This has come about from a web link I saw where a BBC reporter tried to go a month without plastic last August. She was relatively successful as she reduced her plastic purchase by 80% but for someone like me, and indeed many other green / greener people this will be harder as I already have a limited use of plastic however starting 1st of January 2009 I'll give this a whirl.
The BBC reporter stopped using plastic bags for her fruit and veg, I did this 15 years ago,lol. She went to local butchers and deli's etc, I've been doing this for ages. She used terry nappies and some Eco friendly nappies, At 19 my son is well out of nappies now so this will not apply. I make my own shopping bags so no carriers needed, I use paper bags to pick up the dog waste of my gorgeous red setter so no( even biodegradable)plastic bags there. I'll have to find a way of buying cheese without plastic and I'll need to get the yogurt maker out again. I bought a lot of cheese from a farmers market before Christmas and it looked as if it was in waxed paper but on close inspection it is lined with a thin poly sheet...Hmmmm.
I got some free yeast from Asda yesterday so that will last a few weeks but I may have to take a small container with me mid month for some more.
One thing I will have to reluctantly buy during this months trial will be milk in plastic bottles as we don't have a delivery service in my area.
I'll try to update this every couple of days so why not check back to this blog to see how I get on and even leave a comment.
P.S. If you click on the title of this post it will take you to the BBC site for the original story.
January 1st, 2009;
Went ok as we haven't been out today but I did have nightmares about buying milk in plastic bottles last night,lol.
Still Andy at self sufficientish gave me a website called find your milkman. I thought that we didn't have a local milkman anymore but it seems we do so I'll be calling them tomorrow, Friday to check prices etc. It's ok being green but if the prices are prohibitive then I'll find an alternative use for the 4 pint plastic bottles.
January 2nd, 2009.
Still no joy on finding out a price for the milk delivered in plastic fee bottles. I expect it to be around 50p per pint which would make it expensive for me.
I went into town today and had a look at some indipendant butchers and all had plastic sheeting and carrier bags for produce. I was going to ask about supplying my own containers bit decided not to as they were quite busy. I needed something for tea so I ended up at Asda, my usual haunt for good food at cheaper prices although they were quite quick to up prices last year as and when they felt like it. I guess I shouldn't grumble but little things like 2 pence on a pack of 500g mince might only be 2 pence but when you buy 1 a day for feeding the dog it works out at £7.30 a year or nearly 4 bags of mince. Cooked ham went up by £1 per 400g and corned beef went up from £2.98 for 3 tins to over £5.00. Again processed food which in a healthy diet should be cut out but isn't always...
Anyway, back to the shoping. I ended up buying 4 chicken portions and these were on a plastic type tray, recycle symbol 5 in a triangle and a packet of chillie's. Now I came across the chillies first and put them back as they were in plastic and i knew that the local greengrocer had chillies loose so I got the chicken and then went to the grocer........ He was closed. Back to Asda and after buying the chicken I decided to get the chillies so the upshot was wasted petrol and plastic wrapping.
So a month without any new plastic lasted 1 day in truth but I'll change the goalposts and say a month reducing plastic.....
January 3rd, 2009.
Yesterday I was speaking of moving the goalposts in my quest to be plastic free for amonth and today Hartlepool United turned over premiership team Stoke in the FA Cup 3rd round. Bring on Liverpool away from home for a nice pay day for the club.
January 5th.
Yesterday the 4th Went by without any hitch so that's ok. Today however is another matter. Went food shopping as normal for tea, I try to buy local and daily or for every two days so all the produce is used up. This way if I have anything left I know before I go out what I need for the tea ( evening meal) or if it's leftovers.
I was planning the route to take to go to the local small indi shops and thinking of how much time this would take got me thinknig.... I know really dangerous but I did it none the less. I Went to the bank to get some cash as this is then all I have to spend and thus can't get tempted. Got back to the veg shop and bought the veg and a 25 kg sack of spuds mainly because they were in a paper sack and hence no plastic bags but they will get used up no problem. Then it was over town to a fishmongers to get some scampi and then into Asda to buy some mince for my lovely red setter and a tin of mushy peas... well you can't have scampi without mushy peas can you? While I was in the fishmongers I bucked up the courage to ask if I took a plastic box in would they fill it with the fish rather than use plastic bags etc... No problem they said so that was cool. If any of you are in Harltepool go to kings wet fish shop in Thornton Street... really magical fishy place or should that be plaice?
This took me about 75 minutes and 8 miles of petrol in a car that is currently doing 15 miles to the gallon around town but I avoided plastic bags. On the other hand I could have driven 3/4 of a mile to Asda and bought it all in one go and in about 30 minutes but the fish and potatoes and maybe some of the veg would have been in the plastic bags. Then there are the food miles that we are all being bashed around the head with and in my case it doesn't have to be food miles by air for peas from tanzania etc but the 8 miles I did in the gas guzzler car yesterday. Because it's a v6 it pumps out 268g of CO2 per km driven. 8 miles is roughly 12.832 Km so on my little soujourn to the shop yesterday I pumped out 3.438976 kg of CO2........BUT I SAVED SOME PLASTIC BAGS..
I guess there has to be a compromise somewhere but it seems the deeper you go into the actual mechanics of saving the planet that these compromises depend on your particular interests such as zero waste to landfill or no burning fossil fuels for heating or renewable energy. The one thing that is very obvious to me as I go on this month is that you can't save the planet without it costing you money on a personal level.
Also whilst in Asda I forgot to get the dogs mince so I had to go back in the evening to get that so not really that sucessfull of a day.
January 6th.
As an update to the price of the milk I was writing about on the 1st of January I finally got a response today. Apparently we do have a milkman who serves my area... he comes from the Middlesborough depot which is about 15 miles away at the closest and they do have doorstep deliveries in 1 pint glass bottles.......AT 62 PENCE A PINT I mean come on, I know saving the planet costs money but my house go through around 3 pints of milk a day so that's 21 pints a week and it currently costs me £1.53 for 4 pints in plastic bottles. for the same 4 pints delivered in glass bottles it would cost me £2.48 or comparisons for a week being £8.03 for asda in plastic or £13.02 a week in glass.....
Ok then 101 uses for a plastic 4 pint milk bottle... start your answers here.....
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Why do we bother?
Why do we bother to be "green " or "Self sufficient" ? I was watching the recent panorama programme about open cast coal mining and the idea that the government has welched on their original plans to deny open cast pits planning permission. Also they have gone from a stance of no nuclear power to selling the nuke plants to a foreign country in order to build more nuke plants. Coming from hartlepool we have a vested interest in this debate as we have a nuke plant which is the sister plant of heysham and torness nuke plants.
Why do we bother trying to do our bit to reduce, reuse, recycle when we have a government who goes back on thier principles because the industries can lobby louder than the rest of us?
I continue because it's a way of life now for me and one I'm enjoying. I make no grand claims of saving the world now as I only scratch the surface of the green movement now by growing my own fruit and, reduce my reliance on the "big 6" power companies, and look at alternative uses for everything I own ready for when it's "regular"life runs out.
Why do you continue to do the good thing and be greener etc?
Why do we bother trying to do our bit to reduce, reuse, recycle when we have a government who goes back on thier principles because the industries can lobby louder than the rest of us?
I continue because it's a way of life now for me and one I'm enjoying. I make no grand claims of saving the world now as I only scratch the surface of the green movement now by growing my own fruit and, reduce my reliance on the "big 6" power companies, and look at alternative uses for everything I own ready for when it's "regular"life runs out.
Why do you continue to do the good thing and be greener etc?
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Well that's Christmas over with.....
Well that's Christmas over with.....
Well the preparation is over with more or less. For the first time I'm all prepped for Christmas. I don't know what it is but it's certainly a change from about 10 years ago. then I would refuse to do anything until Christmas eve. Buying presents, writing cards, buying food and drink etc all was to be done on Christmas eve. It wasn't that I hated Christmas, far from it I LOVED IT ! I loved the fight in the shops, the arguing, fighting over the last bottle of perfume for the wife, the last power ranger toy for the bairn, the last bag of spuds for the dinner... I loved it... or was it the stress of all the fighting, the arguing and then the sheer satisfaction that I got the last of whatever it was I wanted over the other poor soul that was after the same present? Looking back it was probably the latter I loved and not Christmas per say.
Now I'm a more cultured person, a more relaxed person and a happier one if I must admit to it. Still this year I'm well prepared although still got a couple of things to make and if my wife is reading this then all will be revealed on Christmas Day, ha ha, ha. ( I've banned her from certain parts of the house where I have bits stashed.)
Well the preparation is over with more or less. For the first time I'm all prepped for Christmas. I don't know what it is but it's certainly a change from about 10 years ago. then I would refuse to do anything until Christmas eve. Buying presents, writing cards, buying food and drink etc all was to be done on Christmas eve. It wasn't that I hated Christmas, far from it I LOVED IT ! I loved the fight in the shops, the arguing, fighting over the last bottle of perfume for the wife, the last power ranger toy for the bairn, the last bag of spuds for the dinner... I loved it... or was it the stress of all the fighting, the arguing and then the sheer satisfaction that I got the last of whatever it was I wanted over the other poor soul that was after the same present? Looking back it was probably the latter I loved and not Christmas per say.
Now I'm a more cultured person, a more relaxed person and a happier one if I must admit to it. Still this year I'm well prepared although still got a couple of things to make and if my wife is reading this then all will be revealed on Christmas Day, ha ha, ha. ( I've banned her from certain parts of the house where I have bits stashed.)
Monday, December 15, 2008
Recipies
To become more self sufficient and as a way of providing for my family I need to be able to cook, clean and turn my hand to most things in order to cut down on the cost of employing someone to do the tasks for me. sometimes the tasks are too difficult or dangerous for me but one thing I can do well is cook. Here are a few of my recipies that I use and also links to other sites that have good advice and recipies on.
