Caryk

Hedgerows need careful management for the benefit of the hedge & wildlife.

An excellent video 👇 explaining that repeated annual cutting to same level won't allow blossom & fruits to develop nor benefit the hedgerow.

Do watch & share.

It was so spectacular, disappointing that the replacements don’t live up to it. ☹️

Kwasi Kwarteng Wealth taxes will make the UK poorer Labour's logic appears sensible but it defies economic reality

Sorry @theipaper.com but WHY is this guy talking to us about what will make the UK poorer? He was happy to grenade our economy twice…
Brexit and then his batshit budget with Truss.
He should be in political oblivion for the mess he made and the price we all have to pay for his party’s failures.

People who have come to the United Kingdom legally, played by the rules and made it their home do not need to “go home”. This is their home.

@eddavey.libdems.org.uk has written to Kemi Badenoch to give her the chance to reject these divisive calls from her frontbencher Katie Lam.

Two thirds of a lemon in search of a G & T.

The lists may be available on the Ancestry site. I would check but I don’t have a subscription at the moment.

Leaders’ TV debates: middle-aged, rich, white men telling us what’s what, again | Alex Andreou Alex Andreou: Excluding the Greens and other parties in favour of Ukip will leave the election debates devoid of even a modicum of diversity

It's quite depressing that I wrote this, warning about the elevation of Farage to the top table by TV executives, eleven years ago.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Reform’s leader in @Kent_cc

“I’m not a dictator. I listen… then do what I want.”

And their plan? Squeeze services so they seem competent and please @Nigel_Farage

The mask slipped and someone very helpfully leaked the shitshow 👇

Photo of Farage being interviewed by Mishal Husain. Because he feels uncomfortable about his position on Putin, he replies to her… ‘Listen love, you’re trying ever so hard….’

Christ alive. If we, as a nation, can’t do better than this nasty, stale-breathed, stale-minded, racist misogynist prick, then what the hell are we doing? Leading in the polls??
FFS. Sort yourself out, UK.

UK standards of living set to fall behind Max Kendix Political Correspondent Living standards in Britain will fall behind those of Lithuania in less than five years and Turkey's in less than 20 years, according to forecasts. The UK will fall from the 30th richest country this year to the 46th richest by 2050, according to research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr). The Czech Republic will eclipse British GDP per capita in 2031, and Poland will do the same in 2034. The research was commissioned by the authors of a new book, Prosperity Through Growth, who interviewed former chancellors and former prime ministers to come up with policies to prevent the relative decline. Douglas McWilliams, the founder of Cebr, said: "With GDP per capita in the UK growing extremely sluggishly, we are likely to be overtaken by more dynamic economies unless we change policy." The book suggests merging national insurance and income taxes into one flat tax, cutting business regulation and refocusing public spending on infrastructure and defence.

BREXIT NUMBER CRUNCHING 0.08% Expected growth by 2038 from 'Brexit win' of Trans-Pacific CPTPP trade deal 0.08% Expected growth by 2035 from Australia trade deal 0.07% Expected growth by 2035 from CEPA trade deal with Japan 0.03% Expected growth by 2035 from New Zealand trade deal -4% Long-term loss of growth caused by the Brexit that enabled these 'wins'

Well this is a proper head scratcher.
But yeah, fiddling around with tax and getting rid of consumer protections should sort it.
Wonder what those ‘former chancellors and prime ministers’ had to say about this shitshow. Any mention of Brexit at all??

(Times and Private Eye)

They lie about the ECHR.
Just like they lied about Brexit. Claiming if we just got rid of that ‘European’ thing, we’d be free, we’d have control, all our problems solved…
It’s NOT TRUE.
We’d inflict more chaos on ourselves and torch our own human rights framework for NOTHING.
For liars.
Again.

Nigel Farage is cosying up to the US anti-abortion group that challenged Roe v Wade. Women in Britain should know that | Zoe Williams ADF, a conservative Christian lobby group that counts among its allies JD Vance, has stated that its goal is to see abortion rights curtailed in Britain, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

Nigel Farage is cosying up to the US anti-abortion group that challenged Roe v Wade. Women in Britain should know that | Zoe Williams

It looks amazing, Phil.

Starmer and Reeves are expected to argue that if it hadn't been for Brexit this type of downgrade would not have been needed - and cite official figures suggesting that if Britain had not left the European Union the economy would be about £120 billion greater by 2035 than current forecasts suggest. The message is simple: Farage is ultimately to blame, as the man who delivered Brexit with "easy sloganeering" then walked away from the aftermath rather than putting in the hard yards. Or to put it another way: Farage, not us, is responsible for putting up your taxes. The theme will tie to the main thrust of Starmer's argument at conference, that the Reform leader is selling easy solutions that are just a fantasy.

Good to blame Farage for the dull-arsed, ruinous, tedious failure of Brexit.
Not that good to keep punishing us for that failure, rather than looking to swiftly boost our prosperity by asking to rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union.
But yes. It’s a start.

www.thetimes.com/article/8875...

