August 2010
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To Sustainability and beyond: inspecting and reporting on progress in sustainable development
This is the title of a new publication from Ofsted. The document is commendably brief – and I note that its focus is on sustainability / sustainable development, not ESD, which probably explains some of the lack of emphasis on learning,...
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Indicators Updated
Defra has published a new update on how well we're doing in relation to sustainable development – as far as any indicators can tell us, that is. The report, Measuring Progress: sustainable development indicators 2010, cover 68 indicators, one of...
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Dolly's Man says the Milk's ok
Wednesday's Telegraph carried two short pieces on the cloned beef / milk debate from Lord Peter Melchett, the Soil Association's Policy Director, and Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep. Whilst both seem to agree that there...
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Just like some seminars I go to ...
Browsing the New York Times, as you do, led me to a paper “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton" by Erik Verlinde, a string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, in which...
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Send in the Clones
According to the Telegraph, Britain's food safety watchdog has admitted it doesn't know how many cloned embryos have entered Britain after meat produced from cloned cows ended up in food. Tim Smith, chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, is...
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Small Beer
The fifth Sustainable Development Commission Watchdog report finds that "sustainability measures are saving Government £60-70 million every year." That's about £1 each. Meanwhile, the accumulated public debt is already over £900 billion, and continuing to...
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The quality of strawberry jam, if not strained ...
It is not widely known, but the last government launched another new quango before it mis-managed its own re-election. This was the Office for Strictures and Controll on Food and Fodder – OFSCOFF. As befits an era of austerity, Ofscoff's remit...