crumbling walls

(Berlin 1989)

It's now twenty years since the Berlin Wall came down. As far as I'm concerned this was the most important event in European history.

I visited Berlin in December 1989. The Wall was still there, East Germany still existed and try as I might I couldn't get through to the east as UK citizens could then only use Checkpoint Charlie. So there was still a touch of the old ways about. I stared through from West Berlin into East Berlin and the contrast was incredible.

I'd never doubted the superiority of capitalism over socialism but if I had done that moment would have set it in stone for me.

You probably notice my disdain of socialism on this site. I detest ANY system that deprives people of their freedom. I particularly detest those socialists that have tried to hijack the green movement. The two ideas couldn't be more different. I've had to attack Bristol Greens for letting this scum in. Given the chance these fuckers would build walls around all of us, keeping ideas and prosperity out.

Socialism will never return but the little nastinesses that so defined them will struggle on for some time yet. If you ever feel tempted by the ideas of these maniacs just remember the Berlin wall.

dignitas

Poor Dignitas in Zurich are going to be very busy over the next few weeks.

Tens of thousands of postmen are about to commit suicide between now and Yule, under the whip of their union, the CWU.

To hear their fuhrer talk today about strike breakers was sickening. They are now targetting the brave casual workers who are being brought in to clear the backlog that the lazy fuckers have left. Of course the postmen want to do this work themselves - as OVERTIME!!

The management are being far too soft with their lazy soon-to-be ex-employees. Why not bring in 100,000 casual workers and sack ALL the postmen who have been striking? It may mean a few weeks of disruption as the newcomers learn the ropes, but will it be any worse than the disruption the idiot CWU are threatening.

What sickens me is the way the postmen have absolutely no pride in their work. They should be ashamed of themselves if even a single letter or parcel is held up. We, as consumers, should be able to claim every last penny lost to these morons, through the union funds and when they have all gone through the PO pension pot.

But of course the strike will soon start breaking down. Even the gormless postmen will realise that they ain't going to have any sort of Christmas if they keep losing pay. And I suspect that soon a few posties will be getting serious beatings from decent folk, once this starts actually affecting people.

And just think how many jobs this (in)action will lose - far more than any that will be lost to modernisation. So many businesses will discover the alternatives which are generally faster and cheaper than the PO that they will NEVER return to the post office.

This is the biggest mass suicide since Jonestown.

thick griffin - the end of a career

Britain's reality today - people of all races, all getting on. And Britain so much better for it.


Thick Griffin will NEVER get to this position. No charisma, no intelligence, no charm.


And when the BNP actively push a FOREIGN religion - christianity - their credibility suffers. They are NOT British.


SA Mann Brand would have kicked the shit out of Griffin.

So the BBC, despite the best efforts of the crypto-fascist left wing scum trying to prevent free speech, finally allowed Thick Griffin on Question Time. It was a master stroke - he was totally destroyed by the Isthmian Leaque intellectuals they wheeled out. Bonnie Greer picked him up, tickled his tummy, wound him up and put him back down, an empty husk.

And as for Thick bringing up Churchill - what a joke! Churchill is a prime example of the benefits of mixed blood. His American mother introduced lots of lovely non-British blood to him, including Sioux Indian. Of course Thick was too stupid to know this, and he walked straight into Bonnie's trap.

Right wing politics is NOT about race, but about creating a different world view opposed to the sickly, consumerist, non-heroic left wing one. We NEED a strong, genuinely right wing and obviously non-racist party. Perhaps the post-Thick Griffin BNP will become that party, who knows? They are scrapping the hilarious and self-defeating racist entry rules. Apparently half their membership is non-racist. There's something to work with.

And as for Griffin being a Nazi - that is an insult. Hitler was probably the most successful politician in history. The Nazi Party really did create a new world from the most unpromising beginnings. They brought in the world's first animal protection and environmental laws. They even attempted to outlaw smoking - how cool is that? They tried to create a genuine European political system drawing on Europe's folk roots, our Pagan heritage and a feeling of community first. They stupidly embraced racism which was the thing that destroyed them. But then I was brought up in a (Labour) racist household, and quickly learned how STUPID such ideas were.

As the environmental crisis deepens the left will fall apart and politics everywhere will take a right wing path. Not a racist path, there is no future in that. But borders will toughen up, consumerism will be a thing of the past and nations - probably nations far smaller than most of those that exist today - will build their own communities, with little regard to events happening outside of the nation state. Spectacle and community spirit and coolness will once again be part of the daily diet. We may even see the swastika flutter again over much of Europe, but it won't be a Thick Griffin sort of backwards-looking nationalism but that of a dynamic, inclusive and modernist sustainable national community state, more in keeping with National Socialism's original vegan, Pagan and libertarian ethos.

Thick Griffin would not even understand any of this.

BBC - shame of britain

Leadhills.


Littlehampton.


Hartcliffe.

Did you see that disgraceful BBC programme last night?

I still can't believe that such rubbish masquerading as journalism was actually broadcast.

The synopsis was - take two middle class British people with dark skin, plonk them into one of the tightest-knit working class areas of Bristol, get them wandering around with weird clothes on and acting stupid to the gangs of kids who, rightly, regard the streets as THEIR territory, and wait for sparks to fly. Inevitably some of the thicko kids reacted and threw stuff at the toffs.

Conclusion - working class people in tight-knit communities don't take kindly to middle class toffs goading them, all for entertainment.

BBC's conclusion - racism is rife in Bristol. All Bristolians get tarred with the same brush. A few hate sites are set up on Facebook and a few kids get a hiding from their parents for showing up the neighbourhood.

This was NOTHING to do with racism but everything to do with community. You have to live here and be part of the community for years before you are accepted. The residents think, quite rightly, that you need to prove yourself.

These whingeing toffs did everything they could to goad those kids, then ran to the police to tell tales. Two of the kids have been taken into community care. Does that make the BBC proud?

One of the named girls has four friends in common with Debs on Facebook. Turns out her mum died recently. There's nothing racist in her Facebook and Bebo pages.

But probably the very worst thing that this show did was to try to blame the BNP for all this. Absolute drivel! None of these kids would even know who the BNP were - they'd be considered just as much toffs and outsiders as the two reporters. We all know Thick Griffin is on Question Time this Thursday. The BBC are trying to stir up trouble, and they think we're too stupid to spot it.

I was brought up in Littlehampton which was and still is a scary place if you're not from there. Think the Falls and Shankhill in 1978, but with added knives.

I spent five years in Leadhills, a Scottish village up in the Lowther Hills south of Glasgow. There was real anti-English racism there, but once you'd been there a few years it went. People finally accepted you because you'd proved you had a link to the place.

These knobheads spent six weeks in Southmead. Six weeks!!

And if the luvvies at the BBC had picked on Hartcliffe rather than Southmead then no doubt they would have found the same feral and ignorant - but hardly racist and certainly not BNP - kids here. The story would have been the same.

going postal

So the idiot postmen and women are going on strike are they?

They are absolute scum and anyone striking or feigning illness next week should be immediately sacked with no compensation. The PO has to modernise to compete with couriers. Yet these communist scum are OPPOSED to modernisation.

It's ridiculous. We have mass unemployment. Their work hardly needs brains. At Yule even students work as postmen with a day or two's training. Sack them and send a message to other far left nostalgists that the world has changed forever.

Any postal worker that does strike next week should hang their head in shame, and be run out of their homes. They are morons.

republican commies in the US - your time has passed

First they had Sarah Palin. Then George Bush showed us all that he was the biggest commie ever when he bailed out the banks and dinosaur car companies. Remember that many republicans even believe in 'god' and 'creationism'. These people ae SICK.

