Pete M 🌳

A defining photo of our time.

I’m sure you wouldn’t expect any different from him!

“The risks to livestock can be minimal and there are so many positives… I also think a more balanced ecosystem is beneficial to farmers”

YES. Do it already.

There is public consent with 72% in the area supporting it.

To be clear, Rayner gave permission for eight allotments to be sold. She has not told councils to sell off allotments - that's just untrue.

Turns out the 20mph limit was great idea! Two years on from the controversial policy, it's becoming increasingly clear that the doubters were wrong

I thinks weeks newsletter I breakdown why the data suggests that the 20mph limit in Wales wales actually an amazing idea.

willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/turns-out-...

And those involved in taking this approach should be celebrated and held up as an exemplar for other policy decisions.

I posted this on X and asked the awful Grok if X suppressed posts on Gaza.

It said “No, X's algorithm does not systematically suppress posts about Gaza events, per transparency reports and Musk's free speech stance.”

I challenged it, it changed it’s mind. Musk’s “Free speech stance”. Lol.

Past 24 hours in Gaza :

The main humanitarian hub attacked.
WHO facilities attacked; staff detained, stripped, questioned at gun point.
People killed and injured when tanks fired on tents.
Continued rise in people killed getting food.
Deaths from starvation.

It’s genocide

The new “Sustainable” Farming Scheme in Wales.

🌳 Requires planting 0.1ha of woodland. Or about 0.2% of average farm size.

⬇️ Previous proposal was 7 football pitches tree cover*, this is 1/7 of a football pitch.

The power of the farming lobby.

Blackcurrants in hedges has to be THE easiest food to grow. Collecting 1kg of fruit a day at the moment. Hedges can be so much more than a line of hawthorn in plastic tubes.

The £25k myth: how the media turns struggle into scandal A cherry-picked calculation, a broken labour market, and a government using tabloid outrage as cover for cuts. Welcome to austerity with a fresh coat of paint

The sheer cruelty of reducing disabled people's survival needs to a "windfall" is beyond belief, writes The Bear.

These headlines don't expose a welfare failure; they expose a media ecosystem comfortable with punching down to hide a failure of wages.

Angry at people receiving housing benefit?

Maybe get angry at the cost of housing.

Get angry at the annual £14bn transfer of wealth to private landlords.

Get angry at the inequality baked into the system.

Concentrating an entire population in a camp under military control… all while the world watches on, enabling this crime against humanity.

The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world | Moustafa Bayoumi The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse

Great article on the incomprehensible situation in Gaza, the global response and how international law is being colonised to serve the powerful.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

“Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict”

“If they are so afraid of..a sign…we are stronger than they want us to believe.”

I was wrong, #NationalMeadowsDay is today. So here is some more:
Yellow Rattle
Knapweed
Meadow Vetchling
Hedge Woundwort

What f*cked up country we’ve become.

Yesterday was #NationalMeadowsDay so here is a snippet of some plant life in ours.

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

Elon Musk casually, and illegally, dismantled USAID. According to a new study in the Lancet, that action will lead to *14 million* premature deaths between 2025 and 2030.

Again: Elon Musk is directly responsible for 14 million coming deaths. 4.5 million will be children.

How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against.

I was deported by the U.S. for reporting on the Columbia University student protests.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Appalling Yvette Cooper implied anti-semitism in her statement: “attack against a Jewish-owned business in North London”

The “business”: Elbeit’s landlord, weapons producer. Includes killer drones used to kill thousands of innocent people. Including British aid workers.

It’s so bad it’s almost impressive

The way people battle against nature in the Welsh uplands, rather than work with it, can be quite miserable at times. At least the dead sheep are providing food, but to the same animals so many despise.

Can’t help but feeling we are cooked.

Why? You think kids are the most reliable at identifying species? A risk other caterpillars may be “stomped”. A significant risk it will create an attitude that nature is something only we humans can control?
My point was this was an incorrect way to do this. Which I thought you did too earlier

Getting kids involved with killing caterpillars isn’t going to be a positive.

Painting a plane is not terrorism. Using this to claim @palaction.bsky.social have crossed a threshold into terrorism is something we should all be concerned about.

Arrgghh! These terrible caterpillars! They are so out of control we can’t manage it and we need you all to stomp on them! We must kill them all before they kill us all!

You’ve seen how people are scared of hogweed, ragwort, wasps, anything associated with a ‘scary’ back story?

Feels like an oxymoron. It points to some kind of imbalance surely.

No, I’m objecting to what the reserve staff said. Which you agree there was lots wrong with. So I’m a bit confused.

“We need to do something about them and I would encourage you to stomp on as many as you can find”

Asking the public to “stomp on as many as you can find” is a problem.