The RSPB’s Head of Scottish Investigations, Ian Thomson, seems to have lost all perspective of reality. Perhaps he never had it.
Thomson oversees one of the largest individual budgets at the RSPB yet probably has the least to show for it.
He presents himself as some sort of undercover highly trained operative on a one-man mission to bring down grouse shooting, yet in reality he has far more resemblance to Mr Bean.
Within the RSPB he seems to have a band of merry followers, along with Mark Thomas, whose own hysterical ramblings about hunting down gamekeepers included telling an audience on Radio 4 that the uplands were full of ‘gangs of armed criminals’.
But what is most embarrassing about this charlatan is that, despite having 18 years experience, he still seems to know so little about the reality of grouse shooting.
Take for example a recent zoom seminar he gave to the Scottish Ornithologists' Club (SOC), where he told the audience some of his experiences on grouse moors. There are too many baffling generalisations and factually inaccurate statements to list in just one article, however we thought we’d list a few of the highlights.
It is worth noting too that the zoom seminar was given from an ‘RSPB investigation team curry night’ on the outskirts of Hull.
Mad claim one: During driven grouse shooting the beaters drive birds ‘beating drums and flashing lights’.
This is driven grouse shooting, not an 18th century war. These ridiculous assertions are either complete incompetence on the part of Ian Thomson or a desire to try to distort the views of driven grouse shooting amongst his audiences as an archaic pantomime. Probably both.
Mad claim two: Some of these driven shoots will account to 234,500 grouse in a day.
234,500 grouse in a day is such a bonkers figure to reference it is unimaginable. What on earth is Ian trying to suggest? The average driven grouse day is somewhere between 75 to 150 brace, occasionally they can be a bit more than that. But how on earth can someone could suggest the figure is 234,500 is preposterous, and yet I’m sure some people hearing that will believe him.
Mad claim three: The grouse industry has been subject to very little regulation or accountability.
Moorland management has more regulation than almost any other piece of land. Just ask any upland manager responsible for filling out Natural England paperwork every year.
Mad claim four: One thing we make damn sure of when one of these birds gets killed is we make sure it is all over the media.
This is more of an admission of guilt, rather than a mad claim, because it is true. So despite the population of birds of prey being at a 250 year high, and reaching unstainable levels in some places, the RSPB purposely try to distort this by launching public media campaigns.
This inevitably ends up inciting hostility towards innocent individuals and their families, and giving a totally distorted impression of a conservation trend that has been hugely positive, largely down to the management put in place by grouse moor keepers. Using huge amounts of charitable money to distort the media is surely not what a charity should be doing.
Mad claim five: ‘Yes we’ve made noise, but we've done it by being not shouty, but by being really meticulous in gathering and documenting evidence.’
One thing the RSPB have most definitely done is be shouty. Mostly this is followed shortly by a fundraising appeal. As for meticulously gathering data, no one would know of course because they never release any data. It’s another preposterous self-gratifying claim.
There are of course many more examples we could give, but this give just a sample of some of the madness being thrown about by those at the top of the RSPB.
Of course, and entirely unsurprisingly, when asked what the charity needed to have more success the answer was the same as it ever was. More money. Because the hundreds of millions that the RSPB already have and have spent is never enough for them, is it.