Category : Important Stuff

According to Friday’s Times, as part of an attempt to cut costs, the BBC plans to shut down two of its radio stations by the end of 2011. One of these is BBC Radio 6, better known as 6 Music.

Naturally, online campaigns protesting against the proposals have sprung up, and one name that has been mentioned repeatedly is that of much-loved and greatly-missed DJ, John Peel, who died suddenly following a heart attack in 2004.

As Phill Jupitus so simply yet perfectly put it, killing off 6 Music would be “an affront to the memory of John Peel.” David Bowie added that “6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters like John Peel alive, and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame.”

Best known for his legendary Peel Sessions, which began in September 1967 and ran for 37 years, John Peel undoubtedly helped launch many a career, often by championing music that others would not play. In a 2002 BBC poll to discover the 100 Greatest Britons, he was even voted 43rd, some recognition for his services at BBC Radio 1 and with pirate radio station, Radio London, before that.

For anyone passionate about music, his Top Gear show on Radio 1 every Tuesday and Thursday night made for essential listening. Due to Musicians’ Union rules, he had to include a sizeable portion of non-recorded music in each programme, and, mercifully, live recordings were preferred to the usual chatter.

There exists a vast archive of Peel Sessions, containing 4,000 in all by more than 2,000 artists; including six by Pink Floyd and many from associated acts such as Roxy Music, Roy Harper and Robert Wyatt. Browse by artist or by year.

And so we return to 6 Music…

If you’d like to hear any Peel Session again, Marc Riley invites listeners to share which session they’d most like him to play – and why.

Everyone can listen to 6 Music online, so what better way to help a station in distress?

If you could, I’d like lots of Peel appreciation, as well as Sessions, today.

My favourite has to be Syd Barrett’s. Accompanied by David with Jerry Shirley on drums, recorded in February 1970 and aired the following month, this was later released on Peel’s Strange Fruit label and is an absolute must for any Syd fan.

Thoughts on 6 Music and the BBC in general are also quite welcome; I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking up other imaginative ways in which the corporation could cut back, rather than by scrapping their only radio station with a genuinely ‘alternative’ playlist and where, in true Peel tradition, new acts can be heard on a daily basis.

By the way, if you missed the John Peel tribute single – a version of the Buzzcocks number, ‘Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've)?’, featuring David on rhythm guitar and benefiting Amnesty International – do look/listen out for it.

The 16th Fairtrade Fortnight, the UK’s annual campaign to encourage its consumers to buy products stamped with the Fairtrade mark (as shown) in order to help farmers in developing countries, began on Monday, as it was announced that UK sales of Fairtrade goods were up by 12 per cent last year – to an estimated £799 million.

This year’s ethical push, billed The Big Swap, aims to rally people to switch their everyday grocery items in particular for Fairtrade equivalents. Which is now easier than ever, of course, given that more than 4,500 products are now licensed to carry the mark.

Both Ben & Jerry’s and Green & Black’s have recently declared that they will be 100 per cent Fairtrade by the end of next year; Ben & Jerry’s promising that their ice cream will be 100 per cent Fairtrade globally by the end of 2013.

Sainsbury’s has claimed itself ‘the world’s largest Fairtrade retailer’ following a ten per cent rise in sales of Fairtrade-certified goods – to £218 million in 2009.

The previous year, the Co-operative became the first UK supermarket to convert all its own-brand beverages to Fairtrade. It has supported Fairtrade since 1992.

Starbucks has pledged that all coffee sold in the UK and Ireland will be Fairtrade-certified, which would make it the largest purchaser of Fairtrade coffee in the world.

From last year, cosmetics brands could also carry the Fairtrade mark.

This year’s Fairtrade Fortnight focus is on tea.

We drink more than a billion cups a day – 165 million, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the UK. Globally, the tea trade is worth nearly $4 billion and more than 20 million people in the developing world rely on it (some three million in Kenya alone), yet today’s producers receive barely half of what they did 30 years ago.

10 per cent of the tea sold in the UK is now Fairtrade, but the target is for that figure to rise to 50 per cent by 2012. If it did, the lives of millions around the world would alter drastically, as Mica Paris discovered on a recent visit to southern India.

Recent research found that two-thirds of UK consumers either buy Fairtrade tea already or would like their favourite brand to be Fairtrade. Subsequently, the five brands that, between them, account for 72 per cent of the UK tea market – PG Tips, Tetley, Twinings, Typhoo and Yorkshire Tea – were asked to switch all their products to Fairtrade. As yet, they haven’t done so.

By the way, all of Co-op’s, Marks & Spencer’s and Sainsbury’s own-brand tea is 100 per cent Fairtrade; Clipper has been carrying the Fairtrade mark since the mid-Nineties; and Cafédirect has been selling Fairtrade tea for over a decade (all their teas, coffees and hot chocolates are completely Fairtrade, in fact).

Buying Fairtrade products not only helps farmers and their families achieve a higher standard of living, but also sends a message to the movers and shakers: ‘I don’t agree with the current system that you have for so long manipulated. Its unfair trade rules keep people trapped in poverty; fairer means of trading could lift millions out of it, which would have consequences for all of us.’

Yet doesn’t Fairtrade also enrich those same exploitative forces while nicely covering up the less favourable practices of global household brands? (Personally, albeit somewhat tactlessly, I don’t care if Kit Kats are Fairtrade now; they’re still Nestlé.) Do you think the public are being deceived by such labels and shamed into paying more for them? Or doesn’t it matter if you can afford to buy them? After all, there’s exploitation and then there’s exploitation, and if you’re reading this you’re not one of the two billion people – roughly a third of the world’s population – still existing on less than $2 a day and unable to taste the fruits of their toil.

The Fairtrade Foundation’s target this year is for ‘swaps’: giving up a product in favour of a Fairtrade equivalent, ideally one million of them, proving that the UK wants producers in the developing world to get a better trade deal at long last.

As this is an international blog, many of you will not be able to give numerical support to this campaign, but we can all make a difference by changing our shopping habits. Ethical consumerism does change things. Your purse, wallet or plastic card of choice can, at times, prove itself to be equally effective as the pen you use to write letters of complaint, sign petitions or even mark ballot papers.

The domination of global agriculture by large corporations, combined with the ever-increasing influence of supermarkets in supply chains, has grown considerably: half the world’s coffee beans are purchased by Kraft, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble, Sara Lee and Tchibo. The ten leading food retailers control around a quarter of the $3.5 trillion world food market, just three companies control a whopping 90 per cent of the world’s grain trade, and the top ten seed companies control almost half the $21 billion global commercial market.

