RIP Brian Haw
Was saddened this week to hear of the death of peace activist Brian Haw. There are not too many people in these times who live completely honest lives. We may have our opinions about the way we’d like things to…
Happy Birthday, Amnesty!
This weekend marks the 50th birthday of Amnesty International, an organisation I’ve been a member of since I was a teenager. It started with Peter Benenson being outraged at the imprisonment of a couple of Portuguese students for raising their…
Living like it’s 1972
Read an interesting article by George Marshall in the New Internationalist recently about cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, a seemingly impossible task until you realise that this would only mean returning to the levels of 1972. I was quite…
Coal funding hits record high
Was astonished by a recent snippet from Christian Aid: Christian Aid has criticised a record high of US$4.4 billion in World Bank funding for coal power stations – a 40-fold increase over the past five years. I can’t believe that…
Pigeon-feeding inflation
The cost of feeding the birds has gone up a lot. It only cost Mary Poppins tuppence a bag, but in Trafalgar Square today it’ll cost you £500, according to an aggressively-worded sign that confronted me as I left the…
Monday morning inspiration
Minds are like parachutes. They work best when open. –Thomas Dewar
How not to check email
I use Gmail for my personal email, and recently installed a new feature called “Priority Inbox”, which automatically sorts out your important email and puts it at the top of your screen, while leaving the less important stuff lower down.…
Monday morning inspiration
“The author’s task is to synchronize thoughts, images, raw creative material in a meaningful way, a task as difficult and frantic and joyful as herding cats.” —Brandon Dorn
Monday morning inspiration
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” —Georgia O’Keefe (via Crazyhorse Journal)