These recipies are offered here only as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed, you are not allergic to any of the ingredients or practices and you make yourself happy to follow these guidlines.
Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....
This page will be constantly updated as my blog progresses.
Bread.
the recipe is as follows,
1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water
Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.
Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.
Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.
These recipies are offered here only as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed, you are not allergic to any of the ingredients or practices and you make yourself happy to follow these guidlines.
Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....
This page will be constantly updated as my blog progresses.
Bread.
the recipe is as follows,
1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water
Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.
Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.
Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.
What goes around comes around......
"The country faces grave economic difficulties and the likelihood of severe shortages. Unemployment, soaring food prices, chemically adulterated foods and the increasing dehumanisation of our society have all contributed to a growing awareness of the need to be more self reliant; to grow more of our own food and to make fewer demands on a state which can no longer cope with the needs of it's citizens......."
Seed companies have seen a 40% rise in vegetable seed sales in the last 2 years and a decrease in flower seeds.
Some Allotment sites have waiting lists up to 20 years long.
People don't trust government to keep them safe and healthy now.
which ever way you look at it people are starting to become scared of the future. I thought I was a bit weird when I decided on the road to be more self sufficient year on year but the more i read, the more I look on the net, the more I think about self sufficiency it makes realise that I'm not weird, I'm not on my own and I do have skills that can be of use in the 21st century. Skills that can't write computer codes or skills that can't make money on the stock market but skills that will enable my family and me eat, drink and be warm in a sheltered place. I'm scared of the future but hopefully I will be able to help others make the change if they want.
As for the opening statement which is so apt for today's society were actually written in 1975 as an editorial in the new magazine called practical self sufficiency later to be known as country small holding.
I was only 14 back in 1975 and although we lived in a poor household we were happy. We had patched up clothes and hand me downs although my mam never went as far as making me wear my sisters dresses but, if classed today, we were in a low socio economic bracket but we had food on the plate each night and fire in the hearth and we were happy.
Today, we are better off as food is plentifull and power is readily available for us although we have had hard times in the last 2 years and costs seem to go up all the time.
With the government spending all this money on Iraq and Afghanistan, the banks and city bail outs I can see it going back to the same way we were in the 70's only this time people will not be happy and unrest is possible.
You might discount these as ramblings of a madman but mark my words, mark my words.
Seed companies have seen a 40% rise in vegetable seed sales in the last 2 years and a decrease in flower seeds.
Some Allotment sites have waiting lists up to 20 years long.
People don't trust government to keep them safe and healthy now.
which ever way you look at it people are starting to become scared of the future. I thought I was a bit weird when I decided on the road to be more self sufficient year on year but the more i read, the more I look on the net, the more I think about self sufficiency it makes realise that I'm not weird, I'm not on my own and I do have skills that can be of use in the 21st century. Skills that can't write computer codes or skills that can't make money on the stock market but skills that will enable my family and me eat, drink and be warm in a sheltered place. I'm scared of the future but hopefully I will be able to help others make the change if they want.
As for the opening statement which is so apt for today's society were actually written in 1975 as an editorial in the new magazine called practical self sufficiency later to be known as country small holding.
I was only 14 back in 1975 and although we lived in a poor household we were happy. We had patched up clothes and hand me downs although my mam never went as far as making me wear my sisters dresses but, if classed today, we were in a low socio economic bracket but we had food on the plate each night and fire in the hearth and we were happy.
Today, we are better off as food is plentifull and power is readily available for us although we have had hard times in the last 2 years and costs seem to go up all the time.
With the government spending all this money on Iraq and Afghanistan, the banks and city bail outs I can see it going back to the same way we were in the 70's only this time people will not be happy and unrest is possible.
You might discount these as ramblings of a madman but mark my words, mark my words.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
food 2
I made some bread again yesterday. not everyday as the body won't take it now and i don't get the hang of the bread maker. I've tried shed loads of recipes, different combinations of putting in the constituents such as salt first then yeast, salt then sugar then yeast etc but all to no avail. Sure it's edible but it's not like "what your mother used to make" etc.
Anyway i experimented with adding vitamin C to the mix and it seemed to work really well, so well I've got orders from my wife to make some more tomorrow. The only vitamin C I could find was in some Halliborange tablets in Asda so I used them. The colouring is from beetroot so although it looks a bit purple when you use them it doesn't turn the bread purple, thankfully.
The texture was soft and springy with no holes in it. The crust was dark brown as i left it in a bit too long without turning it around in the oven, so much for a fan assisted oven that evens out the temperature..... It had risen very well and really tasted nice, I mean REALLY NICE... in fact it was better than my mother made,lol.
One other thing I done was after the first rising i knocked it back and then put it in a greased bowl covered with cling film ans left it in the fridge for 24 hours before knocking it back a second time then putting it in the tins for a final rising.
The reason for the fridge was simply that i was too knackered to carry on so rather than waste the dough I reckoned it would be OK in the fridge although I did think the yeast might be killed off with the temperature and thus we might have sour dough bread.... whatever that is.
I've since seen that it can improve the bread by leaving it in the fridge overnight or for 24 hours so I got away with that one. In another article I've read it tells you to bake your bread on a "stone" even in a conventional oven so this must be something like the old stone ovens the older artisan bakers used to use prior to modern set ups.
Still the recipe is as follows,
1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water
Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.
Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.
Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.
This is how I make bread and only offered here as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed. Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....
Anyway i experimented with adding vitamin C to the mix and it seemed to work really well, so well I've got orders from my wife to make some more tomorrow. The only vitamin C I could find was in some Halliborange tablets in Asda so I used them. The colouring is from beetroot so although it looks a bit purple when you use them it doesn't turn the bread purple, thankfully.
The texture was soft and springy with no holes in it. The crust was dark brown as i left it in a bit too long without turning it around in the oven, so much for a fan assisted oven that evens out the temperature..... It had risen very well and really tasted nice, I mean REALLY NICE... in fact it was better than my mother made,lol.
One other thing I done was after the first rising i knocked it back and then put it in a greased bowl covered with cling film ans left it in the fridge for 24 hours before knocking it back a second time then putting it in the tins for a final rising.
The reason for the fridge was simply that i was too knackered to carry on so rather than waste the dough I reckoned it would be OK in the fridge although I did think the yeast might be killed off with the temperature and thus we might have sour dough bread.... whatever that is.
I've since seen that it can improve the bread by leaving it in the fridge overnight or for 24 hours so I got away with that one. In another article I've read it tells you to bake your bread on a "stone" even in a conventional oven so this must be something like the old stone ovens the older artisan bakers used to use prior to modern set ups.
Still the recipe is as follows,
1.5kg of strong white flour
1oz of fresh yeast
450ml of tepid water at around 100 deg f
2 tsp salt
1tsp sugar.
2 vit C tablets in the water
Method
Put the vit c tablets and yeast in the water and leave to ferment / bubble
Put the dry ingredients in the bowl and make a well in the middle.
Pour in the water mixture and mix it all together.
Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 - 15 minutes. Leave covered until it doubles in size. Knock it back or knead it again for another 5 minutes then put in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in fridge for up to 24 hours.
Take out and let it return to room temperature for about 2 hours, less if put in an airing cupboard etc.
Knock back again when at room temp and cut into either buns or into pieces that weigh around 800g. Put into tins and cover with a tea towel to rise. When risen bake in a hot oven about gas mark 7 ( 6 for fan assisted) for 35 - 40 minutes. Should sound hollow when knocked on bottom of bread.
This is how I make bread and only offered here as a guideline. You should make sure for your self that all necessary food hygiene practises are followed. Basically this disclaimer means if you get the squits don't blame me.....
Ev... it just might work..
I've been put in touch with a website of a company that make all sorts of low tourque DC motors etc for all sorts of applications from transport to industry and everything in between. They also do converters, regulators and battery packs etc so if one company can sort all that out as a matched kit then Im well happy....
I bought a copy of Mother Earth News today. A homesteading / self sufficiency type magazine from the USA and i was also bowled over by that. With the world having to suffer the last 8 years of George W I seemed to get conditioned into thinknig that all Americans were gas guzzling drivers living in concrete appartments not talking to neighbours etc but this magazine shows that there is life expectancy after George W......
I bought a copy of Mother Earth News today. A homesteading / self sufficiency type magazine from the USA and i was also bowled over by that. With the world having to suffer the last 8 years of George W I seemed to get conditioned into thinknig that all Americans were gas guzzling drivers living in concrete appartments not talking to neighbours etc but this magazine shows that there is life expectancy after George W......
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
EV ........ That's an electric vehicle to you and me....
I get myself into all sorts of trouble by thinking, at least that's what my wife will say,lol !!!
I was in the car, a gas guzzling 14 mpg round town Omega 2.6 v6 monster the other day sat at a traffic lights / roadworks que and the petrol computer was ticking down rather fast and I got thinking.... what will we do without petrol?
I know I'm become more green and in a sustainable way rather than my last attempt years ago but I've always had petrol engined cars. I don't think I've owned any really economical petrol engines in my whole life. i once had a mini that was balanced, lightened and blueprinted and would do 7 miles to the gallon when the carb, a Reece Fische was set to economy but boy would it go. Talk about shit off a shovel this little monster was ( allegedly) the fastest car in Hartlepool and could easily destroy a 5.3 ltr mustang.... allegedly.
I've had a Capri with a modded engine, a triumph that ran on methanol and petrol but would need the valves replaced every 2000 miles, a Cortina with a 356CI Chevy engine in it so you can see I've never really given much of a thought to fuel economy but as I approach 50 and become more intuitive to my surroundings I realise that if we are to keep using petrol then we will be paying a lot of money for it. To that end I've decided not to restore my 1968 mkii jaguar so if anyone wants it i only want £600 for it and it's all stripped down ready for a bit of welding. give me an email if you are interested.