Two billion of the world’s poorest people are dependent on small-scale farms, so you’d think it crucial that we support them. Doing so would increase food production and thus reduce global poverty, after all. They produce the bulk of many developing countries’ food (up to 80 per cent of Zambia’s, for example) and small, integrated farming systems have been shown to yield more per hectare in the long-term than larger ones. Vietnam, for example, has gone from being a food-deficit country to a major exporter of food due to higher productivity in family farms. It is now the second largest exporter in the world.

Add to this the obvious advantages of local farmers spending their income on local goods and services, which in turn boosts their local economies.

Supporting them would also help the environment: they manage a large share of the world’s water as well as vegetation cover, and farm far more sustainably than those industrial-scale, intensive monstrosities that trouble many of us so, thereby reducing soil erosion, increasing biodiversity and preserving soil fertility.

So, what exactly is Fairtrade? (Apparently, 30 per cent don’t know, so, should you fall into this category, allow me to try and explain.)

On the condition that small-scale farmers are organised, usually into democratically-run co-operatives (by being organised in this way, farmers increase their collective power and can claim a larger share of their profits, as opposed to being exploited by unscrupulous middlemen), and meet standards that promote sustainable agriculture, farmers receive a guaranteed minimum price for their goods, which covers their production costs and is above the world market price.

Fairtrade coffee producers in Nicaragua, for example, currently earn 20 cents per pound more than non-Fairtrade producers.

Coffee farmers in Oromia, Ethiopia, receive twice as much per pound of coffee beans by selling to Fairtrade buyers as opposed to private buyers. Considering that the average farmer produces around 1,300 pounds of coffee per year, if all of it was sold at the Fairtrade price rather than the conventional price, these farmers would earn $1,300 more each year.

Sadly, only a small proportion of their coffee is currently sold as Fairtrade, hence why farmers need the Fairtrade market to expand in order to attract more buyers.

The Fairtrade premium, an additional sum per kilo paid by Fairtrade buyers, is for social and community development. The Fairtrade premium received by the member societies of the Ankole Coffee Union in Uganda amounts to 10 cents per pound. The entire community now has access to clean water because of it.

The premium awarded to Mabale Tea Growers’ Factory, also in Uganda, has helped improve roads and erect leaf-sheds to protect the tea leaves from the elements during sorting. It has also helped build new classrooms and funded the construction of health clinic, both invaluable to the community.

Again, only around two per cent of Mabale’s tea is sold to Fairtrade buyers. If that suddenly became 22 or, better still, 82 per cent, think of the possibilities.

Of course, governments should act to support their farmers and protect them from exploitation. Yet if the people in the richest corners of the globe buy Fairtrade items, they play their small part in making things a lot better for a great many.

The farmers producing tea – the people behind your cuppa, if you like – can scarcely afford to drink their own product. Shouldn’t we, the ones fortunate enough to able to afford it and even more fortunate to be able to effect change through doing something so simple as buying one thing instead of another, at the very least help create for them a better standard of living? What an easy, almost effortless way to make a difference. Hell, we should even be ashamed of that.

Something else to consider is that, in developing countries last year, according to UN Millennium Development Goal figures, an estimated 50 to 90 million more people were thrown into extreme poverty.

I’d like to hear of your favoured Fairtrade products and swaps. Please take a moment to help the campaign to make every cup of tea in the UK Fairtrade by encouraging, in a few mouse clicks, the big five to switch to Fairtrade.

Oxfam are swapping tea for donations right now. In exchange for your unwanted goods, you will receive a free box of Cafédirect tea bags.

As a thank you for swapping to Fairtrade, Cadbury Dairy Milk has released an album entitled Big Swap Songs, which includes five UK chart hits covered by Ghanaian group, The Big Ghana Band. It is free to anyone who switches to any Fairtrade product during the fortnight. Download a free copy of the album by sharing which items you’ve swapped, or visit your local newsagents during the second week of Fairtrade Fortnight (that’s next week) to receive a free CD.

I very much enjoyed reading your views on this topic last year, so look forward to finding out if they’ve changed at all or if you’ve re-assessed any other consumerist habits for the better. Maybe you’ve become more cynical? If so, do tell. (Rainforest Alliance certification is something, no doubt, but 30 per cent just does not impress quite like 100, and it does smack of ‘greenwash’ to me.)

Apologies, naturally, that much of the above is of most relevance to UK-readers. Links to local campaigns or other Fairtrade retailers are very welcome.

It’s Graham’s birthday today, so what better excuse could you possibly need to play all your favourites as written and sung throughout a distinguished career; first with The Hollies, then with Crosby, Stills & Nash and later with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, as well as solo (five solo albums to date and counting, not including last year’s three-disc career retrospective, Reflections, which boasts over 30 previously unreleased tracks), and not forgetting session work (On an Island being one such case you can all recall without even trying)?

Best known for helping to create the most flawless of harmonies and for penning deeply meaningful lyrics, as well as for all those much-loved pop classics of the early Sixties, Graham, of resolute social conscience, has also been a loyal campaigner for issues that mean most to him, such as environmental causes (establishing NukeFree.org, for example).

He also gave his support – and song – to help Gary McKinnon’s campaign to challenge his extradition on charges of computer hacking. If you missed it or just want to enjoy it again, you can find ‘Chicago (Change the World)’ featuring David, Chrissie Hynde and Bob Geldof, with all-important download links, here.

Did you know that Graham is also a keen photographer and collector of photographs? If you share a passion for photography, have a look and perhaps, in addition to sharing which of Graham’s songs you like best, you can also comment on his diverse collection – there’s plenty to listen to whilst you browse.

Aside from the obvious (‘Just One Look’*, ‘Carrie Anne’, ‘Dear Eloise’, ‘King Midas in Reverse’, ‘Teach Your Children’, ‘Marrakesh Express’), a selection of my favourites would have to include ‘Postcard’, ‘Southbound Train’, ‘Helplessly Hoping’, ‘Liar’s Nightmare’, ‘Military Madness’ and this one, ‘On the Line’.

As a life-long Hollies fan, I’m really pleased to say that they will – finally! – be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month in a ceremony at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria. It’s about bloody time, too.

Congratulations, and Happy Birthday, Graham.

