My local football team, the mighty Rushden and Diamonds is currently 8th in the Blue Square Premier League - that's 8th out of 24 teams.
Seeing your performance in the context of others is always informative and sometimes really useful.
So did you know that the UK is 4th place in the EU (out of 27) for the highest rate of income tax? and 12th, out of 15, EU countries in the proportion of our energy coming from renewable sources? and top of the EU cocaine using league? and top of the EU asthma suffering league? and we were 8th in the EU days lost to strikes league table back in 2006. This gets a bit addictive!
In terms of farmland bird population changes, the UK is 11th worst out of 40 European countries over the period 1990-2000. And we were even closer to the bottom, as I remember it, in a previous analysis which covered the period 1980-1990.
Farmland birds declined in most European countries (but increased in just a few) and I wonder what we can learn, maybe nothing, in terms of how the league leaders, Austria, practise their farming? In Austria, farmland birds did pretty well apparently. And Austria is top of the league, it seems, and if you ignore Liechtenstein (which we all do!), in terms of organic agriculture. It can't be that simple can it?
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
essex peasant - careful, peasants shouldn't revolt too much!
You are now slipping into just being completely negative. I wonder why you can't acknowledge the success at Hope Farm? Why is it so difficult for you to praise what has been achieved there?
I don't think you are right about bird numbers at Hope Farm. We have surveyed all bird species there since we acquired the farm - over 100 species recorded (not sure what the total is now). We monitor all breeding and wintering bird species and lots of non-birds as well. If we didn't count everything then we'd be mad, and you would probably say so! But we have consistently (after a few years, so that there is a trend to look at) used the Farmland Bird Index when describing the bird numbers at Hope Farm because that's been an important measure of farmland bird populations at use in policy discussions for years (in fact, since 1999 or so). You can find examples of us using the FBI at Hope Farm on this the RSPB website if you doubt it - I've just checked.
And I will leave it to others to check what we say about farmers to judge whether you are correct when you say that we 'demonise farmers as being uncaring'. Have a look at this blog and the RSPB website as a whole. The internet does make it a lot easier for anyone to see what we actually say rather than rely on your inaccurate version of what we say. To start with - do have a look at the recent blog on stone curlews mentioned in my remarks to Sooty above.