Should Nigel Farage be arrested for inciting riots? Like - Yes RT - Instantly

New blog, of our hot half-term term break with Eleanor in Tunbridge Wells, Eridge and Hastings. www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/a-spring-hea... #NatureWriting

My new blog covering the last two weeks of May in the Wild Side of Beth Chatto Gardens #NatureWriting www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/the-wild-sid...

So that’s two of the “Raise the Colours” organisers now charged with violent crimes & a fifth of the 2024 race rioters with domestic abuse. Makes you wonder whether “innocent patriotism” & “protecting women & girls” are just covers for thuggish racism & misogyny?

Counted 211 Striped Shieldbugs (Graphosoma italicum) at Ninefields, Waltham Abbey TL397005 on a quick visit today, including many mating pairs. My largest count and probably an under estimate. On dense stream side vegetation with Hogweed and Cow Parsley. #EssexWildlife #UKBugs

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... See the lunatic glint in his eyes, as his soul that has been taken over by the Neoliberallus trumpii virus, forcing him to spout bollocks on the day temperature records have been smashed.

Monitoring the Chattowood estate today: the Beth Chatto sand planting gardens held 188 bumbles; adjacent and equal sized transect 'traditional'new estate had just 5. I know pollinators are not everything, and larval food plants for many insects are also needed. But we (anyone) can make a difference!

Beth Chatto Gardens today in the intense heat: a mass emergence of dragonflies, mostly Four-spotted Chaser but 4 other species; and mass orgy of egglaying damsels, here Azure, but 2 other species as well.

In case you hadn't grasped the magnitude of the problem on a day when UK temperature records are being annihilated.

The feeling when you open up your photo timeline, find an amazing photo, then realise it came from your camera, but was taken by your then 7 year old granddaughter... Jealousy? NO, Pride!!! #ProudPapa

Blog of our (very) short break by bus last week, to Brentwood and Warley Place. Short, quite close to home, but packed full of fun and interest! www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/by-bus-to-br... #NatureWriting

Gold medal for the hardy orchids at Homefield Wood this week! Military orchids, Fly orchids and Twayblade stealing the show. #WildflowerShow #Wildflowerhour

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... Those ideas are impossible under Starmer’s red lines. So just f*** Starmers red lines. They will kill the country. They pander to Reform, those that would kill our country. Starmer is as much a bigot as the rest. THEY ARE NOT OUR RED LINES, THEY ARE YOURS.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle... If ever there was a reason to despise conservatives, big or small c, this is it. They all clearly hate their children and put their own selfish needs first. Whatever happened to the decent right wing?

Half an hour on Fordham Heath today, and here are some of the insects. Nothing rare but life in abundance! And I barely got out of the carpark!!!

Beth Chatto's today, Two-spotted Malachite Beetles. 💋 kissing! Handing her a chewed up parcel of food, laced with pheromones to persuade her to be receptive to his advances. Watched them a while. Initially she wasn't up for it, but he persisted and soon they were back together kissing. Who knows ❤️!

Ever since seeing a post by Mick Crawley over on the other place, I have wanted to see Hairy Canary-clover, Lotus hirsutus. So imagine my glee when I found it growing as a #PavementPlant in Shoreham-by-Sea yesterday. And if the name Hairy Canary-clover doesn't raise a smile, I don't know what will.

A flowering grass growing as a pavement plant in Laundress Lane, Cambridge. #WildflowerID #WildflowerHour

Some finds in Colchester Meanwhile Garden today: a couple of fresh Toadflax Brocades, and Nettles covered in blackfly being hoovered up by egglaying 7-spot Ladybirds and a hoverfly Epistrophe eligans larva which is so well camouflaged among nettle flower bracts. A perfect microcosm of life and death

Blog of my first half of May in Beth Chatto Gardens. Sawfly Central! www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/the-wild-sid... #NatureWriting

Fantastic day leading Beth Chatto walks...some great insect records: 6 Green Hairstreaks feeding at Thyme, a new nonbiting midge for the garden Psectrotanypus varius, possibly 3rd UK record of a sawfly Macrophya teutona, and best of all, maybe 2nd Essex record for the spotty chafer Oxythrea funesta

The next Labour leader must move decisively away from the status quo to beat Reform. That means giving power and wealth to working class people. It means a democratic revolution, rent controls and public ownership of water. It means someone who isn't Wes Streeting.

