News and Updates

The Guardian reports that the European Commission has announced ambitious intentions to become world’s first climate-neutral continent with plans to cut emissions by 90% by 2040.  It’s a fair bet that few of the EU's population will have had any...

I wrote back in December about how the price of new gas boilers was rising because manufacturers were passing on the fines imposed on them by government.  From HMG's perspective, of course, these are not fines, but are branded as...

There has been much press coverage recently about the criticism of certain NGOs working across Africa on conservation initiatives which marginalise and sometimes harm local people.  The well funded organisation, African Parks, has been mentioned, specifically by  Survival International which...

Teach the Future has a template letter to be sent the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Skills, etc, Bridget Phillipson.  It nicely sets out the arguments for the Labour Party to do what TtF would like it to do,...

It’s time to cheer the Environment Agency.  At a moment when it would have been easy for its senior leadership to be distracted by a deluge of public criticism over huge sewage discharges into rivers and onto beaches, reports of...

You'll likely have read that Tata Steel is closing two blast furnaces in Port Talbot before it has built the taxpayer subsidised electric arc furnaces to replace them in 2027.  By the end of the year there will be no...

2023 was a very good year for identifying plants in the wild although I did not spend enough time doing it.  I'm determined that 2024 will be better.  This is a good January resolution. Common centaury is my plant of...

I learned French at school, but not very well.  I now wish I'd tried much harder.  The school had two French teachers and one German teacher and so it all depended which form (determined by the 11+ results) you fetched...

When I used to travel to the USA regularly, I was often accused of cynicism by academic colleagues.  In response, I usually said that I was merely being sceptical, pointing out that this was an Enlightenment virtue much needed if...

Did you see the news of the UK's becoming the first G20 economy to halve its greenhouse gas emissions with the average household using less energy than in the mid-1990s – even when you factor in imports?  The UK's output...