Entries by admin

Clash of the Greens

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At a time when the urgency of tackling climate change is greater than ever, some environmentalists are thinking what was unthinkable – that we should now rely on nuclear power. Mark Lynas has a new feature film coming out, Pandora’s Promise, that aims to make the case with the public that our ideas about nuclear […]

Green Biking

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Big excitement with the first trip (in freezing weather) on the new electric bike – a brilliant 70th birthday present from the family. We’ve always wanted to cycle more – for reasons of carbon, cash, exercise and sheer enjoyment of the countryside around Hedgerley. But the really steep hills in every direction have always defeated […]

Saluting New Internationalist

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So New Internationalist is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It’s extraordinary how this upstart student magazine of the 1970s became so quickly a must-read for anyone concerned to understand the real state of the world and campaign for global justice. In the 40th Anniversary edition the original visionary who founded New Internationalist, Peter Adamson, looks at […]

It’s Green but not much of a Deal

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    An interesting evening at the Chinnor village centre for our local Friends of Earth meeting on the Green Deal. The pros and cons were carefully explained, but I came away disappointed. The key idea is to offer people a deal they can’t reasonably refuse – why not improve the energy efficiency of your […]

Million Women Rising

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Great day in London for the 2013 Million Women Rise march. The message was “together we can end male violence against women” and the mood was really feisty. We built our video coverage around Anuradha’s reflections on the meaning of the day, with her conclusion that “women aren’t asking in these marches for anything special […]

The Corrosion of Inequality

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Just watched a very powerful info-graphic of the unbelievable trend in wealth distribution in the US – a situation that’s apparently unbelievable to the American public as well. “1% of America has 40% of all the nation’s wealth. The bottom 80% – 8 out of every 10 people – only has 7% between them.” Which […]

Jo and Harry’s Story

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This week sees the launch of a powerful new feature film, Mary and Martha. The creation of Richard Curtis, best known for great comedies like Blackadder, it’s the story of two mothers brought together by the shared personal tragedy of malaria. It’s to be broadcast on BBC1 on Friday 1st March at 8.30 pm. But behind […]

Malaria No More!

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‘Malaria No More’ is not a dream, it’s the goal of a campaign highlighted this week by the launch of a powerful new feature film, Mary and Martha. The creation of Richard Curtis, best known for great comedies like Blackadder, it’s the story of two mothers brought together by the shared personal tragedy of malaria. […]

Fuel Friends

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With the weather really cold this February and trying to save on the electricity running the heat pump, we’ve been using the wood-burning stoves more. But the logs were getting low. Now it’s been friends to the rescue. Carol Brown with her chainsaw and trained woodswoman skills has cut up a fallen tree.   And […]

Quite a Party

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Celebrating OneWorld’s 18th Birthday on 24th January 2013. And at the same time marking the stepping down of Anuradha Vittachi and Peter Armstrong as executive directors. The event kicked off with a video look-back – 18 years in 18 minutes – tracing OneWorld’s journey from the faltering earliest days of the fledgling Web to today’s […]

Back to the Soil

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Our first attempt at growing more of our own vegetables got off to a great start when Anuradha organised four raised beds in the sunniest part of the garden. But although planting happened in the Spring and the rabbits were kept off with netting, we were defeated by the weeds. Now Franny and Adam have […]

Electricity in and out

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Time to do the calculations again after almost 2 years of operation of the solar PV. We’ve written to our suppliers to ask why last year’s output (1.5Mw from the top 16 panels) is 20% down on what they projected/promised. What’s also puzzling, as you can see from this reading, is that even at noon […]