Coal, Clubs and Insects

Clubland (night-free version)

Long years ago, I started my journalism career in a tiny and long gone publishing house, that published four titles: Publican, Pub Food, Hotel & Restaurant and Club Mirror. The last was for traditional clubs, rather than nightclubs: the working men’s clubs and conservative clubs that were a feature of British life as recently as the 90s.

I thought there were in terminal decline, but I noticed recently that a couple still exist in the town where I live. And the (pre-Gove…) Spectator lives up to its conservative values by being nostalgic for them…

Welcome to real clubland

Working men’s clubs exist across the country, particularly in the north. With snooker and darts, they’re better than private members clubs.

The SpectatorThomas Hodgson

Kicking filthy habits

Much of the climate news is relentlessly grim at the moment. But if you look carefully, the speed with which some countries are stripping out fossil fuels and getting hot and heavy with renewables is cause for a some hope. We can do this, if we put our minds to it, and stop pretending that we don’t have a real problem.

Poland is finally kicking its dirty coal habit

Over the first seven months of 2024, renewables comprised 30.2% of the country’s electrical output.

The Progress PlaybookNick Hedley

My baseline got shifted

Shifting baseline syndrome is a real problem. For my daughters, the occasional insect strike on the car windscreen in summer is a notable event. For me, it’s the sheer lack of them, as I’m old enough to remember when a drive in the dark meant a whole bunch of insects on the windscreen.

So, are our insect populations really that badly in decline…?

Where have all the insects gone?

The tiny creatures on which the world depends seem to be in decline. But what does the data really say — and what is to be done?

Financial TimesManuela Saragosa

Myth-busting

For as long as I can remember, the possibility that holding signal-emitting devices to our heads might be a cancer risk has been floating around. It has died off in recent years, and not surprisingly. I’ve had a mobile - both dumb and smart - for something like 25 years now. That’s long enough that we’d start to see a big problem, if there was a real cancer risk.

Turn out, there isn’t.

Mobile phones not linked to brain cancer, biggest study to date finds

Some 63 studies from 1994 to 2022 have been analysed by Australian researchers commissioned by the World Health Organization

The GuardianNatasha May

Pity that we were all so busy worrying about this, that we didn’t pay attention to phones’ corrosive impact on our societies, relationships and politics…

(Cold) Sea and Sauna

As autumn makes itself felt, our minds naturally turn to… cold swings and warm wooden boxes? Well, for some, it’s a source of wellbeing and community.

Me? I’ll stick to vicarious enjoyment. I love the way YouTube has opened up opportunities for these short documentaries: longer than a TV package, but shorter than the traditional 30 minute slot.