* ‘Just One Look’, you may not know, was co-written by one Doris Troy/Payne, probably best remembered ’round these parts for being one of the acclaimed female backing vocalists on The Dark Side of the Moon. Here’s her 1963 original.

Yep, the final and surely only important remaining topic of 2009: the best and worst Christmas songs. Obviously. You are surrounded by them everywhere you go, after all, and probably have been since the Hallowe’en paraphernalia was hidden away for another year. How limp and lifeless would Christmas be without them?

However clichéd they may be, whether you like them or despise them, I’m especially interested in different versions of the same piece for comparison’s sake. The Drifters’ version of ‘White Christmas’, for example. Frank Sinatra’s ‘Jingle Bells’. Celine Dion’s attempt at ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’. And so on and so forth.

By the way, in my view, which is flagrantly biased, never mind downloading ‘Killing in the Name’ to spite Cowell and Co.; people in the UK should be trying to make this Christmas Number One – and supporting Crisis at the same time. What do you think? (Proceeds will also be donated to Feeding America and the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Good for you, Bob.)

OK, I’ll get straight to the songs that I find most irritating at this (most wonderful) time of the year. I have a fairly high tolerance level when it comes to Christmas tunes, surprisingly, but draw the line at these. I’m really sorry if mentioning them causes anyone’s blood pressure to rise. You might want to hold your breath?

- Burl Ives, ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’
- Jona Lewie, ‘Stop the Cavalry’
- Mike Oldfield, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’

And breathe out through your mouth slowly…

As always, thank you very much for your company throughout the year, both here and in the chatroom; I continue to value your honesty and humour greatly. Enjoy the Christmas holiday, however you choose to spend it, and may the New Year bring all that you hope for, particularly good health.

At the risk of sounding like Shakin’ Stevens: Merry Christmas, everyone.

Tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day across North America (it’s Saturday elsewhere), an international protest against consumerism in response to the embarrassing fact that some 20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of the world’s resources, causing tremendous and disproportionate environmental damage as well as an unfair distribution of wealth, of course.

As the name suggests, it’s a day spent without spending, yet it’s also a day to hopefully think about how you spend, why you spend and what you can do to effect change through your spending by making changes to your consumer habits.

Consider the cheap labour being exploited in developing countries, producing cheap goods for you to buy – goods that you don’t need; the entirely unnecessary oil-based packaging favoured by supermarkets that you cannot recycle or compost, which ends up in landfill and takes an eternity to rot away; the poisonous chemicals sprayed on and pumped into your food and the harmful effects that they, and intensive farming, have on wildlife, its habitat and you; the immense environmental cost of transporting, not least by air, food items that would cause mere inconvenience and not starvation if we could not have them all year round.

‘Black Friday’, the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US, is traditionally one of the busiest shopping days, hence the date of Buy Nothing Day. Where Saturdays tend to be busier for shoppers, the event is observed on that day instead.

So why not have two Buy Nothing Days to think about the needless over-consumption rife in the affluent, bloated developed world and growing rapidly, which will certainly have catastrophic consequences, in many developing countries?

This weekend, invite some friends over for a meal of locally-grown produce, washed down by a glass or two of Fair Trade wine. Play Anti-Monopoly beside the glow of solar- and candle-light. Listen to Jimi Hendrix, as it’s his birthday. Read some Oliver James before bed. It’ll be great. It’ll be different.

Perhaps you can commit or convert another into shopping locally; start borrowing from your library instead of hoarding; grow your own fruit and vegetables in your garden; filter tap water and shun the over-priced bottled variety (which is often tap water, anyway); use jute and cotton bags for your groceries; tell your supermarket – the best way to tell them anything is by not buying – that you don’t need your mushrooms to come in a plastic container shrouded with shrink-wrap any more than you need your bananas to come, sweating, in a plastic bag.

As this television commercial, not surprisingly banned by most US networks in recent years, hits home, “The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person, and 30 times more than a person from India. We are the most voracious consumers in the world. A world that could die because of the way we North Americans live. Give it a rest.”

Ditto Europe.

If for only one day, please do not buy what you do not need.

Over-consumption not only has obvious economic and environmental costs, but personal and social costs as well.

I mentioned Oliver James back there. He argues that English-speaking countries are infected with a virus, which others have called an all-consuming epidemic – affluenza – which fosters mental illness. Indeed, the citizens of English-speaking nations are twice as likely to suffer from mental illness as citizens from mainland Western Europe, and James puts this down to excessive wealth-seeking: stress, anxiety and ultimately burn-out caused by an obsessive quest for material gain.

With the latest must-have items constantly flashed before our eyes, the new and improved version soon rendering its predecessor out-of-date, you can never possibly have it all. Or enough. Yet we work longer hours for less pay, rates of everything from depression to obesity to debt are higher than they’ve ever been, and all the while we live with the endless disappointment of the consumer lifestyle that we, in our ignorance and greed, have allowed to prosper and dominate.

It has to disappoint us because that’s the only way we’ll keep on buying: in order to feel better, to fool ourselves into thinking that we’re somehow more successful and/or content for having more. We assume that we ought to provide all the things that will spoil satisfy our children and hope they’ll make up for missing out on their childhood. We are all too easily convinced that having an expensive, usually electrical and almost always plastic-heavy gadget of some sort will shave a few precious seconds off one task or another each day, which will therefore give us more time that will, in the end, be used up on working or spending, thinking about working or spending, or travelling to wherever we work or can spend.

Do you feel pressurised in this way, believing that every facet of society is geared to make you hunger after things you simply do not need, piling pressure on you to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ so that you don’t get left behind in shame?

Have you already realised this and taken steps to counter the malaise? Are you an ethical consumer and do you boycott certain brands and products, even countries? Do you think you could go a whole day without buying anything, without absorbing any capitalist message or marketing gimmick? As with all such days of purpose, do you think this one can make a jot of difference?

As always, I’d love to share your thoughts on this.

It’s Blog Action Day today, the theme this year is Climate Change and all I ask is that you think of, tell us about and listen to songs about the environment, ecology, nature, and what is to many the most pressing of global concerns. A link to the song and some prominent lyrics would be grand.

Here’s the obvious one, but it’s still the finest to my ears: Joni Mitchell’s original ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. (You may not know that the revised version of the song includes an entirely expected price increase for admission to the tree museum; it’s no longer “a dollar-and-a-half”, it now costs “an arm and a leg” just to see ‘em.)