I don't go out of town much and if i do there is buses to do that. Also if I follow pools away there will always be a seat on a coach or a space in the back of a van for that so I'm sat in this Que thinking why am I driving a 14mpg car, all be it a nice, comfortable, fast, spacious car with full leather, air con, electric package... ( petrol head mode ) when I can get to build a fast economical EV that will get me round town, do the shopping, take the dog to the beach and also be a poser in a different type of car.
Anyway when the jag goes I will have an empty garage so i am going to build an EV starting next year. If anyone reading this has an Ev or any interesting web pages on Ev's then can you let me into the secret please by emailing me.
I don't know how much it will cost, what components are used or anything but I do know the panels will be fibreglass and painted in cherry red metal flake. I might also pay homage to slipknot and Metallica in the painting but there again blue and white has always been a popular set of colours... would you believe it, Hartlepool United FC play in blue and white.....
....... 2B cont.........
I was in the car, a gas guzzling 14 mpg round town Omega 2.6 v6 monster the other day sat at a traffic lights / roadworks que and the petrol computer was ticking down rather fast and I got thinking.... what will we do without petrol?
I know I'm become more green and in a sustainable way rather than my last attempt years ago but I've always had petrol engined cars. I don't think I've owned any really economical petrol engines in my whole life. i once had a mini that was balanced, lightened and blueprinted and would do 7 miles to the gallon when the carb, a Reece Fische was set to economy but boy would it go. Talk about shit off a shovel this little monster was ( allegedly) the fastest car in Hartlepool and could easily destroy a 5.3 ltr mustang.... allegedly.
I've had a Capri with a modded engine, a triumph that ran on methanol and petrol but would need the valves replaced every 2000 miles, a Cortina with a 356CI Chevy engine in it so you can see I've never really given much of a thought to fuel economy but as I approach 50 and become more intuitive to my surroundings I realise that if we are to keep using petrol then we will be paying a lot of money for it. To that end I've decided not to restore my 1968 mkii jaguar so if anyone wants it i only want £600 for it and it's all stripped down ready for a bit of welding. give me an email if you are interested.
I don't go out of town much and if i do there is buses to do that. Also if I follow pools away there will always be a seat on a coach or a space in the back of a van for that so I'm sat in this Que thinking why am I driving a 14mpg car, all be it a nice, comfortable, fast, spacious car with full leather, air con, electric package... ( petrol head mode ) when I can get to build a fast economical EV that will get me round town, do the shopping, take the dog to the beach and also be a poser in a different type of car.
Anyway when the jag goes I will have an empty garage so i am going to build an EV starting next year. If anyone reading this has an Ev or any interesting web pages on Ev's then can you let me into the secret please by emailing me.
I don't know how much it will cost, what components are used or anything but I do know the panels will be fibreglass and painted in cherry red metal flake. I might also pay homage to slipknot and Metallica in the painting but there again blue and white has always been a popular set of colours... would you believe it, Hartlepool United FC play in blue and white.....
....... 2B cont.........
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
food
Ok so it was cold on sunday..... Just right to get out in the garden and pull the last of the cauliflowers. These were really only baby cauli's and were about 2" across but were very sweet. I also got to pull up the leaves and soas not to waste anything where possible I cut the stalks out and shredded the green leaves of the cauli plants and blanched a couple of caulinders full. I froze these in freezer bags and in total got about 2 pounds of greens before the pain in my back and arms got to be to unbearable. The remaining leaves and stalks went next door to my neighbour for his rabbits to eat. The leaves I had blanched are now ready to add body to stocks and soups, also as the cabbage type element in bubble and squeek and indeed as greens for the dinner plate.
The upshot of this is that the ground is now clear and ready for my wife ot make some deep beds this weekend as i really need to get my garlic and shallots into the ground. I know they should be planted on the shortest day ( 21st of December) and lifted on the longest day of June 21st but if i can get them in next week then all the better.
I'm off next week also to get my chickens for the christmas shenanigans. I buy Cob ross chickens reared by a bloke called David Knipe who farms in the lythe valley in cumbria. Oh man if you love chicken then find out which farmers market he is attending and go see the chicken man !!
The upshot of this is that the ground is now clear and ready for my wife ot make some deep beds this weekend as i really need to get my garlic and shallots into the ground. I know they should be planted on the shortest day ( 21st of December) and lifted on the longest day of June 21st but if i can get them in next week then all the better.
I'm off next week also to get my chickens for the christmas shenanigans. I buy Cob ross chickens reared by a bloke called David Knipe who farms in the lythe valley in cumbria. Oh man if you love chicken then find out which farmers market he is attending and go see the chicken man !!
Friday, December 5, 2008
What is "being Green" or "Environmentally friendly".
This missive has been prompted by other postings I've seen on forums I'm in so it's not a new idea but one that has got me thinking again.
So what is being green really about? Is it something that you have to do or is it a lifestyle thing? How hard is it and can you opt out for a bit?
For me being green is hard, damn hard. I was a tee total, celibate, vegetarian Buddhist greenie back in the early 90's and a very committed some say militant one at that which was extremely hard work and after 9 years everything fell apart, mentally and physically and my wife got a husband back all be it a car owning beer drinking swearing couldn't give a toss type of person.
Since then I've got a lot more mellow in my old age and in the last 3 years I've became a born again greenie but this time I'm not chaining myself to railway lines to stop nuclear waste moving for re processing etc.
However being a greenie has it's drawbacks. I mean it's hard work trying to get through to a 16 year old shop assistant that you don't want a plastic bag for the carrots and another for the apples, courgettes, bananas etc. It's also hard when you are buying a cucumber and get thrown out of the shop for removing the plastic coating and giving it to the shop manager to dispose of.
Why don't shops provide paper bags for the fresh produce? They do it for mushrooms so why not everything? Carrier bags, why do they have to be strong plastic? A bag for life can be made from cloth just as easy as plastic... I've made several bags from old pillar cases and duvet covers. One which my wife snaffled away was made out of a pair of jeans.....
Why do local councils insist on you putting out all the recyclable items in separate boxes and bags then the collectors proceed to put them all in one side of the bin waggon.
In years gone buy you shopped local and didn't need to recycle because everything was fresh. you bought things you needed from separate shops. you bought cloth from a haberdashery, paper, cellotape etc from a stationers, fish from a fishmongers, meat from a butchers who had probably slaughtered the beast in the back of the shop so you knew it was fresh.... not now, convenience is the game and Te£$o is the name. Mind you it's not the total fault of these big companies because i fear we have become more lazy in the last 20 years or so. A lot will say it's because women have to go out to work to help pay the mortgage..... why do you have to own a house? why can there not be much more social housing?
I remeber living in a street house and everyone knew everyone else and looked after each other. Now you get up go out of the house into the car go to work come home in the car and go in the house probably without speaking to anyone on the way to or from work......
Is it green for a rich person to pay a lot of money "to be green" or is being green more ethical if done on a shoestring? For instance if a rich person pays say £40,000 for an electric car is that being green er than a person who has not got much money and has to use the bus? both could be classed as being green but which one is greener?
I feel being green is a lifestyle change just the same way as it is going from full fat milk to skimmed milk or 3 sugars to none. One of the greatest jolts to the system I have had recently was to actually look in my wheelie bin and see what was there. I lost a bearing and I knew it was in the bin via the hoover so i emptied the bin out in the back yard. Thankfully there was no dog waste or food waste but masses and masses of plastic wrappers from various bits we had bought. Just out of curiosity I weighed all the plastic and it came to 2.95 kg..... 6and a half pounds of plastic that our council don't take for recycling because " they would have to send it to Cheshire" 3kg a fortnight ( don't get me on about 2 weekly collections" 72kg a year from one house on average.... 39,000 houses in my town.......
2B cont,.,
So what is being green really about? Is it something that you have to do or is it a lifestyle thing? How hard is it and can you opt out for a bit?
For me being green is hard, damn hard. I was a tee total, celibate, vegetarian Buddhist greenie back in the early 90's and a very committed some say militant one at that which was extremely hard work and after 9 years everything fell apart, mentally and physically and my wife got a husband back all be it a car owning beer drinking swearing couldn't give a toss type of person.
Since then I've got a lot more mellow in my old age and in the last 3 years I've became a born again greenie but this time I'm not chaining myself to railway lines to stop nuclear waste moving for re processing etc.
However being a greenie has it's drawbacks. I mean it's hard work trying to get through to a 16 year old shop assistant that you don't want a plastic bag for the carrots and another for the apples, courgettes, bananas etc. It's also hard when you are buying a cucumber and get thrown out of the shop for removing the plastic coating and giving it to the shop manager to dispose of.
Why don't shops provide paper bags for the fresh produce? They do it for mushrooms so why not everything? Carrier bags, why do they have to be strong plastic? A bag for life can be made from cloth just as easy as plastic... I've made several bags from old pillar cases and duvet covers. One which my wife snaffled away was made out of a pair of jeans.....
Why do local councils insist on you putting out all the recyclable items in separate boxes and bags then the collectors proceed to put them all in one side of the bin waggon.
In years gone buy you shopped local and didn't need to recycle because everything was fresh. you bought things you needed from separate shops. you bought cloth from a haberdashery, paper, cellotape etc from a stationers, fish from a fishmongers, meat from a butchers who had probably slaughtered the beast in the back of the shop so you knew it was fresh.... not now, convenience is the game and Te£$o is the name. Mind you it's not the total fault of these big companies because i fear we have become more lazy in the last 20 years or so. A lot will say it's because women have to go out to work to help pay the mortgage..... why do you have to own a house? why can there not be much more social housing?
I remeber living in a street house and everyone knew everyone else and looked after each other. Now you get up go out of the house into the car go to work come home in the car and go in the house probably without speaking to anyone on the way to or from work......
Is it green for a rich person to pay a lot of money "to be green" or is being green more ethical if done on a shoestring? For instance if a rich person pays say £40,000 for an electric car is that being green er than a person who has not got much money and has to use the bus? both could be classed as being green but which one is greener?
