Thursday, August 25, 2011

Wed 24th Aug 2011

Well how fast has August flown by; just like a leaf blown in a gale. The nights have drawn in once more till I find myself in a dark room now at 9pm and 5am with the entire world outside stilled save for the solitary owl.  To slumber and to rise in the darkness for the next 6 months. the weather was supposed to be quite poor this week but has in reality been good. Getting cold though.

 If you’re on the east coast of the US better batten down the hatches now - Hurricane Irene has strengthened to category 2 force after churning over the Turks and Caicos Islands and is now heading towards the Bahamas. US meteorologists warn the weather system could strengthen further and hit the US east coast over the weekend.
 
Lucky I live on a hill - Animals and plants are shifting their natural home ranges towards the cooler poles three times faster than scientists previously thought. In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers looked at the effects of temperature on over 2,000 species.

They report in the journal Science that species experiencing the greatest warming have moved furthest. The results helped to "cement" the link between climate change and shifts in species' global ranges, said the team. Scientists have consistently told us that as the climate warms we should expect animals to head polewards in search of cooler temperatures. Animals like the British comma butterfly, for example, has moved 220km northward from central England to southern Scotland in the last two decades.

And we 50 year olds aren’t much better off  - The proportion of 18-24-year-olds in England not in employment, education or training (Neet) has risen to 18.4%, official figures suggest. The figure from the Department for Education is the highest for the second quarter since 2006, and is up from 16.3% last year.

I’m sure he was in Sainsbury’s last night - After Libyan rebel fighters stormed the Bab al-Aziziya compound in the capital Tripoli - and crowds were seen celebrating the end of the old regime - one question remains: Where is Col Muammar Gaddafi? The country's leader for 42 years has apparently responded with his customary defiance. In an audio message broadcast on a local TV station, he pledged "martyrdom or victory".

I thought it seemed a little more crowded - Net migration rose by 21% last year, with 239,000 more people arriving in the UK than those leaving, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.

Back to the Top - Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album has become the biggest-selling album in the UK in the 21st Century, the Official Charts Company (OCC) has revealed. It said her 2006 second album had this week overtaken sales of James Blunt's 2005 work Back to Bedlam. It had sold 3.26 million copies compared with Blunt's 3.25 million, the OCC said on Thursday