environment

October 4, 2009

U2 And The Feast Of Enoughness

In response to This article about the scale of U2â€™s current tour, I posted this on twitter and facebook:

The discussion on Facebook thenÂ got as far as one friend suggesting that people who objected to the planet-trashing excesses of U2â€™s tour wanted us to “email [all the gig-goers] to stay home and make organic muffins…..” – the kind of Richard Littlejohn-esque reductionist, lazy thinking that leads someone to say such things, often stems from the feeling that something they value highly has been questioned – in this case, it was a friend who was deeply moved by the U2 gig he went to, so any attempt to frame them as irresponsible needs refuting and debunking. Continue reading “U2 And The Feast Of Enoughness”

March 30, 2009

Earthhour – Inspiration, collective meaning and the dangers of virtual absolution.

8.30-9.30 on Saturday night was Earth Hour. The idea was for everyone to turn off their lights for one hour as a symbol of their recognition of the problem of climate change, and the effect of our energy consumption and its environmental impact thereon. (at least, that’s my paraphrase).
Continue reading “Earthhour – Inspiration, collective meaning and the dangers of virtual absolution.”

May 24, 2008

[real life] – no more car?

Question: could you live without a car? (DO you live without a car?)
Ancillary Question: could you live without a car as a gigging musician?

This blog may end up being the ongoing forum for me answering those two questions after my car died this morning… It’s been problematic for a while (frustratingly, only last week I spent £130 on a new exhaust!), but today I took it in for an oil change and saw that the head gasket has gone. Water in the engine. For the second time. I’ll call my garage who did the repair last time and see if there’s any warrantee on the parts, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s a known issue with Rover cars.

Anyway, I REALLY can’t afford to either get it fixed or replace it right now, so unless something magical happens, it looks like for a while we’re going to be car-less. Will be interesting to see how that works, given that we’ve got a few gigs coming up that look like they’ll need a car for sure… or will they? We’ll find out. This part of London isn’t a-wash with decent cheap car hire firms, but there are car-clubs springing up all over the place, so that might be an option…

Either way, I now need to find out where I can sell my car for scrap – it still just about drives (though it did cut out four times on the way home yesterday from a gig at the design museum – more on that later…)

So, sans-car in London. How’s that going to work?