zerochampion

Rail needs

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Returned from an excellent weekend to Glasgow last night, which included plenty of cultural pursuits. Travelled there by train, trying not to feel too smug about it - on the way up we took a sleeper and the return was during the day. There are the usual comparisons you would make between rail and air - cost, comfort, time etc.

Olympic Fright

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There's a gargantuan (8,000) word dissertation on the Olympics by Iain Sinclair in this week's London Review of Books. It's a typically hazy and impressionistic offering by the author of London Orbital, entitled 'The Razing of East London, the Olympics Scam.' It's too big and hard to follow and tiring to read.

Bonkers in Battersea

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I've been a long time admirer of the glorious wreck of a building that is the Battersea Power Station. I also became fascinated by the ill-fated attempts to bring it back to some semblance of life, writing about it in Building back in 2003. Such tantalising prospects of renewable that that have been held out for the past two decades left me in two minds. The schemes would have ensured its future preservation but could threaten to soil its character - never was the latter more at risk than with the woefully misjudged plan offered late last week by Rafael Vinoly.

Should we carbonize interest rates?

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Inflation is much in the news. In fact, in the past two or three weeks it’s come to take centre stage in the discussions about where interest rates are headed and what we should do about it. The Bank of England is charged with keeping the inflation rate down below 2%. Currently it’s much higher, and seems to be headed higher still.

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But the published, official inflation rate is a strange beast and it’s not at all clear exactly what it measures. It’s based on the idea that there is a shopping basket of goods that represents what Mr and Mrs Average Briton might spend their money on.

Re: REA; the Renewable Energy Annual Conference

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When I am making notes at conferences, in an attempt to remember what might make good copy later, I put asterisks next to speaker points. At today's REA Energy Annual Conference  today, Rab Bennetts got three stars as did Bill Dunster (although he speaks so fluently of technical matters, that I am not quite sure what they referred to just now.) Even the Shadow Energy Secretary, crinkly-haired Greg Barker, did quite well with two - mostly for speaking longest about investment in carbon capture and storage which is a proven technology, just not on, ahem, a large scale. Tim Evans, of Renewable Zukunft (it means future) did very well, of which more later.

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But our own, dear, drab, Bob Ledsome, who is deputy director climate change and sustainable development team at the DCLG, got no stars at all.

Sustainable education

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Should sustainability become a central plank of education? It's a question that has sparked a lively debate in the pages of Building Design in the past couple of weeks. The magazine has been running plenty of coverage in the run up to next month's Oxford Conference, which has a bold vision to reset the agenda for architectural education. A central plank of this is around the environment and four leading figures hurled some rotten tomatoes at the education establishment by claiming their courses were out of touch with the needs of practitioners - ie. designing low carbon buildings, understanding how they actually work and how the construction industry operates.

Political and artistic principles

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We live in unusual times. It's somewhat disconcerting to find unanimity between Bristol group Massive Attack and former shadow home secretary David Davis. I witnessed the former communicate their anger at the erosion of civil liberties on our shores last night at a show they performed at the Royal Festival Hall. And this morning I watched Davis proclaim the same message passionately on the Andrew Marr show. He appears to have blindsided everyone at Westminster by a decision to resign this week and call a by-election in his constituency that he stresses is based on pure principle. Cue continued head scratching amongst colleagues and commentator alike as to quite why he's taken this course of action.

Barratt blues

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It's a somewhat unfortunate parallel. The volume housebuilder most gungho about building the highest level Code houses, Barratt, is now the one being pummelled in the City for the perilous state of its balance sheet. Chief executive Mark Clare, who spoke impressively about the challenge of achieving zero carbon at Think this time last month, is now turning his attention to a "heavy dialogue" with his firm's banks on debts and banking covenants, according to an interview in Building yesterday. I'm not sure whether there's an Icarus-like lesson here for those who boldly go before falling to earth or not.

Grist's begging bowl

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I see that the much respected, and witty, green website over in the US, Grist, is seeking some urgent donations in the next week from its audience. It needs $60K to "keep our computers running" over the summer months. I'm probably going to put my hand in my pocket on this one but wonder why the site is still non-for-profit. Am I being a rampant capitalist but shouldn't a brand such as this, which clearly has built a considerable audience and influence in the US and beyond, be looking to establish itself as a business? Is it squeamish about attracting advertising? For me if brands such as Grist remain charitable ones then so does the movement.

Renewables and the dotcom crash

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A boss of mine recently made the comparison between the growth of sustainability in the past two years as a potential business stream and the dotcom boom at the turn of the century. The analogy supposes a huge leap from a sector of the economy into new technologies and markets via a big idea (the internet will fundamentally change the way we communicate/ climate change will transform how we generate and supply energy) before they fully work out whether there's actually any money in it.