Graeme Lyons

Why is this not headline news rather than Rachel Reeves etc

Stephen Fry, "The bullies have risen to the top" "I call it fascism because that's what it is" "It's a cult of power, and a cult of warrior worship, and a total contempt for the old world order" "You have to remember the psychology of the bully at school" "Bullies feast on the fears that they cause" "Look at who Trump admires.. Putin's Russia.. Places moving towards fascism, nationalism, and they don't listen to people like Starmer" "Starmer will be called a nice guy by Trump until he says something which expresses his support for Ukraine, something which he has to do, and then he'll be slapped down and Trump will say: I thought he was nasty" "It's bullying, it's fascism, and we have to realign ourselves in recognition that this is no longer the proper world"

Ask yourself this: If someone had told you this was an Israeli citizen, and you know you’d have felt outrage. If knowing this is a Palestinian citizen, you do not feel outrage. Ask yourself if you genuinely truly believe you are not a racist.

I am incandescent with rage right now. I feel sick to the stomach. A US Vice President stood today on the soil of where so many Americans gave their lives to defeat fascism in Europe. He delivered a disgraceful speech that spat on their graves. Not that we should expect any different, given his boss skipped visiting the graves of fallen Americans in Europe for fear of getting his hair wet. The same man who called the same fallen heroes suckers and losers. As a Brit that loves America and the American people, I am deeply disturbed at the insults delivered by a man who once described Donald Trump as an “idiot" and said he was "reprehensible." Privately, comparing him to Adolf Hitler. How times have changed. Vance is now part of the most authoritarian administration in American history. An administration actively seeking to deny bodily autonomy to women. An administration pursuing the same mass deportation of immigrants that Europe witnessed in 1930s Germany. Vance is a man that his own president doesn’t even see as his successor. He came to Europe to vomit his Christo-fascist bile on leaders from the UK and across Europe, in what appears to be a retribution tour designed to assert American power. The U.S. are to my knowledge the only NATO country to have invoked Article 5 of the NATO charter after 9/11. We, his European allies, met that call with no questions asked. We sent thousands of soldiers to the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq to fight a war on the false premise of Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘known unknowns’. We did this despite millions of our own citizens protesting in the streets of our cities. Our military stood shoulder to shoulder with his military and we, like many Americans, stood to salute our fallen young men and women returning home day after day. I have tears in my eyes as I write this, thinking of them and their loved ones. Our brave men and women willingly gave their all and far too many made the ultimate sacrifice in support of an American led war. For the record, 6000 Ukrainian solders server alongside American soldiers in Iraq. This, despite Ukraine not being a member of NATO. In 1994 upon signing the Budapest Memorandum they gave up their nuclear weapons in return for security assurances from the US and the UK. These were then reneged upon in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. They were told ‘An assurance is not a guarantee’. Now, despite their friendship and their brave sacrifice on the battlefields of Ukraine, the President of the United States has decided to abandon them and hand a victory to an indicted war criminal, who illegally invaded the sovereign territory of a US ally. An ally who’s soldiers had previously lost their lives supporting America in its war on terror. SHAME ON HIM. Shame on the man who dodged the draft and never served a day in defense of his nation. He is a coward and I would gladly call him that to his face. To all those Americans on social media currently posting vile insults to those who have always been there for America, I say, democracy is bigger than you, as you sit anonymously behind your phones posting poison. America might have the most powerful army on the planet, but remember, that same army fled from Saigon after being handed their ass by a bunch of peasant rice farmers, armed with grenades made from discarded US coke cans. Ukraine have been to the Russian army what the Vietnamese were to you and we salute them. You might want to throw Ukraine under the bus while stealing there mineral deposits, BUT EUROPE WILL NOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN. I know for sure that the UK will not abandon the Ukrainian people. Our aid to GDP contribution already exceeds that of the US as does Poland, Germany Finland and others. The U.S. is no longer a reliable ally and if need be, we will stand with Ukraine without America. As for your pathetic tariffs, do your worst. You will soon have no friends but thugs and autocrats, so I’m sure Wun Dum Fuc will be right at home.

I'm gonna close my account here a week today. If anyone needs to stay in touch, PM me here or find me on Blue Sky.

