Sign on a bridge over Turkey Brook, Enfield, seen on a visit to Myddleton House Gardens yesterday afternoon.

What a revolting piece of work she is.

Brilliant and pointed.
bsky.app/profile/geor...

May she disappear like The Titanic at the next general election.

Art historian Bendor Grosvenor on the extraordinary goldification of the Oval Office. Only kings and emperors do this...
bsky.app/profile/bend...

Val Kilmer, star of Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, dies aged 65 Known for his roles in Batman Forever, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Tombstone, the prolific actor’s cause of death was pneumonia

Another one bites the dust. (Damn hell and blast.)

www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ap...

The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: a spectacle of struggle and control | Editorial Editorial: The US president wields tariffs not as a policy tool but as an instrument of pressure, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance – even among allies

So growth will be curtailed. GDP will be affected. The volume of trade will fall. So what?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Starmer offers big US tech firms tax cuts in return for lower Trump tariffs Exclusive: UK willing to placate Trump with lower digital services tax rate also encompassing non-US companies

What a complete wimp Starmer is turning out to be. The correct response to Bezos, Zuckerberg et al is to tell them to get stuffed.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

EXPOSED: Keir Starmer’s Corporate War on Great Britain George Monbiot EXPOSES Labour’s Biggest SCAM

This is the video link which should have accompanied that repost:
www.doubledown.news/watch/2025/m...

A bit long-winded, but it does show how closely Starmer is following the Trumpist script and replicating the Tories' socially and environmentally destructive policies.
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Reeves scapegoating bats to cut red tape is absurd, says Packham Broadcaster and nature campaigner claims Labour’s attack on wildlife in push for economic growth is ‘PR disaster’

Rachel Reeves very obviously has a particular animus against bats: "A very niche directive to Natural England, the nature watchdog, to take advice from the Bat Conservation Trust out of a planning document, became the linchpin of Reeves’s deregulation plan."

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The Hunger Gap A gulf in public understanding prevents us from seeing how and why our food supply is at risk.

For a longer read with extensive footnotes, there's his submission to the HoC inquiry on Environmental Change and Food Security, covering the growing risks to the world's food system.
www.monbiot.com/2023/03/09/t...

Britain’s food supply is precarious – and Trump’s chaos is spreading. I have a plan. Do you? | George Monbiot I’ve started a stockpile, but that isn’t the answer. If crisis strikes, the government needs a strategy to protect us all, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

We began stockpiling food items -- canned foods and dried foods such as pasta and rice -- before Brexit, but (obviously) only in a small way. Perhaps I should ramp up the stockpiling....

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Pushback from the Slovaks perhaps because the country isn't as far along the Russian-client road as Hungary?

And kick out Slovakia as well. Their current leaderships so clearly want to be kowtowing clients of a re-Sovietised Russia.

Uninvited otter wreaks havoc in family kitchen A family was surprised by the uninvited guest who wreaked havoc in their kitchen in Shetland.

This is rather amusing.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Howls of derisive laughter!

The Guardian report states that OfWat allowed Thames to increase bills by 35%, but the bill I received yesterday shows a 40% increase. The chiselling, thieving scum. Let them bankrupt!

Last night's full moon (the Snow Moon) as seen from Wylie Crescent, Albany, West Australia (eight hours ahead of UK time).

Starmer’s dislike of real politics is plain to see. It’s why his government has no direction | John Harris In power, Labour’s agenda has been stripped back to an empty obsession with growth and an imitation of Reform UK. The public isn’t falling for it, says Guardian columnist John Harris

John Harris doesn't say it explicitly, but the message is there: seven months in, Starmer's government has already lost its way, and is unlikely to recover.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

How long, I wonder, before European airlines begin restricting or suspending flights to the US because of this danger?

No amount of US madness now surprises me.

I wonder how many, if any, Afrikaners would consider themselves to be refugees from SA.

Yes indeed.

I recommend his and Peter Hutchinson's The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, which eviscerates the pretensions of the capitalist worldview.

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The crescent Moon and Venus, taken from just outside the front door a few minutes ago.

Tax on UK incinerators may push councils to send more waste to landfill Government scheme to penalise pollution from burning rubbish won’t ensure more is recycled, consultants warn

The second photograph in this article is very misleading. The incinerator in question is in Edmonton, but the photograph has been taken with such an extreme telescopic lens that the casual viewer might think the thing is just outside the Square Mile.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

There is a white-bottied bee prospecting for nectar in winter-flowering creepers outside the conservatory. On the second of February!

...while Red Mars rises in the east, and Jupiter is high in the southeast sky.

A fine sight in the southwest sky: a thin sliver of the new moon (on its back, as it were) and, above it, Venus.

But my camera isn't good enough at resolving them, and the pocket tripod isn't sufficient either. So no photograph. (Poot!)

Another photograph of the robin. (Male, I think, although on this occasion it wasn't singing.)