Nearly 40 years after receiving our first tandem for our wedding in March 1977, we’re taking our heavyweight long-distance tourer Daisy2 to NZ/Aotearoa to cycle from Cape Reinga at the top of North Island to Bluff at the bottom of South Island. We’re raising funds for the wonderful Rory Peck Trust, uniquely dedicated as it says … Read more …
Media/Journalism
On Anglo-German Reunification and Reconciliation
A hundred years from the start of World War One, I’ve finally found the peg I’ve been seeking on which to hang my first Braynework blog post in nearly a year. It’s been the most extraordinary year, in which I left Cirencester and my former partner Sue, sold the beloved Wychcroft home which we bought in 2003, moved … Read more …
Brompton folding bike in New York snow mercy wine-dash
Wonderful fellow-Brompton-folding-bike-owner’s email today from my old Dart Centre friend and colleague in snowed-in New York Bruce Shapiro. “Mark – I have one more reason to be grateful for your introducing me to Brompton bikes all those years ago: As you probably know we were hit by a blizzard overnight. I am hunkered down at home … Read more …
Climate Change and the Failure of Today’s Journalism
(Cross-posted with kind permission of Greenpeace Energy Desk) What was the most important angle in the news coverage of Superstorm Sandy? Was it – should it have been – the storm’s impact on the US presidential elections a week later? Was it the number of human deaths – the usual measure of newsworthiness – or … Read more …
One month to go, and thanks for generous donations…
One month tomorrow, Wednesday April 4th, the journey begins – reminding me of setting off four years ago this month on my so far longest, 4000-mile, round trip to Budapest, and of the nervous thrill of the first day’s journey across (picture l.) Salisbury Plain with its unexploded bombs. “Danger – do not leave the … Read more …
Visas and Jabs
Little more than a month till departure, and – as winter begins to fade and (as in the photo on the right) Cotswolds snows thaw – the visas and jabs are beginning to come together. Preparing to take a bike through Russia to China and on to Vietnam isn’t working out cheap. Best part 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 …
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 …