Matt Cross
@wildforest_matt
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Angler, spaniel fan, firewood connoisseur. Mainly into country stuff, but also very interested in Prisons. Not on anyone's team. mattcross260 @gmail .com
South West Scotland
Joined September 2016
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It's always the old that lead the culture war .
It's always the young that fall.
Now look at all we've won with the meme and the pun.
I ain't a marching anymore.
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Perhaps the problem with discussions over Cecil Rhodes is that people do not really understand who and what Rhodes was.
They think he was another of those racist 19th century colonialists now being judged for his racist views.
This is not so. 1/15
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We had 12 Royal Marines in the village shop today for hot rolls and drinks. What extremely polite, pleasant, well mannered young men. They tidied up every scrap of rubbish and left the place immaculate. Most impressed.
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collectively we need to follow my dad's journey with reference to many of the 'great figures' of colonialism and confront some horrifying truths.
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of others to their own greed have been condemned. To criticise Rhodes for killing tens of thousands so he could take their land and the gold and diamonds it contains is not to impose our moral standards on anther time. It is to apply universal historical standards. 8/15
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Rhodes was not simply the patronising racist in the mould of Kipling, carving out the white mans burden with his diamond miner's pick axe in place of Kipling's pen.
He was a man of appalling greed and reckless disregard for human life who became vastly rich. 2/15
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I'm setting up.the Hampshire Hyena Project which aims to introduce Hyenas to Hampshire to help control badgers thereby removing the need for culling.
I'm looking for board members who have no experience of either Hampshire or Hyenas.
#hyenas4hampshire
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Just seen some blurb for the new Ben Fogle series. This constant portrayal of rural Scotland as a place where other people come to find themselves is tedious bullshit and the reduction of local people to supporting cast in their own story is dumb, out of date and offensive.
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And at the heart of his ability to become rich was his willingness to steal and kill or at least have killed.
He also dug the foundations of apartheid, the effects of which still rack southern Africa. As prime minister of the cape colony he passed laws which deprived 3/15
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I don't buy the argument that a statue of Rhodes above the entrance of one of great institutions of learning is necessary to help us reflect on his misdeeds. In part because we do not lack monuments to greed, 11/15
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Is there a class at crufts for finding stinking deer grallochs, rolling in badger crap, chasing pheasants and just generally being absolutely flipping mental?
Asking for Fizz
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I want to explain why I hate this type of thing so much. 1/10
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A few years later when the Matabele rose up against Rhodes he killed 50,000 more of their people in order to keep that land. It was this reckless and overwhelming personal greed and lust for power that marked Rhodes out from the likes of Kipling and Baden Powell. 6/15
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and this is exactly what Rhodes did.
This fact did not escape notice at the time. His contemporary Mark Twain a man who was himself an eager imperialist said of him "he wants the earth and wants it for his own" "He raids and robs and slays and enslaves the Matabele" 9/15
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If I need to reflect on Rhodes' crimes, his cruelty, his ruthlessness and his greed. I can just walk round the corner to to memorial of a young man who in all probability died of dysentry, literally shitting himself to death for Rhode's greed and ambition. 15/15
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nearly all of the non-white population of the vote and other laws which allowed him to take their land.
In 1893 when Rhodes, already vastly wealthy from diamond mines where native people worked like slaves, turned his attention to the lands of the Matabele.
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and finally "when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake."
His honorary doctorate awarded in 1899 provoked outrage and when he died a news paper said of him "His exclusive preoccupation with material considerations had led him terribly wrong" . 10/15
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the army of the British South Africa company, a private company owned and founded by Rhodes, killed 10,000 Matabele as they seized what would later become Rhodesia. He took it believing it to be rich in Gold. 5/15
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but more because if I want to reflect on Rhodes there is no need for me to stare up at him or walk beneath his feet as he would have me do. I don't even need to travel to the graves of those he killed in Africa. 12/15
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Postscript - If I know and care a little more than most people about Cecil Rhodes it is in part because my Dad was born in Rhodesia and in part because my own life is some interwoven with empire - Rhodesian born Father, half Canadian mother, boarding school in India
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I remember well watching a drama series about Rhodes with my dad in the 1990s and him turning to his brother in horror and asking "was it really like this". They had been taught Rhode's the hero at school, a flawed man of great achievements, the truth shocked him
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Just blocked from commenting on a Facebook rewilding group because I pointed out that a job where you had to plant a tree every 45 seconds all day to make minimum wage with no sick or holiday pay or employer's pension contribution is an uninspiring vision for the rural economy.