Then it all got wiped out by Obama, a hero of the right. He stands for all the things decent people believe in. Individual responsibility, business, education, culture, a decent society.

Today he gave a keynote speech to kids that they should stay at school and educate themselves. He warned that if they drop out they will end up as useless, commie, benefit SCUM.

So how do the republicans react? By claiming that this is spreading SOCIALISM!!!

We need to nuke every republican hippy on the planet, the same way we got rid of the commies. Republicans no doubt believe that kids should leave school at 11, read their bible (if they are indeed able to read), take drugs, smoke and claim their dole money every fortnight. Republicans are the last commies on earth, and should be culled. They want us all to be useless and pathetic.

If you are a republican and you've found this site - FUCK off and crawl under a stone with your benefits-claiming hippy christian commie scum friends. You are already dead. Sieg Heil.

barely believable

Over the last couple of days it's been all over the news.

'Giant oilfield discovered in the Gulf of Mexico!!!'

Shell shares go up 2% on the day. Peak Oil is over!

There was no mention of the size of this oilfield so I did some searching.

Amazingly this 'giant' oilfield, the saviour of globalisation and the rubbishing of Peak Oil is expected to produce - wait for it!!! - 600 million to 900 million barrels of oil. In other words, at current consumption rates (about 82 million barrels a day), 11 days worth!!

This says a lot about how deep the crisis is. That such a tiny and inconsequential find should set the markets alight and warrant 2nd or 3rd headline on the news shows how serious our situation is.

This is the biggest find this year. To keep the oil flowing we really need to make a discovery as large as this every fortnight ...

the age of stupid!!

Last month, for the first time, more money was paid back in mortgages than paid out.

Unbelievably the BBC were reporting this as BAD news! This is the best economic news I've heard in months. It means that individuals and families are at last claiming their lives back, gaining control over their own economic future.

When will the BBC and other leftist snivellers realise the world has changed? That their wonderful proletarian equal socialist consumer hell is beginning to wind down? That the hold over normal people of these great social reformist bankers is beginning to fade, that the move towards strong local communities financed through hard work and thrift rather than borrowing is gaining pace every day.

The financial crises of 2007 were not only the death knell for globalisation but for consumer socialism too. We're gaining more freedom every day.

nobody does it better

We're constantly told that political parties are not taking the coming energy crunch seriously, but this is a quote from a leaflet pushed through our door last night.

Could any of us have said it better or clearer? Notice no mention of the current cover-up story of Climate Change.

You'll possibly be surprised that this is from a BNP leaflet. The rest of the leaflet was pure old Labour, but this caught my eye. It's interesting that the BNP are now active somewhere as remote (and white!) as Hartcliffe. This suggests their organisation is growing fast. This is probably the one part of the leaflet that will not particularly appeal to voters here. All the guff about British jobs for British workers, pulling out of the EU and nationalising everything probably will.

I suspect that as things get harder people in all countries will start adopting a more BNP approach to foreigners, that there will be attempts to pull up the drawbridge. I'd been arguing for this for years in the Green Party but they are even more old Labour than the BNP so it fell on deaf ears. Nothing to do with racism of course, but everything to do with protecting the people (of ALL colours) who were already here.

There'll never be a BNP government of course, but more and more politicians will begin to see the drawbridge approach in a shrinking economy as a sensible move. The biggest danger is if the BNP lift their ban on 'non-indigenous' people joining the party, and we get lumbered with more unworkable old Labour policies, but even New Labour are starting to do that!

balloons over bristol

Early yesterday morning I was hauled out of bed at some unearthly hour to 'see the balloons'. It was almost worth it! Then yesterday evening at a friend's house in north Bristol we saw more balloons.

Now here's a form of transport that may survive Peak Oil. It existed well before oil was discovered so it's pretty odds on that they will survive the post-oil period. So even in fifty years time a few favoured people will get to see what the Earth looks like from the sky.

social history

Digital photography should mean that these early years of the 21st century should be incredibly well recorded. 20 or 30 years ago I used to take photos whenever I could but it wasn't cheap and nowhere near as easy as today. It did have the plus side that I've got hard copy (including negatives) of everything and, because of the cost, most photos were worth having!

But look at the average photo today. Kids tend to fill the screen when they take a shot, usually posing. There's none or very little background. All this info will be lost. Most of the images will not survive. Many that do will have no interest to anybody.

I always used to try to set my family shots into a social history background. Even record shots were of the everyday, rather than the unusual. I also tried to catch atmosphere whenever I could.

At the time I had no idea what I'd do with these shots. But already they are historic. They trigger loads of memories on various Facebook groups and on Panoramio. I'm really glad I took them! And I've got a huge resource for blog posts!

back

That was a bloody long shopping trip!

This is a bit of a catch up. Yes, I voted for Ricky in the end, but he still didn't get in. Instead we're stuck with 6 irrelevancies in the south west, but at least there's no Labour member!

We've had a ridiculous strike here over the last few weeks with binmen striking for a pay RISE. In the end they actually got it, though why nobody knows. We made the local papers with our own strike back at the hippies, creating a huge pile of rubbish outside our houses, then contacting the papers. It was cleared the next day - local initiative or what?

Now the tube drivers in London are striking for an obscene 5% RISE. These fuckers START on £40,000 a year!! Who earns that sort of money?? So the roads are blocked, we're wasting yet more fuel (petrol/diesel rather than electric) and yet more inefficiency gets built into this dying system.

Over everything hangs that 'one-eyed Welsh idiot', Nick Griffin. For all his party's daft 1960s racial drivel, they have been elected on a fair vote. So what makes the far-left unwashed scum think they have the right to chase him off? Their disgraceful display yesterday was probably the biggest recruiting tool the BNP now have in their armoury. And who were the fuckers behind it? Those crypto-fascist scum, UNITE. The very same union that earlier this year staged racist wildcat strikes at various sites in the UK with their Love Thy Neighbour cry of 'British Jobs for British Workers' (now cleverly purloined by the BNP) - and, amazingly, were also behind the idiot binmen strike in Bristol.

Thanks Nick for flushing out the true enemies of democracy. Once the BNP drops its ridiculous rule that black Brits can't join - and it will - they will become a GENUINE alternative to the establishment backwards-looking parties who now infest us.

dilemma

It's the European elections next Thursday.

It's left me in rather a dilemma. Unusually I actually know one of the candidates quite well. Ricky Knight (above) would be my obvious choice I suppose. But he's being trodden on by his stupid party. The Green Party has changed completely from when I joined it in the 1980s. It was a genuinely radical party, interested in individual freedom, small scale business and solving the climate crisis. It's no longer any of these things. It has been TOTALLY infiltrated by left wing scum fleeing from old Labour and even more sinister 'parties'. It is dying from within. It is not prepared to face genuine challenges such as increasing population, immigration and the destruction of personal liberty. And why should it? As a left wing party it is now supporting the class struggle, poverty and centralisation. It has even done deals with the vile 'Respect' 'Party' in Bristol, carving up seats, clearly believing that they are targetting the same loser lefty demographic. I HATE losers. I HATE benefit scroungers, whingers, parasites and people who are in a position of power because of family connections (royal family scum) or nepotism (everywhere). We need to live in a complete meritiocracy.

(More to follow - I'm off shopping ...)

idiot nostalgists

Oh dear. Our dustmen didn't collect the bins yesterday. You won't believe why not ...

These wankers are striking for a pay ... RISE!

Yes, we have deflation, mass unemployment and a severe recession but these neanderthal socialist twats seem to think a pay rise is a right.

Elsewhere, in the real world, many workers are taking pay cuts, which is only right under deflation. Our council house rent has just been REDUCED.

