Latest news with #CountrysideAlliance
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Essex church crime figures prompt security funding call
A campaign group has called for continued security funding for churches after figures revealed the number of crimes affecting places of was in the top 10 worst-affected policing areas in the UK with 500 reported crimes at churches during 2022, 2023 and 2024, according to figures obtained by the Countryside Metcalf-Fisher, director of external affairs at the organisation, called for existing government schemes providing support with repair and security costs, including the Listed Places of Worship (LPW) Grant Scheme and the Places of Worship Protective Security Scheme, to be made Home Office and Essex Police have been contacted for comment. The Countryside Alliance obtained the figures via Freedom of Information requests to every local police force in the it published its church crime report, the Essex figures were not available, but have since been the three years in question, Essex Police revealed 213 reported thefts, 159 reported cases of criminal damage, and 128 reported cases of violence at included two cases of lead being stripped from church Yorkshire was the most severely affected with 1,121 recorded crimes, followed by Kent (655) and Greater Manchester (642).Mr Metcalf-Fisher told BBC Essex: "If I think about my parish church outside Saffron Walden in Ugley, it's a beautiful church, but it is isolated."Lots of people, for a number of years, have had concerns about the security of their local church, whether it's anecdotal stories about lead being taken from the rooftops to donation tins being stolen."He said community awareness could also play a huge part in prevention."We need any dog walkers, people out in the area, just keeping an eye on their churches, and that piece of intelligence to police could go a long way in protecting the future of those churches," he said. The Reverend David Ibiayo said he was "pained" when vandals broke in and damaged St Margaret's Church in Bowers Gifford, near Basildon, last year, causing damage estimated at £15, said "luckily" passers by heard a noise a reported it."We were thinking 'We're a small church, how are we going to survive?', but we had a GoFundMe page and the local community raised £10,000 for us," he said."So, yes, we're pained by the news, but it just goes to show the beauty of the local community."The Grade II-listed Anglican church, which dates back to 1450, used its funds to install CCTV. Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Telegraph
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Council in hypocrisy row over vegan-only menus
A Left-leaning council is embroiled in a hypocrisy row over its plant-based menu. Oxfordshire county council banned meat, dairy and eggs from all its catered events in 2021, citing climate change. Now the Lib Dem authority has admitted serving imported oranges and bananas at council lunches, despite telling others to reduce their ' food miles ', a concept aiming to keep produce local to benefit the environment. It comes despite the council contributing to the Oxfordshire Food Strategy, a set of sustainability guidelines for councils, businesses, community groups and individuals, which call for 'reduced food miles' in the county. A council spokesman said: 'While we do try to source food locally there have been occasions, particularly in the winter months, when food such as oranges and bananas have been sourced from further afield. All other fruit is British-grown. 'We need to balance sustainability against the wish to serve councillors a balanced menu which is nutritious and healthy. 'Oranges and bananas are bought in small quantities from local shops. Such shops would source these oranges and bananas from various locations.' After concerns were raised that it was breaching the environmental guidelines, the council has been forced to review its vegan menu. The Countryside Alliance has called for the council to reverse its ban on meat entirely. Mo Metcalf-Fisher, its director of external affairs, told The Telegraph: 'It never made sense to ban grass-fed beef from a farm up the road, to only source fruit from South America, for example. 'British meat is vastly sustainable and the answer to cutting emissions lies with supporting and promoting our farmers and their produce, not policing what people eat. 'Oxfordshire's leadership should right the wrongs of the past, mend their relationship with local farmers, and reverse this illogical meat ban as swiftly as possible.' In 2021, the council passed the meat and dairy ban submitted by Ian Middleton, a Green party councillor, because it was 'in the interest of the health of our planet and the health of our people'. Pictures of the first plant-based lunch posted by Cllr Middleton on X showed a spread of fruit, including melon, mango, kiwi and pomegranate, alongside sandwiches, pastries and chocolate cake. The decision outraged farmers, led by Jeremy Clarkson, of Clarkson's Farm fame, who said: 'It's the principle of it. You can't dictate. You might be a vegetarian but you can't make everyone else a vegetarian just because you are.' Bethia Thomas, a Lib Dem councillor, called for the council to rethink its catering policy at a full council meeting on Tuesday. In a written question, she claimed 'meals have not been sourced locally, and do not promote sustainability or wholly reflect the policies set out in the food strategy which the council endorses'. She called for the council to use local produce 'to reflect the county's rural economy and our farmers' role in food production'. About three quarters of Oxfordshire's land is used for farming. Liz Leffman, the council leader, said she has asked for the authority's facilities management team to 'review the current arrangements for full council lunches'.