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GOOD NEWS
The dog is back. I found her about a mile from where she went missing.
She's a bit tired, but no real harm done!
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People have the wrong idea about what large scale tree planting is like. Here is a photo tour inside a new commercial plantation
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Rhodes was an appalling racist he once said for example "The native is to be treated as a child and denied franchise."
But it is wrong headed in my view to work backwards imposing our moral values on a previous time. But throughout history people who sacrificed to the lives 7/15
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But it did help provoke the second Boer war in which 70,000 people died, Rhodes actively provoked that war right up until it started. Among the 26,000 British military dead was young man of this village who is memorialised with a fountain by the village hall 14/15
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This mental depeopling of rural Scotland is massively harmful. Increasingly it is portrayed not as a place where people have needs and aspirations, but simply as somewhere to be transiently experienced. A playground of the urban male ego. Not a home, not a work place. 6/10
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In 1895, in a cack handed and doomed attempt to seize control of the Transvaal and its gold, Rhodes attempted to initiate a coup against the government of the Republic of South Africa. The action which became known as the Jameson raid was an embarrassing failure 13/15
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We said goodbye to this dear old dog this afternoon.
It was very sad, but it was time to let her go.
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Buccleuch estates have been in touch with a thinly veiled threat of legal action over my Twitter thread on dispossession and environmental harm.
I don't accept the points they are making, but I can't afford a legal action against them.
So I am afraid it will have to go.
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Tell you who is an arse.
The sheep which is stuck on it's back until you have stopped the car, got out, climbed the fence walked across the field in your only good shoes all the way to six feet from the cretinous mammal at which point it rolls over and gets up.
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We are here, we are people. You have no right to take our places from us and no right to place your needs before ours. 10/10
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I promise this is my last ever tweet about
#hyenas4hampshire
but...... We are in the TIMES
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and BTW if you were wondering how come the West of Scotland is entirely inhabited by Artists, Poets and people overcoming one thing or another.... it's not. Most of us have normal jobs enjoy watching love Island and eat Cheerios straight out of the packet.
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Why can't we just pay landowners for 'producing' wildlife.
So for example if you have a nesting curlew on your land you get £1000, a corncrake £5000, a newt £12 etc?
Why don't we do that?
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I was making the front step for the house today. The block of stone was too big to cut so I decided to try and split it like a proper stone mason...
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Update to the update
My guns are coming home and I have had an apology.
Thanks for all your kindness and goodness.
More to follow.
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Please try and understand this. A live Goshawk eating your birds is far far less of a threat to your way of life, your job and all the good stuff you deliver than a video of you killing one.
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@JohnGillibrand
"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin in a limitied and specific way?"
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This is how it's done
Commuters on an interstate in Oklahoma City were treated to a free rodeo show when a cowboy had to lasso a loose cow during morning traffic.
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What really gets me angry with this stuff is that there are no local people in this narrative. There is almost one, the writer mentions staying in a 'crofter's house'. The Crofter themself gets no further words. I suspect that its is an ex-croft house, now a holiday cottage. 4/10
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Ivy (8) did her first day beating today - grafted all day, ate 1.5 crunchie bars, never moaned, made £20. Fell asleep on the way home.
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Farmers
Foresters
Gamekeepers
Ghillies
Posh people
Scientists
Rewilders
All have something to contribute to finding a sustainable future for Scotland's uplands.
Ditch the stereotypes
Talk to the enemy. They are not the problem. Conflict is the problem.
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It is astonishing that in Glasgow drunk football fans can assemble and vandalised the city centre without consequences, but in London women can not hold a vigil to mark a murder without being arrested and forcibly removed.
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"renewed awareness and perspective". So policy and money optimises it for that purpose, so it becomes more that, so policy and money optimises it for that....