I feel being green is a lifestyle change just the same way as it is going from full fat milk to skimmed milk or 3 sugars to none. One of the greatest jolts to the system I have had recently was to actually look in my wheelie bin and see what was there. I lost a bearing and I knew it was in the bin via the hoover so i emptied the bin out in the back yard. Thankfully there was no dog waste or food waste but masses and masses of plastic wrappers from various bits we had bought. Just out of curiosity I weighed all the plastic and it came to 2.95 kg..... 6and a half pounds of plastic that our council don't take for recycling because " they would have to send it to Cheshire" 3kg a fortnight ( don't get me on about 2 weekly collections" 72kg a year from one house on average.... 39,000 houses in my town.......
2B cont,.,
Thursday, December 4, 2008
the wonders of the internet
How the world has changed since I were a lad.........
This Internet thingy isn't half good you know....... apart from all this blogging malarky you can buy all sorts of things on t'intenet.....
I've waited a long time to see knickelback and each time they have been over here I've been unable to see them, mainly due to money and the fact that the didn't venture up to the darkest north east like. Anyway, now just found out that they will be at Newcastle in May 09 so the Internet has enabled me to buy 3 tickets for this great band. Also on the use of the Internet, another band appearing in Newcastle this weekend is Black stone cherry.... I think there is some clips on the video bar of BSC so why not hover he mouse over one of the pictures and click when you see BSC appear.... and rock the time away.
This Internet thingy isn't half good you know....... apart from all this blogging malarky you can buy all sorts of things on t'intenet.....
I've waited a long time to see knickelback and each time they have been over here I've been unable to see them, mainly due to money and the fact that the didn't venture up to the darkest north east like. Anyway, now just found out that they will be at Newcastle in May 09 so the Internet has enabled me to buy 3 tickets for this great band. Also on the use of the Internet, another band appearing in Newcastle this weekend is Black stone cherry.... I think there is some clips on the video bar of BSC so why not hover he mouse over one of the pictures and click when you see BSC appear.... and rock the time away.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
winter has arrived.... again
By goodness it was cold last night. We took the dog round the block about 7 pm and it was icy cold, cutting wind that must have taken the wind chill down a few pegs that's for sure. Safely back at home we kept warm all night but when we woke this morning there was a deep layer of snow on the floor. I say deep, it was all of 2 inches but in these climatic changing times that was deep compared with the last 15 years or so.
I took my wife to work today in the car, i know a softy at heart but that's me... anyway trying to get the car off the drive and up the bank was a trifle difficult as it normally is in bad weather and driving in the snow made me think of the future and how my disability would be affected in bad weather.
Still it got me thinking... as I do and as I'm well on the way to a wheelchair now and I'm one of these cantankerous types who if told to do something chooses to do something different. Like for instance i was "advised" to start looking at using one of these granny scooters to get round town on. I mean, A granny scooter.... I'd much rather have a quad bike to tear up the shopping centre in rather than a GS....
So having a bit of time to day dream I got to thinking about building one of these disability scooters only doing one that could be environmentally friendly and give me some fun racing cars. So I set about looking at getting a cheap granny scooter and replacing the motor etc with a golf buggy motor as these can't half shift and if they can take on the hills and ditches of a golf course then they could take on the potholes in my town. I'd also be able to get into the shopping centres / malls and have some wheelie good fun there.
Anyway, plans went into dreams and eventually over the days to come whilst looking on the net for golf buggy motors I came across this site www.neurotikart.com Whoa what fun.....
All I need now is to sort out some solar panels and I'm good to go..... a 60 mph ecological granny scooter........
I took my wife to work today in the car, i know a softy at heart but that's me... anyway trying to get the car off the drive and up the bank was a trifle difficult as it normally is in bad weather and driving in the snow made me think of the future and how my disability would be affected in bad weather.
Still it got me thinking... as I do and as I'm well on the way to a wheelchair now and I'm one of these cantankerous types who if told to do something chooses to do something different. Like for instance i was "advised" to start looking at using one of these granny scooters to get round town on. I mean, A granny scooter.... I'd much rather have a quad bike to tear up the shopping centre in rather than a GS....
So having a bit of time to day dream I got to thinking about building one of these disability scooters only doing one that could be environmentally friendly and give me some fun racing cars. So I set about looking at getting a cheap granny scooter and replacing the motor etc with a golf buggy motor as these can't half shift and if they can take on the hills and ditches of a golf course then they could take on the potholes in my town. I'd also be able to get into the shopping centres / malls and have some wheelie good fun there.
Anyway, plans went into dreams and eventually over the days to come whilst looking on the net for golf buggy motors I came across this site www.neurotikart.com Whoa what fun.....
All I need now is to sort out some solar panels and I'm good to go..... a 60 mph ecological granny scooter........
Monday, December 1, 2008
cutting down on electric.
I've been asked how i have reduced my amount of electric I use so here are a few of the things I have done. Some worked some didn't but here goes. I don't want to teach granny to suck eggs so if you are doing these things please bear with me.
Firstly learn how much electric you use and how much this is costing you.
I do this by taking daily meter readings of the gas and electric.I call this my "power diary" I can then tell how much I've used in the previous 24 hours. I tend to do this as I get up so it's now a matter of routine where I get up, get washed, go down stairs read meters do breakfast and bait for the wife and then start the daily chores.... I'm a house husband see.
It's a good idea to do a "power diary" and you can go further by doing an hourly power diary. it gets on your partners nerves but after a few days they "understand".
In a power diary I wrote my daily meter readings and in the hourly version I would write the meter readings immediately before i say... put the oven on then when I switched it off I would take another reading and work out how many units per hour of use the oven was costing. I would then do my cooking in batch form and freeze a lot of it for the following week thus using the full oven. After use I'd then open the oven door so the heat would "escape" into the house and not out into the vents to outside.
Once you know these figures you can go about reducing them. I started off in June with around 24 kwh per day and got that down to 18 then even further to now in November I was using an average of 8.56 kwh per day. The first half of the month the average was actually 7.6 but then we had the workmen in with their power tools so it's gone up a bit by the end of the month.
Once you know the units you are using you can check each individual appliance with
the aid of one of these meters that you can either plug into the socket and then the appliance into the meter or a second type clips onto you main in feed cable and that tells you what you are using. The idea is then to go around your house and switch everything off. Then switch one item on and take a reading, switch it off and do the next item etc.
I found this tedious and it lasted about 5 minutes and 3 appliances before it went out of the window and being of an age when I was able to Learn maths at school I was able to calculate the average use over 24 hours. Say a 100w incandescent bulb could get 10 hours for 1 kw or unit of electricity. So to run this bulb for 10 hours would cost me 11 pence inc vat. However if I used a 20w energy saving bulb i could run that one for 50 hours for 11 pence. It then became a game to see how much I could alter and by using an 11w low energy bulb I could get nearly 91 hours for my 11 pence.
Some things can't be switched off or altered such as the house alarm and other security features. However those 500w security lights can now use low energy bulbs of 24 w. We went away for a few days so I switched everything off that could be switched off and the background useage for the likes of the fridge, freezer, house alarm and satellite / cable box was about 4.7 units a day. Late on in the year we went away again for a couple of days so I switched off the fridge and freezer and the background electric was 1.2 units a day so the fridge and freezer used about 3.5 units a day which is quite a lot apparently. They are over 10 years old and are under counter jobbies so this will account for some extra use. Having researched this I am told that under counter is the worst place as there is little or no circulation so heat builds up and this causes the cooler to work extra. I plan to take the fridge and freezer out of the work benches an stack them on top of each other to see if this makes a difference. If not the next step would be to look for an A rated or A+ rated FF.
I switch off all the lights as much as i can, i use candle light in the bath. My explanation to the wife is it's relaxing but really it is saving electric, lol. I don't automatically put the telly on, i switch the clocks off on ovens and microwaves. it's been reported recently that we use more energy having the clock display on a microwave that we do cooking the food. It's not hard to flick a switch to put the microwave on like any other electrical appliance. I've learnt that the fan in this computer is rated at 333watts so I can have this on for 3 hours for one unit of elecy or I can use my laptop for 8 hours for the same unit.
We used to use the hoover to clean crumbs up in the kitchen now we use a soft bristle brush and a dust pan. Actually it was a better idea but it also saves electric.
Because I'm on ebico as my power supplier and i pay 11.31 pence per unit for electric inc vat my cost of electric for October was £27.32 and November £29.11 corresponding gas was £44.49 and £64.67.
I pay £50 each month for each supply so now I know that in the last 2 months I've used £111 on gas and £57 on electric so I'm going to phone the power company up and reduce my electric DD thus keeping money in my account rather than give them interest.Edit note:: This I've done today, 02.12.08 and reduced my electric to £30.00 and increased my gas to £60.00.
Gas is much the same as the electric. I went about checking the units it used to run a full bath of hot water and worked out a costing from that. It was something like £2.20 and i have a hot bath every night. I changed my habits from running a full hot bath and then waiting an hour and a half for it to cool down ( playing on the computer really) to running a 1/4 bath with hot water, putting in cold water and getting in straight away. alternatively get in whilst the bath is running and it saves more hot water. I've actually got the cost of a bath down to 51 pence now so I can have a hot bath 7 nights a week for the cost of 2 previously.
A lot of people will say it's being a miser or they couldn't be bothered but when I say my power bill is going to be around £1020 this year down from over £1700 last year they look shocked and ask how it is possible..... so I tell them.
..... It also reduces your carbon footprint if that is important to you.......
Firstly learn how much electric you use and how much this is costing you.
I do this by taking daily meter readings of the gas and electric.I call this my "power diary" I can then tell how much I've used in the previous 24 hours. I tend to do this as I get up so it's now a matter of routine where I get up, get washed, go down stairs read meters do breakfast and bait for the wife and then start the daily chores.... I'm a house husband see.