Four years ago, in the middle of a pandemic, we needed a leader with the character to put politics aside and do what was right. That’s what @JoeBiden did.   At a time when our economy was reeling, he drove what would become the world’s strongest recovery – with 17 million new jobs, historic wage gains, and lower health care costs. He passed landmark legislation to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and address the threat of climate change.    I’m grateful to Joe for his leadership, his friendship, and his lifetime of service to this country we love.

Anyone who supported the illegal release of Beavers bears some responsibility for what has happened here in my view. Wasn’t it the obvious next step given the way that ‘beaver bombers’ have come to be treated as conservation heros? We urgently need a major rethink.

Funny how your day can change in an instant. Did a bit of seawatching at Pendine, Carmarthenshire but too cold. Got back to the car and a Desert Wheatear pops out from underneath it!

Cannot believe we’ve got to a place where people think the left are somehow on the side of grooming gangs… I’m on the left I want every one of those monsters & those who covered it up to be locked away Can we all grow up & stop being so damned simple & easy to manipulate?

'It’s almost as if the truth doesn’t matter, because the intoxicating unpleasantness that Twitter is made of has now entirely taken over and become so powerful…' ‘What on earth should Keir Starmer do about Musk’s behaviour?’, asks James O'Brien.

the biggest and most obvious question

@BEACHYBIRDER @BirdGuides @SussexDolphin Hey when was it last seen and where? I might try tomorrow.

Beachy Head: Humpback Whale breaching repeatedly off Beachy Head to the ESE 13:17 @BirdGuides @SussexDolphin

Time to leave, but I’ll miss the constructive discussions across divides that were once possible here. Hoping the new place can avoid becoming an echo chamber - but still lacking the hunters farmers gamekeepers and countryside folk needed to challenge & engage the ecology folks!

@PKBook22 @BritishSpiders @wildlife_uk @LoveUKWildlife @StevenFalk1 @Buzz_dont_tweet @LGSpace @LivingCoastUK @WildlifeTrusts @NBNTrust @URewilding @RichardFoxBC @outwivcamera @CoLeeves @Airhead2 @CoolSussex @ppeewit @BBCSpringwatch @sdnpa @UKgardenspiders Not what you would call rare, but a non-native species that has spread rapidly in recent years. The records on the SRS don't show some of the recent records currently, it's been known from both East and West Sussex since 2020.

@BritishSpiders @wildlife_uk @LoveUKWildlife @StevenFalk1 @Buzz_dont_tweet @LGSpace @LivingCoastUK @WildlifeTrusts @NBNTrust @URewilding @RichardfoxBC @outwivcamera @CoLeeves @sejarnold @Airhead2 @coolsussex @ppeewit @BBCSpringwatch @sdnpa @UKgardenspiders @graemelyons

This misses the point entirely - trivialising nature extinction, climate change, increased flooding, & nature-deficit health & wellbeing issues, is unacceptable. This not 'newts' versus 'people', & such a comparison suggests extreme ignorance about the sustainability imperative!

Autistic Traits I assumed I didn’t experience (And How I Actually Did) #Autism #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent #Neurodiversity #Disability #Disabled

@StephenMoss_TV @DrJohnHayward I am currently writing my first book and I would not have gone with any publisher that would have forced me to write them in lower case. There is an entire chapter on it. It does matter. pelagicpublishing.com/products/pan-s…

@graemelyons @DrJohnHayward I respect your opinion Graeme - I just think that convention means that you will have an uphill battle; and I'm not sure why it matters that much. For me, it's more important that we write about the natural world than whether we use upper or lower case.

@DrJohnHayward @graemelyons Re lower case bird names, I believe that their use in narrative nature writing (as opposed to field guides, scientific papers etc) is valid - all publishers and authors follow this because it makes a book easier and more accessible to the reader. 1/3

@StephenMoss_TV @DrJohnHayward Well, we can do both. It does matter for a lot of different reasons, have a look here. …venaturalhistoryofsussex.blogspot.com/2021/08/why-en…

@StephenMoss_TV @DrJohnHayward Not disagreeing that lots of books are not written like that, I do disagree that it's easier to read.

@graemelyons @DrJohnHayward I've been through dozens of books, going back decades, and they all - or virtually all, as of course there are a handful of exceptions - use lower case! Because it is easier to read - that's all...