Category: “Environment”

When George Osborne announced the first public spending cuts today, he did at least have a mandate of sorts. While some of the detail may differ from the ‘efficiency savings’ claimed during the election to be able to deliver six billion pounds, he had been pretty clear about direction of travel, and though he did not get a Parliamentary [...]

Today is the fourth anniversary of David Cameron’s election as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party. I think we should all just have a moment’s reflection, and ask ourselves what we consider to be the most telling moment, thought, image or (honestly, come on, let’s try) ‘policy’ of those four years. For me, I [...]

If you need any reminder of the challenge facing Ed Miliband as he works for a deal at the Copenhagen climate change summit, look no further than today’s interview in the Financial Times with the elected mayor in Ed’s Doncaster seat. Peter Davies surprised even himself when he was elected mayor standing for English Democrats, winning [...]

It is one of the golden rules of democratic politics that you are never allowed to turn towards the public and tell them they are the problem. Like many golden rules, from time to time it deserves to be broken. Because when you read a survey which states that only 15 per cent of British people worry [...]

I’ve just been for a longish run along the Newcastle quayside, which confirmed me in the view I tweeted last night – that this area has seen a real transformation since the days of successive Tory governments. I know the people who responded on Facebook and Twitter, being ‘friends’ and all that, are likely to [...]

Bono and Bob Geldof, whom God preserve, are much more than your average celebrity campaigner. They don’t just care about their chosen issues, they know about them too, real genuine knowledge, and they know how to use the influence that their status and knowledge brings. They have campaigned pretty tirelessly, and in many different ways, [...]

‘Gee, what a great wall.’ You had to hand it to Ronald Reagan. He had a way with words. But now it seems the Great Wall is even greater than the Great Communicator realised when he came out with his reaction on seeing it for the first time. There we were, thinking the Chinese had [...]

So I put up a  blog on global warming yesterday, headed off for a three hour bike ride, and came back to outbreaks of incivilities all over my Facebook page. As one commenter, Terry Evans, put it, there could have been all manner of comments and argument about climate change and the politics of the environment, [...]

I had no idea, until I saw a tiny item in a French newspaper  on the Eurostar back to London yesterday, that there had been a European Commission competition to honour the first ‘green capitals of Europe.’ Congratulations to Bristol on being shortlisted. Commiserations on missing out. And congratulations to Hamburg and Stockholm for having [...]

As previous postings have shown, I went to the premiere of The Age of Stupid with considerable interest and goodwill, and a belief that it would be a real changemaker. It still might be. It stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in 2055, alone in a world devastated by climate change, clicking his finger on [...]