Now, I may be wrong, but doesn't the average dustman live in a council house? So why with falling rent and falling prices should these toads not get a pay cut like everyone else?

If this council had any teeth it would sack the lot of them. This isn't the 1970s ...

what's important

For too long Western society has been on autopilot. We have come to respect material possessions, credit cards, social status and job titles as more important than character, intelligence or strength. The result is that our society slowly eats itself from within because, discontent with what it has become, it knows no other option.

Politics has come to mean a convenient way of constructing public positions that attract human interest. It does not address decay on such a fundamental level that it corrupts all that it touches. Right or left, black or white, and anything inbetween can agree that our society has thrown caution out the window and gone wholeheartedly into whoredom for money.

Our heroes these days are people who make the tabloids and sell many CDs, movies or books on the basis of their popularity and sex appeal. These factors are in turn carefully managed by industries which derive much profit from this practice, and we cheer them on as well, because there's nothing more praiseworthy than rising from nothing to be wealthy and important, at least in liberal democracies in America and Europe.

While our societies have slowly collapsed from within, we've been distracted by all the things we can buy and the perceived freedom we have, if we just give ourselves over enough to the process of earning money that we can get fanatical about it and earn a small pile. It's mine, get away. There is no higher law than this in the modern society. A home is a castle, and disposable income is for the pleasure of the individual.

For too long "get a job and earn money and work everything else out later" has been the dominant attitude of our society, creating people who function stiffly and inoffensively during the day, but at night go home to alcohol abuse, Internet pornography, drug habits and unhappy marriages. Since what defines character is earning money, our ideal of character is someone submissive to social will while quietly earning enough money to escape society.

Employees hide neuroses and secret desires behind function and feel a secret need for power. They exert it from their families and social groups, seeking to dominate in a time when dominance in any form except that of earning money is frowned upon. Their public faces grow more bland as their private dysfunctions become more bizarre and twisted. Does child molestation occur in every society? Assuredly. But does it happen this much in every society?

You can spend years reading philosophy and politics, trying to find out "where we went wrong." But to me, it's very clear that once money became the only value we had in common, our societies began degenerating. If everything can be for sale, it will soon be sold, and then the power of the individual is only dictated in terms of money. Forests are consumed, families are broken up, and the way we see each other takes on the sinister coloring of intent to manipulate.

This site has many excellent political ideas for you to read and think about. But what I have to tell you today is that in order for any sensible change to occur, we have to abandon this addiction to money at the expense of all else. It's fine to earn a living and have a place in society. But it can't be the only thing we all believe in, or we will come to serve it as, for too long, we have.

Source.

setting themselves up for the cull

The socialists' idea of the rich.


Dinosaurs driving cars unselfconciously are the real enemy.


These people have the right idea - but only when there's a larger, tolerant society to support them.

Recent events in 'London' have made me rethink my attitude to the police yet again. The film of that 'sergeant' hitting an unarmed, tiny, female protestor was a fucking disgrace. Every policeman and woman should hang their head in shame that such scum are allowed in the force. And as for the unprovoked attack on a totally innocent newspaper seller that led to his death - the whole force needs to rethink its tactics. It's even been claimed that diabetics who were 'kettled' were not allowed access to insulin. That's disgusting and if true should bring the wrath of every decent person who wants a better society down on the police.

I did both Poll Tax Riots. Arch socialist Thatcher had to go and I'm glad I helped bring the bitch down. I saw the police tactics there, not dissimilar to those used in London again last month. I've nothing against the police cracking open the skulls of leftist filth who go only to make trouble, but the Climate Change protests were something we ALL have to support. The anti-capitalist scum that latched on to the demo should have stayed away. They should fade away altogether.

I can't understand why the lefties have tried to tack themselves on to the Green movement. They have infiltrated the Green Party (see recent post) and now try to barge in on genuine demos.

This following post to a friend's facebook helped a little.

It is so depressing that a bunch of greedy super rich wankers have the power to kill our Mother Earth even while the rest of us protest, vote, etc etc. Nothing we do within the system seems to evict these parasites. I'm growing my own food here and living as simply as possible, what else can one do? I'd like to tax the rich at 90% globally (no offshore escape funds) and use the money to alleviate world poverty and to live sustainably. How HARD can it be??? What is it going to take to break the stranglehold of the greedy????

What absolute childish unthought-out drivel. Lets dissect it.

It is so depressing that a bunch of greedy super rich wankers have the power to kill our Mother Earth even while the rest of us protest, vote, etc etc.

'Power' is not really held by a bunch of rich people but, mainly, by elected politicians. To retain power they need to give people what they want. Sadly, in most cases, this equates to more material things (which DO in most cases damage the earth, in embedded energy, material waste and pollution). All business people do is fill these needs. Unless you vote Green (and REAL Green, not leftist-infiltrated Green) you are supporting this system.

Nothing we do within the system seems to evict these parasites.

Intemperate RUBBISH. The parasites are the millions of people who live on others. Benefits types, the royal family, the established churches, politicians, local government officers, even in the strictest leftist sense of the word the young and old who do not work. Businesspeople are NOT parasites. They are living the life most people give up when they are still at school, happy to just be cogs in a huge machine, safe, comfortable and with few worries. Businesspeople are HEROES, not villians. Without them we would have nothing.

I'm growing my own food here and living as simply as possible, what else can one do?

This is excellent news, and is the best way you can attack this system and prepare for an energy-constrained future. This sentence goes totally against the grain of the rest of the rant.

I'd like to tax the rich at 90% globally (no offshore escape funds) and use the money to alleviate world poverty and to live sustainably.

Would you? Well fuck off. You'd have nobody starting businesses. We'd all happily live off the crumbling state. There would be starvation, war and no health care. Sounds like 1930s Soviet Union LOL! Offshore tax havens should be protected, they provide employment for many of the people that live there, and attacks on them is nothing but bullying. Trust a lefty to support it. Tax is evil anyway, except on purchases. We should be allowed to retain what we earn and choose our own level of taxation by choosing how we spend it. We need LESS taxation, not more. That incidentally would be an excellent way of stopping the tax havens! Alleviating world poverty would not happen if you introduced punitive levels of taxation, everybody would be worse off.

People can not aspire to developed world levels of wealth - it would destroy the planet. We're going to all have to live simpler, less materialistic lives. And billions will also have to die off I'm afraid, if the Earth is to have a chance. I'd rather those billions were made up of parasites than hard working and innovative businesspeople.

How HARD can it be???

Oh, give it up you whingeing twat. If it was easy surely we'd have done it by now. The Soviet Union and its puppets tried it and look what happened. Power was held by an elite, people were imprisoned in their own countries, nastiness and intrique ruled and the environment was shattered. Is that what you want again?

What is it going to take to break the stranglehold of the greedy????

Well, not a bunch of middle class lefties who've identified the wrong enemy for a start! Let's dissolve politics, that would get rid of a lot of them. Let's starve the real parasites. Reduce the oppressive tax burdens we currently have and let true Green business flourish. Build sustainability into everything we do, throw out christianity and bring in Paganism. Break up the big countries - USA, China, Russia etc. Teach kids to grow and sew, fish and shoot, teach them the value of heroics and self sacrifice rather than self self self. That would be a start.

And let's use all lefties and tories as fertilizer!

morphing heroes

Heinrich Himmler.


Tupac Shakur.

I always wondered what would happen if my two greatest heroes were to be morphed into one person. The great National Socialist Heinrich Himmler managed - despite his feeble eyesight, keen interest in philately and chickens and inability to really ever carry a military uniform well - to rise to the top of his party and bring joy to millions in the process.

My other great hero is Tupac, who along with creating some of the finest music in the nineties also became a keen gardener and an inspiration to others.

