Words, ideas, videos
Well, the fry-up was bloody fantastic. Here's a pic. This was my reward for getting under 120kg. There's a few milestones in that. One is having lost 30kg - 20 per cent of my initial body weight (150kg in October 2019, which meant I was morbidly obese). Apparently losing 20% of your body weight is... Continue Reading →
A long long time ago (okay, 1988) I stayed at Shakespeare and Co as one of the tumbleweeds. One of my abiding memories is as pillion passenger on George Whitman's motorbike as we went to somewhere in a posh arrondisement for - well, it may have been bookbuying? Anyway, my life flashed before me once... Continue Reading →
It must be seriously exhausting being on the receiving end of patriarchy, white supremacy, classism etc. It must take up insane amounts of mental energy, dealing with the daily insults, microaggressions, threats to physical safety etc. It's what Toni Morrison says about distraction.- “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps... Continue Reading →
The Glasgow thing is starting already. COP26, the international climate meeting that was supposed to take place in November 2020 but will now - perhaps- happen in November 2021- has changed its meaning from "magnet that will get all the iron fillings pointing in the same direction" (see this December 2019 blog post) to a... Continue Reading →
Letter in the Manchester Evening News- Bill Flynn's excellent letter ('Nothing new in risk to rights of workers', Viewpoints, MEN, 2nd January) gives a compelling and enraging account of the way workers' rights have been eroded over the last 40 years.Thanks to the first-past-the-post voting system and the ownership of the mass media by billionaire... Continue Reading →
I remember Zoolander. I remember sitting in the Odeon Cinema near the central library (the cinema is long gone) and howling with laughter - properly howling we were - with my friend Matt. At the climax (spoilers) the baddie, Murgato (Will Ferrell) is exasperated with the cluelessness of Derek Zoolander, male model and, well, moron.... Continue Reading →
3 billion animals killed in the Australian fires. Economic and psychological devastation from Covid lockdowns Trump-ism stronger (whether he wins or loses this election - the closeness of it means whatever happens, more bad shit happens.) Climate "action" (always a feeble joke) even more stalled. The ex-participants in so-called "social movements" having learnt that "activism"... Continue Reading →
A couple of weeks ago the academic journal Globalizations published a new article. "Reforming global climate governance in an age of bullshit" by Dr Hayley Stevenson. I'm the social media editor of another academic journal, Environmental Politics, and I tweeted it from @Env_Pol. It got a lot of Twitter love... I asked Dr Stevenson, who... Continue Reading →
Super-useful on DECC (RIP) and the "Community Energy" strategy - the costs of getting it. Should be read alongside that paper by Phil Johnstone Andy Stirling and Ben Sovacool about Policy Mixes for Incumbency Honest about risk of academic blindness from using one theory (SNM) and not paying close enough attention to interviewees, and what... Continue Reading →
Heaps of good stuff - conceptually, methodologically, empirically, in here. Useful for mice who want to bell the cat (though the article itself doesn't suggest a particular way/particular ways). The title: The Acceleration of Urban Sustainability Transitions:A Comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm The authors: Franziska Ehnert, Niki Frantzeskaki , Jake Barnes, Sara... Continue Reading →
