As part of Go Green week, Loughborough Students P&P screened the Basil Gelpke/Ray McCormack award-winning documentary: A Crude Awakening – The Oil Crash. And I have to admit, I was not prepared for the 90 minutes of clear and rational description of this modern time apocalypse.
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We were brought news this week of the almost-disaster that was the collision of two nuclear submarines in the Atlantic ocean, an event that held the potential to be truly, terrifyingly devastating. Each sub was loaded with warheads, which according to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) were eight times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the World War 2, wiping out all but the fringes of the city.
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…to know which way the wind blows (so said Mr. Dylan). That’s right, you don’t need a weatherman, you need me: this is my first post of Activist Winds, my point source emission-contribution to the activist babble. And the title of this post (a reference to the militant off-shoot of the 60s US student peace movement) is apt, because we’re told that student unrest is back (The Times).
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It may not have grabbed many of the headlines this month – what with snow in the UK, fire in Australia and Holocaust denial within the Catholic Church - but on Sunday 1st February the world’s first openly gay Prime Minister or state leader took office. Johanna Sigurdardottir is now the Icelandic Prime Minister, replacing Geir Haarde (remember his car being pelted with eggs?). If sexuality is no longer a barrier to holding even the highest public office, some have claimed that prejudice & discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been more or less eliminated.
So it snowed last week. Heavily, in some places. It’s interesting to watch how the country reacts to snow. I think the North West, specifically Lancashire, where I live, was one of the few places that did not get any heavy snowfall at all. Certainly in my home town, we only had a sprinkling last Sunday night and then Monday we experienced a few snow showers, but it was not deep and no where near the thickness of London’s.