Blog Action Day: The Environment

Its proving rather difficult to work out what to write about with regards to the environment today. I suppose I really ought to, seeing as I signed up for Blog Action Day months ago, and I voted for this very subject to be included. But the environment is a big thing, a powerful force in our lives, but to one extent a very fragile one. For decades, people have been calling on others to “do it for the planet”, but we still manage to make things worse to the extent that Climate Change now threatens humanities very existence.

Welcome to Staycation Nation

Apparently this summer is meant to be the summer of the “Staycation”, people deciding to holiday in Britain instead of going overseas in order to save money. This leaves me wondering when it became insufficient to simply Vacate one’s town or city, and why we need a whole new (or rather, American) term for a holiday we take inside our national boundaries.

Bringing things down to earth

The age of gratuitous art travel continues a pace, but there are some cracks becoming visible in the jubilation of the air industry. It seems that even if a third runway were built, there just might not be enough flights left to use it. But does this mean flying will return to its elite status, and what might become of the work force currently involved.

Re-evaluating Family Matters

I found myself reading a science news article on the BBC about dementia risks amongst people who spend their middle-aged years living alone, which, it seems, might be higher than if people spend those years living with a partner. In the bizarre way that things connect in my head, it took me over to something that a friend wrote on their blog ages ago about life for those neither alone nor in families.

Generational Descent

Ours (by which I mean those under 30 now) is probably the first generation in a position to not just adjust our lifestyles to cut carbon emissions, but to make a choice never to cause certain emissions in the first place. I’ve been wondering recently about the ways in which young people could be encouraged to take advantage of this.

Odds and Ends

Well I guess the problem with my way of writing blog posts is that I end up with more stories saved in my RSS feeds than I know what to do with, and not enough time to write my 800 words on each of them. Cars have been banned from Times Square, New York, which could lead to a massive tirade about the need to keep pedestrianising the world, or I could just lump a bunch of stories together with brief comments, kind of like this…

So, expenses: Tories vs Labour, who wins?!

What struck me the whole way through the expenses claims scandal is that its actually rather unfair that this is coming down on Gordon Brown, a Labour politician. I think this bares worth a little explaining and underlining. Expenses have been abused by both sides, but what of the actual trends in abuse?

5 Reasons Sharing Food is Political

This post is in part a more considered response to an argument that sprung from a request to borrow a table for Food Not Bombs York, a new group rooted in the tradition of Food Not Bombs (see also Wikipedia), a tactic-movement with over 25 years of history and groups from San Francisco to St Petersburg.

My Eurostar Gripes

After a post on train travel in the UK, I thought this might be a good follow up, spreading the horizons east into Europe. Eurostar is an excellent idea, but heavily under-developed. Bringing high-speed rail to London was a great idea, and now the embarrassment that was Waterloo International is fading into history, its probably time to move on a bit.

Pro-Cycling vs. Anti-Car

All being well, today sees the return of the Critical Mass Bike Ride to York’s streets, just after London Critical Mass celebrated its 15th Birthday. One of the most common accusations against Critical Mass is that its dominated by people who are anti-car, rather than, I suppose, pro-Cycling. But what of the difference, and why the taboo?