Neil Ward
@profneilward.bsky.social
Professor, UEA; rural economy; net-zero, food & farming; (+ New Order, The Fall, The Only Ones; Pembrokeshire, Northumberland, Forest of Dean)
How prepared is the UK for a disruption to its food supply? The Public Accounts Committee are holding a week of evidence sessions on the resilience of the UK’s food supply to disruptions. @profneilward.bsky.social gave evidence along with Tim Lang on Monday👉tinyurl.com/3686bmwv
82% of Britons say protecting nature is important to them, new polling by @moreincommonuk.bsky.social shows “You don’t often get that degree of consensus” on any issue, says @luketryl.bsky.social - speaking at an event at Labour Party Conference with the heads of the big nature NGOs
reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this week. 2,977 died in the US that day - extremely shocking. Also shocking is that we are experiencing an extra 1,300 to 3,000 heat-related deaths in England due to extreme weather. Getting close to a 9/11 here each and every year now
The National Audit Office has produced a detailed study of the resilience of the food system in the UK, focussing mainly on Defra and England. It concludes that Defra has not done enough to address risk to resilience in the food supply chain. www.nao.org.uk/reports/resi...
Resilience of the food supply chain to disruptions - NAO report
The government must engage more with households, communities and industry to strengthen the food supply chain's resilience to shocks.
nao.org.uk
Some food for thought
George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last mo.The government must know full well that many people have neither the space nor the money to store extra food in their homes. It is individuating responsibility for a collective problem. As usual, it is the poorest and most excluded who will suffer from it. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/environment/...
This piece by former Conservative Environment Secretary John Gummer is worth a read www.ft.com/content/5b8f...
Tory attempts to repeal the UK Climate Act are tin-eared
Summer’s droughts and wildfires demonstrate the need to stick to cross-party consensus on policy and to UK strategy on net zero
ft.com
The government's Land Use Framework for England was published in March 2026. It contains 79 actions. Five months down the line, what's happened? - - Just 6 actions are 'complete'; - 57 actions are 'in progress'; - 16 actions are 'not started'. Get a move on, DEFRA! 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...
Land Use Framework: list of actions
gov.uk
Does anyone know what the fashion for wearing hair curlers is all about ? Service stations on M42, M1 and A1 today had lots of people in hair curlers. Baffling, but looked great
Join me for a free public livestream of my new course, The Story of Capital. The course meets on Tuesdays from 4:15 - 6:15 pm [ET] from September 8th to December 1st.
💥 My book Rural Pain, Republican Gain is officially released today!! 💥 The book is an outgrowth of my dissertation work that I started in 2016. Indescribable feeling to be able to hold it in book form just under a decade later. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Rural Pain, Republican Gain
An eye-opening look at how Republican policies have affected health outcomes in rural communities and why poor, rural white voters are turning to the Republican Party—not despite this harm, but becaus...
press.uchicago.edu
“If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990,” says coauthor Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who leads the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at IIASA. @cityatlas.bsky.social iiasa.ac.at/news/may-202...
The world’s wealthiest 10% caused two thirds of global warming since 1990
Wealthy individuals have a higher carbon footprint. A new study published in Nature Climate Change quantifies the climate outcomes of these inequalities. It finds that the world’s wealthiest 10% are r...
iiasa.ac.at
The solar #eclipse wont be the same without Bonnie Tyler
My piece from The Conversation yesterday. Trying to encourage some thought about resilience and the medium/longer term. theconversation.com/as-severe-dr...
As severe drought hits, the UK’s food system faces crisis – here’s how to change that
Our entire food system needs a redesign to cope with increasing threats to resilience over the long haul.
theconversation.com
Approaching my 400th gig. Here's my top 30: 30. THE STONE ROSES – Alexandra Palace 18.11.89; 29. EDWYN COLLINS – Kilburn National Ballroom 3.12.87; 28. A CERTAIN RATIO – Manchester Gorilla 24.11.18; 27. ROXY MUSIC – O2 Arena 14.10.22; 26 PETER PERRETT – Hackney Moth Club 19.10.24
I spoke with @owenjones.bsky.social recently about the withheld Joint Intelligence Committee report on food system pressures, and more. I mentioned that one report makes the point that "a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required" Full conversation here: youtu.be/nTYISpFTIq8?...
