It's MUTTON TIME! Macbeth's Orkney Boreray mutton page has just gone live. Along with the familiar whole and half carcass boxes they are repeating the Taster Boxes that proved so popular last time. macbeths.com/collections/bor…
But that isn't what you were posting about @BenGoldsmith You also have decided what @herdyshepherd1 thinks without asking him. As a proffesional ecologist and grazing specialist for many years I can categorically say that sheep grazing done right can be wonderful for nature and the uplands. Your lack of understanding drips from your words here. It's not sheep that are the problem, it is management. Get management right and ecology flows from that WITHOUT reducing numbers of livestock. We don't need rewilding - We need to work with and learn from the communities that have been there for generations to improve the ecosystems they live within. Ben Goldsmith (@BenGoldsmith)I’m a fan of James Rebanks ( @herdyshepherd1). I love his writing, I find him funny, and I admire what he does for nature on his farm. I think our debate on here this weekend about sheep farming has overall been respectful. I’m able to say things which I reckon James knows to be true but cannot say himself. I like to think that (in private) he would agree with me that: -nature in Britain, and especially in our national parks, is in a terrible state; -there are far too many sheep in the British uplands; -sheep contribute nothing to nature recovery, and in fact substantially hold it back; -public money should be for public good; -ELM is absolutely the right idea, but still overly bureaucratic and insufficiently generous; -native cattle (and pigs and ponies) have a beautiful and vital role to play in restoring nature in our most precious landscapes; -a pivot towards emphasising nature in our less agriculturally productive landscapes offers the best and only pathway to economic and social renewal in some pretty tough areas; -nascent publicly and privately funded mechanisms for rewarding nature recovery, such as natural flood management, nutrient run-off mitigation, biodiversity credits, even carbon, offer potentially valuable additional revenue streams for farmers in these landscapes. As *the* sheep farming champion, these are not easy things for James to say in public. But I like to think he knows them to be true. — https://x.com/BenGoldsmith/status/2092338806066126974
A wool jumper knitted in 1986 is still in a wardrobe in Britain, doing fine. The vegan fleece bought in 2026 will be in a hole in the ground by 2031 and still there in 2226. The wool jumper: - Made of grass, rain and time. - Its carbon came out of the sky last spring. - Warms up as it gets wet. - Takes a third of its weight in water before it admits it. - Meets flame, chars, stops. - Buried, gone inside a year. - Sixteen per cent nitrogen. Feeds the field on the way out. - £80 in 1985. Roughly £250 today. Bought once. The vegan fleece: - Made of crude oil, hexane and a very long boat. - Its carbon came out of the ground in the Permian. - Goes clammy at the first hint of rain. - Holds nothing, and complains about it. - Meets flame, liquefies, welds to skin. - Buried, still there in two centuries. - Sheds 700,000 fibres a wash. Feeds the fish. - £40 in 2026. Bought ten times. £400. Two of those columns describe an environmental catastrophe and it is not the one with a face. Wool solved every problem the outdoor industry currently has a patent pending on. Waterproofing, warmth when soaked, fire performance, odour, biodegradability. It solved them before anyone thought to write them down, using weather, and it grows the whole apparatus back every spring at no charge to anybody. Polyester solved one. Cost. It solved it by moving the bill onto the water table, where nobody has to look at it, and textiles are now Europe's fourth largest source of microplastic pollution. The Marines banned polyester outside the wire in Iraq because it was welding itself into men's burns. Aircraft seat covers are 89 to 95 per cent wool because the cabin has to survive a vertical burn test. Every institution that has properly investigated what fire does to a human being has quietly gone back to the sheep. The farmer who grew that fleece got about three pounds for it. But yes. The sheep is the problem. Standing in a field in mid-Wales, in the rain, growing next year's. The sheep is the problem.
Somehow there’s only just over 150,000 signatures to go before PC Harper’s petition hits 1,000,000 signatures. 1,000,000 people who believe that PC Andrew Harper’s legacy deserves so much more than releasing his killers early. Please sign and share, thank you. #ThinBlueLine 🚨