Here are a few more, several of which have been covered by different artists:

- Beach Boys, ‘Don’t Go Near the Water’
- The Cranberries, ‘Time Is Ticking Out’
- Dream Academy, ‘Forest Fire’
- Marvin Gaye, ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’
- Tish Hinojosa, ‘Something In the Rain’
- Kraftwerk, ‘Radioactivity’
- Rush, ‘Red Tide’
- Cat Stevens, ‘Where Do the Children Play?’
- Stephen Stills, ‘Ecology Song’
- Joe Walsh, ‘Song For a Dying Planet’

A few lines from the aforementioned Joe Walsh number:

“Is anyone out there?
Does anybody listen or care anymore?
We are living on a dying planet,
We’re killing everything that’s alive,
And anyone who tries to deny it
Wears a tie and gets paid to lie.”

If all that’s not enough to keep your minds pre-occupied today, I’d also like to hear about those inspirational musicians that we’ve been talking about lately and their endorsement of environmental campaigns. What are musicians and their record labels doing to help save a dying planet, and which are doing most?

Oh, and here’s something for you all to sign. Please?

That’s ‘inspirational’ due to their work ever-so-slightly beyond the realms of their most successful musical output; for example, in raising awareness of social and political causes, campaigning for charity, lending their voices – for singing or speaking – to help bolster major, televised, worldwide benefits and what not.

The obvious one has to be Saint/Sir (delete as you see fit) Bob Geldof, whose birthday is today. The Live Aid legend is now better known in some parts for his no-nonsense style of campaigning rather than for his music.

But there are so many others. There’s David Crosby and Graham Nash, Annie Lennox, Peter Gabriel, Roger Daltrey, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt (whose website has a broad section covering her activist leanings and lists innumerable noble causes), Bono, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Yusuf Islam (better known as Cat Stevens), Elton John… They’ve defended the rights of humans and animals, they’ve set up their own foundations to assist orphans, veterans, sufferers of AIDS and cancer. They’ve dramatically pinned their colours to rival masts at election time.

How do you feel about celebrities sharing their beliefs, not necessarily exclusively through their music, and making you aware of which causes they endorse?

David, obviously, has supported his fair share down the years, but in the genteel manner that we have come to expect of him. His recent support of Gary McKinnon, I know, has ruffled the odd feather in certain quarters.

Paul McCartney singing (with Wings) about giving Ireland back to the Irish, which his record company didn’t want to release and was promptly blacklisted, is another controversial example. And what of the controversy surrounding Cat Stevens’ religious conversion? A prejudiced, selfish over-reaction if ever there was one.

I’m thinking also of the backlash to Neil Young’s Living With War album and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s 2006 Freedom of Speech tour (as documented in the Déjà Vu film). Is such a determined focus at all off-putting? Could you, or have you, turned your back on a musician’s work because his beliefs conflicted unforgivably with your own? Or is it just music, just an opinion; something for the musician to get out of his or her system and the listener to get over?

I’d like to hear your views and which moments stand out as being most effective or memorable, maybe even embarrassing. And do tell us something we might not know about the musicians you enjoy, but the rest of us perhaps know little about. Which causes are closest to their hearts and how have they used their privileged position to advance them? Which have you cheered and which have you cursed?

Favourite Protest Songs coming soon, so please keep them in mind ready for a future post. That should be a good one…

Lastly, thank you very much for the kind birthday greetings; I had a lovely day… or three, as it turned out.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the story, but there have been various musicians speaking out recently both for and against the Featured Artists Coalition, a group set up to represent the interests of recording artists.

Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer, just in case you don’t know), who is on the FAC’s Board of Directors, has publicly criticised the UK government for suggesting that those who illegally share music should have their internet accounts suspended (albeit temporarily, as a last resort).

The record companies have been lobbying government for tough action on music piracy for some time, calling for increased penalties.

The FAC, backed by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, as well as the Music Producers’ Guild, want commercial and private file-sharing to be treated separately.

That’s not to say that Nick Mason, or any FAC member, condones illicit file-sharing. Far from it. The FAC (David is also a member), believe that artists should be paid for their craft by way of royalties.

People might well, but shouldn’t, forget that the creative process is often a painstakingly long one. It takes time to a write a song, to record it, mix and produce it, to manufacture it, distribute it and promote it. A lot of people are employed in the process along the way and they all need to be paid.

So, the FAC wants the industry to focus on making money from file-sharing, rather than on criminalising the file-sharers.

The response, from Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry: “We could hardly have more legal download services than we already do, and they have not eliminated piracy.”

Enter Lily Allen, a young and often outspoken singer/song writer: “These guys from huge bands said file-sharing music is fine. It probably is fine for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world.”

The crux of her argument, which seems perfectly reasonable to me, is that file-sharing is disastrous for upcoming talent, because there simply isn’t the funding available to support them because so much money is lost to file-sharing.

It’s been said that more than six and a half million people in the UK illegally access and distribute music. How can that not damage those that make music?

But is peer-to-peer downloading exclusively holding back such investment?

Many more questions arise from this issue, of course, not least concerns for the state of British music. Frankly, is it worth buying any more? Are CDs and downloads too expensive? Of this, more later.

The FAC agrees that file-sharing affects sales, yet maintains that it also encourages people to buy concert tickets and merchandise, which accounts for much of a musician’s income. (Their record labels get rich from record sales.)

The tremendous success, some might say overload, of music festivals in recent years can be seen as proof of this: the new generation of music fans find what they like online and support the music-makers financially in other ways.

Nick himself said that “File sharing means a new generation of fans for us.”

What do you think? Do you feel bad for, presumably, having acquired music at some point without paying for it? I’m thinking particularly of all those bootlegs from David’s 2006 tour that I often notice. Or is that completely different, inasmuch as live concerts are one-off events that should be recorded for posterity (and probably wouldn’t be secretly recorded in the first place if a professional recording were guaranteed)? Plus, the cost of a ticket with all its fees is astronomical…

And didn’t we always record music? We taped the charts off the radio on a Sunday evening, we’d hold a microphone to the television set when The Old Grey Whistle Test was on. We’d lend tapes to our friends and we’d borrow theirs in return. We’ve always been able to listen to music for free, in shops, on the radio, on MTV.

