Today's #SpringArrivalSpotlight: the Little Ringed Plover!
These sweet little waders return from March, favouring gravelly riverbanks & wetlands.
Spot their bright yellow eye-ring & swift, darting movements as they forage.
On this week's Rare Earth (www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...), we're talking about Lakes, Lochs and Loughs. Do they force us to confront our bad habits because nature isn't washing the problem away?
One of our guests @rachelsalvidge.bsky.social talks about the superbugs she found in Lough Neagh here:
Superbugs resistant to antibiotics are rising fast. I tested water at Lough Neagh (40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water) & found high levels of antibiotic-resistant genes from human & livestock poo. If we treat waterways like sewers, this is what we get. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
It is such a shame as there is no doubt that software procurement across the NHS has not been strategic in that there is a forest of software programmes that did not talk to one another and whose datasets are incompatible.
This is not good for patients, or efficiency or research.
A company being awarded UK Government contracts👇🏻
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#RightToRoam - there is so little nature on these depleted islands, we need access to all of it
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Today's #SpringArrivalSpotlight? Ring Ouzels! Resembling a Blackbird with a white bib, Ring Ouzels arrive in the UK across March and April.
Frequenting rocky upland areas, males will sing to stake their territory.
A shy bird, listen carefully for their 'Prrrt Prrrt' call.
Fox appears from behind green grass.
Only 3 of the UK's 23 nature targets are currently on track.
We need urgent Government action to protect and restore nature for people & wildlife. 🍃
👉 jncc.gov.uk/news/uk-publ...
Water Security Atlas filtered to show levels of water stress in parts of Britain and France.
London & the Southeast are increasingly water-stressed & cannot afford to have a single water source in an unusable condition.
The map below is from our Water Security Atlas & shows levels of water stress by region. Darker = less water available.
share.google/WJ5mHSOoAcRb...
PFAS pollution in a drinking water source near the old Denham Film Studio, so high the source had to be taken out of use.
That's a water source that was providing 20 million litres a day to London, a city where water is already becoming scarce.
From my report on BBC Inside Science, today👇🏾
Parisian car traffic fell by more than half between 2002 and 2023, while cycle lanes expanded sixfold. Bikes now make more than twice as many journeys as cars. www.ft.com/content/882e...
“Cars are the most absurd means of transport in a city. They are parked 95 per cent of the time. It takes two tonnes to move someone who weighs 70 kilogrammes. And the denser the city, the more absurd it is.”
Reaching net zero by 2050 is often framed as a cost burden.
The UK Climate Change Committee’s latest analysis suggests the opposite.
The real risk is fossil fuel dependency.
“Rightwing politicians, junktanks & billionaire press tell us our energy security will be enhanced & our bills fall if we abandon net zero, ditch renewables, reinvest in North Sea gas. These claims are not just a bit wrong. They’re the exact opposite of the truth”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
(WSJ) Trump is at it again, aiming to remove California's special (and aggressive) pollution laws for light-duty vehicles. The lawsuit is also aimed at electric vehicles. These "different" pollution laws for CA have been used since 1979, over FIFTY YEARS. TOTALLY CRAZY
www.wsj.com/articles/tru...
Hegseth: "Another example of a fake headline that I saw yesterday -- 'War widening.' Here's a real headline for you for an actual patriotic press. How about, 'Iran shrinking.'"
They are being explicit about turning corporate media into state propaganda.
🇺🇸 John Bolton on U.S. easing sanctions on Russia for lower oil prices:
"I think they drank a lot of vodka in the Kremlin when they heard that news. This is an absolute gift to the Russians."
Impeccable timing with these @financialtimes.com headlines on the same day highlighting the Trumpian US approach to its allies.
On the same day, the US is
- further easing sanctions on Russia
- starting probes to raise tariffs on EU, UK and Canada
Stephen Miller complaining about the UK finally eliminating heredity nobility from their legislature is a perfect encapsulation of how perverse it is to have these people in charge during the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
“Elon Musk’s Tesla given go-ahead to supply electricity in Great Britain.” A subheading underneath says: “Ofgem licence means firm can replicate Texas setup of powering homes, businesses and EVs.”
Ed Miliband must step in and bar Tesla from holding an energy licence.
Elon Musk is a threat to our national security and clearly not a fit person to operate in our energy industry.
We can’t have the lights go out because he’s having a strop on X.
BBC World Service funding freeze risks ‘opening door to hostile states’, MPs say www.theguardian.com/media/2026/m...
Every hospital in England has been urged to disobey an NHS directive to use software operated by controversial US analytics software company Palantir
www.bmj.com/content/392/...
🚨 NHS England is rolling out Palantir software for our health records - handing huge power to a US firm with a track record in surveillance, military technology and human rights abuses.
Email your local Trust and say NO to Palantir in the NHS: notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-tar...
The one thing that bugs me in this obvious development is the complete absence of self-reflection. "I was wrong" is a sentence that apparently is no longer in use. Instead, you just throw out statements in all directions. One of them will end up being correct.
Trump fired the people whose job it would be to warn him of the really obvious stuff.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”
edition.cnn.com/2026/03/12/p...
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