February 2019

  • My generosity to Drax

    I gave just over £10 to the Drax power station last year so that it could burn wood to generate electricity.  So did you – if you pay tax in the UK.  Of course 'gave' is misleading as I wasn't...

  • Whence cometh the weather?

    Have you been enjoying the balmy weather?  The warmest February ever, we’re told, since recording began. Although we never quite reached the dizzy heights of Aberwystykh's 20 on Monday, or Kew's 21.2 yesterday, it was warm enough and enjoyable.  The...

  • ESD and wider sustainability academics

    The SHED-SHARE mailbase had a message from its co-ordinator the other day.  It said: Greetings SHED-ers Does anyone know if there have been any conversations with AdvanceHE is establishing an ESD Community of Practice?  With push from the community they...

  • The anchor of my purest thoughts

    This is an extract from the Wordsworth poem: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 ... For I have learned To look on nature, not as in...

  • Are globalisation and Google on the run?

    Being no fan of Google, I gave a small cheer the other week when France’s data-protection regulator announced that it had found the company's data-collection practices to be in breach of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and fined it a modest €50m....

  • More than a game of chicken

    Although I don't, all who consume chicken might like [or not] to read the Economist's recent detailing of the industry.  This is how it starts: "In a shed on a poultry farm just outside Colchester, in south-east England, thousands of...

  • Ofsted's Education Inspection Framework

    Despite what I said the other day, I've been reading Ofsted's Education Inspection Framework and a riveting read it is.  You might be surprised to hear that the words environment/environmental occur in it as many as 24 times; but you'll...

  • Let's protest about climate

    A whole lot of folk have worked themselves up in a lather of indignation because a few thousand young people left their schools last Friday to protest about the lack of governmental action about climate change.  A few of the...

  • Where will your children be tomorrow?

    Will they be in school?  Or will they be protesting about the ecological crisis facing the world and the lack of policy focus on it?   We're told that there will be a growing number of such protests where adding...

  • An everyday story of coerced proletarianisation

    There was an (inadvertently) entertaining article in the Guardian the other week from a woke bloke in a UK university complaining about how poverty stats are manipulated and misinterpreted.  There were lots of sloping graphs to grab our attention but...