Clare Rayner

Nigel Farage lied multiple times at his press conference today - including saying no-one who voted Green in Gorton and Denton has a job and he's "certain" Reform won most British born voters in the by-election, based on zero evidence, and yet not a single journalist there pushed back on them

UK launches operation to support thousands of Britons in Middle East Officials are understood to be working on plans to evacuate British nationals, should airspace remain closed.

What's happening in Dubai bolsters the argument taxes should be based on people's nationality, not just their country of residence (ie the US model).

If Brits living abroad can expect to be airlifted out by virtue of being British, they should pay some tax towards that.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Just throwing it out there: telling people that they have legitimate grievances about immigration will never reduce the sense of grievance. This isn't how anything works and a government that paid even the merest attention to social science research would know their approach helps the far-right.

If the rumours are true and the kids and social media consultation opens today, here are two things I think should be banned from
social media:

1) AI bots
2) recommendations algorithms that optimise for time on site

Firm regulation of both of these things is possible and auditable

there's also something truly sick and decadent about how absolutely impossible, just utterly outside the Overton Window, it is for even mainstream progressive American politicians to simply say: "the US does not have the right to attack any country it doesn't like and the US military should go home"

this policy is cruel and will make minimal difference to immigration numbers (as refugees are only a small % of overall immigrants, and most of them come from countries that aren't going to be safe any time soon [e.g. eritrea;afghanistan]).

It will actively harm integration and finding work.

Three cornered leek, danish Scurvygrass, Blackthorn, daisy, cow parsley, common chickweed and shepherds purse

I also found 7 species of white flowering plants (out of my 25 for #thewinter10).

Loving the Blackthorn blossom particularly. And two clumps of Danish Scurvygrass - a healthy patch (top middle) looking lush, and a purple coloured plant growing on a wall (presumably under stress).

#wildflowerhour

Primroses, hedge bedstraw, ivy, grass, leaf litter - in the bank of a hedgerow, Dartmoor, Devon

Primroses, hedge bedstraw, ivy - bank of a hedge #Dartmoor #Devon #WildflowerHour

Barren Strawberry, Potentilla steralis, in the ancient wood pasture up the lane. #wildflowerhour

A variety of wildflowers seen in the UK and beyond in recent years © Jon Dunn

Starting shortly, the last of the #Winter10 wildflowerhours - and next week, the focused weekly challenges begin anew from the lovely team at @wildflowerhour.bsky.social...

I can't wait to see what I see this coming year close to and further from home. And what everyone else finds...

At least 148 dead after reported strike on school, Iran says Iran has blamed the US and Israel for the strike; the US is looking into reports of the incident, while the IDF says it is

Utterly horrifying. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A reminder of what some of these asylum policies are:

- giving refugees only 2.5 years of leave, meaning the Home Office has to review their status every 30 months
- quadrupling the time to settlement from 5 years to 20 years
- no automatic way to be reunited with close family members

Open invite for volunteers tp make a whole wetland tomorrow. Flooding a field on the river by smashing a land drain, building a few leaky dams with live willow, and propagating willow cuttings to see how many we can sneak past the deer. Park at Angelfish Cafe and hike in!
w3w.co/large.tunnel...

what even is the fucking point

Still remarkable to ponder what exactly it is about washed-up, full-of-shit, generally-despised politicians that leads dodgy tech companies to pay them huge wads of cash.

the loss of the World Service would be a tragedy and huge lost of soft power for Britain

Earned settlement The government is consulting on how the current settlement system should be reformed and how those reforms should be implemented.

Calling on other UK immigrants and pro immigration citizens, today is the last day (til 11.59pm) to fill in the public consultation on the proposed changes to Earned Settlement, most notably moving the timeline from 5 years to 10 years www.gov.uk/government/c...

This seems as good an excuse as any for a short thread introducing people to some single moths I've found in my area, looking for fun.

1. Here, for starters, is a Canary-Shouldered Thorn Moth (I didn't make this up).

A blue envelope vomiting up a pile of papers.

Is it just me or does the new Outlook 365 animation (whilst you wait for it to open your inbox) look like an envelope puking papers? Every time it makes me feel slightly nauseous!

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

A tawny owl perching on the entrance of a wooden owl box up a pine tree.

Happy #SuperbOwlSunday, this is our owl and he hangs out in the owl box in the meadow. He arrived in November (first ever owl occupant) and we are extremely happy to have him.

My photo shows a roughly square-shaped piece of limestone with a relief carving depicting a front facing owl on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This relief represents the ancient Egyptian owl hieroglyph ‘m’. Limestone plaque dimensions H. 10.3 x W. 11.1 x D. 2.5 cm

Happy #SuperbOwlSunday!

Here’s a lovely limestone plaque carved with the face of an owl!🦉😍

From Egypt, Late Period–Ptolemaic Period, 400–30 BC.

Met Museum www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

📷 by me

#Archaeology

Photo of the described owl art. It looks like muddy scratch marks on a mottled brown cave wall. The head is very round with two upright lines for ears and a line in the center for a beak. Numerous parallel lines suggest plumage on the wings.

The oldest known image of an owl:

More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees
carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

Natural England are dragging their heels on certifying the Middlewick Ranges as a SSSI, protecting it from development.

The community need to fund a judicial review to protect this place.

Please chip in - even just a couple of quid helps.

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/full-prote...

I emailed the reporters and editors yesterday afternoon. Got a prompt response saying they were looking at it—and have heard nothing since.

Is @theguardian.com just waiting to fix their non-exclusive exclusive until no one is looking?

I am not letting this go.

To show how widespread SGAR rat poison is in UK, we found 4 out of 5 Sparrowhawks are also dosed with it. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
You might well ask how a predator that eats birds gets dosed with rat poison? Answer: people chuck it everywhere and it's in insects, songbirds, everything.

I read thousands of pages of Epstein files this weekend trying to understand what he wanted out of his meeting with 4chan's Christopher Poole. Here's everything we know about Epstein's plans to dismantle the internet and, eventually, democracy.
www.garbageday.email/p/here-s-how...

English Bluebell shoots

More English Bluebell shoots

English Bluebells Sir, thousands of em

A cloudy pond full of water sits in a rather barren clay crater. Chunks of flint and rock can be seen scattering the surrounding earth. A few dead thistles adorn the ground in the foreground and behind the pond, a row of tall trees reaches into the grey sky.

At least one upside of the rainy weather is that this new pond, created in an arable field corner in autumn 2024, is nearly full! Last summer it was down to a damp patch at the bottom because of the drought. Looking forward to the surrounding areas regrowing a bit so it looks a little less desolate.

“Notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein played a role in convincing Bobby Kotick to embrace loot boxes, essentially gambling for children” what is this sentence, what is this world