Environmental news and comment
comment, 4 September 2025 Hello. This is an archive of my personal website, including stories I wrote and published up to 2018. It replaces my previous website provided by Typepad, which shut down in September 2025. Apart from my freedom of information log, it is not being updated. Apologies for any broken links, mistakes or […]
updated 20 August 2025 This is a list of all the requests I have made under freedom of information legislation in the UK, briefly summarising each request and its current status. First are the 109 requests I have made to the Scottish Government, followed below by 77 requests to the Ministry of Defence. Next comes one request to the UK Atomic Energy Authority, followed by five to the British…
Simon Pepper, who has died aged 70, played a major role in shaping environmental campaigning and policy in Scotland. He made WWF Scotland into one of the country’s most influential pressure groups, forged dozens of different organisations into a powerful alliance and was a key advisor to successive governments. In 1985 Simon was WWF Scotland’s […]
from the Sunday Herald, 2 September 2018 It wasn’t, perhaps, the most important environment story the Sunday Herald has ever run. But it was certainly one of the most read. ‘Virgin's wildlife orgy campaign labelled tasteless’ was the headline on 13 October 2007. It reported on a viral marketing campaign for Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains […]
My daughter, Lindsay Riddoch, who took her own life on the eve of her 25th birthday, was an ardent and articulate advocate for better mental health services, a historian, poet, pub-quizzer and demon game-player. She was a fiercely independent thinker and debater, intent on exposing injustice. If she saw something wrong, she would try and […]
from Sunday Herald, 19 February 2017 Frack is a harsh, ugly word, with unpleasant connotations. If public arguments were won or lost on single words, the fracking industry would be on a hiding to nothing. Fracked, as it were. But the issue of whether or not to exploit Scotland’s reserves of underground shale gas is […]
from The Guardian, 2 November 2016 In 1992, when the first submarine armed with Trident nuclear missiles arrived on the Clyde near Glasgow, John Ainslie was in a canoe. Along with a flotilla of other protesters, he was buzzing the huge dark boat as it cut through the cold water. He had just been appointed […]
from Sunday Herald, 23 October 2016 Warm tributes from across the political divide have been paid to John Ainslie, the veteran co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND), who died on Friday after a long battle with cancer. The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Greens, socialists, trade unionists, journalists […]
from Sunday Herald, 24 July 2016 The Scottish Government is promising that it will abide by European Union (EU) environmental law protecting wildlife and preventing pollution despite Brexit. The cabinet secretary for the environment, Roseanna Cunningham, is pledging not to weaken a raft of Brussels legal measures regarded as crucial for conserving plants and animals […]
from Sunday Herald, 03 July 2016 The Cairngorm ski resort near Aviemore has come under fierce fire for breaching planning permission during construction work high on the much-prized mountain. The Cairngorm National Park Authority (CNPA) has reprimanded the ski company for creating an access track and re-engineering a slope without consent. The works were part […]