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they're oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the 'urban jackboot' as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions. Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate 'was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn', but no one knows who the client is. So far I've received no response to the questions I sent to Belport. The people of Littlebredy, a village of 32 homes, wholly owned by the estate, say they have been ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800-hectare (2,000-acre) grounds, widely enjoyed by local people, was terminated, with red signs to this effect and padlocks on all the entrances. No one knows who is doing this to them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. One person has been evicted already, to make way for an estate office. When she complained about her treatment on social media, the first reply stated, without a shred of evidence: 'You're being evicted so that young fighting age male refugees, who are escaping war in France, can have somewhere safe to live, who, as far as our government is concerned, have priority over you … VOTE REFORM!' That's how divide and rule works: never mind the anonymous plutocrat evicting her, the true culprits, somehow, are asylum seekers. We are lectured by rightwing parties and the rightwing media about the need for 'integration'. But that word is used only as a weapon against immigrants. It is not they who rip communities apart, tear people from their homes and shut us out of the land, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money. But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, swarming with immigrants and trans people, is coming to get you! It will terminate the traditions country people love and impose its own culture instead. It is drummed into our heads that what rural people want is different to what the oppressive urbanites desire. But it's not true. Embarrassingly for the self-professed guardians of the countryside, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future Countryside – which tells us it is 'powered by the Countryside Alliance Foundation', the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commissioned polling in 2023. Its question about a wider right to roam in the countryside was phrased in a way that made it sound threatening: 'To what extent do you agree that the public should have the 'right to roam' meaning that anyone can wander in the open countryside regardless of whether the land is privately or publicly owned?' Even so, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed it was a good idea. Even more strikingly, when asked which political party 'would do the most to prioritise/protect/promote the countryside?', only 9% each of urban and rural people named the Conservatives, while 38% in both categories said the Green party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these answers failed to find their way into Future Countryside's public presentation of the results. Instead, the only mention of a right to roam was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: 'They weren't brought up in the countryside. They think they can wander across all the fields with the right to roam.' Links to both the raw polling data and the public presentation on the organisation's website currently show a '404 error' when you try to open them. Strangely, writing a year after these results were published, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed that a wider right to roam is 'completely contradictory to what the public actually wants'. With admirable chutzpah, he accused those calling for it of waging a 'culture war in the countryside'. When YouGov framed the question more objectively, for a poll commissioned by the Right to Roam campaign, it found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. It also discovered, in stark contrast to the claims of certain rural 'guardians' who call it 'the social glue that keeps rural communities together', that opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against it. As the access campaigner Jon Moses points out in an article for the Lead, 'the issues over which we're told we're most divided are often the issues on which we actually most agree'. That view is supported by some fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. It found that while in several other western countries there is a stark political divide between urban and rural people, this does not apply in Britain. 'We do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied or 'left behind' compared to their urban counterparts.' On cultural issues, it found, 'ruralites are often less – not more – authoritarian than urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader'. We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of the culture warriors to divide us. But we must be persuaded that other people don't want what we want: that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the weird minority, pushing against the social current. In reality, the weird minority are the 1% who own half of all the land in England, and the subset of that group who hide their ownership behind front companies and opaque trusts. If the government's proposed changes to the Land Registry go ahead, it may become easier to discover the true owners of places such as Bridehead, though I suspect we will still struggle. On 5 July, the Right to Roam campaign will organise a peaceful trespass at Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers blighting rural life. The real conflict is not town v country, but money and power v people. That holds, regardless of where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England
Power hides by setting us against each other. This is never more true than in the countryside, where the impacts of an extreme concentration of ownership and control are blamed on those who have nothing to do with it. Rural people are endlessly instructed that they're oppressed not by the lords of the land, but by vicious and ignorant townies – the 'urban jackboot' as the Countryside Alliance used to call it – stamping on their traditions. Near Bridport in Dorset right now, an entire village is facing eviction, following the sale of the Bridehead Estate for about £30m. The official new owner, Bridehead Estate Ltd, is registered to the same address, with the same officers, as a company called Belport. The Telegraph reports that the estate 'was bought by Belport, a private equity firm, on behalf of a wealthy client last autumn', but no one knows who the client is. So far I've received no response to the questions I sent to Belport. The people of Littlebredy, a village of 32 homes, wholly owned by the estate, say they have been ordered to leave from January. At the beginning of this month, access to parts of the 800-hectare (2,000-acre) grounds, widely enjoyed by local people, was