R B @richbeard

On a stretch of the River Roding in Barking strewn with waste and detritus, a barrister named Paul Powlesland did something the British state has spent decades failing to do: he cleaned it and made it look like a river again. He now faces legal action. Yep. He and a group of volunteers hired a digger for £1,000 of their own money and hauled more than 200 bags of filth out of the water - packaging, broken appliances, used needles, even weapons. By any sane reckoning it was a small act of public good, civic spirit at its most potent and wholesome. For his trouble, he received a letter from the Environment Agency informing him that he is under investigation for working without a permit, an offence that carries up to two years in prison. The same Environment Agency that found the will to come after a volunteer for cleaning a river without the right paperwork has not, on that same river, prosecuted a single one of the illegal sewage spills that have fouled it for years. Not one. It's too fat, scrofulous, and indolent to fight the sort of people who'd do this. But it has energy to spare for the man with the digger and the bin bags because they expect he's likely to be a reasonable sort of Englishman who pays his taxes and honours procedure, however unreasonable it may be, when levied upon him. Protecting rivers? They have no interest in that. This is the thing about our institutions that the public grasps in its bones and the people who run them never will. Our institutions fail, and the manner of their failing is the worst part of it - the bloodless, box-ticking, permission-withholding callousness of bodies that have forgotten they exist to achieve anything at all. They should all be cleared out; every decision-making body in the building responsible for the dereliction of duty, and for daring to persecute a member of the public, must be hollowed out. The whole thing started from scratch. Better yet, I'll tell you what an outfit like Progress will do once it gains power; we'll put people like @paulpowlesland in charge of the very body now threatening to jail him. The institutions meant to look after this country - the Environment Agency and a dozen like it - are dying of exactly the defensive, do-nothing culture that sent that letter. They need to be run by people like him who actually give a toss. People with the brains to understand the problem and the plain human instinct to go and fix it themselves, while the rest stand on the bank writing their little sociopathic missives to the ones who already did. I don't know the first thing about Paul. I've never met him. I don't know what his political preferences are, the shape of his beliefs, what else we would agree or disagree on. None of that means a thing to me. He's a good man, and the right kind of man to make things work; and Progress is an attempt to make the country work, not a club made to serve a certain type or belief profile. A country is made to work by the people who, whatever their politics, cannot walk past a problem without trying to solve it. There are such people everywhere in Britain - on the rivers, in the schools, the wards, the workshops - and almost none of them are running anything, because the institutions have been built to keep that exact kind of person out. Drop the case against him. Then go further: find the hundred other Paul Powleslands the country is currently ignoring or threatening, and give them the keys. Put the responsibility and the authority, together, in their hands. Britain will be cleaned up - its rivers, and a great deal besides - in no time. It will be done by the people willing to get in the water, not by the ones writing letters about permits from the bank.

“What’re you in for mate?” “Cleaning a river without a permit. What about you?” @EnvAgency is really plumbing new depths of malevolent uselessness here.

Last night, our long-range sanctions once again reached the Moscow region – for the second time this week, the Moscow oil refinery was hit. Targets were also struck in the Rostov region and in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. This is a fully justified response to Russian attacks on our cities and communities, and another important result of our warriors’ work against facilities that sustain Russia’s war machine. I thank our Defense and Security Forces of Ukraine for their coordinated efforts – the Security Service of Ukraine, the Unmanned Systems Forces, the Special Operations Forces, Defense Intelligence, and our missile brigade for their precision. In recent days, all of our partners have noted the precision and effectiveness of our mid-range strikes and long-range sanctions. It is time the war ended, and Russia must take the necessary steps in diplomacy.

Since privatisation not one major reservoir has been built by the English water companies While more than 35 have been sold In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built

@Daffers560510 @BenGoldsmith Who's destroying ancient woodland, what conservation group ??