It's a good idea to do a "power diary" and you can go further by doing an hourly power diary. it gets on your partners nerves but after a few days they "understand".
In a power diary I wrote my daily meter readings and in the hourly version I would write the meter readings immediately before i say... put the oven on then when I switched it off I would take another reading and work out how many units per hour of use the oven was costing. I would then do my cooking in batch form and freeze a lot of it for the following week thus using the full oven. After use I'd then open the oven door so the heat would "escape" into the house and not out into the vents to outside.
Once you know these figures you can go about reducing them. I started off in June with around 24 kwh per day and got that down to 18 then even further to now in November I was using an average of 8.56 kwh per day. The first half of the month the average was actually 7.6 but then we had the workmen in with their power tools so it's gone up a bit by the end of the month.
Once you know the units you are using you can check each individual appliance with
the aid of one of these meters that you can either plug into the socket and then the appliance into the meter or a second type clips onto you main in feed cable and that tells you what you are using. The idea is then to go around your house and switch everything off. Then switch one item on and take a reading, switch it off and do the next item etc.
I found this tedious and it lasted about 5 minutes and 3 appliances before it went out of the window and being of an age when I was able to Learn maths at school I was able to calculate the average use over 24 hours. Say a 100w incandescent bulb could get 10 hours for 1 kw or unit of electricity. So to run this bulb for 10 hours would cost me 11 pence inc vat. However if I used a 20w energy saving bulb i could run that one for 50 hours for 11 pence. It then became a game to see how much I could alter and by using an 11w low energy bulb I could get nearly 91 hours for my 11 pence.
Some things can't be switched off or altered such as the house alarm and other security features. However those 500w security lights can now use low energy bulbs of 24 w. We went away for a few days so I switched everything off that could be switched off and the background useage for the likes of the fridge, freezer, house alarm and satellite / cable box was about 4.7 units a day. Late on in the year we went away again for a couple of days so I switched off the fridge and freezer and the background electric was 1.2 units a day so the fridge and freezer used about 3.5 units a day which is quite a lot apparently. They are over 10 years old and are under counter jobbies so this will account for some extra use. Having researched this I am told that under counter is the worst place as there is little or no circulation so heat builds up and this causes the cooler to work extra. I plan to take the fridge and freezer out of the work benches an stack them on top of each other to see if this makes a difference. If not the next step would be to look for an A rated or A+ rated FF.
I switch off all the lights as much as i can, i use candle light in the bath. My explanation to the wife is it's relaxing but really it is saving electric, lol. I don't automatically put the telly on, i switch the clocks off on ovens and microwaves. it's been reported recently that we use more energy having the clock display on a microwave that we do cooking the food. It's not hard to flick a switch to put the microwave on like any other electrical appliance. I've learnt that the fan in this computer is rated at 333watts so I can have this on for 3 hours for one unit of elecy or I can use my laptop for 8 hours for the same unit.
We used to use the hoover to clean crumbs up in the kitchen now we use a soft bristle brush and a dust pan. Actually it was a better idea but it also saves electric.
Because I'm on ebico as my power supplier and i pay 11.31 pence per unit for electric inc vat my cost of electric for October was £27.32 and November £29.11 corresponding gas was £44.49 and £64.67.
I pay £50 each month for each supply so now I know that in the last 2 months I've used £111 on gas and £57 on electric so I'm going to phone the power company up and reduce my electric DD thus keeping money in my account rather than give them interest.Edit note:: This I've done today, 02.12.08 and reduced my electric to £30.00 and increased my gas to £60.00.
Gas is much the same as the electric. I went about checking the units it used to run a full bath of hot water and worked out a costing from that. It was something like £2.20 and i have a hot bath every night. I changed my habits from running a full hot bath and then waiting an hour and a half for it to cool down ( playing on the computer really) to running a 1/4 bath with hot water, putting in cold water and getting in straight away. alternatively get in whilst the bath is running and it saves more hot water. I've actually got the cost of a bath down to 51 pence now so I can have a hot bath 7 nights a week for the cost of 2 previously.
A lot of people will say it's being a miser or they couldn't be bothered but when I say my power bill is going to be around £1020 this year down from over £1700 last year they look shocked and ask how it is possible..... so I tell them.
Publish Post
..... It also reduces your carbon footprint if that is important to you.......
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
making sense of things
I got to thinking today whilst the decorators were in and I had nothing to do and i was thinking what pure, total self sufficiency would be like. Indeed what is self sufficiency ? I want to be self sufficient and this came about because of the power companies taking up for a ride and the government not having the balls to do anything about it. In France EDF is the major supplier of power. It is 51% government owned. The French government will not allow competition in the utility sector and EDF are only allowed to increase prices by the rate of inflation so I'm led to believe.
In Britain, EDF is a major player in the power game and can raise prices by what they want. Are we in Britain subsidising the French power system ??
Anyway, what is self sufficiency?
To me it would be total Independence from everything and everybody. You would be self sufficient in power, food production, transport and housing. This is not every one's idea of SS but for now lets expand on these ideas.
1, Total Independence of the power companies.
To achieve this you would certainly need to be all electric as you cannot produce your own gas. (we will come to wood soon) Well you can but that's just because you ate too many beans and you cannot use methane very well. So to live a 21st century lifestyle with computers, Ipods, TV's et al you will need to have a hefty bank of solar Photovoltaic cells on the roof. The average household uses 4800 kwh of electric per year. I think the average falling on the Uk is 900kwh per year per 1KW panel. Therefore to get 4800 kwhrs out of your system means you will need to install panels to the value of 5.5kws. This would cost in the region of £12000 to £15000 so you would need a lot of roof space also as a basic 130w panel is about 1.2m x 2m so to get 5.5 kw you will need around 43 panels.... quite a roof space indeed and it would need to be facing south.
2, Food production.
Like many people, I like to grow some veg in the back garden but could I become self sufficient from the main shops like T****'s and Asda ? I certainly couldn't keep any animals in the back garden so I would need to become a veggie again ( I was veggie for 9 years until fish and chips summoned me in Whitby one day......
So if I were to become a veggie again what could I grow to keep me healthy all year round. I've done some research and I'd need a garden at least 40 ft long by 80 ft wide and the research offers a proviso that the land would need to be "worked hard" to produce enough to keep a couple and 2 small children.
We have nearly as much garden, ours is 45 x 60 but there are trees, a pond,flower bed and dog running area to think about and we don't have any children at home... well one darling son comes home from Uni every now and then when he has no food but plenty of washing, lol. So, I would be down to 4 deep beds of 6m by 1.2m ( see post below where my wife is going to make these).
So if I had enough land I could be self sufficient in food providing I was veggie and didn't drink milk or eat cheese.... life would cease to exist without cheese.... but then eggs would be a problem so I'd have to keep chickens which, if you read all the magazines is a wonderful thing but cleaning chicken crap out on a morning in December is still cleaning crap out and when they get diseases etc, which even with the best husbandry I suspect they will still get red mite and worms etc they will cost money to cure in either self medication or vets bills. If you buy good stock chickens you are looking at £15 each so for 10 birds you are looking at an outlay of £150 without a house for them, food and other bits needed. I worked it out in the summer and I would need to spend in the region of £800 to set up a 10 bird egg line but then asked how much organic free range eggs cost and to get my initial outlay back I'd need to keep the chickens laying eggs every day of the year for nearly 2 years. In reality the timescale is probably more like 4 years so that's out of the question. As for working the land hard. .. Oh I forgot, I'm quite disabled so working the land hard is out of the question.......
Water
We all need water to survive, no doubt about that but to be totally SS you need your own well or spring water source. I was reading the latest edition of Home Farmer and this excellent magazine has a feature on water supply which was quite revealing. We, or at least I do take water for granted. I turn the tap on and it's there. That's not to say I'm not frugal with it and I have even trained my wife to switch off the tap when brushing her teeth and only taking a 4 minute shower. Although we are not on a water meter yet I'm confident that I could at least save a bit of money if I were to go metered. I'm saving water at the moment and have over 2000 ltr of it ready to fill my garden pond up when I get to clean it out later this month. I was going to sink a large tank into the ground to collect the rainwater properly and then use this for washing the clothes and toilet flushing but money isn't there yet for this project and whilst our mains supply is still quite cheap it makes no sense to swap.
Self Sufficiency is a great idea and one we could all aspire to but one that only a very few could ultimately achieve.
....... to be continued
In Britain, EDF is a major player in the power game and can raise prices by what they want. Are we in Britain subsidising the French power system ??
Anyway, what is self sufficiency?
To me it would be total Independence from everything and everybody. You would be self sufficient in power, food production, transport and housing. This is not every one's idea of SS but for now lets expand on these ideas.
1, Total Independence of the power companies.
To achieve this you would certainly need to be all electric as you cannot produce your own gas. (we will come to wood soon) Well you can but that's just because you ate too many beans and you cannot use methane very well. So to live a 21st century lifestyle with computers, Ipods, TV's et al you will need to have a hefty bank of solar Photovoltaic cells on the roof. The average household uses 4800 kwh of electric per year. I think the average falling on the Uk is 900kwh per year per 1KW panel. Therefore to get 4800 kwhrs out of your system means you will need to install panels to the value of 5.5kws. This would cost in the region of £12000 to £15000 so you would need a lot of roof space also as a basic 130w panel is about 1.2m x 2m so to get 5.5 kw you will need around 43 panels.... quite a roof space indeed and it would need to be facing south.
2, Food production.
Like many people, I like to grow some veg in the back garden but could I become self sufficient from the main shops like T****'s and Asda ? I certainly couldn't keep any animals in the back garden so I would need to become a veggie again ( I was veggie for 9 years until fish and chips summoned me in Whitby one day......
So if I were to become a veggie again what could I grow to keep me healthy all year round. I've done some research and I'd need a garden at least 40 ft long by 80 ft wide and the research offers a proviso that the land would need to be "worked hard" to produce enough to keep a couple and 2 small children.