Another question is, how can anyone possibly justify charging more for downloading an entire album than purchasing the plastic-heavy CD? I’m all for being green and shunning unnecessary packaging, but why shouldn’t the price of downloads be considerably less than the physical product?

Are there not legitimate ways for people to discover music online, not including taking it without asking or paying – which is, by definition, theft? There are plenty of sites streaming music on demand, where you look (well, mostly listen), but don’t touch. You can’t go into a music shop and leave with a handful of CDs. You’d be stopped and prosecuted. How is downloading torrents any different?

Look at MySpace, if you dare, and you’ll notice a gaggle of songs that people have gathered together and offered to others, as though they’re theirs to offer. (I think Stewie Griffin said it best when he spoke of MySpace as being a place for things that other people have created but are used to express one’s individualism.)

Yes, you find something that you like online, as you would on the TV or radio, and may be inclined to buy a CD, concert ticket or T-shirt, but the potential for stealing hundreds, if not thousands, of songs is currently far too great online. You’d have to make an awful lot of trips to a music store to equal that vast digital stash.

It’s not about the ease of accessing music, either. If it’s convenience you’re after, now that nobody has time to visit shops or even friends, you can pick up your CDs at the supermarket. Or order them online and have them delivered to your door. No time to wait? Then download them. Legally. It’s very easy.

It’s purely about the cost and this avaricious desire for more, more, more.

Are the record companies not the real problem here? Do they and the other often exploitative forces surrounding musicians make too much money off the backs of the act and its talent? Are they the ones complaining now because they’re not enriching themselves quite as fully as they once did?

When they should have been embracing the internet, they were trying to fight it, and now they are seeing their profits shrinking.

They have given us one manufactured band after another, each with a shorter shelf-life than the last. They’ve been heavy on the merchandise (everything from lunch boxes to duvet covers), milked the moment like their lives depended on it (forgetful of the fact that there’ll always be a new line of pretty boys and girls willing to replace the current flavour of the month, so they’ll get to do it all again ad infinitum) and they had the bare-faced cheek to for so long charge £15 for a rushed-out CD with two or three good tunes and half a dozen examples of bland, instantly forgettable (if you’re lucky… or maybe not) filler.

Then there are the Best of and Greatest Hits compilations. Are they not something of a record label rip off? It’s true that nobody makes you buy them, but an awful lot of money appears to be spent advertising them. Money that record companies perhaps ought to be pumping into new talent, as per Lily’s wishes.

CDs have never cost much to manufacture. Now they’re finally about half the price and, crucially, musicians have other means of getting noticed: digitally, via the internet. People can write and record songs at home, get them online and cut out the middlemen. Their path to fame is suddenly clearer, if not much longer.

Would Lily Allen have so successfully traversed hers were it not for the wonders of the internet (or, forgive me, a celebrity father, for that matter)?

Indeed, if more artists chose to go it alone, this would mean more competition for the manufactured acts and their inventors. It would mean fewer executive chancers. It would mean more money and power – and headaches – for the artist.

Things are certainly different in these technological times, and I know that the age of those reading this is likely to vary considerably, but how did you discover Pink Floyd? Courtesy of John Peel playing them on the radio, or were you intrigued by those fantastic gatefold LPs and curious to find out what they housed? Did you borrow a friend’s copy, audio or video, or did you find all the audio and video that’s ever been produced lined up and waiting for your mouse clicks at YouTube?

How did you discover On an Island?

Have record sales dropped because the music is generally of poorer quality these days, or because more people are helping themselves to it? Bear in mind that Radiohead made a profit in 2007 when they chose to allow fans to pay whatever they wanted – yes, even nothing at all – to download their In Rainbows album.

They also, at the same time, invited pre-orders for an exclusive deluxe edition costing £40. They received some 70,000, which were then manufactured to order.

Nine Inch Nails did something similar in 2008: offered an album, The Slip, as a free, permanent download and followed it with a limited-edition CD/DVD version, which sold enough copies to cover the whole project’s cost.

The Arctic Monkeys burned their own CDs and gave them away at their early concerts so that fans would know the words to their songs at their gigs, plus it was a good way of increasing exposure. File-sharing is, after all, free publicity.

So, will the industry collapse if the product is given away freely? Maybe not.

Would people pay to legally download if the price was more reasonable – whatever that means – and DRM abolished, do you think?

Consider also, if you will, the Pirate Bay. The founders of this notorious Swedish file-sharing site, reported to have had an estimated 22 million users, were jailed for a year earlier this year for breaching copyright and ordered to compensate representatives of the movie, music and video game industries. Unrepentant, they remain confident that others will continue without them. Certainly, illicit music downloads did not stop when Napster was forced to change.

Can the internet ever be policed and those who indiscriminately and unlawfully share music be criminalised without creating a backlash against the music itself?

And do you even accept that unauthorised downloading is a form of theft?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this and more, but no links to file-sharing sites and no need to brag about your huge collections of RoIOs, please.

As tempting as it may be to pretend, after giving this post such an uncharacteristically snappy title, that David is to perform a series of ostentatious tribute concerts in memory of the great Michael Jackson and his equally great 1987 album, it’s obviously best not to make up silly stories for my amusement.*

Instead, I’ll just say that Blog Action Day (BAD, get it?) is coming ’round again, so I’d like to know what you would like to discuss on 15 October.

The aim of Blog Action Day, you may recall or even guess, is to get people talking about the same issue via their blogs, podcasts, tweets, etc.

Last year, when the theme was Poverty, nearly 13,000 blogs got involved, reaching more than 13 million readers. Some of those blogs, like this one, tallied up some extremely sharp, thoughtful, stirring comments. Thank you, all.

Although you can suggest your own topic, this year’s listed choices are:

- Water and Food Sustainability
- Human Rights
- Gay Rights
- Peace and Armed Conflict
- Education
- Climate Change
- Health
- Internet Freedom

My vote, not surprisingly, is for Climate Change. I invite you to vote, too.

Oh, and if you’re in the mood for casting votes this evening, I heard through the grapevine that Gala, daughter of Richard Wright and Guy Pratt’s (much) better half, has once again been short-listed in the British Design Awards – congratulations, Gala – so, I don’t know, maybe some of you might want to vote for Viable London, ‘Milton’ range in the British Design of the Year category…?

*Admit it, many of you would snap up tickets.

The re-recording of the Graham Nash song, ‘Chicago’, with additional lyrics penned by Gary’s mother and featuring the vocals of David, Chrissie Hynde, Bob Geldof and Gary himself, is now available for download – here.