Iona community: 92% oppose MachairWind. Almost every objector explicitly supports renewables and net zero. They fought for ten years for a community turbine refused on height/visibility grounds. Those rules “disappear” for 91 offshore turbines up to 335m high, 7.7 miles from Colonsay. The electricity won’t go to the host communities. ScottishPower confirmed: Kilmarnock and Wales. Scotland already generates ~2x what it consumes and pays ~£300m/year curtailing wind that can’t reach the grid. The structural question who benefits from more generation when the grid can’t carry what exists? still hasn’t been answered. NPF4 requires that NSA development only proceed where integrity isn’t compromised or harm is outweighed by national benefit. The community says MachairWind fails that test. That’s a planning argument, not a protest slogan.

Vicky Allan @vicky_allan

7 days ago

Iona residents oppose 91-turbine wind farm plan for seas near Staffa. They describe it as an important 'test case' for the West Coast. My piece for @heraldscotland heraldscotland.com/news/26188705.…

3 13 19 4K 2

@overlandertheb1 Save the Lammermuirs,.. data centres vs driven grouse moors, dont actually know which is worse.

Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump are destroying Albania's protected wetlands for a $1.6B luxury resort while flamingos, sea turtles and local habitats get wrecked Albanians are out in the streets raging for 11th day, good for them. This shit's gotta stop.

Ukraine shot down Russian Kalibr cruise missiles. Then took them apart — board by board, component by component. What Ukraine's Ministry of Defence @DefenceU found inside should be uncomfortable reading for Western regulators and sanctions enforcement agencies. More than 80–90% of the guidance system electronics: foreign-made. Every part marked. Every manufacturer identified. 🧵👇

REP. BACON: This administration, and particularly Pentagon right now, is very critical of Europe, EU, NATO, and you never hear them criticize Russia. Why are they so weak on Russia, which affects their Ukraine and Baltics policy, but so quick to always want to criticize Europe? That's not good for America, not good for our national security. We, with our allies, have to work together to counter Russia, to counter China, and to help us in Middle East. This constant criticism, along with President's threats towards Greenland as well as Canada, has hurt us. Our allies have lost a lot of trust in United States.

When you're told its the badgers fault for the decline in ground nesting birds. Early silage cutting is not a problem. This poor pheasant sitting on her nest begs to differ, chopped to pieces cutting silage. But hey, let's keep to the agenda of open season on the badger.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

Trump bricht heute das Meet the Press Interview mit Kristen Welker ab – live auf Sendung. Auslöser: Welker konfrontiert ihn mit der langsamen Stimmauszählung in Kalifornien. Trump nennt sie „korrupt" – dann NBC, ABC, CBS und CNN. Behauptet er habe einen Erdrutschsieg errungen und es gebe mehr Beweise als je zuvor für Wahlbetrug. Welker: „Sie haben nie Beweise vorgelegt." Trump antwortet nicht – steht auf – verabschiedet sich – verlässt das Set. Welker hatte extra für dieses Interview nach Wisconsin gereist. Ein amtierender US-Präsident bricht ein Presseinterview ab weil eine Journalistin Fakten nennt. Das ist was Amerika gewählt hat. 🇺🇸🇪🇺

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention. The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean. And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them. Record-breaking temperatures. A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse. The response? Yank out the instruments and walk away. That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency. For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives. The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident. That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first. cnn.com/2026/06/03/cli…

Satellite-tagged White-tailed Eagle 'disappeared' on Snilesworth Estate, in the North York Moors National Park. Link to a feature article in The Guardian & some additional commentary from me ⬇️ raptorpersecutionuk.org/2026/06/06/sat…

Clarion Housing destroyed an active swift colony by demolishing a building early, breaching the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Tell the Surrey Police crime commissioner to enforce the law 👉surrey-pcc.gov.uk/contact-us/con… It’s #worldswiftday but no one gives a monkeys.

Oh what a surprise (not)! The gamekeeper at Snilesworth Estate has a previous conviction for #wildlifecrime - so much for the shooting industry clearing out the ‘bad apples’ … the entire barrel is rotten. Shut down the shooters or their crimes will continue.