So when I discovered morph and match I put 'em in to see if my theory - that morphing these two would create Barack Obama - would be proved correct.

Not a chance - I came up with this!

get ricky knight elected

Don't waste your vote on 4 June. Use it to get Ricky Knight elected as Green MEP for the South West. Try to get involved with the campaign, encourage your friends to vote and join this Facebook group!

Whilst much Green work does need to be done locally some of the more important policy making does, sadly, have to be at the international level. It's essential that as many Green MEPs as possible are doing this thankless job.

Ricky's a great bloke, quite unlike the careerist politicians who think of the EU as a gravy train. Get him in!!

south bristol car share

Want to help the environment and save money? Want to help reduce road traffic and pollution?

If you live in south Bristol like me here's your chance to help make the future work ....

the death of the green party

I've been hearing some very interesting and disturbing stuff from local Bristol Green Party friends. It appears that the Green Party in Bristol are talking about discussing the possibility of trying to do deals with a shabby outfit called 'Respect', carving up wards in Bristol and offering not to stand against each other. If true this would be a disaster.

What on Earth does the Green Party have in common with a rag-tag bunch of whingeing London middle-class lefties?? Nothing, as far as I can see.

But, apparently, they are like twins. People will happily vote for either. Well, I wouldn't. If I found a 'Respect' Party candidate in Hartcliffe I'd probably turn the community gun on them. At the very least they would get a serious kicking. That's if somebody else decent hadn't beaten me to them ...

I HATE socialism. It was a system devised by middle-class losers to punish successful people. In all its forms, wherever it has sprung up, it has brought nothing but poverty, ignorance and often death. From Lenin through Hitler and Thatcher to Blair and Bush, socialists have laid the world bare. The fact is that the world would be a better place without politicians and politics. It has created this mad consumer society, taken away our historic freedoms and has hampered business development. It tries to mould us all as perfect, consuming, citizens. It throws us madness like christianity, Gareth Gates and soaps, it tries to shepherd our kids into the whole industrial treadmill from the age of 5, keeping them indoors and teaching them stuff they'll never need. This is the sytem the Green Party supports.

Socialism only had an existence in a world where the economy could endlessly grow. Those days have finished, but Bristol Green Party don't seem to have noticed. To provide champagne for everybody, the socialists' stated aim, was impossible even in a growing economy, let alone a contracting one.

I've been a Green Party member on and off for 22 years. What attracted me originally was their radical vision. Yes, they had one once!! 'Neither left or right, but Green' was the slogan. No wonder we joined in droves.

That seems like a different world now. These new 'greens' want to do mad socialist stuff like renationalize the railways!! Railways should be owned by the communities and people they serve, not by the same sort of fucking bureaucrats that destroyed our system in the 60s. Barbara Castle, socialist, was the most evil sow ever. In fact there were even calls for me to be thrown out of the Green Party a few years ago because I dared to suggest they look at the local ownership idea for railways. Oh no, they wanted them to be run by distant civil servants. They even happily exhibit the authoritarian streak that socialists love.

I was brought up in a socialist family. I was taught to hate business, the royal family and foreigners. Foreigners started at Emsworth and Dorking. I still hate the royal family - more socialists living on the state rather than working for a living. Foreigners and business are cool.

And now the Green Party are considering (or at least talking about considering) disenfranchising large swathes of Bristol's voters. It would be like taking away a Mars Bar and replacing it with a pile of dog poo.

So the Green Party dies by its own hand, absorbed by the very socialist system that it originally set out to destroy. Perhaps all those environmental votes will go to the BNP ...

fear and loathing

So people are now more 'fearful' than ever are they?

What fucking drivel.

And what are they fearful of? Drastic climate change, the end of cheap oil?

Are they fuck ...

They are worried about (LOL!) TERRORISM.

It's 2009. Terrorism was one of the first victims of this Depression. Terrorism was a bit of middle-class fun for middle-class twats. It was irrelevant in 1970, it is absolutely pointless now. Yet our leftie Daily Mail readers still take it all in, programmed by their glorious leader Brown, in the hope they'll meekly accept ID cards and more limits on our freedoms.

You gormless lower middle class sheep are pathetic. You should be ruthlessly culled. Now there's something else for you to be fearful of.

Imagine how healthy our society would be if we began to use selective culling of scum.

you fucking scum

(Photos - Innsbruck 2009 - Pagan imagery rules in this nominally catholic country).

You will probably think I made this up, but I haven't. This appeared on AOL News this morning.

The Archbishop of York has attacked the "glory hunting" decision to stage two Premier League football matches on Easter Sunday.

John Sentamu joined other church leaders in saying the decision to play games showed disdain for the religious traditions of Britain.

His call comes after Premier League chief Richard Scudamore and Setanta director of sport Trevor East were accused of disregarding the importance of Easter Sunday and treading on the sensitivities of employees and football supporters in the name of profit.

Politicians have been asked to ban future matches on Easter Day.

What the fuck????????????

I know you have to be borderline special needs to entertain the madness of christianity, but surely even the christians don't think Easter is anything to do with their death worshipping 'religion'?

Easter is 100% Pagan. All the imagery, TRADITIONS and icons are Pagan. 100%. No arguments.

What this self-appointed 'archbishop' has to do with anything is beyond me. If they love this 'religion' so much why don't they fuck off to bloody Jerusalem and whinge over there?

These foreign scum have been treading on British religious traditions since they first set foot on our islands. How dare this idiot claim that playing football shows 'disdain for the religious traditions of Britain'!!!!!

This madness even goes as far as closing our local Morrisons ALL DAY today. Why????

Easter (or Ostara) is the celebration of the beginning of Spring. It happened on 21st March as it nearly always does. These morons try to steal OUR traditions and ruin them with their own death drivel, but in the end the Pagans will win and these scum will be shown the door.

Good luck to the footballers playing today. If you see the 'archbishop' try to knock his fucking pinhead off with a well aimed ball!

getting it wrong

All this international gallavanting that our 'leaders' are currently boring us with is all well and good, but what really is the point?

You have crusty fuckers outside whingeing about capitalism and praising marxism missing the point totally. Marxism died in 1990, it's never coming back. And the 'problem' isn't capitalism, which is the finest economic system ever devised, but marxist-light politicians interfering with the market because they simply can't believe it's all over.

It's the availability of oil that is causing this crunch. Our leaders are floundering about trying to engineer a recession to hide the fact that Peak Oil has already hit us. The $140 a barrel oil price scared them shitless - the only outcome had to be a recession whilst they figured out what on earth they could do. The market was sending such a strong signal that the party was over that the consumer-lovers had to do something ...

They triggered a media circus that saw first hedge fund managers, then bankers, as the 'problem'. All the time the oil price was falling as was demand, which got the Saudis out of a hole as it can hide the fact that their oil wells are drying up. Our new breed of politicians - Obama, Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel et al - grin inanely as they see power flooding to them. Idiots like Brown continue to plan their anti-liberal measures such as ID cards so that as things break down, as the consumer dream is shattered, our benevolent masters can control us.

Fuck 'em all.

capitalism IS working

Oh dear. The hippies and lefties have got their rotten teeth into a reasonable climate camp protest in London.

Why do lefties and hippies feel they have anything in common with climate change and peak oil types?

I left the Green Party because these oddballs think they can infiltrate the green movement, and a lot of (middle-class) greens are too fucking soft to beat them out of the movement.

No my soft chums, capitalism isn't dead. It's your fucking wonderful state interference that has caused all these problems. And what's your solution? More fucking moribund socialism.

Just go back to your mummys' and daddys' big houses in the shires and shut the fuck up!

custard the fucker!

