Articles
November 26, 2012
It is eighteen months since the meltdown of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power complex after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. Globally, reaction to this series of events has been mixed, with a number of countries including Germany reaffirming their intentions to get out of civil nuclear power generation, others like China and Indonesia […]
November 13, 2012
My reflections on a couple of great books on some of my favourite subjects, by Paul Farley and Michael Symmonds Roberts ‘Edgelands: Journeys into England’s true wilderness’, and Owen Hatherley, ‘A guide to the new ruins of Great Britain’. ‘Edgelands’ are those spaces where the veneer of civilisation peels away. They are the debatable spaces […]
October 30, 2012
As we celebrate the end of the first ever United Nations International Year of Cooperatives, there is a sense of the dawning of a ‘golden age’ for co-operatives in the UK. All the main political parties are signed up to co-ops. The buzzword is ‘responsible capitalism’ and there is a realisation that the existing […]
October 4, 2012
The Mandarins in the DfT have egg all over their faces. But some are very relieved. Finally the penny dropped somewhere near the top of the office that they couldn’t be saying both that there was shed loads of unused capacity on the West Coast Mainline (the basis of First Group’s up-till-yesterday successful bid) and […]
September 26, 2012
Local government could never be described as fashionable, yet today there is more talk than ever about the importance of ‘the local’. However, this has converted into less, rather than more, freedom to act locally. Whitehall’s desire to control is strong, as the current freeze on council tax rises demonstrates. Local government hasn’t suffered as […]
September 26, 2012
The last few weeks have really brought home to me the vulnerability of subsistence farmers across the world to unpredictable weather. I have had an allotment for thirty years and it is a very useful supplement to family food supplies with plenty of fresh fruit and veg in season. But of course I don’t rely […]
September 20, 2012
Like nearly everybody else I know, I have watched more of the Olympics on TV than I expected to. I found it gripping, moving, inspiring, uplifting and a little bit escapist. A couple of times I heard reference to events of Olympics in the past now dropped, including chess, poetry, art, architecture and town planning. An […]