Cheryl Brumley 18/10/09

 Green has proven consistently in vogue no matter what the season. Leaders will don the colour – an accessory to their monochrome suits and stiff ties – to ramp up their “cool” factor. Fashion types, such as Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld, have been equally enamoured by the chic hue. His most recent show in Paris was held on a mock-farm featuring organic and renewable fabrics. One must applaud their efforts but effective green tactics must be born from more than just self-interested politicians and fashion houses…[Continue Reading]

I once sat in a basement floor room in a Whitehall building, with sleepy fluorescent lights above me in place of windows, writing stacks of letters on behalf of ministers. The words I wrote in some of these letters, I truly believed – though I must say many I typed with angry, grudging keystrokes. These were letters I had to write defending energy companies and the extortionate and unfair prices they waged on consumers. Many were responses to shakily handwritten pieces from elderly citizens worried about their ability to pay their fuel bills on a fixed income. Surely fobbing off the “fuel poor” to Ofgem (who in turn only has the power to then fob them off to an ineffective energy Ombudsman), represents a greater issue underlying the UK energy market as it stands today – it is unsustainable in terms of expenses and supply …[Continue Reading]