2. The Angel’s Game; 3. The Prisoner of Heaven; 4. The Labyrinth of the Spirits. 😀

All four books in the series are well worth reading.

Still on my shelf. There is no way I could get rid of it.

The death of the premature baby born after their mother contracted measles highlights the danger of more and more people refusing vaccines.

An individual is contagious 4 days before the rash appears.

Imagine a child with measles at a daycare full of babies too young to be vaccinated.

Really, Sky? Her husband's name deserves more prominence than her own?

Yet it's a potentially fruitful line of argument. Many of the UK's current problems stem from something most of us would prefer not to dwell on - Brexit. Depressed investment, low productivity, stagnant economic growth and living standards, the strain on the public finances and thus public services, food prices, the "Boriswave" of more than 2 million (legal) immigrants, increased red tape and border hassles for businesses, farmers and travellers... all can be traced back, to a greater or lesser extent, to 2016 and the EU Referendum. And who, as he reminds us again now, spent 30 years of his life campaigning for Britain to leave the EU? Farage. It is he, Farage, who 'broke Britain' with Brexit and is now capitalising on the vast damage he caused

“Farage “broke Britain" with Brexit and is now, outrageously, capitalising on the vast damage he caused”

Article argues there’s no need to mention Reform’s racism as the Brexit shitshow is failure enough.
But that had its roots in racism too. So let’s do both.
app.independent.co.uk/edition/uk.c...

Differing political definitions of patriotism 3 of the 6 letters (4th quoted in the post) criticising Phillips 😊 Sir, Melanie Phillips expresses a very specific and slightly odd definition of patriotism as "love for the Crown, the armed forces and the common law, and attachment to faith, family and flag" ("Sorry Keir, you don't understand patriotism", , comment, Sep 30). Perhaps that is why she concludes that Nigel Farage offers “the only patriotic force on the horizon". Personally, I regard someone who had a very direct hand in diminishing the United Kingdom's GDP by 4 per cent — as a direct result of our leaving the European Union — as confirming Samuel Johnson's much-quoted remark that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". Acts rather than words still count for some of us. Shaun Leavey Sherborne, Dorset Sir, Over thousands of years these islands have been invaded and occupied by various tribes, who, at any given moment, represented some kind of "Englishness". "In 300 years' time there might well be another kind of "Englishness", doubtless defending itself from the incursion of escapees from another foreign disaster, and claiming a threat to its purity". We were never pure, and attempts such as the present one to somehow freeze a manufactured notion of "Englishness" are doomed to failure. Jerry Stuart London SEI Sir, There is a fundamental flaw in Melanie Phillips's article. She talks of British patriotism as "attachment to faith, family and flag". °. She doesn't indicate which faith she is referring to, but presumably means the Christian faith as the traditional faith in Britain. However, the faith of Jesus of Nazareth shares much more common ground with the values she seems to dismiss - decency, reasonableness and compassion - than it does with the militarism and flag-waving she seems to endorse. I surely cannot be the only person getting worried when the Christian faith is conscripted into the support of strident nationalism. The Rev Paul Dowling

“That Brexit has made control of immigration more difficult, damaged our economy and weakened opportunities for future generations should make people think twice before putting Brexit's chief proponent in charge of running the country”

Times letters: a lonely oasis of sanity in the far right storm.

Really, Reform UK? THIS is what you're going with? That this man, who served as an MEP next to Nigel Farage for years and was made leader of your party in Wales by current deputy, Richard Tice, is just "one of tens of thousands of people Nigel meets on an annual basis"?~AA

I still use my Hornsea Brown sugar jar with the wooden lid.

As Reform's Nathan Gill admits taking bribes from Russian 'secret service pawn' Oleg Voloshyn, here’s a nice photo of Nigel Farage with Voloshyn’s wife.

Me, Toby Jones and a timely reminder of why we need a free press A new drama on the phone-hacking scandal shows us journalism at its worst, but also how reporting can make real change

Robert Redford, me, Toby Jones - and a reporter who found corruption in his own backyard. Thoughts on the coming ITV drama, The Hack www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

Wow.

Tommy Robinson is a journalist in much the same way that a hamster is a bicycle.

Reform, with 0.7% of all MPs, featured in 25% of BBC's recent 10pm news bulletins Astonishingly, a party with 18 times as many MPs as Reform has received one-third less coverage on BBC News at 10.

British media pumps out daily propaganda pieces for Farage, fails to offer *any scrutiny* and basically legitimises rampant racism, then puts on its ‘innocent face’ and clutches its pearls at the rise of the far right…
What a grim betrayal of our democracy.
www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/how...

Photo of David Bill presenting on GB ‘news’ wearing a huge panty pad on his ear - in sympathy with Trump

So, Reform Party chair, David Bull (seen here wearing a panty pad of sympathy when Trump got shot on the ear) and anti-vax crank, Dr Malhotra (who thinks the Covid vaccine gave the royals cancer)…
🤡⚠️wrote Reform’s “health policy” together🤡⚠️

How TF is Reform not being laughed out of the door?