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Podcast – Iceland, the fire island
Iceland has a stunning landscape with glaciers galore … but is more properly fire island. Lava, earthquakes eruptions and volcanoes dominate life and world headlines.Around Christmas 2023, an eruption forced people from their homes in the fishing port of Grindavik. One year and six eruptions later – the townspeople are back. But another eruption nearby is spewing lava into the car park of the famous Blue Lagoon. By the time you hear this podcast, that eruption could be over… or much worse.Yet despite all the risk and uncertainty, many Icelanders say they live here because of their volcanoes not despite them. Why? That’s what this podcast – recorded in October 2024 – is all about. CreditsThanks to Easyjet for flights – direct to Reykjavik each weekday from Edinburgh. I travelled...Read More
Is Gothenburg Sweden’s green capital?
Gothenburg once boasted the world’s largest shipyards, but faced with Japanese and Korean competition, the oil crisis and a world economic downturn, the city was brought to its knees in the 1980s, with 5 kms of empty dockland and 20 thousand unemployed people. But though shipbuilding was down, Gothenburg was not out. The City Council bought the empty shipyards for one Swedish krona – that’s 2 pence – financed new house-building, new secondary schools and linked up with Chalmers University to set up Lindholmen Science Park. It attracted the Swedish mobile phone maker, Ericsson who created a cluster of ten thousand people in other IT companies round its new HQ. This inter-dependency helped the sector survive the dot.com crash. The biggest advance though, followed the biggest setb...Read More
Film: Outdoor kindergarten in Arctic Norway
At long last, outdoor nurseries and kindergartens are getting some official encouragement in Scotland. Pioneers like the Secret Garden in Fife and about a dozen others have offered an alternative to indoor early life for over a decade. But now Inspiring Scotland’s been funded by the Scottish Government to work with eight councils setting up new outdoor play projects. The need to get kids moving and enjoying outdoor activity is urgent. Five years ago, a study of 38 nations ranked Scotland joint last for physical activity, while childhood obesity levels here continue to rise, with a quarter of five-year-olds deemed to be at risk of becoming seriously overweight. So what does the future look like? Maybe a bit like Norwegian kindergarten today – minus the snow. So here’s a sa...Read More