From wild swimming to grouse shooting, Britain is in hock to hobbyists

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From wild swimming to grouse shooting, Britain is in hock to hobbyists
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles,Belgique Actualités
  • 📰 TheEconomist
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Beware the hobby lobby

a nation. For proof, drive to Bransdale, a grouse-shooting estate in the North York Moors. Providing a home for red grouse, a fast plump bird that is hard to shoot, requires a landscape as artificial as any garden. Controlled burning creates a mix of young and old heather, giving the bird something to eat and somewhere to live respectively; potential predators such as stoats are removed by skilled full-time gamekeepers. It is beautiful, barren and familiar.

The sport, whose season begins on August 12th, is only the most extreme example of a hobby shaping Britain. Yet the power of hobbyists can be seen in everything from the regulation of polluting cars in London to rows over sewage. Hobbyists are the most powerful yet overlooked force in British politics. Call it the hobby lobby. Its influence is everywhere.

By contrast, when hobbyists come calling, governments tremble. Images of raw sewage being pumped into Britain’s waterways have hurt the Tories as much as a failing health service or rising taxes. Why? Because wild-swimmers have established themselves as one of Britain’s potent hobby lobbies. The Outdoor Swimming Society, which does what it says on the tin, had 300 members in 2006. It now boasts nearly 200,000. Believe it or not, England’s waters are in a better state today than in the 1990s.

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