After a long pause, I've just done another England Covid & NHS update as we head into the autumn/winter season. TLDR: we're in a significant Covid wave now, the NHS is stretched, get boosted if you're eligible. christinapagel.substack.com/p/england-is...

If a news organisation is making -200% margin after five years, it is not a commercial operation and should be assumed to have a different purpose.

Just written a Banned Books Week post about this that says exactly the same thing.

On reports the Home Secretary plans to grant police more powers to prevent ‘repeated protests’, Greenpeace UK: “Protest works because it is repetitive. If police had told the Suffragettes or civil rights activists ‘you’ve made your point,’ they would never have won the victories we all enjoy today"

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Farage plays the everyman, but he’s not harmless, he’s not honest, and he’s not on your side. ❌

UK govt faces court for conservation area dumping licence. Sussex Wildlife Trust has launched legal action over govt's decision to allow the dumping of 100,000 tonnes of dredged sediment directly into a locally protected marine conservation zone.. oceanographicmagazine.com/news/uk-gove...

Violet Hunt and her amazing cat. #caturday

An NHS doctor who was working at St. Thomas' hospital, which is on the route where the far right marched:

The Green Community Grants Programme,will offer grants of up to £25,000 to small charities and not for profit groups contributing towards nature recovery and the climate emergency,also for proposals to improve places for nature and people’s access to them . www.wildlifetrusts.org/news/new-fun...

Fellow mudlark & friend Jason Sandy is giving a talk & exhibiting some of his fantastic mudlarking finds this evening, Weds 17th Sept, 7pm, at historic St Mary’s Church, Battersea, as part of Open House Festival. Free entry, no need to book. Do come!

NOTHING will prepare you for this 45-second story arc. From "I'm just doing this because I love the flag, it's totally grassroots, and I'm not part of anything political"... to who actually gave him the flags the night before. Anyone who believes it is an innocent movement needs to see this.

On Sunday the main sewer burst again in our village, swamping the river and killing every fish. The good thing? Local people called our citizen science team and we raised the alarm. Southern Water fixed the breach. But it KEEPS HAPPENING. #RippleEffect #CitizenScience #PollutionWatch #SouthernWater

People do not want the messy, uncomfortable truth that disabled people know—that disability is not a choice, but a natural variation of existence. That a disabled life has just as much worth as any other. Great article by @pollyrowena.bsky.social #TheSaltPath #NatureWriting #Memoir #Disability

This 👇 By constantly platforming Reform the BBC is validating their nasty policies, pretty much unchallenged, and turning them into mainstream, acceptable ideology. It’s frankly terrifying.

Green Party people in the UK, if you haven’t voted for our new Deputy Leader yet there’s still time to choose Rachel Millward. Co-Leader of Wealden District Council, demolisher of political opponents on the TV sofa - and BIG friend to rivers - she easily got my vote!

Can confirm. #librarians #booksky

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

Four Al Jazeera staff, including reporter Anas Al Sharif, were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent for journalists outside the main gate of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital aje.io/onll19

I have been a reporter for 25 years. I know the risks reporting in war zones. This is not that situation. This is systematic silencing by Israel. If we do not act now, there will be no one left in Gaza to tell anyone’s story. Me today for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Arresting the poets are we? Not a good look.

Rye dwellers. You can now buy the work of learning disabled artists from my brother's home at Ethel Loves Me www.ethelloves.me

"When nature is personal, the world is peopled by rocks, trees, rivers, and mountains...protagonists of their own stories rather than just props in a human story. When Earth is truly alive, the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human.” - @priscillastuckey.bsky.social (Kissed by a Fox)

Normally they expect you to be happy about the circumstances of your arrest.

One reason water companies feel able to delay bringing in hosepipe bans & drag their feet on fixing leaks is that successive governments have allowed them to pump water from rivers when reservoirs get low. But that water is taken from wildlife. 2/3 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Ummm. Imagine such sentences for raptor persecution on a shooting estate, or for river pollution, habitat destruction or felling enacted by a farmer, large landowner, private company, council contractor or developer? What could POSSIBLY be the diffence I wonder? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

If you find a grounded swift, it needs expert & urgent help. Please contact me so I can link to rehabber. These birds can’t easily take off from the ground & in hot weather, chicks who 👀 like this aren’t quite able to fly & often are pushed or jump out of their nests.