David also plays guitar, bass and keyboards on the track.

Its release coincides with today’s judicial review application, the outcome of which, it is hoped, will be the decision that Gary can stand trial on charges of computer hacking, and serve any necessary jail time, in the UK.

If you have a PayPal account (preferable, but not essential), you can download the song with ease after making a voluntary donation of any amount. Your donation will help Gary continue his fight to stay in the UK and challenge the one-sided extradition treaty that would have him face charges in the US.

Download instructions are provided.

For the full story, see the Latest News page.

For previous discussion, which you are still very welcome to take part in, see past blog entries concerning Gary’s case here and here.

If you’ve heard it, what do you think of the song?

It was the mother of all benefit gigs and it took place on this day in 1985. “The day the music changed the world” was what they called it and consequently stamped on the commemorative DVD.

It was one of the largest television broadcasts/satellite link-ups ever, reportedly viewed by more than 1.5 billion, in 60 countries, around the world.

As well as raising awareness of the plight of the starving in Africa, some say that a kitty holding somewhere in the region of £150 million was raised for famine relief as a direct result of the concerts, which saved between a million and two million lives.

David, of course, was at Wembley (with Bryan Ferry), but whose performances do you remember as being special? I thought U2 were excellent that day.

If you don’t already have it, there is an official four-disc set of the Live Aid concerts, which was released in November 2004. Proceeds go to the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which continues to support projects across Africa.

The spot where international focus was most firmly fixed following Michael Buerk’s harrowing news report, Ethiopia, today remains one of Africa’s poorest and most populous countries. Only 10 percent of its land is arable, its dry climate dictating that the cruel cycle of drought and famine does not come as a great shock. Ethiopian life expectancy, according to the UN, is a depressing 52-54 years, but that’s hardly surprising when you consider that 46% of the population are under-nourished, only 22% have access to safe drinking water, and there are three doctors per 100,000 potential patients.

23% of Ethiopians live on less than $1 a day and, even in an ‘average’ year, six million have to be fed by the outside world. Twice as many are hungry today than during the “biblical” famine of 1984/5 that spurred Bob Geldof to act.

Hold that thought.

I recently read a strongly-worded article by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, entitled “Band Aid and ’self-obsessed, angst-driven Western do-gooders’”.

You might care to do the same, but the following paragraph in particular made me stop and read again. If it has a similar effect on you, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts, if you’ve got time to share them.

It has always intrigued me why the conscience of the West can only be pricked by degradation of other peoples. The process of getting westerners to part with their donations end up dehumanizing and degrading Africa. Instead of creating the much needed understanding and solidarity it creates an unequal power relation with psychological hang-ups about superior and inferior peoples; one is a permanent donor and the other is a permanent supplicant. That one-way street does not lead to understanding, rather it institutionalizes a ‘we know best’ attitude on the part of the humanitarian industry. It also makes the humanitarian agencies married to bad news from Africa, thereby becoming professional merchants of our misery.

The musical highlight of Live8, no doubt, was Pink Floyd reforming momentarily to perform for the first time in 24 years.

In another worrying example of time just flying by, the ten concerts held simultaneously to persuade political leaders to make poverty history took place on this date four years ago.

The leaders of the eight richest nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and USA – followed the festivities by pledging, at Gleneagles, to double aid to poor nations by 2010, half of which would go to Africa.

Figures show that, in fact, the G8 have only delivered one third of the additional assistance promised, despite being two thirds of the way towards their deadline.

By the end of this year they will have only delivered about half of what they promised, with Italy and France responsible for 80% of the shortfall.

This is because France cut aid to Africa last year and Italy has delivered only 3% of the aid increase it promised.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some 34 million more children in African schools, an estimated three million people on life-saving AIDS treatment, and death rates from malaria have more than halved in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zambia.

The next G8 Summit will be held in L’Aquila, Italy, from 8 July.

Despite agreeing with many of the cynical sentiments expressed in articles by Michel Chossudovsky and Ann Talbot, who insist that the events were more a profit-making exercise for its corporate sponsors than a means of averting yet another avoidable humanitarian disaster, I like to believe that Live8 truly did increase awareness and turned apathy into activism in some quarters.

Yes, the 10 concerts cost £25 million to stage (the cost in terms of carbon emissions is something else, of course), performers at the Philadelphia gig received obscenely inappropriate gifts and the CD sales of the performers boomed (David, I think it only fair to point out, was the first to promise that any such profits would be donated to charity and encouraged others to follow his example).

What do you think of Live8 now: Success or failure? PR stunt or genuine political mass movement? Did you wear a white wristband, rumoured to have been made in a Chinese sweatshop? Did you wonder where all the black performers were performing that day? And what of the broken promises of financial assistance?

Your thoughts on any of this, and the rest, please.

As an aside, if you have yet to read David’s recollections of the 1969 moon landings – entitled “My moon-landing jam session”, in today’s Guardian – you can find them here. That’s certainly a topic for later this month, though.

Have you heard about this? See Paul McCartney’s video message, here, which explains why it’s a good idea for everyone to reduce their unhealthy dependence upon meat and commit to a weekly meat-free day. (If you’ve got the time and desire to find out more, you can do worse than read Compassion in World Farming Trust’s 2004 report, ‘The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat’).

Meat production has undeniably become a serious environmental hazard. A huge strain on the Earth’s resources, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world’s livestock population is responsible for some 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The transport industry is responsible for 13%.

Livestock production uses 8% of the world’s (increasingly scarce) fresh water supplies. Indeed, you use more water producing meat than you do grain.

Animal waste pollutes. In North Carolina, USA, for example, there are roughly as many pigs as there are people… and the pigs produce four times as much waste.

With increased prosperity, we are consuming more meat. The World Cancer Research Fund recommends that we eat no more than 500g of red meat each week – roughly the equivalent of three 6oz steaks.

In the West, where meat consumption is at its highest, one billion people are overweight. Developing nations have adopted a similarly unhealthy, meat-based diet. Even though the West eats three times as much meat as the rest of the world, meat consumption in ‘poorer’ countries has doubled in just over a decade.

The demand for meat is a major cause of deforestation. Estimates suggest that 70% of the Amazonian rainforest has been flattened to make way for livestock.

Worldwide, about 200 million hectares of forest has been lost since the ’60s, much of it cleared to rear cattle for the hamburger trade – vulgarly referred to as “hamburgerisation” – or to grow subsidised crops for, you guessed it, animal feed.