New partnership between BeZero Carbon and the University of East Anglia comes at a critical moment for global fire risk 🔥 ⬇️ Here's what it will add to the State of Wildfires Project www.uea.ac.uk/about/news/a...
BeZero partners with the State of Wildfires Project to analyse global wildfire risk
Carbon ratings agency BeZero Carbon has partnered with the University of East Anglia (UEA) to fund the State of Wildfires Project, a major international scientific initiative tracking the causes and…
uea.ac.uk
🚨 Norfolk is now officially in drought. Please use water wisely, be extra careful with fire risks, and remember this is the reality of man made climate change. London has already had 24 days above 30°C this year, more than the whole of the 1980s. waterwise.org.uk/how-to-save-...
No 10 has completed the reshuffle, by announcing a full list of PPS appointments today: there are about 60 PPS roles here. Michael Payne, Adam Thompson and Chris Vince at the Home Office. Olivia Blake, Luke Charters & Kirith Entwistle at MHCLG.
I join you from the Blaenavon wildfire in Southeast Wales, brought to you by BP, Shell and Equinor. Though it does not look dramatic, the fire has been out of control for days - for a very particular reason. 🧵
With today's theft of Vix torc, here's what has been taken... The torc was found as part of a burial & placed around neck of the interred. Despite its size, it weighs only 480g (less that half the weight of the Snettisham Great torc). It is STUNNING. #Archaeology #Gold #Torcs 🏺 1/2
Met Office chief Penny Endersby: ‘There is not going to be a usual summer’ ft.trib.al/deFVitX
Met Office chief Penny Endersby: ‘There is not going to be a usual summer’
The head of the UK’s national weather service on this year’s multiple heatwaves, the net zero backlash and why geoengineering is not a panacea
ft.trib.al
1/ We've a new paper: The highest-impact diets belong to the people with the most choices. In @nature.com Food, led by Oliver Taherzadeh and Hongyi Cai: across 165 countries, the highest dietary emissions per person are among highly educated urban men aged 15-34. doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01389-y
Dietary environmental impacts and quality differ by socio-demographic characteristics - Nature Food
Dietary intake and supply chain data from 165 countries reveal demographic disparities in diet-related environmental impacts. Impacts are greatest among young, highly educated urban men, and healthier...
doi.org
![[Title panel]:
A-LEVEL RESULTS COLUMNS DAY
[Scene is a TV news type report about A Level results day]
REPORTER [talking to camera outside a school where students are crowding outside the hall to get in]:
Well, it's that day again
When A-Level students across the country finally get to find out
What Britain's newspaper columnists think about their results.
[show the interior of the school hall, with long tables, but instead of results papers on them, loads of middle-aged newspaper columnists are all laid out]
[Close up on the COLUMNISTS lying on the table, talking up to a gaggle of excited students desperate to find out what they say]
PETER HITCHENS:
I remember when A-Levels meant something
CLARKSON:
I got a C and two U's
[Cut to outside the hall, the REPORTER is talking to a student]
REPORTER:
And did you get the middle-aged opinions you wanted?
STUDENT:
Yes!
I got one ‘There's Too Much Humanities’,
and two Oxford graduates telling me they went to Oxford.
REPORTER [now doing a voiceover, as we see the students in the school hall next to the columnists on tables, and the students are preparing to jump in the air for a photographer]:
And then the annual photo shoot…
[PHOTOGRAPHER]
One, two, three...
[One of the columnists on the table pipes up with]:
What's The Point Of University in 2026?
[The students all jump for joy]
STUDENTS:
HOORAY!
[ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreiauzow46czexl5p6tdraopiegsutr63pkiar6cescidhxaluclska)
