The kindness of strangers during the Gezi Park protests have made Istanbul feel like home
I have been living in Istanbul, in Taksim, for the last year and a half. This weekend I felt at home here for the first time. Against the tense backdrop and amid the clouds of tear gas people are being exceptionally kind.
On Sunday 26 May, oil began flowing down the Kolva River through Komi indigenous land in northern Russia. For a week now, the oil has been coating the river and building up on the banks, with no reaction from Rusvietpetro, the joint venture company of VietPetro and Zarubezhneft, a state-controlled Russian oil company, and no cleanup being organised by the company or even the local authorities.
MPs are deciding whether a clean power target should be included in the Energy Bill. Will they back clean renewable power, or a costly, dirty dash for gas?
Our office in Istanbul has been under siege. It is in the heart Taksim, an area in which a brutal police clampdown has been trying to end the peaceful protest over the planned destruction of the small, and historic, Gezi Park by Taksim Square. The protest has grown to involve tens of thousands of people and drawn the support of people from all over the world.
For once, we all agree. 82% of people want to see more renewable energy. Yet George Osborne is still trying to keep us hooked on fossil fuels. On Tuesday, MPs must pick a side.
Here's a tip for anyone looking to do public relations for forest-destroying companies. The correct way to respond to a simple question about how much forest you're clearing is not to ask the journalist to stop filming.
Of all the shoulders to cry on, it might seem strange to pick the German Chancellor’s. But that’s what the German car association (VDA) did this week when its president Matthias Wissman wrote to her to moan that long-term targets for cleaner cars could strangle the car industry. He asked her to take a strong position against the regulations which are currently being debated in Brussels.
“I know that everything I say sounds like utter fucking bullshit,”
a top Cuadrilla PR executive told me yesterday when I asked him about the risks fracking poses to the sleepy Sussex village of Balcombe.
