A plate of green asparagus in melted butter
It's not English, because we're in France, but it is green, fresh, local and delicious. Later in the season we may have hollandaise, but for the first ones, just melted butter...
Growing trees continue to take up carbon. Drax has been found out importing old-growth forests several times. The loss of biodiversity from clearfelling is another factor.
The better outcome would be to close it down. It was built for coal. You get much more power from the sunshine with solar panels instead of coppice on the same land. Best efficiency of C4 photosynthesis is about 4%; PVs up to 20%.
because it emits much less CO2 per MWh. Drax is the UK's largest carbon emitter. And it burns forests. And its fuel is subsidised. It's not renewable energy. Better still wind, solar or nuclear ofc. But to stop burning gas while still burning forests is dumb.
Today is the day when the English asparagus season is supposed to open.
And when you should get your maincrop spuds in the ground.
It’s not long since some bloody idiot said multiculturalism doesn’t work. I’ve kept in contact with many friends from many countries over the years and just had a message from an old friend who is French/Brazilian. Multiculturalism is the lifeblood of us all!
that 5.5% coming from dead forests would be better coming from gas though.
Be interesting to see if he turns up. Cummings didn't.
The very fact that the appointment had already been announced was considerable pressure. But I bet there had been phone calls, whatsapps and even lunches from McSweeney too
wouldn't be surprised if we get no significant rain now until mid-July. Long dry growing season and sodden ripening season seems to be an emerging pattern in recent years. We need to get much better at water management to cope.
It depends how the questions are asked. “mutual free movement" is more popular than "free movement". But with Reform still leading the polls, we have much further to go.
Because the resources that matter most are people of working age who work and it chooses to keep them away.
Opportunity cost is long overdue a comeback in British politics.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
There are far too many moronic, over-confident and rude political staffers all round.
No difference between McSweeny and Cummings.
It's all very well looking at the numbers about the in/out question but party polling has Reform and Tories leading the polls on about 25 and 20% respectively. Until there's at least a stake through the Faragists' heart, nothing can be considered stable.
apart perhaps from the current leader?
he had access to the Darroch cables though, didn't he?
Starmer came as a team though and that team included McSweeny who helped him win and had very blue labour loyalties not least to Mandelson. Poor judgement from Starmer all along.
these days, finding and critically assessing answers to questions is a much more useful skill than merely knowing the answers your teachers want you to know.
I would add 'curious' to that somewhere. Critically curious. 'Informed' can sometimes veer into 'indoctrinated'.
Yeah but the original sin was announcing Mandelson's appointment before getting the all-clear from the spooks. Starmer's responsibility, McSweeny's doing.
No, he's not. The original sin was announcing Mandelson's appointment before having the all-clear from the vetting services. That pre-announcement itself was a pretty clear signal from No10 to Robbins to act as he did. (No10 at the time was McSweeny, but Starmer was the responsible adult).
Of course he would. But the problem was that he *announced* the appointment *before* the results of the vetting were known. That was at best dumb.
Robbie Gibb
were the borogoves and the mome raths outgabe
Peter Mandelson, Alasdair Campbell, Nick Timothy, Dominic Cummings, Morgan McSweeny all wrong 'uns.
SPAD culture breeds wrong 'uns.
Exactly right. I think that Starmer was probably bounced into doing so by McSweeny possibly on the advice of his mentor but what do I know.
given that they had already announced Mandelson as appointed, the régime 'bring Starmer results not problems', being enforced by McSweeny would have informed their decision, which begs the question of whether McSweeny knew.
OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit
Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here
Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse
Media and universities: AI is here to stay