Election 17

We have a general election coming soon and for the first time in my life, I'm not bothering voting.
I'll make no bones that  there will be another hiatus to this channel coming soon and the period I'm away will encompass the actual election.  I could get a postal vote but seeing as I've only ever seen a campaign leaflet for Labour and one independent candidate. Have a read of some badly written nonsense on the Bexley Times website for an overview of my local area (seriously was the sub editor on lunch or something).

To be fair that independent candidate does sound really ace as I found a small booklet of his discarded on the street, a full on old school liberal, that will be lucky to outshine the Christian weirdo's there (spoiler Labour will win as always).

Talking about weirdos The Mail were laying into the UKIP Manifesto on Friday despite them endorsing the cut to overseas aid and a few other campaign policies.  Whole manifesto here if you can give a damn.  The cut price version is half proper Tory manifesto and half Monster Raving Loony, we don't ban burqas here as we're not French, but I'm with you on Brexit and that. Apart from that I can't vote UKIP with their cut price poundshop logo and Edward Hitler as boss.

Paul Nuttall here.

The Tories want to kill off their only voters the old and at the same time also kill off all porn and everything that makes the net worth living under vague civil liberties. They'll probably get it too thanks to that Manchester bombing, Hence an independent.  I can't vote for Labour as they have already won here, also Jeremy Corbyn is a horrible terrorist sympathiser and a Marxist weirdo. Picture him as PM its a car crash.

Worse is Tim Farron, Lib Dem boss, a (should be) committed Christian that has an abysmal record on all things anti gay and looks like a bad photocopy of old Paddy Ashdown former leader of the Libs.  They also are of the delusion that Brexit didn't happen and we can still be friends in Europe, so its glad that I found a pic of him holding a pint of milk a"well known" racist metaphor and looking uncomfortable as fuck. 

Sieg Heil Timothy.

State of the worlds plants 2016

Kew have finally spunked out their review of the worlds flora 2016 with a few good surprises for everyone.  It includes more wild varieties of Manioc and a new highly localised Parsnip from Turkey, as well as some re classifications through genetic analysis , which includes Paubrasilia a national tree of Brazil which has been hived off from Caesalpina.  I like the Mail's take on this which links some new species of Aloe from *South Africa which aren't in the report at all.  (Thankfully there are new species of Aloe being found but its normally either Kenya or Madagascar which are the hotspot areas).

The top news is that news of this was actually a few months old, as a preliminary list of this appeared up on Kew's Science blog back in February but we'll ignore that as there's a shiny new website complete with PDF download of the entire report here.

A lot of this makes sobering reading as most are threatened and critically endangered, largely due to habitat loss, either dam projects or mining concerns a lot of species hang in the balance here.

Anyway that is the state of the worlds plants.

*Brain cells, The Aloe species come from the front page of the pdf where it looks like the Mail has copy pasted extensively from.  Incidentally been trawling through last years back issues of the BCSS journal looking for any sign of these new Aloes and can only find mentions from Yemen and Kenya rather then South Africa.  Although I can remember an article in Bradleya our year book of them being cliff dwellers of some sort, I cannot remember what year it is could well be from 2016 and of course I don't actually have that years Bradleya.

Lullingstone Park

Went here today, a nice day out all told, with a walk down by the river and across the fields. Nothing can really beat Kent at this time of year, especially when the sun is out.  Came back to some crazy gospel bollocks all about the end of the world on our doorstep.  We are literally getting like America now and sadly my old vista workhorse used to power the printer doesn't power on now so will have to do some investigation to see what it could be.

Electronic Gaming Monthly.

This week I've been clearing away some junk, that is mainly old copies of EGM from the Mid 2000's and onward.  Still have a few copies up on top of the wardrobe from the mid 90's to go through, that also has the phone book sized xmas edition from 94 with Donkey Kong Country in.

These though were well past their prime with only Seanbaby making me laugh still.  There is still an emphasis on ads too which is baffling as UK mags never really carried them and even then it was cringy stuff from Woolies and the like.  There is a few odd ads there too including some anti weed stuff, the highly weird Seaman ad and David Beckham telling you to drink more milk, so football obviously has some impact there in the states now instead of the usual handegg. 

There is also the return of crap westernized anime artwork, this time for Castelvania Portrait Of Ruin as well as much better attempt for one of the Tales games (though in hindsight they just used some official artwork). I wont be sad to see them go its not terrible but they weren't an absolute joy pit like EDGE became.