Incredible biodiversity...including in common fruit & veg.

Isn't all that biodiversity incredible? From the genes in a species, the differences within a species, to the number of species making up a community and the variety of communities making up ecosystems (which are themselves of many types)...

Just look at some of the variation in one common vegetable:

B ertan
I nfinity
O nward
D anvers
I mperator
V alery (or St Valery)
E mperor
R edchild
S inclair's
I ngot
T humbelina
Y ellowstone

All the above are varieties of carrot. Carrots are not all orange either - they can be white, yellow, red, purple or black too!

Its a great shame that the 'choice' offered in supermarkets does not reflect such variety and indeed all edible biodiversity more, where appropriate. Take apples for instance - there are 2300 varieties of apple in the National Fruit Collection, but on sale in many supermarkets are perhaps 6 varieties (though some are working on improving the number offered).

There are over 20,000 edible plant species but fewer than 20 species currently provide 90% of our food. We rely on a very narrow range of varieties within species too, including wheat. This is fundamentally bad from a food security point of view.

Government Energy Review not serious consultation and designed to get the result they want

The view of Greenpeace on the government's Energy Review is absolutely spot on. Greenpeace work on this issue is highly valuable. I couldn't put it any better than they do - its worth five minutes taking a look at their video:

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/about/video-another-bad-idea-sponsored-by-the-uk-government-20071003

I will be writing to my MP about energy policy shortly.