How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

Why Keir Starmer's refusal to explicitly condemn Nigel Farage's immoral plan to tear thousands of families and communities apart will only help clear the Reform leader's path to Downing Street bylinetimes.com/2025/09/22/w...

Working on a piece & cannot believe I just wrote the following: "On Wednesday, ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel Live! just hours after the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened to cancel ABC’s broadcasting license." The de-democratization of America in action.

Oh a forced sale to regime allies? Shocker.

A debate Labour badly needs to have:

There's no better poster child for the mess the UK is now in than the fact that the Financial Times - home to the "how to spend it" supplement on luxury geegaws - is now one of the most left-wing media channels in the country simply because it's still interested in reality.

@jo-the-botanist.bsky.social Hi Jo, I found this grass I think is Lolium giganteum, do you think that’s right?

@tetzoo.bsky.social Any idea what this is?

Good piece by Zeinab Shuker on Syria's environmental crises, from pollution and deforesting to water shortages. These aren't minor issues to be resolved in a distant future—they're growing sources of instability. @zfshuker.bsky.social & @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...

I do enjoy the country-specific name changes for No Kings protests this weekend

I’ve made labels for the collection of pressed grasses I’ve assembled. I think these suitably express my deep love of Latin and English botanical names:

@jo-the-botanist.bsky.social I don’t suppose you could help me with this grass? Found in the dunes at Horsey Gap. I’m thinking it’s a couch but can’t work it out. Flowering spike like couch/ryegrass but leaves are hairlike, tiny ligule.

Catabrosa aquaticum on the Bure near my home. A pretty floating grass, not common, with flower spikes like a purple-green haze over the water.

Here is the grad speech that NYU is now withholding the student's diploma for: "As I search my heart today in addressing you all…the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine."

Fletcher: “I can tell you from having visited...death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you."

Extraordinary and chilling moment at the UN. Relief chief Tom Fletcher accuses Israel of using starvation “as a bargaining chip.” Urges the Security Council to act decisively to prevent genocide in Gaza.

🚨 Trump’s efforts to deport migrants w/o legal status to Libya are beyond disgusting. I teach North African Politics, followed Libya for years & interviewed scores of migrants in Tunisia who went through its hell. There is an active slave trade there. Journalists cannot enter. An urgent thread: 🧵

A ditch full of flowering water violets- a rare and lovely sight:

Think it's time the gov backtracked on this dreadful developer's charter. #TrashForCash www.theguardian.com/environment/...

It's probably not fair to compare a country with an entire continent (with a much deeper history), but I don't know if there's an equivalent in the US (with its vast food deserts) of every nondescript town or village, like in e.g. Italy having its own dishes and cuisine.

In the past few months I’ve been taking the phrase “go touch some grass” perhaps too literally. I’ve learnt to identify about 15 or so grass species more or less by sight, and my home is covered in small piles of hay.

Just heard my first cuckoo of the year, the nest box I put up in February has a pair of barn owls in it, and this morning (finally!), the garage is full of chattering swallows. The world turns.

AKP-controlled district in Istanbul cuts the electricity ahead of CHP leader's rally there

this is genuinely remarkable - www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happe...

Stunning Poem from Paris Review Daily Poem

@patrickgalbraith.bsky.social Hi Patrick- trying to get in touch with you. Could you follow me so I can DM? 🙏

You may laugh, but I know people there and Shep has been a polarising figure whose incompetent tenure has eroded long-established norms.

1. Because this issue is critical, but has received remarkably little coverage, here's a thread pulling out the key themes from my article yesterday, on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which puts decades of environmental protections to the torch. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Drought conditions in Europe in the first half of April. Getting worse [Source: joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/european-and...

JFC this is grim.

Saw a barn owl hunting this morning for first time in weeks- perhaps out in the day because it has chicks to feed. Also more swallows about after a lone pair on April 7. Reed warbler too for the first time this year, chattering in the small reed bed by the river. All these give me hope and joy.

Most graphs of OECD data have Turkey and Mexico together on one side and the Scandinavians on the other. This one is exceptional

This guy is showing how it’s done. Good for him.

Astronomers using a space telescope have found signs of biological activity on K2-18b, a distant water-covered planet that is 8.6 times bigger than Earth. www.ft.com/content/0142...

Protests in Turkey continue, approaching a one month mark since the arrest of the popular Istanbul Mayor. University students have been at the forefront of these protests. Now joining them are high school students. globalvoices.org/2025/04/16/t... for @globalvoices.org

@nicolakellywrites.bsky.social Hi Nicola, hope you’re well! Trying to get in touch with you about something. Could you follow me back? 🙏

Very excited to be talking about Istanbul and ‘To The City’ with Louise Troup at the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival on Sunday: www.sherbornetravelwritingfestival.com/2025-twf-aut...

In fairness, it would be hard for it to be *less* funny than the American version.

Worth noting though, that most successful populists (eg. Erdoğan, Orban, Chavez) built the foundations of their success on an initial period of rising economic prosperity/expanding social security net, before their eccentricities undermined it. Trump is skipping that step.

The UK car industry contributes £22bn to the economy and employs c 35k people. Universities contribute £265bn and employ nearly 400k, over 10x as much. Yet he seems ok to let that sector implode.

An anonymous group of food industry execs published a memo warning about “a threat to food security like none other we have seen” in the UK, citing degrading soil health, water scarcity, heating, and extreme weather. Mitigation strategies don’t meet level of risk www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/whistle...

I have to agree with Max. The efforts from the EU thus far are just not where they need to be going. It is understandable but just discouraging.

Happy to see ‘To The City’ spotted in the wild in Oxford, Mississippi, by @nicholasdanfort.bsky.social.