Well done Plane Stupid for custarding smug hippy lefty scum Peter Mandelson, the arch twat brought in by Gordon Brown to save his skin.

The woman who did it is on telly right now, and has been given around five minutes to put the climate change message over. A true heroine - and a decent, middle class person at that.

This is a generational thing. Young people out there have a grim future thanks to idiots like Mandelson, Lenin, Thatcher, Bush, Blair and all those other lefty creeps who think they know better than scientists. They are already suffering the first Peak Oil generated depression, they've got climate change horrors to come. They should show all these old fuckers, who have probably lived the easiest and most liberal lives since we switched from being hunter-gatherers, what they think of them.

Let's hope this is the start of a great generational conflict. I suspect custard won't be the sharpest weapon used in this war! I'm off to soak John of Whitchurch right now ...

aaahhh

Poor John of Whitchurch won't believe it, but Australia has just had record breaking heat!

These two shots came from a customer in Australia and are unbelievably cute ...

a bullet for your thoughts ...

This is nicked straight from Glenn Vowles' blog, apposite because the moron he quotes lives just down the road (in Whitchurch, or Lower Hartcliffe as we call it. 'Lower' represents their subhuman IQ).

John from Whitchurch seems to think that the brief spell of recent cold weather we’ve had in the UK is evidence that there is no global warming (‘Global warming? You must be joking’, Open Lines, Feb 12). Questioning of evidence is what science is all about and I’m all in favour of it. John seems not to have applied this principle to the evidence he uses however.

His evidence is only for a very, very short period of weeks and days. He refers to information only from the UK. Climate is about decades of changes not short term weather. Climatic change as now discussed, of which global warming is only one aspect (albeit very important), is a phenomenon which is global and which is tracked over geological time (hundreds, thousands and millions of years).

Has he considered whether the recent weather around the globe fits predictions made by the scientific ‘experts’ he scoffs at? Has he looked at patterns and trends over long periods of time and over large areas of the globe as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have in their independent work for the United Nations?

John very properly asks who these ‘experts’ are and what qualifications they have but this information has been very widely publicised for years now. The IPCC were awarded a Nobel Prize for their work last year! There is no doubt that the United Nations are served by very well qualified scientists as are hundreds of governments and thousands of businesses and scientific institutions all around the globe. They have all assessed the evidence and conclude that climate change is real, very serious and requiring urgent, large scale action! However, its not the fact that they are ‘experts’ that convinces me about climate change – it’s the fact that their central evidence and their expertise has passed continual and rigorous testing. This testing rightly continues to be an essential part of the problem solving process.

Glenn's too understanding and kind. To my mind anyone this stupid needs to be exterminated, as they have no use to us. Their idiotic left wing ideas will have no place in a new world - poor John would not even make it as a slave. Would you want him?

once in a lifetime

You've got a once in a lifetime chance of seeing, on the big screen, the finest film ever made.

It's a full screen showing of the fantastic Moon and the Sledgehammer (in London unfortunately) with a question and answer session with the director, Philip Trevelyan, afterwards.

You owe it to yourself not to miss it!

bristol snow

It's been an amazing week, with four big snowfalls hitting Bristol. This morning's was the heaviest with around 6 inches.

Pundits are aleady blaming climate change, and this does seem to fit the pattern. But it's not that different from 1947, 1963, 1979 or 1981 so perhaps there's nothing sinister about it.

But what it does show is how vulnerable we are. Forget comparisons with Switzerland, Finland, New England etc - that's not relevant. Those places get regular cold winters with lots of snow, and it's worth them spending plenty of money on protection. More to the point is how quickly regular activity can come to a halt. Imagine if this was Peak Oil!

But there's been a fun side too. Kids have been off school, adults haven't been able to get to work. Hartcliffe's been even friendlier than usual these last few days. We think we're above (and beyond) nature, but it's clear we're not.

ciao racists

I was woken up by a big delivery, but in my half-asleep state I really thought I was dreaming when the news was running a story about lefties going on strike in the UK because 'foreign' workers were being employed taking 'British' jobs.

Well I wasn't dreaming and when I was fully awake I lost it!

I was brought up in a tough working class area in the 60s and racism was everywhere. But that was FORTY years ago.

Take a closer look at this. These workers aren't foreign, they are EU nationals (Italian and Portugese). They are not taking 'British' jobs - they are a skilled workforce employed by the Italian company that won the contract to do this construction work. Doubtless British companies tendered for this but weren't cheap/skilled enough.

When we were out in Switzerland in December a bunch of Essex lads sat next to us in the Mexican restaurant. They'd been out a few weeks working on a contract! So British people are doing the same thing in Europe, even OUTSIDE the EU!

So our dim lefty scum racist friends need to think this through.

Firstly the workers are EU nationals so there is no way we can stop them working in any case.

Secondly if this craven government did try to bring in some arcane anti-Free Trade rules then surely reciprocal arrangements would send tens of thousands of British workers back to the UK as their contracts were terminated?

Net result? A rise in UK unemployment.

Think it through you socialist scumbags and get back to work!

getting it wrong

So 'Lord' Mandelson is planning a 2 billion quid plus bail out of the 'British' car industry is he?

What a joke!

The government should NEVER interfere in the market. These companies should have built up reserves to get them through harder times - if they haven't then they deserve to go to the wall.

Car companies are dying ayway - they have about as much future as airlines. The car (as well as bus and lorry and tractor) is an anachronism, created when oil was plentiful and cheap. It will not outlive the end of cheap oil, which is now upon us. The much touted alternatives are NOT alternatives, they are still cars, they still need huge amounts of energy and raw materials to build. The cost of electricity will rise in tandem with the cost of oil and gas. Roads themselves will begin to break up as maintenance schedules are loosened up - in the UK this already seems to be happening.

If a car company deserves to survive it will do it WITHOUT government help. It will start to retool and retrain, to allow it to exploit the explosive growth in rail travel that is coming. They will build carriages and locomotives, freight vehicles and trams.

The car is already a historic artefact. Some will survive a few more years until oil reaches stratospheric prices, $500, $1000 a barrel. But really the car today is an example of dead man walking, if that's not too confusing a metaphor!

Onwards - to infinity and beyond!

the shame of the christians

Lies openly displayed at Noah's Ark - a CHILDREN'S zoo!


The Pagans are reclaiming symbols shamelessly stolen by the christians. This represents fertility.


Anyone who buys this filth for their child should be investigated by social services.


Says it all LOL!

We had a shocking experience at the doctors yesterday.

There was a child sitting with his mother near us. By them was some crabbit old sour-faced sow. The child had been sick regularly over the last few weeks. Turns out his mum and this old bag were members of the local church!

The old bitch was grilling this child, giving him the benefit of her superior brain. She concluded - publically - that the boy was putting it all on.

Then, unbelievably, this cow suddenly said 'Jesus can see everything you do.'

This is why I despise christianity. What utter drivel, and how sinister. I should have decked this socialist bitch, but as a Pagan I don't believe in violence. The way they lie and propagandise kids should be illegal. Social Services should be aware of this sort of thing which is clearly child abuse.

I can't wait until we've driven the last christians from this fair Pagan land.

the future of food retail

This is Brockley Farm Shop in Somerset. It's everything a real food shop should be with locally grown produce, shop produced cakes and pies etc and a smattering of more exotic stuff, some English, some foreign.

And it is even right next to a bus stop!

This is the sort of shop that should survive and flourish after Peak Oil, although it will eventually need a railway/tramway to pass it to keep deliveries and trade up of course! Or possibly even manage with horse and cart deliveries.

Buy rail and tram stocks ...

second home scum

There's a right row blowing up in Helford, Cornwall.

