A rare glimpse of an abandoned haggis farm on Rannoch Moor, the now flooded holding pens visible from above The farm closed in the late 1800’s due to criticism around intensive breeding methods, and the owners instead switched to mining tartan, although that venture didnt last.

Landing Athens. Giving a seminar in Volos.

Now there's a very, very good question. Thames Water have now admitted that they are not treating (dousing) their sewage for phosphate due to a "supply issue". That by the way has a massive and negative impact on water quality and aquatic life. Funny they didn't mention any of that until they were called out on it. How many other WCs I wonder are having supply issues?

Bet he won’t hesitate to make us pay our taxes. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy02…

C. Gull esq was ‘ere

Views may differ on whether Olly Robbins should have somehow shared that issues had arisen in vetting. But his evidence shows that in a complex situation he took his responsibilities very seriously, did not act incompetently or with malign intent, and does not merit dismissal.

You know you’re in Norway when…

Land hermit crab doing its thing.

Perhaps the oddest pair of adjacent books at a book swap.

What do you expect from a corrupt organisation? bbc.co.uk/sport/football/art…

Scotland is waking up to the devastating news that the Forth Bridge has been stolen. I heard it on the radio and had to run along to see it for myself. The radio said they were following a positive line of enquiry with a local company that uses girders to make soft drinks.

Interestingly Travelodge is owned by the US company GoldenTree Asset Management. Strange that’s not being mentioned.

⁦@VeteranIrish⁩

On the 90th anniversary of the Spitfire let's remember Lucy, Lady Houston who donated the equivalent of £7,000,000 of her own money in 1931 to Supermarine to keep the Spitfire project alive "Every true Briton would rather sell his last shirt than admit that England could not afford to defend herself" 🇬🇧

In 1943, Paris - a woman sits in a Gestapo interrogation room, her feet bleeding, her body broken. The officers across from her know she's holding secrets. Names of British agents. Locations of resistance safe houses. Intelligence that could dismantle entire networks across France. They've already started the torture. Her toenails are being removed, one at a time. Soon they'll use heated irons on her back. They'll lock her in darkness for weeks. They'll promise her life in exchange for just one name. She's a 30-year-old mother of three. Not a soldier. Not a spy by training. Just a French-born housewife who was living quietly in England until Hitler's armies swallowed her homeland. That's when Odette Sansom made a choice that most of us will never have to make. She left her three daughters behind and volunteered for Britain's Special Operations Executive, the shadow organization built to sabotage Nazi operations from within. The SOE didn't want career military. They wanted people who could disappear into occupied territory. People who spoke native French. People willing to accept that capture likely meant torture and execution. Odette knew the odds. She volunteered anyway. By 1942, she was operating in occupied France under the codename "Lise," coordinating resistance cells, organizing sabotage, funneling intelligence back to London. She worked alongside Captain Peter Churchill, building networks that struck at German supply lines and communications. For months, they were ghosts. Then a collaborator sold them out. Now she's in this room. In this chair. Facing men who have perfected the art of breaking human beings. And here's what they don't understand: Odette Sansom has already decided she won't break. Not for pain. Not for promises. Not even to save her own life. Because she knows that every name she gives means another agent tortured. Another resistance fighter executed. Another family destroyed. So she gives them nothing. Through months of interrogation. Through agony most of us can't fathom. Through solitary confinement and death threats. Nothing. The Gestapo eventually realizes they can't break her. They send her to Ravensbrück concentration camp, condemned under "Night and Fog" protocol, prisoners meant to vanish without trace. She survives more than a year there by convincing the commandant she's related to Winston Churchill. It's a complete lie, but it keeps her alive. When Allied forces arrive in 1945, that same commandant tries using her as a bargaining chip. The moment they reach American lines, Odette identifies him as a war criminal. He's arrested on the spot. Britain awarded her the George Cross, the highest civilian honor for courage. The citation was clear: for refusing to betray her comrades despite torture that would break nearly anyone. Then in 1951, someone stole the medal from her home. Months later, it arrived in the mail with an anonymous note. The thief had researched what it represented and couldn't live with keeping it. Even criminals recognized what that medal meant. Odette Sansom Hallowes lived to 82, spending decades honoring fallen comrades and embodying quiet strength. She always insisted she'd simply done what anyone should do. But that's not true. What she did was extraordinary. She proved that the most powerful resistance to tyranny isn't violence. It's the absolute refusal to break, no matter the cost. 📷© Imperial War Museums (Restored & Colorized) © Daughters of Time #drthehistories

The day Idaho turned beavers into paratroopers. In 1948 the Idaho Fish and Game Department had too many beavers flooding suburbs and chewing orchards — and not enough in the remote backcountry where dams were needed to fight drought and erosion. Trucks couldn’t reach the rugged mountains. Mules killed too many from stress. So game warden Elmo Heter had a crazy plan. He took surplus WWII silk parachutes, built special wooden crates with spring doors that popped open on landing, and loaded pairs of beavers inside. Then he flew low over the Payette National Forest and dropped them — 76 beavers in all. At 200 feet, the crates tumbled out, parachutes opened, and the furry engineers floated down into remote streams. Only one died (he chewed out of his box mid-air). The rest hit the ground, climbed out, and started building dams the same day. Those dams created ponds, stopped erosion, and turned dry valleys into lush wetlands that still thrive today. Seventy-six beavers. Seventy-six parachutes. One of the most creative environmental wins ever. Sometimes you don’t need fancy tech. You just need to give nature a little lift. From the sky.

A clear and elegant explanation of the science behind global warming, presented by Carl Sagan in 1985.

Well, well, well, govt has finally realised that their big crack down on water industry bonuses was a hoax. It's so badly worded it's next to meaningless. What a waste of time, what a waste of parliamentary process, what a waste of the public's trust. 👇

Since #bbclaurak is trending, let’s remind ourselves that ONE MONTH ago, the BBC invited Mandelson on for a soft-ball interview on her show. While his client, Palantir’s Louis Moseley appeared as a pundit Both, as I wrote at time, were ‘abject failures of journalism’ 1/

FIFA is an appalling organisation Just read the article. Needs to be wound up. bbc.co.uk/sport/football/art…