News and Updates

In fact, despite warnings of biblical proportion from an increasingly frit Met Office, there were no dead at all, and I did wonder whether that rather irked the media outfits that had spent £zillions sending news teams to north-west Scotland to cover what...

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP20, comes at yet another "crucial moment, and talks continue on a draft international climate agreement due to be fanfared in Paris in 2015.  Carbon Brief has a comment on proceedings so far, as governments back away from accountability...

I know that some prefer not to use the concept of natural capital; this can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from its association with the idea of money and monetary value, and worries that they will be labelled 'neo-liberal', across to...

The UN is meeting in Peru to sort out climate change before it's too late – although many (which includes me on my more gloomy days) think it was already too some time ago.  Still, you have to meet to show...

HEFCE has a draft business plan – 2015 to 2015.  Pretty disappointing stuff, but typical of HEFCE's new narrow view of the world.  It is obviously settling into its new role of  just handing out the cash.  ELSA, the English...

Whilst Edinburgh's credulous citizens gawp at their feckless Chinese imports, waiting for the next miracle of creation, Scotland's environmental elite wilfully neglects its indigenous fauna.  Read on for a sad story of neglect and decline.

In the summer, ELSA, the English Learning and Sustainability Alliance, wrote to David Willetts MP (now reshuffled off the ministerial coil).  The focus, broadly speaking, was to wonder whether the Department for Business, Industry and Skills [BIS] might pump some lead into...

It seems that US citizens spent some $7.4bn in the run up to Hallowe'en.  This included: $2.2bn on confectionery ("candy") $1.1bn on costumes – for kids $1.4bn on costumes – for adults $0.35bn on costumes – for pets That's ~$15 each,...

I'm not going to buy Band Aid 30.  Neither, it seems, is Fuse ODG who has been put off by the patronising view of Africa that the whole idea represents.  Indeed!  Not that this is new.  The original Band Aid had...

When your guiding principle is that your enemy's enemy will have to be your friend, you run all sorts of risks.  You've only got to examine American Cold War policy about supporting dictatorships and terrorists to see that, not to mention the...