Milk prices are sinking fast and UK dairy farmers are fighting to stay afloat. The ‘milk trolley challenge’ and supermarket protests have helped raise the profile of their plight but our appetite for the white stuff has never been lower. Twenty years ago we drank three times as much whole milk as we do today; … Continue reading
Waiting for the general election has been a bit like waiting for Christmas. The hype keeps building but the big day never seems to arrive. Rather than greetings cards, however, ‘vote for me’ flyers have been piling up on the door mat. And instead of wall-to-wall seasonal specials, television viewing has been nonstop politics. Come … Continue reading
Blink and you just might miss it. If you don’t live in the UK, that is. Last night, 80,000 people watched the Paralympic opening ceremony - a slightly more modest, but nonetheless equally poignant affair than its bigger brother. As the kids return to school and the Olympic feel-good fades, it offers a last-hurrah for … Continue reading
About 15 years ago, I visited the Montreal Olympic Village. A captivating and beautiful city, the Olympic Village was a complete contrast. Tired-looking vacant stadia and vast, mostly unused concrete behemoths populated by a few shuffling tourists. I found it a depressing place and the slowly flaking paint symbolised a squandered enterprise. Costing Canada $1bn, … Continue reading
Teaching is an incredible privilege. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of inspiring and motivating young people – helping them achieve and grow. It was therefore more than a little surprising when Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of the UK schools inspectorate Ofsted, started a finger-wagging tirade accusing teachers of being shirking whiners. “You youngsters don’t … Continue reading
Have you ever done a ‘leadership’ exercise? I’m sure you know the sort of thing - You’re on a corporate “training day” and after being placed into arbitrary groups in a stuffy meeting room, you are given a handful of straws, paperclips and plastic cups and told to build a tower that reaches the ceiling. … Continue reading
The streets of major British cities descended into chaos last night. Again. Angry stick-weilding, BMX-riding hooded teenagers went on the rampage. Breaking, burning and looting for no apparent reason - the police largely impotent to halt to the anarchy. It’s been a long time since the UK has seen anything like this. Just what triggered … Continue reading
A fireball erupts as civilians shriek and run for cover. A security officer burns and a gas mask-wearing man dashes through the smoke. Men beat each another with bats and stones. Shots are fired and grenades hurled as a city centre descends into chaos. Is this a scene from a warzone? No – this is … Continue reading