Bill Scott's blog

The Times carried a story the other day that the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had banned an anti-Fracking advert from Friends of the Earth (FoE) on the grounds that it was misleading.  The paper reported:

"Friends of the Earth (FoE) failed to substantiate claims that fracking could cause cancer, contaminate water supplies, increase asthma rates and send house prices plummeting, the Advertising Standards Authority says.  ...

The draft upholds the complaints against FoE on all four grounds, finding in each case that the group had breached the ASA’s code by making misleading statements that it had failed to substantiate.  The draft rejects FoE’s attempt to use evidence from the US to justify its claims about the threat to health and water supplies. It notes that there are differences between the way fracking is regulated in the US and UK, with the Environment Agency imposing strict controls here on chemicals used and the protection of water supplies."

FoE denies it all.  Apparently, however, one of the FoE claims was that fracking chemicals could cause cancer because they contain sand, which contains silica, “a known carcinogen”.

The trouble is, I think, that there are just not enough popular TV programmes about chemistry.  We clearly need more like Breaking Bad which, under the guise of drama and entertainment, sneaks in some decent chemistry teaching.  Meanwhile, just to be on the safe side (the precautionary p'ple, you know) we should, perhaps, be putting out the red flags and clearing beaches and sand pits everywhere.  You never know ...

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Postscript.

As I write this, the first tanker of fracked gas arrives in Scotland for processing at Grangemouth, a plant which, in a different life, I once visited to research an article on Hydrocracking.  It is ok, it seems to import gas from a country with lax environmental standards, but not to produce it where such standards are amongst the highest in the world.  Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

If you've ever found yourself wondering how much electricity Bulgaria exported in November 2015, and to where, and got no answers, your problems are over.  Just go here where fabulous graphs will answer this, and many another question about European energy transfers.  But be warned, do not do this is you are up against a deadline as you'll get into a lot of bother.

The answer is 1.1 TWh, and it went, unsurprisingly, perhaps, to Turkey, Serbia, Greece and Macedonia.  Never say this blog is not informative!

I wrote last week about the article by Simon Murray, the NT's Director of Everything, in the Autumn magazine, and promised to say some more about what he had to say about the "more difficult" countryside.

Well, he wrote this:

"The countryside is more difficult.  People get that immediate 'wow' from walking in places like the Lake District – there are green fields and sheep grazing or corn being cut – and they don't see the devastation of nature that these pastoral images can conceal."

Wow! indeed.  Someone should tell Murray that if visitors to the Lakeland fells ever encounter un-devastated nature (all bracken and rank grass), they won't thank him.  I imagine that it was this sort of egregious re-wilding nonsense that was behind the Trust's top dollar payment in Borrowdale to ensure that farming would stop on a large chunk of the valley.  To be fair, biodiversically speaking, it will prove to have been a great day for thistles.

UCL's Development Education Research Centre (DERC) has been commissioned by UNESCO to prepare a briefing paper on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education within the training of teachers.

It's looking for any examples around the world of initiatives that bring these themes into the training of teachers and any relevant literature or research.  The specific questions it has been asked to consider are:

• What are common ways of preparing teachers in the areas of ESD and GCED?

• What is the best methodology to monitor the GCED and ESD-related training of teachers, particularly at the level of ITE, from a comparative perspective? Have there been any attempts to compare the efforts of countries in including ESD and GCED in their teacher education curricula and practice? What obstacles need to be overcome to draw such comparisons at a global level?

• What is the available evidence base on the extent to which GCED and ESD are included in ITE and materials in different countries, as well as CPD programmes? Using examples from at least ten countries in four different regions, what are the most emphasized GCED and ESD-related issues in teacher training?

• What could be the best mechanisms to improve GCED and ESD-related teacher education?

• What are the prospects (given the current situation and the available evidence) that systems will meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals 4.7 target in relation to teacher education by 2030?

If you are in a position to send any relevant material or wish to discuss these points, contact Doug Bourn , d.bourn@ucl.ac.uk – by mid October.

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My report would be: "First, change the nature of the training of teachers; only then think about all this."  I said it was short.

I've been leafing through the NT's Autumn magazine and turned to the article by Simon Murray, the Senior Director of Everything with particular interest.  Actually Murray is only i/c Strategy, Curatorship, Visitor Experience, and External Affairs, but you do wonder what else there is for others to do.  Anyway, he's obviously a busy bloke, so we should be grateful that he's found the time to commit his thoughts to paper.  And what thoughts they are.  There's a big block of bold text in the middle of the article which runs:

The vision is for a programme that inspires you to take something from your visit that will make a difference."

This, it turns out, is not an encouragement of petty theft or grand larceny, both of which are routinely possible at NT houses.  Rather, it's all about learning outcomes which it seems are central to its new 10-year strategy (Playing our part).  Murray says: "We want to create experiences for our visitors that move, teach and inspire them."  I've a terrible thought that compulsory learning objectives cannot be far behind – and we'll probably encounter them in a tent strategically placed between the car park and the first raffle ticket sellers.