terminated, with red signs to this effect and padlocks on all the entrances. No one knows who is doing this to them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming. One person has been evicted already, to make way for an estate office. When she complained about her treatment on social media, the first reply stated, without a shred of evidence: 'You're being evicted so that young fighting age male refugees, who are escaping war in France, can have somewhere safe to live, who, as far as our government is concerned, have priority over you … VOTE REFORM!' That's how divide and rule works: never mind the anonymous plutocrat evicting her, the true culprits, somehow, are asylum seekers. We are lectured by rightwing parties and the rightwing media about the need for 'integration'. But that word is used only as a weapon against immigrants. It is not they who rip communities apart, tear people from their homes and shut us out of the land, causing social disintegration. It is the power of money. But look, a spider! The cosmopolitan city, swarming with immigrants and trans people, is coming to get you! It will terminate the traditions country people love and impose its own culture instead. It is drummed into our heads that what rural people want is different to what the oppressive urbanites desire. But it's not true. Embarrassingly for the self-professed guardians of the countryside, some of the evidence comes from their own surveys. Future Countryside – which tells us it is 'powered by the Countryside Alliance Foundation', the charitable arm of the Countryside Alliance – commissioned polling in 2023. Its question about a wider right to roam in the countryside was phrased in a way that made it sound threatening: 'To what extent do you agree that the public should have the 'right to roam' meaning that anyone can wander in the open countryside regardless of whether the land is privately or publicly owned?' Even so, there was almost no difference between the responses of urban and rural people: 55% of urban people and 54% of rural people agreed it was a good idea. Even more strikingly, when asked which political party 'would do the most to prioritise/protect/promote the countryside?', only 9% each of urban and rural people named the Conservatives, while 38% in both categories said the Green party. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these answers failed to find their way into Future Countryside's public presentation of the results. Instead, the only mention of a right to roam was a comment from an anonymous rural respondent: 'They weren't brought up in the countryside. They think they can wander across all the fields with the right to roam.' Links to both the raw polling data and the public presentation on the organisation's website currently show a '404 error' when you try to open them. Strangely, writing a year after these results were published, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, claimed that a wider right to roam is 'completely contradictory to what the public actually wants'. With admirable chutzpah, he accused those calling for it of waging a 'culture war in the countryside'. When YouGov framed the question more objectively, for a poll commissioned by the Right to Roam campaign, it found that 68% of urban people and 68% of rural people supported it. It also discovered, in stark contrast to the claims of certain rural 'guardians' who call it 'the social glue that keeps rural communities together', that opposition to hunting with dogs is strong everywhere: 78% of urban people and 74% of rural people are against it. As the access campaigner Jon Moses points out in an article for the Lead, 'the issues over which we're told we're most divided are often the issues on which we actually most agree'. That view is supported by some fascinating research published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. It found that while in several other western countries there is a stark political divide between urban and rural people, this does not apply in Britain. 'We do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied or 'left behind' compared to their urban counterparts.' On cultural issues, it found, 'ruralites are often less – not more – authoritarian than urbanites … and are less likely to support an undemocratic leader'. We are fundamentally the same people, despite the best efforts of the culture warriors to divide us. But we must be persuaded that other people don't want what we want: that we are the outsiders, the interlopers, the weird minority, pushing against the social current. In reality, the weird minority are the 1% who own half of all the land in England, and the subset of that group who hide their ownership behind front companies and opaque trusts. If the government's proposed changes to the Land Registry go ahead, it may become easier to discover the true owners of places such as Bridehead, though I suspect we will still struggle. On 5 July, the Right to Roam campaign will organise a peaceful trespass at Bridehead, to draw attention to the almost feudal powers blighting rural life. The real conflict is not town v country, but money and power v people. That holds, regardless of where you live. Never let powerful people tell you who you are. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist On Tuesday 16 September, join George Monbiot, Mikaela Loach and other special guests discussing the forces driving climate denialism, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at
South Wales Argus
25-06-2025
- Business
- South Wales Argus
UK's best butcher is N S James in Raglan, Monmouthshire
N S James Butchers in Raglan, Monmouthshire, won the title at the 2025 Countryside Alliance Awards after first being crowned Best Butcher in Wales. The UK finals took place at the House of Lords, following their success in the Welsh round of the competition. Monmouth MS Peter Fox praised the business for its achievement. Mr Fox said: "As a Member of the Senedd, we often deal with bad news and difficult issues, so it is always nice to be presented with a good news story such as this, and also the opportunity to celebrate our butcher industry and local businesses. "N S James has been ever present in my constituency and is a staple of Raglan. "I often visit when I am in the area, and would recommend everyone to pop in if they are in the area. "Whilst of course not showing favouritism to any one business, I would encourage everyone to shop locally when they can." He also highlighted the value of the Countryside Alliance Awards in promoting rural businesses. Mr Fox said: "The Countryside Alliance awards are an excellent way to not just recognise, but to support and promote our rural communities. "They celebrate people who do that extra thing to support our industries, and it's exciting to see so many businesses taking part and receiving plaudits." He said it was no surprise to see N S James take the UK title after their regional win.