The locals, the people that actually live there, need a jetty to help them load and unload their fishing boats. But second homers, the lefty scumbags that like quaint and nostalgia and twee, think it shouldn't be built.

As a vegetarian I wouldn't touch fish with a bargepole, but I don't think that should stop other people eating it, or indeed catching it and selling it for a profit. Come Peak Oil I suspect the most severe vegan will be munching on rabbit, squirrel and pigeon at every opportunity. We shouldn't knock those that actually make a sustainable living from nature.

I've nothing against second homes either, though how anyone can even afford a first home escapes me, even in this day and age!

But there is no way some London scumbags can determine how a Cornish fisherman lives.

Soon Cornwall will be independent of England, and this may well be one of the things that makes that happen quicker. Soon the second homers will no longer be able to afford the luxury of a rural retreat and real people will once again live in these villages. The sooner the better.

hope

Well, Obama's in. His inauguration speech wasn't bad at all. He painted a fairly bleak but realistic picture of where the USA currently stands. I suspect the economic picture is worse than any of us feared. In the UK they are projecting 3.4 million unemployed by 2010 - even arch socialist Thatcher couldn't manage that, though I'm sure she tried.

Highlight for me? Yo Yo Ma playing the cello.

I met Yo Yo back in about 1979, on a train from Littlehampton to Chichester. I'd never heard of him, and didn't at the time have much truck with anything other than Joy Division, but at his invitation I did pop along to Chichester cathedral (yes, you read that right! I used to be far less anti-christian) and listened to him play. He was excellent!

What does the new presidency mean? Well, he touched on energy in his speech, and a lot of other things. He certainly didn't proclaim, even in code, that the American Way of Life was not up for Negotiation, quite the opposite. He didn't mention 'growth' once, but he did touch on many non-economic aspects of life. I think this is what we need to hear.

I love business and money, to me the market is king and no better system than capitalism has been, or will ever be, devised. But there's far more to life than making money (which is dead easy) - family, friends, relationships, community, health, culture (not so easy).

We now hear that all 50 states in the US have Transition groups. This is fantastic news, though shouldn't be a surprise. That's part of the process of creating a new USA, a USA that wll lead the world on Climate Change, social justice and energy security, that will send socialism running to the caves of Pakistan, the conservative clubs of middle England and the ghettoes of Gaza.

More than anything Barack is a symbol that racism is finally dead, that you can emerge from any background to high office, and that the world really has changed. Now let's gid rid of Brown - what a joke he now seems!

busy and wild weekend

Bristol in the middle of Saturday night's storm


The Fleece on saturday night


Jungi at the zoo on Sunday.

We've had a really busy weekend!

We rejoined the gym on Saturday, then went off to a gig on Saturday night, at the Fleece, a new venue for me. Not a bad location at all with loads of character.

To the zoo on Sunday then, amazingly, to the gym on the way back.

All the activity practically killed me off. We're getting in practice for the summer, when we'll be totally redoing the garden and getting Transition fit!

brown's poll tax

Yesterday's barely believable decision by our idiot 'government' to authorize the building of a new runway at Heathrow is the final nail in New Labour's coffin. I can't think of a single person who wants this, and my friends come from all circles. It is nothing short of madness. With superb irony it was decided on the very day that there was an announcement that air travel had fallen for the first time in amost twenty years!

The message is simple. From the Climate Change angle there is no point in even talking about EXPANDING air travel - it just can't happen. Aeroplanes inject CO2 directly into the atmosphere. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO ADD A SINGLE GRAM OF CO2 WANKERS!

From the Peak Oil/Economics angle what on earth is the point of committing a single euro to planning for things that will NEVER be needed? Within twenty years Heathrow will be a rotting eyesore, planes and passengers just a folk memory.

From the human angle how can even commie Brown consider for a moment blighting 700 homes in Sipston for something that is not needed and will never happen? Shades of Caecescu or what?

The Poll Tax was the biggest madness of Thatcher's totally mad socialist reign. I'm proud to say I was in both Poll Tax riots and helped bring the fucker down.

This is Brown's Poll Tax. Good riddance.

outlaw these lunatics

christians have been up in arms about these adverts on Bristol buses. As far as I recall these are a reaction to the dreadful Alpha Course ads that have been polluting the UK. A fringe christian group, christian Voice, has been trying to get them banned!

Look at the ad carefully. It doesn't even go so far as to proclaim what we all know, that there is no god. Yet these left wing foreign scum still want to ban the truth. I HATE christians!! There is no room for this foreign 'religion' in a Pagan country like the UK.


This made us smile, seen in Bristol yesterday. I love the deliberate spelling error!

Noah's Ark is a blot on the landscape. It projects itself as a zoo, but once you're trapped inside you are subjected to a constant barrage of lies. They actually claim Noah's Ark was REAL, that animals were CREATED by 'god' and that evolution is a lie. And all this is aimed at CHILDREN. christians always have to lie and cheat to get their psychotic message across, and kids are easy victims. There's no room for propaganda in the UK.


This is what the christians love - images of pain, death and hopelessness. christianity is a death cult for lefties and the middle class.

The UK was, is and always will be a Pagan country. There is no room for any foreign religions here, especially those born in the vile and raving mad Middle East.

greenpeace do something right!

At last Greenpeace are doing something right! They've purchased a piece of land near Heathrow that they're packaging up into tiny plots and selling on to decent non-hippy types.

Then our idiot 'government' will need to negotiate with every owner to get it back.

Airport expansion is total MADNESS. Air travel will shrink steadily over the next twenty years, then will be gone forever. So why are the morons even considering this?? It makes no sense at all, even in their addled world view that sees the future as an extension of the past. There is NO replacement for aircraft fuel, and never will be.

Even the tories have got it. Rather than waste billions on a runway that will never be used, they are asking for investment in transport with a future - high speed rail. Even in an energy constrained world high speed rail should survive and even flourish. It's amazing that the tories look ahead whilst New Labour look behind them for ideas.

If Labour proceed with this - it will never be built but they may well authorize it - then the party will die, their internal conflicts (both between and within members) all being too much for them.

And the real irony? The piece of land is a wheatfield, which is what all of Heathrow will become by 2030!

total dickheads

This fucking 'government' has to go, and go soon.

They are SERIOUSLY wasting their time and our money discussing EXPANSION of Heathrow airport!!!!!

Now, we all know the world has changed. We've passed the peak and oil supply is now falling. But these socialist middle class arseholes are still acting as if everything is the same. This is the problem with government - they are totally isolated from reality and make tits of themselves on a daily basis.

Listen you wankers - air travel is already contracting. This is a PERMANENT thing. There is no suitable alternative to aircraft fuel. Air travel will vanish within 20 years. Rather than expanding airports you need to start planning for their contraction and eventual removal. The runways should be ploughed up and used to grow food. That is the reality. You live in a dream world. Lenin, Marx and Thatcher are DEAD. You need to move on.

a day of goodbyes

Jenny (in striped top)


Jack at the bar.


Scott pre-Canada.

Today was a strange day of goodbyes. At lunchtime we went to the Castle of Comfort near Priddy to see Jack and Jenny before they return to Australia. This evening we went to Wick St Lawrence for a surprise birthday/seeing him off to Canada party for Scott. I first met Scott's mum and dad back in Leysin Switzerland in 1987 - quite by chance they now live under half an hour away.

This long distance travelling which has become quite commonplace over the last 20 years or so will be an early victim of Peak Oil. Our kids will be amazed at how easy it used to be to get from one place to another, and how quickly. The idea of families occupying two different counties let alone two different nations will seem incredible.

So, as I said to Scott I'll say it to you - make the most of these easy and incredibly cheap times, because it will never be so easy (or cheap!) again. Scott is off to Canada for six months. It'll do him the world of good.

