One mustn’t take life too seriously. If this form of house extension appeals (and it’s a lot less painful than having a Conservatory built…) then Steve Hobbs is your man, at Cotswolds Shepherd’s Huts. Read more …
Blog Posts
Guinness is not always good for you…
The last moments seen right of nervous good health back at the end of July… I’ve been waiting to post these thoughts for four months as my left arm and hand’s ulnar nerve has begun, at last, to heal from a very nasty uncharacteristically (honest) alcohol-related, zero miles-per-hour crash in Dublin at the end of … Read more …
Climate Progress blog post on the Journalism of Climate Change
I thought I might post here a contribution I made this week to Climate Progress, a site I read daily and consider the best current blog on the science and politics of Climate Change. The post was in response to some (partly but not entirely justified) sharp criticism of a BBC piece by my old … Read more …
Talking at Deutsche Welle about Climate Change and Journalism
It’s not the most comprehensive of packages, but Deutsche Welle in Bonn have done an interesting job of summarising a panel on the journalism of climate change which I ran, together with Mary-Jayne Rust, in Bonn in June. With some 1400 participants registered, many from developing countries helped financially to take part by the German … Read more …
The Ultimate Canal Bums?
I doubt that many folk will read this, but can’t resist posting a couple of photos from the Grand Union Canal at the weekend, where Sue and I have just taken our new narrowboat-for-hire, the Molly May, out for her maiden voyage. Unlike the bulbous father-and-son crew on the right, she cuts a lovely figure, is … Read more …
Will We Save the World?
The occasional visitor to these pages may recall that last year, we installed a solar hot water system in our house in Cirencester. It’s worked brilliantly, meaning we didn’t need to use any gas at all through the summer and well into the autumn – admittedly helped by switching the Aga off as well (a beast … Read more …
The Coming Climate Change Panic
For those readers of this modest blog interested in perhaps the best climate change discussion out there on the web, I’d like to recommend Climate Progress.org. They have a fascinating and frighteningly relevant series of postings currently up there on the overlap between climate change and human population – including a link to the clearest … Read more …
Copenhagen – A Bucket of Cold Water
With Copenhagen now over, I’ve been wondering how, briefly, to capture here in words and an appropriate image my own increasingly clear understanding, which the climate summit has served only to reinforce, that the game is over. The image I alighted on is perhaps a little subtle, rediscovered among thousands of old negatives I’m now … Read more …
Remembering Romania and Ceausescu
Why did I switch from journalism to psychotherapy? As chronicled (cautiously) elsewhere on this site (see my long-in-the-tooth Masters thesis from 2000), Romania and covering the revolution there 20 years ago this month were, looking back, the decisive turning point. As this year of revolutionary anniversaries draws to a close (wall-to-wall coverage of the fall … Read more …
Working with therapists on facing the worst
Bringing climate change into awareness: presenting the issues Tree Staunton, Stroud-based body psychotherapist, and I have been exploring ways of facilitating honest and uncomfortable discussion among fellow psychotherapists about the reality of climate change and what this will mean for us as a species. As you may have read elsewhere on my site, I have … Read more …