Consequently, one way or another, livestock now claims more than 30% of our planet’s land surface.

Lastly, and perhaps the fundamental reason for vegetarianism: factory farming is irrefutably inhumane. Millions of living creatures, bred only to be slaughtered after often brief, miserable lives of deprivation and suffering in intensive farms, do not exercise, enjoy fresh air, graze casually or interact with other animals. Selective breeding to ensure unnatural growth has created myriad health problems and deformities, which further add to the animals’ unnecessary suffering.

So, with all this in mind, if you don’t already, will you forgo meat on a Monday from now on? As Paul says, “it not only addresses pollution, but better health, the ethical treatment of animals, global hunger and community and political activism.”

Today just so happens to be Paul’s birthday, so a very Happy Birthday to him.

You may well have heard about this already, so apologies – not least to Nick – for not being able to mention it, and invite your feedback on it, before my break.

David’s guitar and backing vocals, along with the bass of Guy Pratt, feature on a new song by Nick Laird-Clowes (Dream Academy, Trashmonk) called ‘Mayday’.

It’s part of the soundtrack to Nick Broomfield’s documentary, ‘A Time Comes: The Story of the Kingsnorth Six’, about a group of influential environmental activists who, in a protest against government plans to construct new coal-fired plants across Britain (you can see where they want them, here), bravely scaled a 220m chimney at Kingsnorth power station, Kent, back in 2007.

In all, 50 Greenpeace volunteers took over the site. They immobilised the conveyor belts that carry coal into the plant and chained themselves to machinery.

The resulting trial was historic.

You can watch how their story unfurled in a 20-minute documentary, and download the track, here.

Naturally, I’d like to hear what you think of both, but I’d also enjoy a tasty discussion about coal’s validity in the 21st century and about ordinary people taking up their right to protest, which is what the song is all about.

One fact to bear in mind, if you please: Seven new (marginally more efficient) coal plants would wipe out half of the UK’s carbon budget, making it impossible to reach the target of reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% (compared with 1990 figures) by 2050.

That target figure doesn’t take into consideration emissions from shipping and aviation, but that’s a grumble for another day.

A German report commissioned by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council claims that, by 2050, the USA could be coal-free, drawing nearly all its electricity from renewable supplies, cutting emissions by more than 80% and creating 14 million jobs in the process.

Germany, by the way, although experiencing similar resistance to the construction of new coal-powered plants, is on target to be using 100% renewable energy sources by 2050. (Germany already produces 200 times more solar, and ten times more wind, power than the UK.)

If you’d like to Give Coal the Boot, and let Prime Minister Brown know how you feel about coal (that’s give coal the boot, not Gordon; give him a break, it’s not all his fault), stamp your footprint on the Greenpeace map – it doesn’t matter where in the world you are. The same is true if you’d like to contact energy giant E.ON.

As has been said a million times before, we only have one Earth, so issues such as this have consequences for everybody.

I’d like to talk about trees today.

Tomorrow is World Environment Day and one of its aims for 2009 is to see seven billion planted around the world by the end of the year.

Some 3.1 billion have been planted – in 166 countries – already.

You can support the Billion Tree Campaign very easily, as the United Nations Environment Programme will plant a tree for everyone on Twitter who follows @UNEPandYou by 5 June, so please do merrily tweet and re-tweet about that.

Everyone knows that trees absorb carbon dioxide; over its lifetime of 100 years, each tree will inhale roughly one tonne. The average tree, in one year, exhales enough oxygen for a family of four for a year. So why are we cutting them down?

Tragically, some 20,000 hectares of forest are lost per day – that’s an area twice the size of Paris. Greenpeace this week published their ‘Slaughtering the Amazon’ report, which makes interesting reading for anyone looking to boycott the companies responsible for Brazil’s disappearing greenery. (When you consider that the Amazon is estimated to store between 80 and 120 billion tonnes of carbon, you can imagine how crucial it is to protect it from destruction.)

The worldwide loss of natural forest actually contributes more to global carbon emissions than the transport sector each year, so planting more trees and curbing deforestation is certainly a positive and cost-effective way of reducing emissions.

Furthermore, trees enhance the natural landscape, provide a habitat for local wildlife, help conserve both soil and water, protect coastal areas, stabilise sand dunes and control avalanches. They provide sources of fuel, food and medicine.

Writing as an unashamed tree-hugger, if you’re able to plant just one tree this year, please do; you won’t regret it. They’ll attract insects, which will in turn attract birds. They’ll shade you from the sun and shelter you from the wind and rain. They’ll beautify your garden and nourish you with their fruits. You can strip dead branches of their bark and combine with fallen leaves to further enhance the quality of your soil. You don’t even need much more than a container to plant one.

To coincide with World Environment Day, tomorrow marks the historic release of ‘HOME’. Have a look at the trailer and make a date to watch the film in its glorious entirety, free of charge, here. I’d love to know what you think of it.

As you know, David has been one of many to speak out against Gary McKinnon’s planned extradition to the US to stand trial for computer hacking charges, agreeing to produce a new recording of the Graham Nash protest song, ‘Chicago’.

If extradited, Gary could face a prison stretch of up to 70 years in a high-security penitentiary, which seems a very harsh punishment for looking for evidence of alien life and is hardly appropriate for someone with an autistic condition.

Gary was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in August 2008. His late diagnosis meant that his form of autism was not considered in previous legal hearings.

If this campaign, which asks that the decision to extradite be over-turned and culminates next month in a judicial review, fails, he could be sent to the US to stand trial immediately.

Gary’s supporters want to make sure that Gary isn’t extradited and that any further legal proceedings – and a prison sentence, if need be – be served in the UK, where a conviction under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

UK readers, you can e-mail your MP to ask for his or her support and let the Prime Minister know your feelings by signing this petition.

It takes barely a minute to show your support, it’s a thoroughly professional (Number 10) appeal which asks only for a name and address. As of now, there are more than three thousand signatories. Please tell your friends and family about it.

The chatroom is open until 17:00 (UK), so come and talk about this, Monday’s Crisis gig (some photographs of Polly’s from the concert can be found here, by the way), or anything else that takes your fancy. Registration is a doddle.

