If we don’t count bicycles, electric cars (and only when you know the energy is produced by renewables), and commuting by yacht, zero-carbon travel for business or leisure still remains something of a chimera. So it is promising news that German national rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB) has become one of the first transport operators in… Continue reading
Kept in the dark: the man who vets our movies
He’s still the biggest name in UK films, although audiences can be forgiven for not noticing David Cooke is director of the British Board of Film Classification. His signature appears on the certificate that prefaces every film shown in British cinemas and has done since 2004, when he took up the post. I interviewed… Continue reading →
Vienna – year round celebration in music capital of the world
Vienna celebrates 2013 with its traditional elegant starburst, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year’s Concert, broadcasted to the world from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein. Still think you can get tickets? In your dreams. The way to share in this glorious concert, based around the waltzes of the Strauss family, is live on a big screen… Continue reading →
You’ve seen The Snowman (30 times). So what about the other Christmas story?
The arthouse cinema near where I live shows It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve. You can’t get in, unless you book within the hour back in August, or something like that. I have my personal seasonal TV favorite. It’s the West Wing episode set in the days before Christmas, where Toby Ziegler arranges a… Continue reading →
Conservative MP Yeo calls for decarbonisation by 2030 to boost renewables
I bet Tim Yeo’s List of personal targets for this year did not include briefly trending third on the UK twitter list, just behind Romeo Beckham. And for sound and excellent reasons. [By 2pm he was top trend, ahead of Master Beckham.] Yeo is a significant Conservative MP, Chair of the Energy and Climate Change… Continue reading →
We are all Northern Ireland tourists now.
There was a long time when we looked the other way. You didn’t go there. Northern Ireland was toxic, a place of self-destructive conflict. It was a terrible family argument, spilling, metaphorically, out into the street. Even passers-by were in mortal danger. Those days are over, and it’s hard to believe they will ever return…. Continue reading →