Briefings for Britain, May 1, Catherine McBride
The BBC’s Countryfile, various conservation organisations and even The House of Lords all seem to be convinced that without 4000 unused and forgotten EU regulations – the UK’s environment would be destroyed. But the evidence suggests that just doesn’t appear to be true.
The BBC’s Countryfile program broadcast on 16th April, was filmed in Lincolnshire, one of the few areas of the UK with commercially sized farms with large, flat, rectangular fields. I was ecstatic to see them budding with green nascent food. Lincolnshire is one of the few areas in the UK that can compete with the Netherlands and Belgium in suppling food to British supermarkets. If George Eustace MP still believes that the UK can become self-sufficient in food production, then we are going to need a bigger Lincolnshire.
Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t see it like that. They think Lincolnshire needs more wildlife habitats and so they were building one to attract hedgehogs right between a large field and a road! (Hopefully next week Countryfile will build a hedgehog tunnel under the road.) But it is not just Lincolnshire, Countryfile believes that the whole UK needs more wildlife habitats and opened the program by claiming that the UK’s wildlife is in ‘crisis’, that the UK is in the bottom 10% of countries across the world at protecting nature and that it is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, all while showing pictures of Lincolnshire’s commercial farms that provide food for human habitation.
Countryfile hopes its viewers don’t know is that most of Southern England, and Wales, and Scotland, and Northern Ireland look more like Clarkson’s Farm than Lincolnshire – full of hills and hollows, hedgerows and copse, woodlands and wildlife habitats.
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