If you want a quiet place don't go to an Essex library

So said the librarian at the Essex County Council library in Prettygate last Tuesday. I expressed my amazement and she gave me a form to fill in: see below...

Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig

A very old friend of mine, who I meet about once a year, told me about this book last week, which was first published 1 January 2015.

Air pollution in Colchester

Letter to Essex County Standard, Friday 4 March 2016

Tory Health Sec Hunt calls for 'denationalising' NHS

Letter to Essex County Standard ecs.letters@nqe.com 15 February 2016

air pollution kills one thousand people in UK every week

Brilliant website at www.opendemocracy.net

Horrendous news - one thousand people are killed every week in the UK by air pollution. Remember last year's fixing of emissions tests by VW?

Read more at An urgent struggle: our tainted air: The deadliness of air pollution is all too often overlooked; a national action campaign is long overdue...

Ethics - book recommendations

Book recommendations (by my friend DB).

• Alasdair MacIntyre - history of ethics - very good on the Greeks. 
• Phillipa Foot - good on how our philosophical concepts of morality are governed by a very Protestant Christian assumption that it's all about actions. And that the actions are somehow objectively right or wrong (God ordained, or, in the absence of God, still somehow not determined by humanity, timeless) rather than flowing from humans. 
• Bernard Williams and Geoffrey Warnock - very good on utilitarianism. (Bernard Williams was married to Shirley Williams for a while - possibly one of the brightest philosophers ever.)

Custard creams and the 'network of global corporate control'

Custard creams and the 'network of global corporate control' -: Custard creams and the 'network of global corporate control' - great blog by www.lowimpact.org