I do hope that an international network of railways continues to link Europe (and hopefully beyond) once the cars and planes have gone. I hope there is enough civilization to allow our descendants to still travel a little, so that groups of people do not become insular, resort to racism or socialism or mad religion. I worry that a lot of what we've gained socially and politically on the back of cheap oil will be lost, but perhaps not. Much of the world is still uncivilized, but that hasn't stopped us from being decent people. But we need to be making the big adjustment to a post-oil world now, five year's time may be too late, ten year's will definitely be.

With the demise of socialist dinosaurs like George Bush and Tony Blair perhaps we do still have that window of opportunity.

the death of banking

We have a retarded government. They don't have a clue.

The economy has changed forever. Yet still, like the nostalgists they are, they are looking backwards for answers. We got in this situation because people had become hooked on credit and had lost touch with their roots. If you earned £100 you spent £120, and your foolproof investment, your home, would always make up the shortfall, because everybody knows that house prices only ever go up.

Oh dear. This was never going to work was it?

So what are our dear 'leaders' doing now? Are they going back on the gold standard, encouraging us to grow our own food, pumping billions into developing and expanding our rail and tram networks, looking for energy indepdence, increasing interest rates to encourage savings and encourage banks to lend? Are they reducing the money supply to restrict unsecured credit? Are they fuck! They are doing the exact opposite.

I'm more convinced each day that this is the crisis preceding Peak Oil and that the economy can't be mended because the fundamentals have shifted. I might be wrong, but everything this 'government' does seems to make it more certain.

gas attack!

With Russia and Ukraine slapping each other over gas supplies, we've a little gas crisis of our own here in Hartcliffe! On a day that's led to the Bristol ferry being cancelled due to ice floes, we've just had a minor problem - a flat battery in the key meter - that has left us without any gas until the buggers come out to fix it. That's no heat, no hot water, no cooking ... and being a 'modern' house we've no real alternative. At my previous place I had electric fires, open fires and an Aga.

Oh well, it's all good practice for when gas runs out permanently. Are we bovvered? Well, yes actually ...

Serves us right for being soft.

the new consumer reality

Shopping just after Yule is always a bit of a soulless affair but this year seems worse than ever. Okay, the above is Woolworths, but even a trip to Tesco today revealed empty aisles, tat on every shelf and just a general air of despondency, almost as if the average person in the street really has finally realised that the old consumer society - pointless socialism writ large - has vanished almost overnight.

JJB's seems to have closed down overnight. Other units on the same estate remain empty after two years - you have to wonder if they'll ever be let.

Something doesn't ring quite true with this recession. Despite just a tiny percentage drop in output, everything seems to be shuddering to a halt.

I had rather hoped consumerism would continue for another ten or even twenty years, just to allow us to get prepared for the change. Luckily my business is unaffected, I trade worldwide and offer a fantastic service, so if anything I'm busier than ever.

got a fiver ... you've got a party

We had a post New Year party last night which was great. It was a nice way to use up some of the last bits of Xmas food and drink etc. It was so cold we could use the patio as a fridge which helped a lot. We had about thirty in.

Some of the girls went trampolining. It was about minus six outside. Look at the frost on the trampoline!

the last embers of 2008

Bristol tonight - first shot is of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra leaving the stage after finishing on a stirring Radetsky March in this year's Strauss New Year's Eve concert.

The rest are from the walk back to the car through a frigid and consequently quiet Bristol.

Now for a bottle of 1990 Tokaji Aszu to see the new year in.

hellatrow - oh dear!

How not to run a business!

In our quest for intra-holiday entertainment we trudged to a place down the road that advertises itself as having the biggest stock of used books in the UK.

What a let down!

A few years ago, when I was trying to pay my way through my MA, I sold books on eBay. This meant visiting a huge number of charity shops looking for stock. But this was far, far worse. This is where the books that the charity shops can't even give away end up!

What is the point of displaying 1 million plus books if not one of them is less than 30 years old, where the filing system is appalling, where all the tatty things that end up in attics take up valuable shelf space and where many of the books are not even priced?

This is one business that I hope is an early victim of the credit crunch - it deserves to be!

death of the pound

It must be clear to even the most knuckle-dragging socialist that their government is now in the process of destroying the pound.

Both the Euro and the Swiss Franc are now at unprecentedly high levels against our dying currency. Even the fucking Zimbabwe dollar is RISING against the pound. That says everything about the total incompetence of the morons ruining our country.

At least gold is rising day on day!

We need to join the Euro - a Euro backed by gold - within two years.

let's kickstart the cull

A not often alluded to problem of our socialist government's attempts to make us all drivers is the fact that around 80% of people are NOT natural drivers. In fact they don't have a fucking clue.

I hate driving but it is something I do well, thanks to years of challenging myself to push the boundaries - alpine crossings, foul weather driving, off roading, lorry driving etc etc.

But take a close look next time you drive at the sheer uselessness of most drivers. If they were dogs they'd be put down.

Today in a space of less than a mile the following three socialist hippy twats presented themselves -

1. A twat driving one of those obsolete 4x4 jokes overtaking (without indicating) on cross hatches and nearly collidng with cars coming the other way.

2. An old git driving so badly that we assumed he was drunk or Alzheimered up to the nines. His road positioning was so bad that we fell back about 50 metres. He then did a right hand turn about 100 metres short of the turning, running along the cross hatches the whole distance.

3. Some kiddie in front of us for an unknown reason turning left with no indication at all.

If it were up to me all the above three drivers would lose their licences for ever. Or better still be executed.

The problem is the socialists and hippies are so stupid they've forced nearly everyone on to the roads. It's pretty obvious that as our rail networks were destroyed by the hippies the bar for passing the driving test was dropped.

What needs to happen now is simple.

a. HUGE investment in trains and trams, as well as a national network of cycleways, footpaths and greenways (country bridleways with space for walkers).

b. Stopping the issuing of new driving licences.

c. Life bans for all road offences, including speeding, using mobile phones or being wankers.

Let's cull the fuckers! Amateur drivers should be forced of the roads ...

a sussex yuletide

It always amazes me how different Sussex is. The dialect, the place names, everything really. Abby and Danielle were quite shocked when the shops down there sold the 'same as you get in a normal shop'.

Sussex nationalism is everywhere - don't ever call a Sussex person 'English'. They'll kill you!

The best thing about Sussex is that it was the last place in Britain to be christianized - it'll probably be the first place to re-Paganize too! The above sign is typically Sussex - thanks Dad!

What is it with christians and 'christmas'? All the crap they spout, even though everyone knows that Yule is a Pagan festival, and all the so-called 'christian' traditions are just perversions of Pagan ones? Birth of the son/sun - get it? The winter solstice. I HATE christians!!

sussex housing madness

I thought this was for 'Beadle's About' when I first saw it. This ONE bedroom starter home, in pit of the world Littlehampton, is seriously being advertised at £250,000!!!! This is with £49,950 off!!

This really does underline how mad the housing market had become and why the fall is going to be massive. Whilst most commentators are forecasting 30-50% falls I reckon this is very optimistic. I expect around 70%, at which point even I might buy somewhere - though there'll be no guarantee prices will ever rise again.


And we have to remember that your quarter of a million quid starter home is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and storm flooding on the Sussex coast - which makes it even less of a bargain!


This was the street where I grew up - Whitelea Road in Littlehampton. My sister still lives here, and the house between hers and the one I lived in is up for sale. She announced that it was up for sale for £135,000, we all laughed, assuming she was horrified at how unrealistic the price was. No, she thought it was CHEAP!! They have a lot of shocks coming down south.