ICYMI More follows - www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-ar...

"Can I call you back, we're just in the middle of a chant?" BL Arundel 83, f.63v

Tania’s books are always surprising, curious and wonderful - and I know her launch will be too! 👇

This is the next little hand made book I wrote & illustrated. It’s for my son, who was fascinated by insects & creeping crawling things. Woodlice have so many different colloquial names that I’m sure I could add many more to it in a finished edition. Sound up full & apologies for whispering

This isn't abstract, something going on 'over there'. Unless you grow your food on decades-old organic soil, you're probably consuming toxic chemicals dumped on the land in sewage sludge, entirely legally. And the river you love? Rain washes those chemicals back into it. We need action!

This week’s Private Eye.

If you've found yourself taking the narrative of the tragic illness the helpless homelessness and the walking cure encrusted with inspiration porn with a pinch of salt over the years, this is *quite* the read. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Irish novelist Sebastian Barry, born 1955. "I do believe writing for a writer is as natural as birdsong to a robin [and] you can ferry back a lost heart and soul in the small boat of a novel or a play...True lives can nest in the actual syntax of language." #booksky #writingcommunity #authors

My mom and stepdad are from the same diaspora group as Zohran Mamdani’s dad (same like “my stepdad was kicked out of the same town and knows some of his classmates”) and apparently the New York Times doesn’t understand how diaspora works, so I am going to tell you a little about my mom’s people!

It seems that the only relief I can find from the current political nightmare is to post rude songs from #18thc children's books & let my Bluesky friends make the applications as they choose. Not just sure this one, also from Tommy Thumb's Pretty Songbook, will get past the moderators, but I'll try:

The fascinating secular Laws of Cnut were issued after seizing the throne of England. They intended to cement his power and reassure his subjects, largely repeating laws of earlier kings. Full of insights into medieval life. To share with you, I aim to post a law a day in sequence #medievalsky 1/2

Perfectly expressed.

This 👇. Please listen to Prof Dave Goulson. Not because he doesn’t want your dog to cool off - but because that flea treatment will kill all the invertebrates in the water, it’s that powerful.

I know it's hot, but please don't let your dog swim if you have treated it with a spot-on flea treatment in the last 28 days www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/v...

The Summer Solstice will soon be upon us, and here's what Stonehenge looked like in the 16th century. #SummerSolstice British Library Add MS 28330; Lucas De Heere, Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland; 1573 CE-1575 CE; England (London); f.36r

A fabulous evening with the Project Ripple Effect team at the Houses of Parliament last night to celebrate our work to study and protect the Upper Medway, and call for far better care for rivers and regulation of pollution. #Medway #RiverHealth #EcologyandConservation project-ripple-effect.co.uk

Whoa Black Betty

Can you help find Sussex's breeding Hawfinches by locating cherry trees and looking for split cherry stones? See www.sos.org.uk/archives/6421 Thank you! @sussexornitholo.bsky.social @sussexwildlife.bsky.social @ukrbbp.bsky.social

Please share this post and thread. @alexismarieadams.bsky.social & @julianhoffman.bsky.social have highlighted Kushner's plans in one of the most precious wildlife areas in Albania. What is it with the uber-rich that they care so little about nature?

Even before I heard the devastating, horrific news of political assassination in Minnesota, I woke up this morning thinking about Emily Dickinson's great poem "'Hope' is the thing with feathers -" Lots of people know this beautiful little poem, but fewer, I think(?) realize when it was written. /1

Don't let all the news distract you from the ongoing starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli govt is deliberately trying to prevent news getting out . It dismisses what news there is as Hamas propaganda while refusing to let international journalists in. An information war too.

We have lost all contact with our UNRWA colleagues in Gaza, communications have been cut off. This morning, for the first time in months, we did not receive their morning messages to say, "good morning" and "we are fine/alive". We anxiously await to hear from our colleagues.

Look! #buyastrangerabook is a real thing!