Have a good day xx 🎄

The modern pecking order: relegated to a child’s mattress and 1990s sleeping bag IN YOUR OWN HOUSE. And I’m the one cooking tomorrow... #DuvetKnowItsChristmas

The pumpkin summoning charm is making a challenge for the lead in #DuvetKnowItsChristmas #JoinIn

First time sharing #DuvetKnowItsChristmas with my 12yo. This is our favourite so far.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a... dormouse?

Christmas Eve morning 🌅 #onmywalk #cumbria #photography

A Solstice sunrise (this one’s an ink-and-watercolour from a few years ago - we haven’t had any sort of sunrise here for the last week or so!). For the final day of #artAdventCalendar - best wishes to everyone. 🪶 #art #nature

Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?

Edinburgh, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Hill Top Farm, Sawrey - Beatrix Potter's first farm, now owned by @nationaltrust. Bringing in the Herdwicks to create a landlord's flock for the new tenant #SheepOfTheDay

The dancers #aurora #uist

Here in the south of Shetland today, the sun rose at 0907 and set at 1500 giving us 5 hours and 53 minutes of daylight. At the summer solstice we'll get nearly 19 hours of daylight! Here's 30 seconds of our #WinterSolstice day enjoying the sight and sounds of Atlantic swells at Quendale Bay.

Excellent and important look at the Scottish government's new approach to disability benefits and how it is performing compared to Personal Independence Payments thus far:

It is early days, but it is heartening to see that thus far, can have a less confrontational process without higher costs. (Making the process unpleasant is a bad tool of cost control for other reasons, but need to be honest about why states make these processes unpleasant: it is cost control!)

New Podcast episode! 🚨 Trump’s Second Act: Leadership, Tariffs, and Tensions As 2025 draws to a close, we take a deep dive into a year of American politics and its global impact. With @mkblyth.bsky.social and @jkaarbo.bsky.social. 🎧 Listen now: uofgspotlight.com #UofGSpotlight

#IsleOfLewis 📷

Europe imagines it can win at Washington’s “neo-royalist” game. Trump sees Europe as an extension of his domestic retribution campaign. Both are wrong, and both underestimate Europe’s ability to fight back (if it finds the will). My thoughts for @agendapublica.es: agendapublica.es/noticia/2047...

It doesn't matter if it's an early years setting run directly by a school, another provider in a school, or a strong relationship between settings not on the same site. If you know of any good examples, please do get in touch, and please share this call out with your networks.

... e.g. potentially with joint policies, shared training sessions or Continuing Professional Development (CPD), clear information sharing on children transitioning between setting and school) or potentially sharing staff between settings.

We're looking for case studies! 📢 The @suttontrust.bsky.social and @smfthinktank.bsky.social are researching school based nurseries - and we're looking far and wide for schools and early years settings with strong partnerships....

Beautiful colours above Loch Long in Argyll Scotland as the sun sets earlier today 🌅 A perfect end after a lovely day and similar to look forward to tomorrow 😎 Have a lovely day/evening everyone 🎄💙 #Scotland #StormHour

Ding Dong Merrily on High(er Hyde Heath)! 🔔🎄🌟 Keeping things festive with a beautiful Bell Heather for this #wildflowerhour.

Hazel - Corylus avellana, just one or two specimens in flower this afternoon between the showers, I usually don’t see catkins in flower this side of Christmas here but the weather has been very mild of late #Wildflowerhour

A Daisy growing in the grass in the churchyard of St Mary de Castro, Leicester, where only a few were flowering. #WildflowerHour

Luckily for this week's #WildflowerHour #WildflowerAllotment my visit to the allotment coincided with a beautifully bright sunny day...which in turm resutled in the blossoming of two mallow flowers..

