Mhairi Black: 'We rightly condemn the violent acts of Iran, so too must we condemn the the violent acts of Israel... if 100 missiles... constitutes as disproportionate, then so to must Israel's bombardment of Gaza'

Rishi Sunak: It's important not to try & draw any equivalence

#Manchester - I need your help!

Yesterday I ran the Manchester Marathon but I lost my wedding ring.

I think it came off on Chester Road after the White City roundabout.

This is a picture of the ring it has 'I love you 3000' inscribed inside it too.

Plz help me get it back!

#RT

Musk finally driving the last nail into Twitter’s coffin

Musk: New X Users Will Have To Pay To Post Tweets
joemygod.com/2024/04/musk-n…

Guy Shrubsole Steve Barclay Natural England Joe Marshall Chris Packham Paul Powlesland Feargal Sharkey Ruth Tingay Lucy Lapwing Caroline Lucas Mark Avery Sophie Pavelle Helena Horton Steve Reed Interesting. Heather Wheeler MP and Maggie Throup MP have constituencies adjacent to the East Midlands Freeport. I feel the subject of stripping Natural England of its powers may be of interest to EuropeanPowell who looking close at the Freeports and Special Economic Zones.

Guy Shrubsole Steve Barclay Natural England Joe Marshall Chris Packham Paul Powlesland Feargal Sharkey Ruth Tingay Lucy Lapwing Caroline Lucas Mark Avery Sophie Pavelle Helena Horton Steve Reed How could they strip away yet MORE powers? Environment Agency already utterly use- and defenceless against the perverted abuse of our natural environment on a near daily basis
twitter.com/paulpowlesland…

Diamond Hell Steve Barclay Natural England Joe Marshall Chris Packham Paul Powlesland Feargal Sharkey Ruth Tingay Lucy Lapwing Caroline Lucas Mark Avery Sophie Pavelle Helena Horton Steve Reed Probably cos they’ve had their budgets slashed to the bone over the past 14 years - fund regulators better and they tend to get better at their jobs; run them down and then deregulate is how the Tories operate

Guy Shrubsole Steve Barclay Natural England Joe Marshall Chris Packham Paul Powlesland Feargal Sharkey Ruth Tingay Lucy Lapwing Caroline Lucas Mark Avery Sophie Pavelle Helena Horton Steve Reed I find myself somewhat conflicted on this situation. Where I live (Isle of Wight) Natural England only seem interested in working with very large and often absent landowners and they have little, or no interest in working grass roots, or engaging effectively with others.

Steve Barclay Tony Whitehead Wildlife and Countryside Link 12/ Here’s an excellent tool from Wild Card to make it super-easy to email your MP about this #AttackOnNature : actionnetwork.org/letters/sssis-…

Steve Barclay Tony Whitehead 11/ And here’s a briefing on Derek Thomas MP’s misguided Bill and why it threatens nature protections, written by Wildlife and Countryside Link: wcl.org.uk/docs/Sites%20o…

Steve Barclay 10/ If you’re writing to your MP about this - the excellent Tony Whitehead has put together some suggested wording for a letter in his thread below:

9/ There’s still time to stop this.

TWEET tagging any of these 18 MPs to expose this effort to gut Natural England.

WRITE to your MP urging them to speak against the Bill at its second reading on 26th April.

And tell Steve Barclay to publicly oppose these plans.

8/ In other words, Tory Ministers and their landowning friends have long itched to reduce the powers of Natural England and its predecessors.

Any transfer of those powers to a politician would mean a reduction in nature protections – as fewer nature reserves would get created.

7/ In the 2010s, David Cameron briefly tried to get Natural England to sell off its national nature reserves. After his parallel plans to privatise the Forestry Commission’s Public Forest Estate were met with a storm of protest, the sale was dropped.

6/ In the 1980s, what was now called the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) came under assault from then Tory Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley, who blocked the NCC from buying more land for nature reserves.

5/ In 1955 the Tory minister responsible for the Nature Conservancy, the Marquess of Salisbury, was apoplectic at the NC’s plans to designate some land as an SSSI – which happened to belong to another landowning Tory MP. He pushed the NC to suppress its proposals.

4/ Since the foundation of the Nature Conservancy – Natural England’s predecessor body – in 1949, Tory politicians and landowners (often one and the same) have sought to undermine its powers.

3/ That’s why 18 Tory MPs have written to the Environment Secretary “to ask you to support the bill or otherwise enact its provisions'

They claim transferring Natural England’s power to create SSSIs to the SoS “would not cause any protections to be lost”

This is arrant nonsense

2/ The letter concerns Derek Thomas MP’s Bill, tabled last month, which would strip Natural England of its power to designate SSSIs.

As a 10-Minute Rule Bill, it stands little chance of passing – unless the Government gives the Bill its support.

x.com/guyshrubsole/s…

REVEALED: 18 Tory MPs have written to Environment Secretary Steve Barclay urging him to gut Natural England’s powers to create nature reserves (SSSIs)

This latest #AttackOnNature must not succeed

(Thanks to Joe Marshall for obtaining the letter)

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