Thursday, September 01, 2016

Not the Sustainable Futures Report

This is the text of the 2nd September podcast, available at susbiz.biz  

Hello. This is Anthony Day and this is not the Sustainable Futures Report.

As you know, I decided to take July and August off and I had a great summer. I promised to come back to you today, 2nd September, but I’ve decided to suspend this podcast for a further month. Here’s why. Two weeks ago I had emergency brain surgery. Not nearly as dramatic as it might sound although it was quite serious at the time. Our NHS is truly wonderful and I'm happy to say I am making a rapid recovery. However my next appointment with the consultant is on 28 September so I have decided to suspend the Sustainable Futures Report until then.

I'll take the opportunity to review the purpose and direction of the report. My aim has been to bring you topical news on issues relating to sustainability and also to report on new technologies which will help us to make the world more sustainable. I hope it's interesting and I hope it's valuable. Each episode is around 3,000 words each week and with research, writing and recording it takes a day to a day and a half. I have readers and listeners all over the world, but to be perfectly frank not an awful lot. I need to be sure that what I am doing is useful and of course if you have any ideas of what you would like to see included please don't fail to contact me: mail@Anthony-day.com 

Of course we had a busy summer on the political scene in the UK with Brexit, a change of government, the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, questions over environmental policies and a spat with the Chinese over the Hinkley C power station. Why start building it, given that nobody has yet been able to make this design work? In fact this summer has been a whole series of questions and it's only now that we're beginning to get some idea of what the answers will be. By the end of the month we might have a clearer idea of which way we are going, but there is no doubt that Brexit is going to make things immensely complicated and it's going to strain our resources, our civil service and relations between those who voted out and those who wanted to stay.

So that's it for the moment: probably the shortest Sustainable Futures Report of all time. Do get in touch if you have some ideas of what I should include in future episodes. Do get in touch if you’re an expert and would like to do an interview. The next Sustainable Futures Report will appear on Friday 7 October. Hope all goes well for you until then.

This is Anthony Day. As I explained this has not been the Sustainable Futures Report but there will be another one in early October. 


Thanks for listening