We have nearly as much garden, ours is 45 x 60 but there are trees, a pond,flower bed and dog running area to think about and we don't have any children at home... well one darling son comes home from Uni every now and then when he has no food but plenty of washing, lol. So, I would be down to 4 deep beds of 6m by 1.2m ( see post below where my wife is going to make these).
So if I had enough land I could be self sufficient in food providing I was veggie and didn't drink milk or eat cheese.... life would cease to exist without cheese.... but then eggs would be a problem so I'd have to keep chickens which, if you read all the magazines is a wonderful thing but cleaning chicken crap out on a morning in December is still cleaning crap out and when they get diseases etc, which even with the best husbandry I suspect they will still get red mite and worms etc they will cost money to cure in either self medication or vets bills. If you buy good stock chickens you are looking at £15 each so for 10 birds you are looking at an outlay of £150 without a house for them, food and other bits needed. I worked it out in the summer and I would need to spend in the region of £800 to set up a 10 bird egg line but then asked how much organic free range eggs cost and to get my initial outlay back I'd need to keep the chickens laying eggs every day of the year for nearly 2 years. In reality the timescale is probably more like 4 years so that's out of the question. As for working the land hard. .. Oh I forgot, I'm quite disabled so working the land hard is out of the question.......
Water
We all need water to survive, no doubt about that but to be totally SS you need your own well or spring water source. I was reading the latest edition of Home Farmer and this excellent magazine has a feature on water supply which was quite revealing. We, or at least I do take water for granted. I turn the tap on and it's there. That's not to say I'm not frugal with it and I have even trained my wife to switch off the tap when brushing her teeth and only taking a 4 minute shower. Although we are not on a water meter yet I'm confident that I could at least save a bit of money if I were to go metered. I'm saving water at the moment and have over 2000 ltr of it ready to fill my garden pond up when I get to clean it out later this month. I was going to sink a large tank into the ground to collect the rainwater properly and then use this for washing the clothes and toilet flushing but money isn't there yet for this project and whilst our mains supply is still quite cheap it makes no sense to swap.
Self Sufficiency is a great idea and one we could all aspire to but one that only a very few could ultimately achieve.
....... to be continued
Monday, November 24, 2008
renovations
For a while now we have needed to have our house renovated. It's served us well over the last 17 years but now it needs updating and revitalising.
So because we want to reduce our dependency on the major power companies we have lagged the floor and outside stair wall as in the blog ...insulation below.
The update of this is that the plasterer has now been and gone, the walls have dried out and the decorator is coming on Thursday followed by the carpet fitter on Friday. Already we have seen a reduction in the amount of gas used and the house is far too hot for my liking at the moment as we have had a new radiator put into the hall. It's a smaller one than the one we have replaced but the output is massively improved so the heat out put is heating all of the hall and stairs.
The rest of the rads have been bled and as I say the house is too hot for me but my wife is what is known locally as a cold arse, lol.
The end of the month is coming soon so I will be able to update my blog on the amount of fuel used and I am hoping that it will be substantially reduced although I must take into account the fact that there have been workmen in and lights, drills and all manner of other tools have been used, many of them using electric.
Once this is done my wife is going to make some deep beds for the garden. She doesn't actually know this yet but when the scaffold boards arrive and I show her how to hold a hammer and nails or even screws and a screwdriver for the posh version she will soon get the hang of it. After that she will also learn how to plant broad beans and garlic........lol.
So because we want to reduce our dependency on the major power companies we have lagged the floor and outside stair wall as in the blog ...insulation below.
The update of this is that the plasterer has now been and gone, the walls have dried out and the decorator is coming on Thursday followed by the carpet fitter on Friday. Already we have seen a reduction in the amount of gas used and the house is far too hot for my liking at the moment as we have had a new radiator put into the hall. It's a smaller one than the one we have replaced but the output is massively improved so the heat out put is heating all of the hall and stairs.
The rest of the rads have been bled and as I say the house is too hot for me but my wife is what is known locally as a cold arse, lol.
The end of the month is coming soon so I will be able to update my blog on the amount of fuel used and I am hoping that it will be substantially reduced although I must take into account the fact that there have been workmen in and lights, drills and all manner of other tools have been used, many of them using electric.
Once this is done my wife is going to make some deep beds for the garden. She doesn't actually know this yet but when the scaffold boards arrive and I show her how to hold a hammer and nails or even screws and a screwdriver for the posh version she will soon get the hang of it. After that she will also learn how to plant broad beans and garlic........lol.
Scared
A few years ago I was walking home from town when two drugged up scroats thought they were more entitled to own my I -pod than I was. The major word here being "thought". I had saved up for a long time to get the money for that I- pod and I was buggered if I was going to give it up to these two who would swap it for a £10 wrap.
Anyway the upshot was that they were both put in hospital and 3 years on one is still on crutches which brings me to the point of this blog message.... I'm being followed.......Yeah !!!!
Not in a bad way of course but on this blog.
Hi Rick and Pat and thank you for following me. Rick and Pat are living the good life in Portugal and long may they continue. I'll delve into your welcoming site more over the weeks and hopefully pick up some pointers as to how to have a great blog like yours.
I'm new to this blogging lark so I don't know what will be of interest to you but I will enjoy being followed this time I'm sure, lol.
Anyway the upshot was that they were both put in hospital and 3 years on one is still on crutches which brings me to the point of this blog message.... I'm being followed.......Yeah !!!!
Not in a bad way of course but on this blog.
Hi Rick and Pat and thank you for following me. Rick and Pat are living the good life in Portugal and long may they continue. I'll delve into your welcoming site more over the weeks and hopefully pick up some pointers as to how to have a great blog like yours.
I'm new to this blogging lark so I don't know what will be of interest to you but I will enjoy being followed this time I'm sure, lol.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Insulation
It's been 13 days since I last blogged...... if that's the correct word nut I've been busy and ill at the same time.
As I said in the last post I was getting the inside of the outer walls lagged with 2" of insulation and then plaster boarded over. This would then be skimmed by a pro plasterer. As it happens the bloke I had organised to do the work decided not to turn up and repeated phone calls fell on deaf ears or rather a voicemail..... bloody mobiles.... you can't have a decent whinge these days, humph.
So I decided to do it myself..... can't be that hard, it's only a bit of wood and insulation..... 3 hours and my spaka back got the better of me along with my shoulders, neck, and legs giving up the ghost I decided it was time to call it off as a bad idea. I got another bloke in and the pro plasterer is coming on Monday.
So it's taken 13 days of rest and massive amounts of pain killers to repair the damage of 3 hours work.... Mind you it has given me time to think about things whilst I was in agony as I'm a great believer in occupying he mind as if you don't it will occupy itself and not always for the better.
So in my thinking I got to the point of catching up on the daily meter readings. Whilst i was out of it in bed my wife took it upon herself to read the meters for me, good lass so we have got it down to an average of 1.8 units of gas per day and an average of 6 KWh for the leccy so the cost so far for November is around £9 for leccy and£12 for gas and we are nearly at the half way stage of the month. I know the weather has been a bit warmer for this last week but maybe the insulation is doing it's job in a big way. If I can get away with around £30 for gas and £20 for electric for the month of November I'll be well chuffed as I was paying £157 a month at the dearest time last year with Eon.
So to recap, I'm feeling a bit more normal, well as normal as one can when doped up on all sorts of pain killers, or rather pain modifiers as the tablets never actually "kill" the pain off but just dulls it a bit. My staircase is lagged and ready to be plastered by Nick the Plasterer.... who is a thoroughly good bloke and a demon plasterer to boot. Then it's off to take the wife to look for a arpet in time for chrimbo and that's another year more or less done for.....
As I said in the last post I was getting the inside of the outer walls lagged with 2" of insulation and then plaster boarded over. This would then be skimmed by a pro plasterer. As it happens the bloke I had organised to do the work decided not to turn up and repeated phone calls fell on deaf ears or rather a voicemail..... bloody mobiles.... you can't have a decent whinge these days, humph.
So I decided to do it myself..... can't be that hard, it's only a bit of wood and insulation..... 3 hours and my spaka back got the better of me along with my shoulders, neck, and legs giving up the ghost I decided it was time to call it off as a bad idea. I got another bloke in and the pro plasterer is coming on Monday.
So it's taken 13 days of rest and massive amounts of pain killers to repair the damage of 3 hours work.... Mind you it has given me time to think about things whilst I was in agony as I'm a great believer in occupying he mind as if you don't it will occupy itself and not always for the better.
So in my thinking I got to the point of catching up on the daily meter readings. Whilst i was out of it in bed my wife took it upon herself to read the meters for me, good lass so we have got it down to an average of 1.8 units of gas per day and an average of 6 KWh for the leccy so the cost so far for November is around £9 for leccy and£12 for gas and we are nearly at the half way stage of the month. I know the weather has been a bit warmer for this last week but maybe the insulation is doing it's job in a big way. If I can get away with around £30 for gas and £20 for electric for the month of November I'll be well chuffed as I was paying £157 a month at the dearest time last year with Eon.
So to recap, I'm feeling a bit more normal, well as normal as one can when doped up on all sorts of pain killers, or rather pain modifiers as the tablets never actually "kill" the pain off but just dulls it a bit. My staircase is lagged and ready to be plastered by Nick the Plasterer.... who is a thoroughly good bloke and a demon plasterer to boot. Then it's off to take the wife to look for a arpet in time for chrimbo and that's another year more or less done for.....
Saturday, November 1, 2008
The cold snap snapped......
Well the last few days of October certainly let us know that winter was just around the corner. It were bloody freezing in our house!! As in my last post I said we were away for 3 days so being on a bent to reduce our dependency on the large immoral power companies I switched of as much as I could including the heating.