Raptor Persecution UK @RaptorPersUK

2 weeks ago

Satellite-tagged White-tailed Eagle 'disappeared' on Snilesworth Estate, in the North York Moors National Park. Link to a feature article in The Guardian & some additional commentary from me ⬇️ raptorpersecutionuk.org/2026/06/06/sat…

8 148 268 15K 9

Last night, the House chose to stand with Ukraine, and I was proud to cast my vote. We passed military and reconstruction aid for Ukraine, plus hard new sanctions on Russia. We did it over the objections of Mike Johnson and Republican leadership, who spent over a year trying to keep this bill from ever hitting the floor. Eighteen Republicans crossed the aisle and did the right thing. Why does this matter? Because when a giant authoritarian state invades a smaller democracy, there is no gray area. There is no “both sides.” Vladimir Putin is a thug. He started an unprovoked war. He flattened cities. He stole children from their families. Helping Ukraine isn’t charity. It’s the test of whether we still mean a single word we say about freedom. I heard every excuse. The war’s winding down, they said, so let’s wait and see. Nonsense. You don’t strengthen a democracy by going wobbly the second things get hard. You don’t stop the next invasion by telling the world American resolve comes with an expiration date. Putin is watching. So is every dictator who dreams of taking what isn’t his by force. This bill still has to clear the Senate and survive a presidential signature. The odds are long. But the House did its job. And we said it plainly: no country gets swallowed whole just because a tyrant wants it. I’ll keep fighting to see this through. Ukraine’s fight is our fight, and we do not abandon our friends. ms.now/news/house-pas…

The EU issued nearly half a million tourist visas to Russians in 2025. Not to dissidents. Not to refugees. Tourist visas. For holidays. The highest number since Putin sent his army into Ukraine, up 10% on the year. France, proud, principled, morally unimpeachable France, raised its Russian approvals by 23% in a single year. When the numbers got awkward, the EU did what the EU does. It deleted them. Russian visa statistics quietly vanished from the official Schengen tracker in early 2026. Eight countries had to formally demand they be put back. They hid the data. Not the policy. The data. Ten countries, the Nordics, the Baltics, and the Netherlands among them, had to write an actual letter to get this onto a ministers’ meeting agenda. The remaining seventeen apparently saw nothing strange about any of this. No law is coming before summer. Because before any law can exist, there must first be a proposal. Before the proposal, a consultation. Before the consultation, a scoping exercise. Before the scoping exercise, a working group must be convened to determine whether a scoping exercise is appropriate. The working group requires terms of reference. The terms of reference must be approved by a subcommittee. The subcommittee reports to a committee. The committee feeds into a framework. The framework informs a roadmap. The roadmap gets amended seventeen times and renamed a “strategic pathway.” The strategic pathway is then circulated to member states for comment. France requests more time. The whole thing goes back to the working group. Any legislation won’t pass before 2027. Possibly 2031, if Italy has a strong summer season. Ukraine is entering year five. Russians are entering Italy. Four years of sanctions packages, candlelit solidarity vigils, and solemn declarations about European values, and Paris increased its Russian tourist approvals by nearly a quarter. The EU didn’t fail to stop the missiles. It didn’t even try to stop the sunbathing.

Tonight's meeting in Auchtertool about the 600MW AI data centre. Fifers are furious. Looks like Fife Council fast-tracking data centre despite it: - Consuming half of Scottish household electricity - No Environmental Impact Assessment EIA - Looking like it has landed from space

Lots of pro russian Irish people telling me to ‘go to the front lines & leave Ireland’ I’ve just come here from Nikopol. The press armour is still in my bag. I watched Russian drones hunt civilians with my own eyes. That’s why the indifference here is so despicable, especially while Ireland still supplies alumina to Russias war machine. I’m not going anywhere. This investigation continues