In honor of Earth Day: a thread of environmental wins

Early hawthorn blossom along the coast path from Dawlish to Teignmouth (Devon). And honesty to follow the #cabbagefamily theme.
#wildflowerhour

A day after I gave birth, I was asked by the midwife or nurse checking me whether I had "spent a penny". I had been in the UK for almost 10 years by then and was fluent but had never come across that idiom before and had no idea what she was asking.

Women standing up for their rights described as "angry women"....
A continuation of the stereotype "he's assertive, she's aggressive" etc.

Community garden full of wildflowers in Cambridge, UK

How many people out there are giving wildflowers a chance by leaving areas of their gardens uncut this year? Please repost if you are offering a lifeline to pollinators like bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies and bats by mowing less!

The @nationaltrust.org.uk only rarely ask their members to take political action, but when they do, it’s seismic.

Please take the NT’s action, email your MP demanding the Government protect 30% of the UK for nature by 2030: campaigns.nationaltrust.org.uk/page/186395/...

bsky.app/profile/nati...

I had my citizenship ceremony at the height of the Windrush scandal, a few days before Amber Rudd's resignation. Good to see they have learnt from it....not 🤦🏼‍♀️

Ministers working with Labour backbenchers to temper Mahmood immigration plans Exclusive: Starmer urged to go further with exemptions if he wants to avoid widespread anger from his own MPs

There’s no purpose to these policies beyond the shabby & in any event vain hope of gaining votes from racists. They‘ll screw up countless people’s lives for decades & prevent them becoming full members of society as well as damaging the economy. There is no compromising with this & MPs shouldn’t try

In the BlueSky tradition of 'here's a nice thing but here's how it's problematic':

Is Attenborough right to claim that gardens in England cover a greater area than all of our National Nature Reserves?

Technically, yes: but I think it’s a misleading comparison that lets government off the hook...1/

Unsettled status: the policy and politics of indefinite leave to remain - UK in a changing Europe Sunder Katwala looks at the government's proposed reforms to the settlement rules in the UK as part of its immigration overhaul and asks whether they could meet the fairness challenge.

A polite but forensic discussion and dismantling of the government's incoherent/inconsistent argument for the "earned settlement" proposals from @sundersays.bsky.social.

As he says, media reporting/discussion has been lamentably ill-informed.

ukandeu.ac.uk/unsettled-st...

Behind the headlines and rhetoric, what do Labour’s immigration plans mean for those affected?

Read the full feature here ⤵️
www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-im...

#uknews #ukpolitics #ukvisa #ukimmigration #ukmigration

The extortionate costs of visas, sometimes 10 x the actual processing costs, already leave many impoverished and families ripped apart. The fees are now set to go up again. We need a system which is fair. Support our campaign for fees limited to processing costs & settlement routes capped at 5 years

And also some marsh marigolds, because it's the first time I've ever seen some. What beauties!
#wildflowerhour #stoverpark #devon

Missed #wildflowerhour last night, but here are magnolia stellar, mahonia and amelanchier, with their cheerful beautiful #treeflowers. And a pine tree that got my eye because of the sheer amount of pine cones on it.
#devon

Didn’t want to get affected like this giving evidence. Caught me by surprise. We all lost so much. We have to act on the inquiry’s recommendations. We have to be better now, so that we can be better next time.

Primrose, daisies (and geranium leaves), lesser celandines and early dog violet (I think). All welcome, self-seeded additions to our garden. Not so much a plant story, more of a "selective mowing" story. We leave various parts of the lawn to grow longer from spring to autumn.
#WildFlowerHour

The urgent need to tackle growing challenges in the SEND system - The Sutton Trust Unpacking our research on access to SEND support.

✍️ "Both families did the best they could for their children but differing resources and circumstances meant they had very different experiences of the SEND system."

More on the class inequalities in access to SEND support exposed by our research ⤵️

Good grief, what citizen ever checks the Home Office or equivalent in their country except for travel advice in a volatile situation?

This is a message you put in adverts on telly, on the news, on travel websites, etc., with clear deadlines for a year beforehand-AND you have early flexibility.

Astonished Home Sec is still using this £10 billion. It is a fiction. This goes beyond a misleading sleight of hand (it i net lifetime cost in 30 years time of the status quo) because government can't claim their reforms save it

MPs must insist on the real fiscal numbers (which may be zero/net)

I believe it's secondary legislation (like a lot of immigration legislation) and therefore doesn't require a vote. Would be very happy to be told I'm wrong though.

Blackthorn started to flower along the Otter river (Devon) and looked lovely in yesterday's sunshine.
#wildflowerhour

I have been to the glacier blanc as a child, a young adult with my husband about 20 years later and then with our children about 20 years after that. The change over that time was all too evident to see...

SACRE are statutory bodies as explained in the screenshot below (from
www.gov.uk/government/p...)
Note who the groups A and B are!

What happened to "attracting the brightest and the best"? It's a new low when Theresa May sounds more lenient than a Labour home secretary on immigration.

The home secretary talks about her reforms to the asylum system, including reprocessing applications every two and a half years, as a means to end "pull factors" for refugees. This shows a disturbing lack of awareness about the current system. The majority of those seeking asylum who we work with come to the UK because they have existing ties to this country. It is where they feel the safest in rebuilding their lives after fleeing war and persecution. Despite the home secretary's claims to the contrary, the Home Office has neither the ability nor the resources to implement this policy in a workable way. We already see initial applications taking more than a year. To increase the number that need to be reviewed is unfeasible and costly. Not only that, it would leave people seeking safety and security in limbo, at more risk of becoming undocumented and exploited. This is a policy that is not supported by evidence, and instead has been designed to grab headlines with no thought to the harm it causes those individuals who hoped that they may find some safety here, and the economic and social costs to all of us. Daniel Sohege Director, Stand For All

My response in the Guardian to the Home Secretary's changes to asylum rules, and the utterly false claim that Labour's hostile and Inhumane anti-asylum policies reduce "pull factors".

Bug Directory Try our Bug indentification guide here or become a member to submit stories about missing bugs.

www.buglife.org.uk/bugs/bug-dir...

This would have been the case for my kids, had their father and I not been married. When I explained that to people around the time of the Brexit referendum, most people wouldn't believe me.

I have and it's not changed my mind about Labour.

No they haven't. Their manifesto says they will implement a fair and humane system of managed immigration. At this point in time, what Labour is saying and doing means I won't vote for them.
The campaign for the by-election was toxic and the response from Stammer about the result terrible.

There is an alternative to wanting to be seen to toughen immigration and creating division. It needs political courage. And looking at the recent by-election, that worked pretty well for the Green Party.