No post yesterday because I got up at 6am to get the bus to Oxford for the annual Oxford Media Convention. I was at the conference all day, in and out of sessions. It was a little odd being there as a freelancer because there was no obvious angles or stories, it’s all potentially interesting [...]

Police in Melbourne have arrested a would-be burglar after the victim drew a cartoon of his assailant. They picked up the burglar within half an hour because he looked so much like his caricature. Proving that the pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. Brilliant!

Meat & Livestock Australia has a hilarious marketing campaign to try to get people to eat more lamb on Australia Day, now only a week away. Watch Sam Kekovich’s address to the nation about how recent instances of un-Australian behaviour (such as drug-smuggling models and beach-bashing boofheads) could have been prevented by one thing: more [...]

After yesterday’s doomsday message, I thought I should offer something practical and hopeful. We don’t know that the worst predictions are true so I don’t think we can give up! (Although it would be good to make some preparations in case the worst does come true). I think climate change is inevitable but we can [...]

I’m feeling really depressed after looking at the morning papers and finding The Independent full of a new warning by environmental scientist James Lovelock that climate change is now irreversible and civilisation as we know it is about to end. This is not coming from a crank – Lovelock is a very famous and well-respected [...]

It’s been a weekend filled with all my favourite things. It’s lunch time on Sunday and I’m still sitting in my warm pyjamas, sipping coffee and basking in the glow of having produced a scrumptious breakfast for the two of us. (Using a recipe from Mollie Katzen’s vegetarian cookbook The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, I made [...]

Borough Market before the Saturday morning rush. Organics at Borough Market.

I haven’t announced it on the blog but most of you probably already know that I resigned from Media Week and am now officially self-employed. I’m now a freelance journalist, or as my friend and former colleague Leigh puts it, “an independent operator”. So while the holiday is over and it’s back to real life, [...]

We arrived back in London last night after a 12 hour flight from Shanghai, which was a little dull but thankfully uneventful. We flew China Eastern because of the extortionate Christmas prices and they did the trick – they didn’t crash, our flights departed and arrived more or less on time and they didn’t lose [...]