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U-turn lifts limit from £1m to £2.5m after protests and warnings that family farms were at risk
Ministers will increase the threshold for taxing inherited farmland from £1m to £2.5m after months of pressure from campaigners and MPs representing rural areas.
In a statement slipped out just before Christmas, the environment department announced the U-turn, which will apply from April when the tax kicks in.
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The activist and author of Here Comes the Sun discusses rapid advances in solar and wind power and how the US ceded leadership in the sector to its main rival
Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature, published in 1989, warned early of the dangers of climate changes and he has been campaigning and writing ever since. His most recent book, Here Comes the Sun, takes a look at the soaring potential of renewable energy
Is your latest book a more optimistic take on this world?
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Met Office says temperatures are tracking ahead of 2022 after year of heatwaves and drought, though late cold spell could yet intervene
Forecasters say 2025 is “more likely than not” to break the record for the hottest year in the UK since records began, after a summer of heatwaves and drought followed by a mild autumn.
According to the Met Office, the official forecaster, the mean temperature for 2025 is tracking well ahead of the previous highest year, set in 2022. However, a colder spell expected from Christmas until the new year makes it too close to call definitively.
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Mass of congealed fat, oil and grease 100 metres in length found blocking sewers in Whitechapel area of capital
A “fatberg” weighing an estimated 100 tonnes has been discovered blocking sewers in east London, officials have said.
The mass of congealed fats, oils and grease measures about 100 metres long (328ft) and weighs about a third more than the heaviest of the British army’s battle tanks. It has been called the grandchild of the 2017 Whitechapel fatberg, which weighed 130 tonnes and stretched for more than 250 metres (820ft).
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Speke, Merseyside: Walking through Stockton’s Wood today, you’d never know it played such a vital role in the second world war
For most visitors, the Tudor house of Speke Hall, with all its rich history and magnificence, is the star of the show here. But right next door, Stockton’s Wood has a history all of its own.
Today, on a chilly winter day, there’s no escaping that right now this ancient woodland is an important “deadwood” site. It’s rich in veteran trees and fallen branches, and has a stunning diversity of mosses and fungi. Pausing by a fallen oak, I count slime mould pimpling the bark, several species of small but perfectly formed bracket fungi, and candlesnuff fungus, fungal mycelium lurking where once sap flowed. A wind-thrown silver birch is caught in a sycamore’s embrace.
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Rich Stockdale says model of ‘regenerative capitalism’ would maximise profits by planting trees, restoring peatlands, and installing windfarms across its estates
The founder of an investment firm buying large estates across Britain to restore woods and peatland has said it is “unashamedly and proudly” capitalist, and plans to make tens of millions of pounds in profit.
Rich Stockdale, the chief executive of Oxygen Conservation, said his model of “regenerative capitalism” was a “force for good” because it would offer investors significant profits by planting trees, restoring peatlands, operating solar farms and holiday homes and installing new windfarms across its estates.
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Researchers have realised the records are a ‘goldmine’ to study changes in environmental conditions
Yangang Xing had never heard of organ-tuning books, but his colleague Andrew Knight often played the pipe organ at churches as a teenager.
When the pair, who are researchers at Nottingham Trent University, set out to study how environmental conditions in churches had changed over time, Knight explained that all over the country many organs had notebooks full of data tucked away in their recesses.
This article was first published by The Reengineer
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As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
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Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the year
Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?
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Thousands of farms set to go bankrupt as grain farmers in particular hit by trade disruptions caused by price hikes
Donald Trump, having promised to “NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN”, appeared to come through for them this month when he unveiled a $12bn aid package. Industry leaders say thousands of farms will still go bust this year.
While the US president has vowed to increase domestic farm production, and even claimed this formed a “big part” of his plan to lower grocery prices for Americans, many US farmers are grappling with mounting financial issues – compounded by Trump’s agenda.
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pub. Verso, London, New York, 2012
pub. Random House, 2006