This beautiful Common Chickweed flower, my favourite of this week’s #thewinter10 . Such a delicate and tiny flower in mid-December. #WildFlowerHour @wildflowerhour.bsky.social

Local, near my garden in Coleraine for #thewinter10 for #WildFlowerHour Just TWO (Periwinkle & Quaking Grass with anthers!!) but fingers crossed for the New Year Plant Hunt #NYPH #BSBI at #RoeValley Friday 2nd Jan 10-12 @wildflowerhour.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social @bsbiireland.bsky.social

On the way home, a Harebell nodding vigorously at the roadside and a wasp defying 50mph gusts in search of food, a hint of July in mid-December that felt worthy of records on @cofnod.org.uk #WildflowerHour

CHRISTMAS RAFFLE (soft launch) I'm doing a raffle. Tickets are just £2 each! You can win all these SIGNED books + £50 to spend. More importantly, every ticket you buy will help buy books for two amazing schools. TWO POUNDS. More here. www.biggreenbookshop.com/big-green-ex... Please share.

No by-elections (or, it seems, polls) this week in Scotland, but next year should be busy! Almost halfway to the goal for the BBS election crowdfunder to cover a poll and count day volunteers - huge thanks to everyone who has chipped in so far. gofund.me/2e4453605

St Andrew’s Square #Edinburgh #Christmas2025

Deadline for applications: Wednesday, 10th December 2025 (COB 17:00 GMT+4) More info: saveourseas.com/sosf-darros-... 📷: Photo by Henriette Grimmel | © Save Our Seas Foundation

Still a teeny wee bit of colour on the Bell Heather, Erica cinerea, at the Devil's Punchbowl today. #WildflowerHour

I found one Common-field Speedwell flower that was open, many others were closed #WildflowerHour

I think this is a naturalised Adria Bellflower, which I found growing on a wall in Cambridge earlier this week. Lovely little thing! #WildFlowerHour @bsbibotany.bsky.social @wildflowerhour.bsky.social

Flowers of Herb-Robert, Geranium robertianum, brightening up a stone buttress on the wall of St Peter & St Paul church Ormskirk. #WildflowerHour

Lovely to catch up with these two botanical superstars at yesterday's #BIBConf25! @naturelark.bsky.social (on left) and @botanybeck.bsky.social, the driving force behind @wildflowerhour.bsky.social! Looking good, #wildflowerhour ladies!

White Campion sheltering under the outer edge canopy of a Lawson Cypress conifer #WildflowerHour

As I'm planning next years field season, I wonder if anyone on here would like to run a small island project on Skúvoy with me. I will be catching and samling great skuas, but there will be good opportunities to investigate other aspects of seabird island ecology 🌍🧪 #seabirds

This is a massively dumb way to fund things. Just fund local government properly through fiscal devolution, council tax reform, and social care reform. Oh, wait, you ducked all of those again....

On Bregman, I was there in the audience and I can’t see what the BBC have gained by removing this line except more bad publicity. I will say that no such edits or censorship occurred when I gave the Reith Lectures and free-speech defenders might want think about whether this is the world they want.

The important report, based on Citizens Advice Scotland’s national data, shows how public debt and deductions are driving child poverty, and how this burden falls disproportionately on women, single parents and disabled households.

Still spaces available for the next seminar in our SDG series, free for upper primary and secondary teachers across Scotland. Carbon Colonialism: How rich countries export climate breakdown, with Dr Laurie Parsons. More info and booking here ▶️ shorturl.at/DKCJm #LearningforSustainability

We’re proud that Citizens Advice Scotland’s national data, alongside StepChange data, has been used in this powerful new research. Our data is one of the largest, richest, and most reliable real-time pictures of how people in Scotland experience debt and hardship

Garlic Mustard flowering on a frosty November morning in a Lincolnshire hedgerow was not instantly recognisable. Somewhat out of season I thought I had found something new. #WildflowerHour

#Wildflowerhour Hedge Woundwort, Stachys sylvatica in a village hedgerow near Monmouth.

Hybris violet from yesterday's Norfolk Flora group meeting @bsbibotany.bsky.social #wildflowerhour

A ghost of summer. Still some flowers on Wild clary in West Cambridge. #WildflowerHour

I found one Herb-robert flower #WildflowerHour