Clare Rayner

Crude oil prices, showing a very sharp increase in the last day, from around 65 to 101 dollars per barrel..

Oil prices wouldn't be all over the news today if more of our economy was powered by local, secure renewable energy.

This isn't an "energy crisis". It's a fossil fuel crisis.

44% of UK electricity came from renewables in 2025. More of that plus an electrified economy => no more oil shocks.

Checking up on local nest box cameras the other day I came across something I have not seen before in ~30 years of monitoring barn owl boxes....a tawny owl in a box with a pair of barn owls! Thankfully a couple of days later the barn owls were still present and the tawny owl had moved on.

I find that the bird sound app often struggles to identify starlings so could well be that.

Phengaris teleius (Scarce Large Blue) in a French meadow. One of the 17 species in the European Grassland Butterfly Index. Photo: Martin Warren)

The latest European Grassland Butterfly Indicator is out. It shows that grassland butterflies have declined by 47% since 1991, indicating a huge loss of grassland biodiversity. The data come from 16,150 transects & 15,000 volunteers. We are calling for urgent action. www.bc-europe.eu/documents/69...

It is easy to think of nature as existing elsewhere - in reserves, in other parts of the world, places we fly to on holiday

Which can mean we think responding to the biodiversity crisis is simply about conservation actions

Rather than the fact that our society is based on the exploitation ofnature

My grandfather-in-law fled Nazi Germany with his parents in 1938 and settled in the US. He refused to set foot back in Germany for over 60 years, despite all the changes made in the interim. It didn’t matter that Germany became “safe.” He wanted nothing to do with the place.

Exactly. My grandmother was also a refugee from Nazi Germany and her parents both died in Auschwitz. She only returned to Germany in the mid 1990s to show us, her grandchildren, the place where she grew up. Even then it was a traumatic trip.

In pushing Labour's extreme and hostile anti-asylum and anti-immigration policies the Home Secretary has lied. She has, deliberately or through ignorance, misled the public on fundamental aspects of both. That alone should surely be a resigning matter

Take two 7 year olds in a primary school in PM's constituency.

His Dad is a banker
Her Mum is cleaner at that bank

Does he say Pascal Banque's son gets perm status at age 10 while in primary school & working class classmate Marie Cleaner not until 22 (consequence: international student fees)

Given that the UK's position in the last 50 years is that settlements are illegal and Israel cannot annex the West Bank, banning trade with West Bank settlements is really the absolutely minimal ask. It's pathetic that it hasn't happened.

Your regular reminder than a large majority of voters - and overwhelming majority of Labour voters - favour giving settled migrants access to the welfare state after five years or less. The Home Secretary is not reforming rules in line with public opinion. She is doing the opposite.

Don’t get solar panels for the environment.

Don’t get solar panels looking for quick savings.

Get solar panels to protect family from warmongering capitalist and the fascist governments who are going to continuously jack your energy bills through the roof forever if you don’t.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Petition: Nationalise water companies to make water a non profit publicly owned asset To make water a non profit making national asset that ensures we have a secure water infrastructure that ensures our water security for future generations.

Come on England. 7,000 odd signatures is desperate given how the private water companies have treated your rivers and seas.
I've signed it and I'm not directly affected.

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