Our average heating for a day was around 2 therms so a saving of around 6 therms was achieved but by the house was cold when we came back. i mean not only cold enough to chill the bones but the fabric of the building, the walls and floors were cold to touch. It just goes to show how much heat is sucked out of the buildings by the walls.
The upshot of it all was we had to leave the gas heating on for a lot longer than normal to reheat the house and in the end used 6.2 therms of gas but suffered for the day until it warmed up..... which brings me to another point. We are getting the walls and floors insulated on the inside as it is a cold house so hopefully by next winter we will see a significant reduction in our energy useage and be as warm if not warmer than now.
Our actual gas useage for the whole of October was 51.2 therms of gas which when converted into kwh it works out at 1642.33 kwh and we pay 2.86p per kwh so that equates to £46.97. We also used 350 kwh of electric. The electric I am particularly well chuffed at as we used to use 18kwh per DAY in June which would have increased to around 24 units in October so to reduce this overall down to an average of 11.29 a day pleases me a lot. As we are on Ebico, a charity power company www.ebico.co.uk we only pay 11.41p per kwh so our electric for October came out as £39.94 inc vat.
Our average heating for a day was around 2 therms so a saving of around 6 therms was achieved but by the house was cold when we came back. i mean not only cold enough to chill the bones but the fabric of the building, the walls and floors were cold to touch. It just goes to show how much heat is sucked out of the buildings by the walls.
The upshot of it all was we had to leave the gas heating on for a lot longer than normal to reheat the house and in the end used 6.2 therms of gas but suffered for the day until it warmed up..... which brings me to another point. We are getting the walls and floors insulated on the inside as it is a cold house so hopefully by next winter we will see a significant reduction in our energy useage and be as warm if not warmer than now.
Our actual gas useage for the whole of October was 51.2 therms of gas which when converted into kwh it works out at 1642.33 kwh and we pay 2.86p per kwh so that equates to £46.97. We also used 350 kwh of electric. The electric I am particularly well chuffed at as we used to use 18kwh per DAY in June which would have increased to around 24 units in October so to reduce this overall down to an average of 11.29 a day pleases me a lot. As we are on Ebico, a charity power company www.ebico.co.uk we only pay 11.41p per kwh so our electric for October came out as £39.94 inc vat.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Burglars
We went away for a few days over to Cumbria so we could have some R&R and also take in the HUFC match against Carlisle ( 1-0 to pools) but whilst there we got a phone call from a neighbour telling us that our house alarm had gone off. We came home a day early only to find that the scroats had tried to jemmy out the patio window but the security devices had held well. The galling part was that my neighbour telephoned the police and they refused to attend the alarm and asked her to check to see if anything was wrong. Like asking a middle aged woman to confront a ( probably drugged up ) burglar on her own. Cleveland police are the shits........ The green edge on this episode is that the burglar left a good quality garden fork as he legged it, obviously from a previous burglary but hell, I can use a good garden fork especially if I confront a burglar.....
We went by car to the lakes as we had a dog and two suitcases but it got me thinking that back in the 60's we also had a dog and cases when we went on holiday but we didn't have a car. The journey would take about 6 hours to get to the lakes by train but we managed it. Now I wonder how long it would take and if we could be bothered as the car is the easier option.
I want to get rid of the car but my wife points out the need for a car as I'm well disabled. Now if only I can find a solar powered granny scooter and a train time table........hmmmmm.....
We went by car to the lakes as we had a dog and two suitcases but it got me thinking that back in the 60's we also had a dog and cases when we went on holiday but we didn't have a car. The journey would take about 6 hours to get to the lakes by train but we managed it. Now I wonder how long it would take and if we could be bothered as the car is the easier option.
I want to get rid of the car but my wife points out the need for a car as I'm well disabled. Now if only I can find a solar powered granny scooter and a train time table........hmmmmm.....
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
What's in your bins?
As the title says, What's in your bins? Have you looked lately or don't you care ? Nothing wrong with just dumping stuff in the bins including the recycling bins but as this blog has a bit of a green eco bent then I feel that we all have a duty of care to look in our bins and see what we can avoid putting in there in the future.
Take for instance an Innocent plastic bottle full of lovely cool mineral water.
When you have downed the mineral water and (hopefully) put the bottle in the recycling bin then is that it for you or do you wonder where that plastic bottle goes and what happens to it ? I did so I phoned a few council departments and the general consensus is that it is shipped off to china or India s we don't have the facilities to recycle plastic that much in Britain. Apparently the bottle is sent half way round the world in bulk containers on ships and then chipped up or pelleted and then sent back to us in this form to be reused in making more bottles etc.
Now if you didn't buy that bottle in the first place you wouldn't need to be part of the pollution caused by this shipping pollution would you? You would be able to say that you are treading lighter on the fragile earth and if you think of it it's only one bottle but if you buy one a day it's 18.25 tonnes of plastic a year......
Also when you are shopping why do we need to put fruit and veg in plastic bags? We pick the produce from the shelves, we put them in bags and then put the bags in the trolley. When we get to the checkout we put the bags on the conveyor belt. Is it so hard not to use the bag in the first place? Try it next time and see if you REALLY do need the plastic bag.
Again this sort of packaging makes up about 60% of our household rubbish that goes to landfill according to Friends of the Earth.
Take for instance an Innocent plastic bottle full of lovely cool mineral water.
When you have downed the mineral water and (hopefully) put the bottle in the recycling bin then is that it for you or do you wonder where that plastic bottle goes and what happens to it ? I did so I phoned a few council departments and the general consensus is that it is shipped off to china or India s we don't have the facilities to recycle plastic that much in Britain. Apparently the bottle is sent half way round the world in bulk containers on ships and then chipped up or pelleted and then sent back to us in this form to be reused in making more bottles etc.
Now if you didn't buy that bottle in the first place you wouldn't need to be part of the pollution caused by this shipping pollution would you? You would be able to say that you are treading lighter on the fragile earth and if you think of it it's only one bottle but if you buy one a day it's 18.25 tonnes of plastic a year......
Also when you are shopping why do we need to put fruit and veg in plastic bags? We pick the produce from the shelves, we put them in bags and then put the bags in the trolley. When we get to the checkout we put the bags on the conveyor belt. Is it so hard not to use the bag in the first place? Try it next time and see if you REALLY do need the plastic bag.
Again this sort of packaging makes up about 60% of our household rubbish that goes to landfill according to Friends of the Earth.
The come back kids
Last night we went to watch Hartlepool United at home playing Huddersfield Town. Now we, as in all the family are home and away supporters dedicated to the cause and if you cut us we bleed blue and white. However this causes conflict with my trials at being more eco friendly because if we do every away match this season we will drive the equivillent in miles of half way around the world in a gas guzzler of a car. To that end we have decided to only do a handful of important games or niggle matches when we can get a "good atmosphere " going.
The trouble is that this season we are known as the come back kids because we always have to fight to get a point or 3. Last night was again no exception. The defence were crap and let in a goal. We came back with a goal of our own. Sure enough we let in another goal from a set piece free kick. Again we equalised....2-2. True to form right on the stroke of half time we let in a third goal... Rather dubious as it came from a dodgy offside decision and then their keeper took the freekick from the other side of the pitch no less !! this led to the goal so 2-3 at half time.
Still we Hartlepool supporters know better and that there is still 45 minutes in the second half. True to form we put 3 more goals past Huddersfield Town in the second half to end the game 5-3 to Pools. My trouble is that we let in so many goals. Including last night we have scored 59 goals at home but also conceeded 54.... Still we can't complain...... 3 points is still 3 points..
The trouble is that this season we are known as the come back kids because we always have to fight to get a point or 3. Last night was again no exception. The defence were crap and let in a goal. We came back with a goal of our own. Sure enough we let in another goal from a set piece free kick. Again we equalised....2-2. True to form right on the stroke of half time we let in a third goal... Rather dubious as it came from a dodgy offside decision and then their keeper took the freekick from the other side of the pitch no less !! this led to the goal so 2-3 at half time.
Still we Hartlepool supporters know better and that there is still 45 minutes in the second half. True to form we put 3 more goals past Huddersfield Town in the second half to end the game 5-3 to Pools. My trouble is that we let in so many goals. Including last night we have scored 59 goals at home but also conceeded 54.... Still we can't complain...... 3 points is still 3 points..
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The penny drops........
Had nowt to do today, well that's not strictly true as there is always too much that needs to be done in this world but we decided that we would go out for the day. No place in particular so we ended up at a garden centre and a couple of electrical shops. The garden centre was a typical crass affair but I couldn't resist getting some raspberry canes, a red goosgog bush and a thorn less blackberry bush. Two cups of tea later the wife came back from the "Christmas department" which was set up in August by the way, and off we toddled to the electrical shops.
We need a new fridge and freezer purely on environmental and money saving grounds. The separate under the counter ones we have at present still do their job but hey are costly to run compared with the modern A++ versions.
Having worked out the running cost of the ones we have which is around 4 units of electric a day and the new one would be less than 1 unit a day we would save around 33 p a day in running costs.
Now 33 pence a day doesn't sound much and you are probably thinking that I'm a skinflint but over a year it is over £120 in savings. Granted the cost of the one we looked at was the thick end of £400 but just on the savings alone the new Fridge Freezer would have paid back it's cost in 3years and 4 months. Also being disabled the pain involved in getting stuff out of the fridge and freezer at the moment would be negligible. As well as this the current ones we have are over 10 years old for the new one we would then be quids in.
Also in the next shop along in the shopping parade we saw some new televisions. Flat screen, digital do dahs all this and that free cable or satellite boxes and home cinema systems etc. I, of course wanted the biggest TV on display, a whopping 60" jobby at nearly £2000 ( but you did get a free home cinema sound system and it played DJ Tiesto concerts in hi def...... but my wife dragged me away and as we were walking along the line of TVs she said....." but how much energy do they use?"