Blog of our latest short break by public transport, last week, to Beccles, Southwold, Bungay and Diss. The usual disparate mix of interests...! www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/poking-aroun... #NatureWriting

We are planning a plant sale for this weekend here in Wivenhoe. Please come along (with cash!) and buy some plants to support our campaign and the Wivenhoe Society. Contributions of plants and seeds for sale would be very welcome

Sunderland, the town where being a Holocaust denier, or an abuser of your wife and child gets you elected to public office. Twats.

This is the end result of Shabana Mahmood’s nasty immigration policies… more votes for Reform and so, more racism scaring and dividing our communities. Not sure how Labour can justify this, politically or morally. It’s so far from what we’d all hoped. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

How about a criminal investigation and a permanent ban from public life for taking bribes and lying to the electorate? A wrist slap for breaching a code, a suspension and by-election is more prize than punishment for tantrum-prone Farage who’s barely an MP anyway. observer.co.uk/news/politic...

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... Just crucify* frogfage as all media outlets continually did with Corbyn and are with Polanski. *but not like a martyr

Sack the Home Secretary. Introduce PR. #Rejoin the EU.

A please @labouruk.bsky.social, stop saying that it's up to us to stop Reform. YOU could stop a Reform government in 2029, by introducing the proportional representation so many in the country have been clamouring for. The only way Farage can win is through our crazy first-past-the-post system.

I'm 44 now - perhaps in my lifetime we will see the world transition to renewable energy, one of the greatest gifts to future generations. It seems more likely by the day. There is more energy around us in wind and sunlight than we need.

Reform, Labour and the Tories all take money from oil & gas giants and private healthcare interests. That tells you who they’re really working for. The Green Party doesn’t take that money. We answer to you - and to the future of our planet. Vote Green on Thursday. 💚

Beth Chatto Gardens today: two new sawflies for the list, adult Fern Sawfly (awful photo) and larval Periclista pubescens (neither shown in Essex on NBN); new beetle Rhagonycha lignosa; and a newly emerged Common Blue...

Blog of my two lovely walks last week, one for @naturetrek.bsky.social , the other for #WildEssex. Spring at its best! The Colne Valley, from Chappel to Chalkney Wood, and back! www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/the-colne-va... #NatureWriting

“£240 Billion of income that has disappeared” So far… And Farage wants to scrap Labour’s reset, scrap the Brexit deal altogether in fact… and go to a leave-the-ECHR-no-deal Brexit. Has the country completely lost its mind? When will this idiocy stop? Prejudice as policy is ruinous.

Robert Peston talks to Stanford Professor Nick Bloom about the cost of Brexit on The Rest is Money: 🚨 "We could have doubled the money on the NHS if we'd not left the European Union." Brexit cost "£2,000 a year per person in Britain." Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yn3AQaNVDg

Utterly digusting antisemitism as the country's only Jewish party leader is heckled by Nazi scum.

www.theguardian.com/environment/... Utter bollocks. Ok get the uber-rich to pay through the nose to kill if they really must, but the need to take trophies - like the rapist keeping his victims' underwear - is simply psychopathic. And psychopaths have no place in decent communities.

New blog of the natural delights of my time in Beth Chatto Gardens this month. www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/the-wild-sid... #NatureWriting

Look what visited us in Wivenhoe last night, the lovely little Turtle Shieldbug, just 5mm long. Not rare but rarely seen unless actively searched for at ground level. Came through our window 11m up at dusk.

They’ve arrived in Shrewsbury 😊

My heart made a little jump when I read this. I haven't seen "ours" yet. Only days.

Swift screaming low and hurtling down St John's Road, Wivenhoe just five mins ago!! About five days early. Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!

If you're in receipt of PIP or a carer of someone with PIP respond to the Timm's review. I work as a volunteer advocate with people with learning disabilities; many of these people will be shafted if Labour goes ahead with its plan; tax the rich and big business; don't take money from the most needy

Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Proof if any were needed the Reform are uncivilised thugs modelled on the orange psychopath across the Atlantic. Antony Gormley sculpture quietly removed and sold off by UK council - The Art Newspaper - International art news and events share.google/79cYLUoMpM5b...

If 'airlines demand', civilised society should tell them where to go. Why should serial polluters be allowed to make such demands? If people must fly, they should pay the true cost for the privilege, rather than the planet. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Blog of our recent short break, revisiting my Yorkshire roots... www.chrisgibsonwildlife.co.uk/back-to-my-y...