Tag: Bright Green

  • Your kindness could kill

    By Amie Robertson and Ric Lander A poster in a Sainsburys in Ipswich, Suffolk, reads “could you spare 20p for a cup of tea? How about £10 for a bag of heroin? £12 for a rock of crack?” The poster asks people to donate to a local homeless fund and gives a contact for Streetlink,…

  • The fight against fossils: are we beginning to win?

    The fight against fossils: are we beginning to win?

    Tomorrow is the world’s first ever Global Divestment Day. I’m quite excited. The environmental movement used to be all about changing light bulbs and taking shorter showers. It is now getting organised around defeating the fossil fuel industry.  How did this happen?  And more importantly, how can it win? For years environmental groups had been encouraging people…

  • Dust. Settled. Go Scotland: a 7 item to-do list

    Dust. Settled. Go Scotland: a 7 item to-do list

    For two years up to September the country was in fever pitch with friends, colleagues, families and strangers debating and cajoling each other on every issue we have.  It was all encompassing and it was fascinating – but ultimately it was leading up to answering a binary question. After we got our answer on September…

  • Hope as Resistance: 16 Pictures of Dissent to World War One

    The last surviving British veteran of the First World War, Harry Patch, died in 2009.  With him dies the collective memory of a generation that fought, resisted, endured and dreamed. Living memory is a powerful thing.  It can assert itself in ways the dead cannot.  Patch himself met Tony Blair.   He told him “war is…

  • Crisis in the Scottish media: finding the phoenix

    Crisis in the Scottish media: finding the phoenix

    The Scottish media is in crisis. Except for the Sunday Herald (exceptional for other reasons too) every national newspaper has seen dramatic falls in circulation in recent years. They have become machines for reprinting corporate and political press releases, stripped of journalistic resource and critical analysis. BBC Scotland has been under relentless attack, quietly from…

  • Extreme Energy Inquiry begins in Scotland

    Extreme Energy Inquiry begins in Scotland

    Green Councillor Mark Ruskell with local community representatives and Friends of the Earth members outside the Inchyra Hotel this morning. Photo: Friends of the Earth Scotland. The UK’s first public inquiry into unconventional gas drilling is underway in Polmont, Falkirk. The Scottish Government called the inquiry after the troubled Australian firm Dart Energy appealed to speed…

  • After 160 years Central Scotland has had enough

    After 160 years Central Scotland has had enough Ric Lander, 11th June 2013. Originally published in Perspectives Magazine and on Bright Green. The central belt’s fossil-fuel industrialists: James ‘Paraffin’ Young; John (Lord) Browne, BP; Mark Lappin, Dart Energy. When new technology offers us great promise – and the new gas boom certainly does, offering up…

  • Fracking Stumbles Ahead onto Uncharted Paths

    Fracking Stumbles Ahead onto Uncharted Paths

    Rally against Fracking in Ohio, United States Ministerial Optimism sees Fracking Stumble Ahead onto Uncharted Paths In a letter regarding the controversial drilling process Sarah Boyack MSP says regarding the Scottish Government’s position “I am sure that you share my hope that the Minister’s optimism is well-placed” [1]. I do share Sarah’s hope, but optimism…

  • Durban, and how we stopped climate change

    Durban, and how we stopped climate change

    photo courtesy of UNFCCC Durban could yet be a chapter in the story of how we stopped climate change If a successful campaign needs a story, then since 2009 the global climate movement has been in deep trouble. We certainly started off with a great story. I love to tell it to people all the…

  • Machiavelli: power, transition and institutional change

    Machiavelli: power, transition and institutional change

    In 1513 Machiavelli provided a seminal analysis of the flow of power in Europe. The ideas defined in “The Prince” have inspired political thinkers ever since. At the time his acute, perhaps cynical, understanding of power, made him notorious, and his works were added to the Vatican’s list of banned literature. Today his name has…