Defra

This weekend, the Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom announced a plan to ban microbeads from cosmetic products like face scrubs, toothpastes and shower gels. This is brilliant news for the 350,000 people who have signed our petition in collaboration with Fauna & Flora International, the Marine Conservation Society and the Environmental Investigation Agency. It shows the government is taking steps to protect our oceans from this pointless plastic pollution. BUT… (oh why is there always a ‘but’?!)

Secretary of State for the Environment Mr Owen Paterson has been sacked, and ‘the countryside’ is reportedly FURIOUS. As is traditional, the spokesmen for ‘the countryside’ and their alleged fury are climate sceptics writing in the Telegraph - and none of those climate sceptics writing in the Telegraph is more furious than Owen Paterson himself.

In a shock to the scientific community, neonicotinoids, - or neurotoxic agricultural insecticides - have been shown in laboratory tests to cause brain damage in bees.

Actually, it wasn’t that much of a shock. There’s never been any doubt over the potential of these chemicals to harm bees - the recent controversy has been over dosage.

Well, they may not be shouting about it, but it certainly looks that way. Ironically 2010 has been declared by the UN as 'International Year of Biodiversity', yet alarm bells are ringing for one iconic species already.

In a remarkable contrast from last summer, and autumn, when the UK Government were keen to tell us all how committed they were to saving the bluefin at every possible opportunity, our ministers have gone strangely silent on the issue since the ICCAT meeting in November.