When I was a child in Madagascar, we used to walk through a little village on the way to school. There was a man in a wheelchair who used to sit out by the roadside, his legs shrivelled and twisted under him, stick-thin and useless. Polio, my mum told us – a terrible disease that [...]
Archive | October, 2011
Why the City of London needs to be occupied
There’s been a lot in the news this week about the Occupy London protest around St Paul’s. The Cathedral has closed for the first time since the Second World War, and there is talk of legal action to move the protestors on. There is talk of health and safety, highway regulations, and the definitions of [...]
What we learned this week
The government is planning to vote on a new law on tuesday to criminalise squatting. So if you’re homeless and you bunk down in a derelict and unused property for the night, you’ll now be breaking the law. If this offends you, there’s one day left to make some noise about it. What’s the world’s [...]
Back the Robin Hood Tax at the G20
When I first read about the financial transaction tax, it was a campaign adrift. A proposal had lost in the European parliament by just six votes – the UK being the leading voice against it. That was 2005, and the decade long campaign for the tax appeared to fizzle out. A few years and a [...]
Reducing the negative impact of advertising
In yesterday’s post, I looked at a recent report that analyses the role of advertising in shaping cultural values. It concludes that advertising is something of a negative force, and that “the potential impacts of advertising should be of pressing concern to a wide range of third sector organisations—irrespective of whether they are working on [...]
The cultural impact of advertising
For the last few weeks I’ve been carrying around a report entitled The Advertising Effect, from the Compass think tank. I’ve been meaning to write about it and haven’t got round to it. I’ve been reminded of it this week the publication of a new report from WWF and the Public Interest Research Centre, Think [...]
The EU is subsidising illegal fishing
That’s the straight-forward message of this latest campaign video from Greenpeace, which highlights the fact that EU subsidy monies have found their way to fishing companies with a history of illegal activity. In one incidence, a Spanish company received €15 million between 20o2 and 2009, despite several of their crews being convicted for fishing without [...]
Heating the sky
I quite like this poster from the Energy Saving Trust – a simple and sensible question in my opinion, and a design to match. The poster is part of the action pack for Energy Saving Week, which starts today. Download here, and stick one up in your workplace.
Skeptic’s favourite confirms a warming trend
When it comes to climate change, I’m prepared to accept that some people have differing views on why the earth might be warming. Those that hold out that the earth hasn’t warmed are a different matter. Plenty of such people exist, and many of them justify their views with criticisms of the data sources that [...]
What we learned this week
The landscape is already man-made, so why do we object to wind turbines, asks Will Self. News of an unlikely ally in the fight against climate change: Starbucks are concerned about the future of their coffee producers, and are lobbying the US government for tougher action. The main reason that our carbon emissions have fallen [...]
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