.
In other words, you provide solid scientific evidence and a logical argument that shows the initial premise to be false.
Assuming it’s not just abuse, the response you get is generally some unverifiable local anecdote about predation (which, at best, suggest there may be a local imbalance, though of course it’s more likely just confirmation bias), and an assertion that “scientists” are know-nothings because they’re all “PhDs” who get their information from books (shocking, I know) and aren’t “real country people”. Obviously, they apparently don’t know that BTO data is mostly based on citizen science, and they don’t provide any contradictory evidence beyond personal anecdote (not even a link to the Moorland Association or C4PMC or whoever). They just “know” that your data is wrong (of course, there’s usually also a reference to “Packham”, “woke”, “tree-huggers”, “do-gooders” or some other tribal nonsense to seal their triumphant rebuttal.)
It’s pure anti-intellectualism.
Well put. Your list of insults from shooters should also include being called an “anti”, and in my case, being called “silly” for voicing an opinion.
I don’t mind the childish insults, but it can get pretty sinister. This was a recent reply when a comment I posted made it clear that I had looked at their Facebook feed (why would I hide the fact; I was merely interested in their credentials – it’s not my problem that he hadn’t changed his privacy settings):
“my goodness your a stalker as well i hope your neighbours have their children locked up”
I also had this recently; I’m assuming it was supposed to sound intimidating:
“the best thing would be meet up and you could educate me and maybe I could educate you too”
These are not nice people.
Yes I would think we have all seen this sort of nonsense and dogmatic pride in prejudice and ignorance more often than we might like. However the very same voices are frequently raised and expected to be taken seriously whenever and where ever serious conservation issues are being discussed that may impinge on their interests, where of course such views are expected to be given serious consideration. Resulting in ANY co-operative endeavour being condemned to a series of banging one’s head on a brick wall and no meaningful discussions or results. Yet from a PR point of view exclude these buffoons and/or their pals at your peril.
I would have thought that the Charity Commission should be asked for their views on his suitability to be a member of any charity, given his clearly misogynistic postings and behaviour.
The petition requests “to formally recognise local knowledge and ensure it is given full consideration alongside scientific knowledge.” By it’s own definition, the petition is setting local knowledge apart from, and distinct to, scientific knowledge. Ergo, local knowldge is not scientific.
Science is a system of knowledge which studies and describes the natural world and phenomena through unbiased observation, investigation, identification and experimentation. If “Local Knowledge” is not these things then what is it?
Fairy tales?
Or black magic?
They spent two years ‘considering’ that!
“Don’t touch things, this is local knowledge for local people, there’s nothing for you here”
“We don’t bother the outside world, we don’t want it bothering us”
“Whilst experts (that’s debatable) in their own field (killing wildlife), they are not necessarily experts in articulating a comprehensive written (illiterate) or oral (incoherent) response”
“‘What the inhabitant of an ecosystem knows and can observe differs from what an agent from the national government knows and can observe’ (Dasgupta, 2021, Abridged version p.494).
But what they omit is that the ‘inhabitant’ – in this instance – has a wildly different objective to that of the ‘agent from the national government’.
“Perthshire gamekeeper and all that goes with it.”
How candid of him!