Peter Oborne reminds us that British Muslims were the first to suffer from bank account closures, but nobody protested. The Pipeline looks at the decision by Shropshire Council to grant planning consent to a local housing development in the near setting of the nationally important Old Oswestry hillfort. It fears that by raising the bar on what constitutes "harm" to the setting of a heritage site, the decision puts every such site in England at risk from insensitive developers. "Why should Dartmoor remain the only place in England where wild camping is (lawfully) possible? If we accept that being able ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Take someone who voted Conservative in 2019. On a journey from Conservative via don't know to another party which is the big step that matters? Is it the first one – from Conservative to don't know – or the second one – from don't know to Labour/Lib Dem? Is the decision to leave the big step, or is the big step the decision about where to go next? Rather like, is the decision to leave a job or partner the big step, ...
The Green Win: those crazy '80s 2023 – we're living through what is quite frankly an unhinged era when it comes to our management of Planet Earth. Not a day goes by without an extreme weather event, a new data set showing ice loss or boiling oceans, and a pushback by right wing media stuck ... Continue reading The Green Win: those crazy '80s
Since writing this, I have done what I should have done first and had a search in the British Newspaper Archive. It turns out there are plenty of wartime references to buddleias on bombsites. A second blog post will follow. When did the buddleia invade England? I'm complicit in the invasion myself: I planted one because I like butterflies, but there are depressingly few of those to be seen now. Buddleias, however, are everywhere, including places they shouldn't be - you often see them growing out of the masonry of neglected buildings. And they are everywhere on old railway land ...
Ukraine The Ukraine war has resulted in the world facing a shortage of every grain product and the prospect of widespread starvation in the developing world and spiralling food prices in the developed. Shortages of corn and wheat – Ukraine and Russia's two biggest grain exports – have increased demand for that other major grain product – rice. This has led India to ban exports of non-basmati rice "to ensure adequate domestic availability at reasonable prices." India exports 40 percent of the world's rice. To compound the problem other major rice producing countries – Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam – have ...
There's an irony to Kathe Green's musical career. Everyone knows her voice, but her first album - Run the Length of Your Wildness - is notoriously hard to find. You know her voice because her father Johnny Green composed and conducted the score for the film of Lionel Bart's Oliver! It turned out that Mark Lester, their Oliver Twist, couldn't sing a note and had to be dubbed. Kathe, already in her mid-twenties, showed her father she could produce a convincing voice for him and got the job. And if you do come across a copy of her rare first ...
Wednesday and Thursday sessions at Ninewells Community Garden. Fun, free and suitable for all abilities - no booking is needed and all welcome!