The purpose behind all this becomes clear as you read on.  It is to help the Trust address the "current crisis in the historic and the natural environment" through the Playing our part strategy so that visitors who've been taught, moved and inspired, will then go away and do something to make a difference to make the world a bit of a better place.

Having poked some fun at the earnestness of all this, I should say that I like the idea of helping people get more out of visits, and that more of us, and more frequently, should do something positive in the world, as far as we can.  I fear it will have to be handled gently, however, as quite a lot of visitors obviously go to NT properties for a nice day out and a cream tea.  But the Trust knows that.

I'll say more about what Murray writes about the countryside in another post, as this he says  "is more difficult."  Indeed it is!

A time to remember – A visit from an old friend and colleague from the Netherlands prompted thoughts about the 1980s when I believed the EU was a force for good, and teacher education the "priority of priorities".  No longer, of course.  We remembered visits to €eurocrats in Brussels, and a never-to-be-forgotten trip to Limerick to the Nth ATEE conference.  There, there was a limerick competition which we both duly entered only to find our entries censored.  It's still hard to see why; mine was a modest satire on the poor organisation of the event; his a delicate Lutheran skit on St Mary in whose immaculate college we were staying.  Humourless *******.

To Stourhead – for modest exercise and good conversation with more old friends, and a visual stimulus that's second to none if you like your landscapes to be of the managed 18th century sort.  I read that such Capability Brown-type gardens (this one's by Henry Hoare) are under attack by certain groups across the UK for their cultural uniformity and tendency to nostalgia.  I noted that the long-neglected overshot water wheel was now fixed.  And so it turned, but as it was not connected to anything, no useful work was done.

Meeting up with Johnny Voun – To have lived so long – 55 next birthday; but don't ask what number base that is expressed in – and not to have comes across Johnny Voun seems most remiss.  Johnny V is an English apple with deep crimson skin whose colour bleeds into the white flesh which is sweet with a slightly anise flavour and lovely aroma.  Somewhat like a Discovery, but denser and more subtle.  Say what you like about the National Trust – and who doesn't these days – they do know their apples.

Chinese visitors – It was good to meet Li Shan and Hu Sifan, from Mengla and Shenzhen, respectively, who are in the UK enquiring about environmental and sustainability education from the botanic garden perspective.  It was an engaging hour at the university with two articulate and perceptive people.

Life and Death in the afternoon – Perhaps a never to be repeated or forgotten incident was the dispute between three magpies and a sparrow hawk on the grass in front of my house.  We watched from 15 metres or so.  The hawk had taken a wood pigeon out of the sky and was trying to eat it, but the magpies were intend on having it instead.  But they were no match for the hawk and were too disorganised to get the better of it.  They had the last word, however, as when the hawk had had its fill, they disposed of what was left leaving only a few feathers.  There was only one metaphor on display here.

All plastic and no apples –  Where are English apples?  I've long given up on the Co-op having English apples as it's not part of their understanding of sustainable development, and sure enough the university's shop only had imports and fruit that had been stored for months.  I was surprised, however, to fine none in the lage Bath Sainsbury's store.  When the country is awash with the best apples in the world, where are they all?  Well, the chance is that, when they do turn up, they'll be wrapped in plastic as most apples seems to be these days.  Just when we'd been weaned off take away plastic bags, the supermarkets are still using tonnes of the stuff, mostly needlessly, I suspect to make life easier for themselves.

A carbon-neutral white van – Finally, to round off the week, we got a parcel via a cheery bloke in a big white van which (the parcel, that is) proclaimed itself to be carbon-neutral.  Anything is now possible, it seems.

Well done to the NUS sustainability team for scooping a whopping global ESD Prize.  They'll be off to Paris in October, to UNESCO Central Command, and three days of launching and lunching in that special French way.

There are three winners of the UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) this year:

• The Centre for Community Regeneration and Development (CCREAD-Cameroon)
• Okayama ESD Promotion Commission
• NUS

The Prize was established in 2014 to "honour and showcase outstanding ESD projects and programmes of individuals, institutions and organizations within the framework of the Global Action Programme on ESD (GAP)".  The Prize is funded by the Government of Japan and endowed with USD 50,000 for each laureate.

NUS, ably led by Jamie Agombar, won the global ESD prize for its Green Impact programme and was nominated by the UK Government c/o the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO.  UNESCO says:

"NUS-UK, a confederation of 600 students’ unions across the United Kingdom, was selected for its “Green Impact” programme, which accredits and awards university departments for sustainability efforts. Training students as mentors, the programme encourages university staff to make their workplace “greener” while generating economic savings. The Green Impact framework ranges from simple actions such as advice on double sided printing to setting up an ethical credit union. Through peer to peer engagement, the programme creates collaboration across departments and institutions."

Although NUS has been widely congratulated for its achievements from within the UK, surely there are more than a few ladies and gentlemen now abed in England who'll be thinking themselves acursed they'll not be going to Paris in NUS's stead.

I'm not one of them.  Although I rather deplore the size of the prize, I can think of no worthier UK winner.