100 protestors arrested, 3 horses dead. I think they might be arresting the wrong people.
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One of the trainers (a quick Google suggests that he is a well known figure) was a school chum when I was very small.
His father was the master of the local hunt. A notoriously ill-tempered and violent man.
One day he went out to tackle some locals who he reckoned were on his land and worked himself up into such a frenzy that he dropped dead from a heart attack* on the spot.
tl;dr it’s barbaric garbage but it won’t go away until people stop gambling.
* God smote him a mighty blow for being a massive cunt
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32 years here in a couple of months.
Fuck me! A familiar road…
This could have easily gone in the Twitchers thread but it highlights issues that are way beyond our declining bird populations.
Mark Cocker is such a good author, his book “Crow County” is a masterpiece of the genre.
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I recall one specific car journey in the mid 80’s from Sheffield down towards Bristol during an early summer afternoon to evening. We decided to go cross country making use of the Fosse way between Leicester (ish) and the Cotswolds.
The amount of insects in the air then had to be seen to be believed and the car was carpeted in a layer of them. Using the wipers created a thick soup to the point where it was ineffective and we needed to stop and wash the screen clean a couple of times.
You simply never see that density of insect life now, cars accumulate little even during summer journeys.
It’s therefore no surprise that bird numbers would be in dramatic decline following the decline in flying invertebrates. I presume it’s down to farming methods/pesticides but whatever, the damage is done.
Large-scale ‘agribusiness’ farming, excessive pesticide, fungicide and herbicide use [all of those kill insects, directly or indirectly], habitat loss, loss from moving vehicle accidents and domestic cats.
The cats get forgotten or go unmentioned because it’s unpopular. One in four UK households has a cat - that’s ~12 million, a number which shot-up from ~8 million during 2020 and 2021, and has quadrupled since 1965 when it was ~4 million.
Each one is capable of killing dozens of birds from ducks and pigeons to the smallest wren, some even manage to kill things like owls and kestrels, as well as bats, insectivores and rodents - al have knock-on harm associated.
An aspect of habitat loss that gets overlooked is the death of the domestic garden - there’s a tidal-wave of hard-surfaces, decking, ‘garden rooms’ and plastic fucking grass sweeping over the land because gardens are too much like hard work.
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Winds me up that cats are allowed to wander wherever the fck they like shitting and killing wildlife with abandon. Not the cats fault of course, owners seem to think it’s fine though. If next door’s dog was shitting all over my garden and killing wild animals I’d have something to say to my neighbour. As a bare minimum cats should have a bell on to at least give some of the birds a chance. They should also be kept indoors unless accompanied by the owner but everyone thinks I’m batshit when I come away with that.
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You should know by now that cats make the rules.
We obey
Our mog has never killed anything except various insects - mostly flies. If a fly comes into the house it rarely lasts more that a minute or two before he catches and eats it.
He has never shat (or pissed) in anyone’s garden either - he only does that in his litter tray. Makes us larf because if he’s been outside for a long time, the first place he visits after coming in is his litter tray. 
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We have a cat, had two until a year ago. Cats always go into indoors-only ‘lockdown’ at the end of March and don’t get out until late October. Nothing gets killed as a consequence. It’s very easy, fuck knows why more don’t do it.
And they don’t shit in neighbours’ gardens - it’s me that does that.
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I’ve got at least four cats who like to visit. Two in particular seem to like coming to mines specifically for a shit, my strawberry patch being a particular favourite. I used to have to bird feeder spots on on a tree in the middle of the lawn and one on a tree surrounded by bushes. Although very popular with the local finches, the latter became a bit of an ambush spot so had to stop putting feed out there. I’ve never seen one actually kill a bird but I have seen them lurking in the bushes and found dead birds in the area so the cats are getting the blame.
Mysteriously all of them seem to like rolling around in a particular patch of border which we incidentally have now covered with weed suppressant and bark chippings.
Every few days there is a circular patch of bare weed suppressant with all the bark out to the sides. I have no idea why they seem to love this spot.
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Can’t believe it was only £2.99 to begin with 
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I read this while drinking my second coffee of the morning.
It should be retitled Stuff American White People like.
Although it is bollocks whatever title you give it
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