Meanwhile some of just want to live our lives, have a bus, go to the supermarket, be able to buy a house. 9/10
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The problem is that almost subconsciously it affects how politicians and officials, think and act. It nudges how policy is made and money is spent and slowly by slowly a feedback loop develops. The value of the place is not as a home but as somewhere for 8/10
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The Hampshire Hyena project has run into objections from people who are worried about their children being eaten.
I must emphasise that there is no record of anyone being eaten by a Hyena in Hampshire
But we will be providing buffalo to guard playgrounds etc as a reassurance.
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If your vision of land reform doesn't start with the people who are already there, it is a crap vision for land reform.
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It's not the sheer lazy inaccuracy of it (though that really doesn't help). Skye is not in the Western Isles. Culturally, historically even geologically Skye and the Western isles are quite distinct. 2/10
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Local three vet practice. Seeing serious cases only. Vet one is doing all the work until he gets sick then vet two (who is self isolating) steps in until he gets sick, then its vet three's turn, by the time she gets sick vet one should be well again. Smart cookies these vets.
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But instead as a place to "go alone – to write, to think, to be." And yes that is an actual quote.
The problem with this isn't just that it makes local people an unwanted intrusion in their own home. 7/10
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The Dog, the Quad and the Wild Wild Land
Rural Depopulation & Land Use Change in Scotland a thread provoked by "The Last Keeper" a film by
@tomopre
Preface
I'm not a rural worker. But my dad was, he was a shepherd who worked with a dog & lost his job to land use change
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I might delete all my previous tweets in the last 48 hours and replace them with this.
"If your vision for the uplands is that new better billionaires will replace the old bad billionaires it's a crap vision."
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I'm annoyed. We are social distancing like mad, washing hands every time someone comes into the house, shielding the old folk. The whole village is being extremely socially responsible. Meanwhile half the country just seems to be carrying on as normal.
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All hats off to
@eddcoles
as the Government announces it will be increasing the penalties for hare coursing to an unlimited fine and up to six months in prison.
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Britain
"We are so scared of animals we ran a calf over with police car for coming into town"
Also Britain
"Bring back wolves"
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Awesome news! HOLLY IS HOME!
Holly is still missing following a car accident near Maybole in Ayrshire. If you are in the Maybole, Minishant, Crosshill area please look out for her. Her owner is a friend of mine she is in hospital with serious injuries after the accident and is desperate for news of her dog
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"Let's buy a whole landscape. One of loch and hill, bog and rock, rich in folklore and history"
"Then what?"
"Then let's plant millions of the same tree all over it"
"Uh then what?"
"Let's cut em all down and create huge ugly scars"
"Ok then what?"
"Then we do it again!"
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Postscript - my lot, the fieldsports mob, can be some of the absolute worst for this. We can mentally depeople a landscape quicker then we can gralloch a roe buck. It's awful.
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The best thing about spaniels is their 100% belief that they can help with anything you are doing.
Untangling a cable? Allow me to get involved
Landing a fish? We have been grabbing animals for generations.
Looking for the remote? I can look for things. I can look for things
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Guess whose guns came home today along with an official apology!
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This is a bold thing to say and I know France would dispute it. But I think Britain is the greatest cheese making nation in the world.
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I hope some scum bag hasn't killed one of our eagles, but if they have I hope they finish up in jail.
This project has been an amazing success built on respect and co-operation between keepers, farmers, foresters and raptor conservationists.
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The smart people in Forestry know this isn't ok. Most of the ones on here groan and put their heads in their hands when they see stuff like this, then they feel the need to front up for their industry.
This isn't from the 1970s, this was this week in Dumfriesshire.
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I have lived through the terms of Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson. Some I have agreed with some I have disagreed with. But only one has been a totally unscrupulous, lying, self interested autocratic scum bag for whom I have nothing but contempt.
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The £6,000,000 Orkney Native wildlife project has killed 120 stoats so killing stoats on Orkney is currently costing £50,000 a stoat.
I am hereby offering to go to Orkney, find and kill a stoat for £49,000. No stoat No fee.
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This may make me hated, but personally I would like to see less emphasis on emotional backstory and more emphasis on craft in 'The Repair Shop'.
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@LandEthics
Actually yes I do. Because if people don't read and don't respond this type of narrative achieves total dominance.
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This is happening on a huge scale all across southern Scotland it is a grant funded rampage of destruction.