It wasn't until we were driving home that I realised what she said.... " but how much energy do they use?"For over a year now I've been battling with her to win over her mind and soul with constant talk about energy saving light bulbs, wood burning stoves, solar thermal heating and Photovoltaic panels not to mention how much electric and gas we have used on a daily basis, (I take daily meter readings) how much petrol costs in terms of CO2, Getting her to switch lights off, standby buttons are also banned and cooking is always "eeked out" a bit further such as putting a 1/4 can of water into the pan of soup, adding vegetables and lentils to mince to make it go further and of course reduce, reuse, recycle. Most of it I thought had landed on deaf ears and all to no avail but to my shock and horror she comes out with a blinder of a question " but how much energy do the TV's use?" Amanda, I love you !!
All my work is done....... Now where is that wood burning stove catalogue I need to show her.......
We need a new fridge and freezer purely on environmental and money saving grounds. The separate under the counter ones we have at present still do their job but hey are costly to run compared with the modern A++ versions.
Having worked out the running cost of the ones we have which is around 4 units of electric a day and the new one would be less than 1 unit a day we would save around 33 p a day in running costs.
Now 33 pence a day doesn't sound much and you are probably thinking that I'm a skinflint but over a year it is over £120 in savings. Granted the cost of the one we looked at was the thick end of £400 but just on the savings alone the new Fridge Freezer would have paid back it's cost in 3years and 4 months. Also being disabled the pain involved in getting stuff out of the fridge and freezer at the moment would be negligible. As well as this the current ones we have are over 10 years old for the new one we would then be quids in.
Also in the next shop along in the shopping parade we saw some new televisions. Flat screen, digital do dahs all this and that free cable or satellite boxes and home cinema systems etc. I, of course wanted the biggest TV on display, a whopping 60" jobby at nearly £2000 ( but you did get a free home cinema sound system and it played DJ Tiesto concerts in hi def...... but my wife dragged me away and as we were walking along the line of TVs she said....." but how much energy do they use?"
It wasn't until we were driving home that I realised what she said.... " but how much energy do they use?"For over a year now I've been battling with her to win over her mind and soul with constant talk about energy saving light bulbs, wood burning stoves, solar thermal heating and Photovoltaic panels not to mention how much electric and gas we have used on a daily basis, (I take daily meter readings) how much petrol costs in terms of CO2, Getting her to switch lights off, standby buttons are also banned and cooking is always "eeked out" a bit further such as putting a 1/4 can of water into the pan of soup, adding vegetables and lentils to mince to make it go further and of course reduce, reuse, recycle. Most of it I thought had landed on deaf ears and all to no avail but to my shock and horror she comes out with a blinder of a question " but how much energy do the TV's use?" Amanda, I love you !!
All my work is done....... Now where is that wood burning stove catalogue I need to show her.......
Saturday, October 18, 2008
It's spittin......
It's spittin marjory... get the kids in.........
Got up early today, well 10 oclock which is early for me on a Saturday ready to dig over some of the garden with a rotorvator. Well actually I was going to make cups of tea and bacon sarnies and a friend was going to do the rotorvating, ripping up a good 2/3rd of the lawn to make a veg patch 8m long by 5m wide but it started to rain........ started with a little spitting rain then a bit more and eventually it is a torrential downpour and the wetherman said it would be fine today with heavy rain tomorrow, Sunday. The lawn is laughing at us now but come the next fine day that coincides with my mates day off and the lawn is a gonna.......
Got up early today, well 10 oclock which is early for me on a Saturday ready to dig over some of the garden with a rotorvator. Well actually I was going to make cups of tea and bacon sarnies and a friend was going to do the rotorvating, ripping up a good 2/3rd of the lawn to make a veg patch 8m long by 5m wide but it started to rain........ started with a little spitting rain then a bit more and eventually it is a torrential downpour and the wetherman said it would be fine today with heavy rain tomorrow, Sunday. The lawn is laughing at us now but come the next fine day that coincides with my mates day off and the lawn is a gonna.......
Friday, October 17, 2008
Change
Leading on from my welcome post........
Do we need to change? If so what do we need to change and why? I feel that we need to change the way we think and the way we behave to one another and the planet as a whole. We need to change the government as they seem to have lost the plot totally.
It's not just the money crisis or the meltdown of the stock market, the collapse of the banking infrastructure or the lack of services and higher taxes we pay but the insidious hidden things like massive legislation introduced by this government.
I've been driving for nearly 30 years and not put a foot wrong. In the last 3 months I have had 2 parking fines ( £60 each £30 if settled fast) and an £80 fine ( £40 is settled fast) by the dvla for not renewing my SORN on a car I'm rebuilding.
The parking fines were dished out when I was in Edinburgh and had broken down and I was waiting for a tow truck when the parking attendant slapped the fine on the car. The second was in my home town because I was 11 mm over a white line. Both appealed, the white line was rescinded.
The dvla one just had to be paid but in the past a notice used to be sent out much the same as the renewal papers for the tax disc. Not now, bang goes £40 quid. These type of stealth payments are making a lot of difference, I mean £40 is a fortnights food shopping for my wife and I.
Change to the way we treat the planet is also well over due. I remember in 1992 ( I think) Greenpeace said we had 8 years to change our thinking on global warming or it would be too late to reverse the changes.
Governments including ours looked the other way and ignored the likes of Greenpeace and now look at the trouble we are in and the dire predictions we are all facing in the future.
Maybe the global recession will be a good thing. Maybe it will bring us to our knees and then the ones who can grow their own food, feed their own animals and ride a bike will be one step ahead of the herd who will be running for the cliff top without the ability to turn right or left before the precipice looms.
Do we need to change? If so what do we need to change and why? I feel that we need to change the way we think and the way we behave to one another and the planet as a whole. We need to change the government as they seem to have lost the plot totally.
It's not just the money crisis or the meltdown of the stock market, the collapse of the banking infrastructure or the lack of services and higher taxes we pay but the insidious hidden things like massive legislation introduced by this government.
I've been driving for nearly 30 years and not put a foot wrong. In the last 3 months I have had 2 parking fines ( £60 each £30 if settled fast) and an £80 fine ( £40 is settled fast) by the dvla for not renewing my SORN on a car I'm rebuilding.
The parking fines were dished out when I was in Edinburgh and had broken down and I was waiting for a tow truck when the parking attendant slapped the fine on the car. The second was in my home town because I was 11 mm over a white line. Both appealed, the white line was rescinded.
The dvla one just had to be paid but in the past a notice used to be sent out much the same as the renewal papers for the tax disc. Not now, bang goes £40 quid. These type of stealth payments are making a lot of difference, I mean £40 is a fortnights food shopping for my wife and I.
Change to the way we treat the planet is also well over due. I remember in 1992 ( I think) Greenpeace said we had 8 years to change our thinking on global warming or it would be too late to reverse the changes.
Governments including ours looked the other way and ignored the likes of Greenpeace and now look at the trouble we are in and the dire predictions we are all facing in the future.
Maybe the global recession will be a good thing. Maybe it will bring us to our knees and then the ones who can grow their own food, feed their own animals and ride a bike will be one step ahead of the herd who will be running for the cliff top without the ability to turn right or left before the precipice looms.
Welcome
Welcome to my blog.
Years ago, in the late 80's to be precise I was studying to be a professional photographer and the first digital photograph came on the scene. The one that I saw was a collage of a soldier outside a castle with a deep blue cloudy sky. All three shots, the soldier, the castle and the sky had been taken with a digital camera and merged by computer to make one.
There was uproar in photography circles and I devoutly stood up and proclaimed that I would NEVER EVER buy a digital camera and I would stay faithful to the medium of Black and white prints on expensive papers with many hours in the darkroom....... I bought a digital Camera all be it in 2003.
I also couldn't see the point of all this blogging palarkey! I mean who wants to read what jumped up self important little people want to say??
I've now got a blog so I guess I' m a blogger.... Ho hum......
I guess the reason for this retrospective is that times change and as we evolve in our day to day lives we see the benefits, the negativity's, the uses and the pitfalls of the fast evolving world we live in and maybe we want to try and change this ( for better or worse) or we want to make our mark in the world without designing a nuclear bomb or creating genocide or even "being a celebrity"
For me this blog will be of a green bent as I fear for my son and any children he may have in the future as we rape, pillage and destroy this world we live in. Time has come to change the way we live, the way we think, the way we behave and above all the way we link into the world of our fellow man.
I hope you enjoy reading my missives and find something of use in them. I can't guarantee I won't ramble on and on, be obnoxious, politically INcorrect or any other of a thousand traits I seem to have but I'll try to be good..... honest.
Years ago, in the late 80's to be precise I was studying to be a professional photographer and the first digital photograph came on the scene. The one that I saw was a collage of a soldier outside a castle with a deep blue cloudy sky. All three shots, the soldier, the castle and the sky had been taken with a digital camera and merged by computer to make one.
There was uproar in photography circles and I devoutly stood up and proclaimed that I would NEVER EVER buy a digital camera and I would stay faithful to the medium of Black and white prints on expensive papers with many hours in the darkroom....... I bought a digital Camera all be it in 2003.
I also couldn't see the point of all this blogging palarkey! I mean who wants to read what jumped up self important little people want to say??
I've now got a blog so I guess I' m a blogger.... Ho hum......
I guess the reason for this retrospective is that times change and as we evolve in our day to day lives we see the benefits, the negativity's, the uses and the pitfalls of the fast evolving world we live in and maybe we want to try and change this ( for better or worse) or we want to make our mark in the world without designing a nuclear bomb or creating genocide or even "being a celebrity"
For me this blog will be of a green bent as I fear for my son and any children he may have in the future as we rape, pillage and destroy this world we live in. Time has come to change the way we live, the way we think, the way we behave and above all the way we link into the world of our fellow man.
I hope you enjoy reading my missives and find something of use in them. I can't guarantee I won't ramble on and on, be obnoxious, politically INcorrect or any other of a thousand traits I seem to have but I'll try to be good..... honest.
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