As ticket holders have known since Friday evening (and kept secret, as per the charity’s wishes, with varying degrees of success – thanks for that), Islington’s Union Chapel is the venue for tonight’s ‘hidden’ Crisis gig, where David will soon join Amadou & Mariam for a special one-off performance (click here for details).

The concert is a sell-out, which is very good news for Crisis, as the UK’s national charity for single homeless people will benefit from all proceeds.

If you’re in attendance (you should be enjoying the support right about now), first and foremost, thank you very much for supporting Crisis; I hope you are enjoying the show and look forward to hearing all about it.

If you’re not there, I’d like to know your thoughts as to the idea of a ‘hidden’ gig.

The venue was kept hidden, as you may know, to draw attention to the hidden homeless, most obviously the rough sleepers and squatters, so many of whom do not know where they will be spending the night until the day is nearing an end.

However, there are also the many millions all around the world who fit the legal definition of ‘homeless’, either because they have no legal right to stay in their (often inadequate) accommodation and are at threat of eviction, or because they’re taking temporary refuge in hostels and shelters, sleeping on friends’ sofas or in their vehicles. You don’t see them in shop doorways, so they’re out of sight and out of mind, but their plight is similarly challenging.

Here are some suggestions for things we all can do to help make it easier.

Some good news for some of you.

David will be performing as a special guest of Amadou & Mariam, a well-known duo from Mali, at a one-off show at a secret venue somewhere in central London on Monday 25 May – all proceeds going to Crisis, the charity for the homeless.

The venue will be revealed to ticket holders by text or e-mail the day before the show. The venue is to be kept ‘hidden’ until this time for good reason: to draw attention to the uncertain reality of the UK’s hidden homeless.

Tickets are now on sale, available online from See Tickets or by telephoning +44 (0)871 2200260.

Tickets are priced at £25 (plus a booking/delivery fee of £2.75).

The first two rows are designated ‘VIP Seats’. These will also go on sale tomorrow, priced at £75 per ticket (plus the relevant fees). There are just 10 seats in each row, so that’s 20 tickets in total. If you want one, you’ll have to be quick.

VIP tickets come with a goody bag, the contents of which are still being decided, but should include a commemorative Crisis T-shirt, a copy of the four-disc version of ‘Live in GdaÅ„sk’, as well as Amadou & Mariam’s latest CD, ‘Welcome to Mali’.

Have a listen to their “Afro-pop blues” at MySpace.

Said David: “I met Amadou and Mariam at the Mojo Awards, where we expressed mutual respect for each others’ music, so it was a wonderful surprise when they called recently, inviting me to collaborate with them on this special one-off occasion for Crisis. I’m looking forward to breaking down a few musical boundaries in the cause of helping the homeless.”

More of Crisis’ ‘hidden’ gigs will take place across London until 17 June.

Nuclear is apparently the least popular energy source among EU citizens, with 37% opposed to it but almost as many (36%) having a more balanced view.

In the US, despite Forbes famously labelling America’s nuclear program “the largest managerial disaster in business history” in the mid-Eighties, with running costs exceeding all predictions, a Gallup poll recently found that 59% of Americans are now supportive of its use (27% strongly so). Florida may even allow the nuclear industry to qualify for renewable energy subsidies, even though it’s not renewable.

In the UK, now that the nuclear industry has been privatised, nuclear is suddenly acceptable again. Surely it’s a complete coincidence that the Prime Minister’s brother is head of Media Relations at the world’s largest nuclear operator.

This very large nuclear operator, by the way, is also trying to bully the UK government into lowering its proposed renewable electricity targets by 10%, as it wants a bigger share of government spoils more than it wants a greener future.

It’s probably also a coincidence that, in 2006, it became compulsory for UK schools to teach all pupils between 14 and 16 about nuclear power; the nuclear industry spending millions on teaching aids naturally heavily-biased in their favour.

Anyway…

Now, because of climate change and the clear need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, the pro-nuclear brigade insist that theirs is the answer to our energy crisis… ignoring the fact that it takes considerable time to complete nuclear sites and that we need an urgent reduction in carbon emissions.

Besides, it’s not as though nuclear means zero emissions. The plants may not directly create CO2, but the cycle certainly does – more than 10 times the industry estimates, according to some, which is more than any renewable alternative.

Then there’s the not-exactly-small matter of all that deadly radioactive waste, which remains dangerous for thousands of years, which has to be stored safely. Have we forgotten about Chernobyl already, perhaps the greatest ecological disaster ever known, which was unfolding so horrifically this time 23 years ago?

In any sense, aren’t nuclear power plants a prime target for terrorists?

What do you think? Is nuclear a dead-end option and ‘quick’ fix for governments (and, in Britain’s case, another way of meekly handing over vast bounties to US companies in yet another sickening corporate give-away), or is it a necessary evil?

Are renewables too risky in that they require considerable investment and, critics say, are never likely to be able to produce enough energy to meet our needs? Shell must think so, having halted all wind and solar schemes worldwide last month.

Which would you rather see funded through your taxes: nuclear or renewable energy? And which would you rather have sited near your community: a wind turbine or a nuclear reactor?

Tomorrow is Earth Day, the idea of a Wisconsin senator, the late Gaylord Nelson, back in the Sixties. The first Earth Day took place in 1970, with some 20 million supporting its cause. Now 500 million are expected to celebrate this year’s event.

Hundreds of millions of people switched off their lights for Earth Hour last month.

This is all very encouraging, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Other statistics are anything but. Such as, since 1970, the Earth’s population has almost doubled, the share of arable land per person has almost halved and more than 160 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide have been released into the atmosphere (that’s more in the last 40 years than in the two hundred prior to 1970).

So, without wishing to get all preachy, please commit to doing at least one new ‘little something’ for the good of our planet, such as collecting rain water or not using the car at weekends – and get someone else to follow your lead.

I’d love to hear your suggestions for enhancing simple, sustainable living.

One thing I’m doing this year is growing my own vegetables, so tips and encouragement from the green-fingered would be especially welcome.

You might like to read what the Wilderness Society recommends for making a difference, tune in to Earth Day TV, write to your elected political representatives and e-mail Congress (because the successor to Kyoto should involve the USA, with the emphasis being put on protecting the climate, not corporate profits).

If you need inspiration, or just a stark reality check (yes, you can call it a guilt-trip, I know that I feel guilty), there are some shocking photographs of melting glaciers, dried-up riverbeds, mounds of dead fish and creeks filled with rubbish – here.

To take a line from Greenpeace, enough is enough.