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There are mountains a plenty, "icebound in the winter and shrouded in cloud". (The Cuillins get relatively little ice in winter due to the gulf stream, but that's by the by.) And he communes the living crap out of those mountains, but people there are none. 5/10
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Lochaber Mountain Rescue team have just brought four people off Ben Nevis. According to the team Facebook page
"No winter kit - no ice axes, no crampons and as far as we are aware no maps. Three of the guys were in trainers"
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If we as a society ask people to run into violent and dangerous situations to protect the rest of us, then maybe we need to accept that sometimes when they get there they aren't going act like they are buttering scones for the church picnic.
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Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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I have persuaded my daughter (9) to come on a backpacking, camping, canoeing adventure in Estonia in the Spring. Paddling through wolf country, sleeping in hay barns and forest huts, cooking on an open fire.
How cool!
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It's not even the shocking self indulgence of it. This piece is 1335 words long, 50 of those words are 'I', three are 'me', 40 are 'my' and we have one 'myself'.
None are 'he' there is one 'she' and four 'they's.
The writer is very much the center of his own story. 3/10
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I found out that my dog has cancer today - not sure if it still localised in her mammary glands or has spread to her lungs.
I'm pretty sad about it.
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Twitter exchange of the year.
Cumbrian sheep farmer and author schools TV presenter.
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Launching personal attacks on RSPB staff is no part of how we will resolve land use conflict and secure a future for shooting and managed moorland.
I'm genuinely ashamed.
@c4_pmc
please stop this. Let's debate the issues and leave the personal out of it.
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Timpson is what Capitalism should be.
Just met a young man who took us up on the offer of free dry cleaning for his interview clothes…and got the job!
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I went to Culsharg bothy yesterday. It has been trashed, graffitied and every window smashed.
People are pigs.
We don't deserve nice things.
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STOLEN/MISSING 💥💥💥PLEASE RT
From Emily Kretz on Facebook
Please share and make her to hot to handle! At some point last night somebody came into our yard in Lopen, Somerset TA13, and took her from her kennel. Next door we’re also broken into!
Somebody must know something!
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Maybe forcing an entire landscape into maximum productivity is a greater threat to food security than allowing some parts of that landscape to maximize provision of the ecosystem services (pollinating insects, pest eating birds, flood abatement) that underpin food production.
A major rewilding project on a farm in Wiltshire has sparked outrage from farmers who have raised concerns over food security. Details on the large project at a 2,800-acre arable unit were released with fanfare in a Guardian newspaper article.
Read more.⬇️
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Just a brief return to say that the tidal wave of kindness, generosity, sympathy and goodness that has flowed over me in the last two days has been very heartening.
For all the overdue replies - I am sorry. Inbox is overflowing.
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If you ever wondered what a very large grayling looks like...
Oh and seeing as you ask yes I did catch it.
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Fieldsports people who describe rural Scotland as a 'playground' and rewilders who call it a 'blank canvas' are equally objectionable.
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Some news...
I will be moving in from the news role at Shooting Times after Christmas. I have a new job managing environmental restoration projects for a small local charity.
Not sure about the fate of this account yet. That will be decided after thought and discussion.
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Wild Justice has formally withdrawn it's last legal challenge to the General Licence. We've won.
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"We cannot expect them to let us continue to kill parts of the nation’s wildlife based simply on our own judgement that it needs killing."
A blog on shooting in the age of accountability, what we need to learn from the General Licence fiasco.
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Horrified to hear that one of our local ospreys has been found dead tangled in discarded fishing tackle.
The anti-social behaviour of some anglers is truly shameful.
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Never wheat shredded eat
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We are now the proud owners of a 16 week old Springer bitch pup called Fizz. She's a beauty.
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Just got an interesting email from a syndicate shoot that does Grouse and Pheasants. They have buzzards nesting in a pen. They have been feeding them rabbits and reckon they haven't lost a single bird.
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The Rural working class are the single most ignored socio-economic group in Britain.
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I'm in a good place now, but at times in the last few years I have struggled with feeling really down and really anxious.
I never felt I could talk about those things.
But some of you spoke openly about depression and anxiety and that really helped me.
Thank you.
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Sadly my wee dog's cancer has spread to her lungs. The Vet reckons she has about a year. We are sad in our house today.
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