Mum and Dad rented our place for £1.50 a week back in the 60s.

the end of woolworths

We've just had a long weekend down in Sussex (more to follow!) and made aquaintance with Woolies twice. The top two pics are of the store in Chichester - the empty shelves were more interesting than the ones with stuff on. Woolworths got it wrong right to the bitter end, with its fake 'sale'. They should have gone back to their roots and sold everything for 6d (2½p). That would have brought the crowds in and been a nice slap in the face of the administrators.

The last picture is from a lovely Italian restaurant in Littlehampton with another dying Woolworths forming the backdrop. Historic or what?

the quick death of the pound

It seems incredible that the pound is plunging so quickly - but it was forecast months ago by those in the know.

The fact is it's now about 95% certain that the UK will (at last!) join the Euro within 1 to 2 years - if the EU will let us.

Why a third world pisspot of a country like the UK needs its own currency is a mystery to me. Most of us travel, live or work in Europe these days, we've become Europeans over the last ten years, thanks to Easyjet, the better weather and Brits turning their backs on racism and other socialistic conceits.

The Mail/Guardian knuckledraggers have always whimpered that it's because we'll no longer have the queen on our coins. Sadly that's not true as the pattern coinage above proves. The other monarchies within the EU all show their monarchs heads on their coins, why wouldn't the UK? Or do the Mail/Guardian types really believe all the baa baa black sheep/English flags banned drivel?

Even the Euro is a currency of its time. As Peak Oil takes hold then the flight to gold will become unstoppable, as will the development of parallel local currencies, such as the Totnes and Lewes pounds. And I still fancy the Swiss Franc, the ultimate local currency!

socialist hell

(Geneva 5.12.2008)

Poor Manchester. I always thought it was a pretty cool place, providing us with The Smiths, The Passage, Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses and, above all others, Joy Division.

Now they've let us all down. The Guardian-denier-hippy-tory-lefty sheep have voted AGAINST (yes, AGAINST!!) the congestion charge!! Why would anyone vote FOR congestion??

So the loser sheep will have a few more years of ridiculous traffic jams until common sense and right wing ideas take root again and the charge is brought in and the profits used to build TRAMWAYS.

I shake my head sometimes. It looks like the whole world's gone red ...

porkie pies

'Irish pork is contaminated!' screams the headlines.

So?

As only hippies, socialists, chavs and losers eat dead animals surely this is a good thing?

Most normal people have been vegetarian or vegan for the last half century. This is a very chav headline, totally irrelevant to 99% of us. It merely underlines one of the main dangers of eating dead animals - poison.

If you eat meat you are as bad and stupid as any smoker or tory. You're not only destroying your health, making yourself look uncool and directly causing suffering to fellow creatures, but you know NOTHING of economics.

'Irish pork is contaminated!' Good!! Start stuffing yourself hippies!!!

heroes and villians

57 protestors broke into Stansted yesterday night and disrupted flights. Heroes and heroines all.

Whilst a bunch of Essex losers, BBC socialist scum and pathetic little emasculated Stansted spokes'men' whimper about the 'criminality' of it all, the rest of us non-lefty types are allowing ourselves huge grins.

What are Stansted and our moronic 'government' thinking of anyway? Why on earth would Stansted need a NEW runway??? They are going to have a job keeping the business they have in the teeth of global economic meltdown. In a few year's time they'll thank the protestors for saving them from wasting a fortune on extra facilities that will never be used.

Socialists - SHUT THE FUCK UP! The world you tried to build has gone forever. Get used to it losers ...

swiss stuff

The lake and town this morning.


Rhatische Bahn train at St Moritz.


Returning from Davos through a Yuletide landscape.


Ending the evening at the World's largest whisky bar - actually in our hotel.

Who knows what travel in 30 years time will be like? The only things we can be sure of is that there'll be no appreciable civilian air transport and the roads will be all but empty.

Today we woke up to half the lake frozen overnight. We decided to take a shortish train trip up to Davos. The RhB do a magnificent job of providing modern transport in this underpopulated corner of Switzerland.

This evening we walked up to the Xmas market with the temperature 10 degrees below. Layers is the secret! The market was fun, really something for the locals as the season doesn't start until tomorrow. I don't think we've heard an English voice since we arrived.

I like this cosmopolitan lifestyle, the mix of nationalities and languages. We tend to slip in and out of 4 or 5 at random here, everyone seems to know what you're saying. I'll miss this when Peak Oil hits which is why I'm making the most of it now.

to St Moritz

Metre gauge train at Landquart.


The view from our hotel window.


Cold horses playing with a branch.





Hartcliffe pair spotted in St Moritz horror.

I'm doing all this from our hotel in St Moritz!

We travelled over from Bristol yesterday. The trains weren't as good as usual with delays and cancellations, including the line to St Moritz being closed due to the avalanche risk. This meant some diversions, over a railway that only opened in 1999 - not sure what would have happened if this had been twenty years ago!

We finally made it here at about six in the evening. the whole town is under a metre of snow.

The hotel is superb with fantastic views across the lake and town. We had a superb raclette in the hotel restaurant, then had trouble sleeping because of the altitude!

This morning we've walked along the town side of the lake. This morning's snow has given way to bright sunshine.

As always Switzerland impresses with its post Peak Oil credentials. Superb and cheap public transport (even if, like us, you go first class!) and most power being hydro. Solar panels everywhere of course and cars and lorries being frowned on.

throwing money away

What on earth is wrong with the US and UK? Both countries are planning to throw state (our) money at ailing car companies.

THIS IS NOT CAPITALISM.

This is 70s style socialism (remember British Leyland?)

Sometimes you need to remind Bush and Brown how capitalism works. Companies that start to fail - no matter for what reason - should be allowed to do just that. Tinkering with the market to avoid closure does no good at all, in fact it does harm. The most essential part of successful capitalism is creative destruction - as a crap company fails good ones step in to take their place. Otherwise we get frozen into a moment of time where nothing changes or develops.

Let GM go to the wall. Let them all go to the wall.

Nobody will be buying cars - or certainly not the lumbering fuel-inefficient monsters Detroit seems to favour - in 20 years time. We expect our car to last us at least another 10 to 15 years (if diesel's still available of course), hopefully after that we'll be sussed enough to no longer need one. Kids today will never drive, they'll walk, cycle and use public transport - and be happier and healthier for it.

Why on earth waste a single moment on bailing out companies that will no longer have any role in a modern world? What are the socialists Bush and Brown thinking of?

musing

Woolworths and MFI go bust on the same day. Mad allahs go on the rampage in Mumbai deliberately targeting UK and US citizens. What's going on?

Gold and silver look like they are starting their staggering climb as money floods out of equities and into real cash.

Suddenly in the US and Europe the suburbs are beginning to die, their shops dying, their businesses collapsing and the social fabric, once held together by the glue of rising house prices, easy credit, conspicuous consumption and cultural marxism, falling apart quicker than one can document it.

And this is only the beginning. But is it the REAL beginning? Has the 'economic' crisis cloaked the real crisis that we all know is coming. We expected the end of consumerism and easy living (socialism) to be heralded by oil shortages and/or terrible climatic disasters. But the economy, in all its subtlety and cold-bloodedness, is calling the first shots, the 'externalities' ignored by your middle class shits manifesting themselves like this (looming depression) rather than through the glamour of fist fights on the forecourts or hurricanes in the home counties. They are coming, it's just we'll be more shabbily dressed than I was expecting ...

horseshit politics

Oh dear. All day the telly pundits have been going on about 'a momentous day for the UK economy' 'cos prize tosspot Darling was presenting a pre-budget thing.

And what a load of crap it is. Gordon Brown softened us up this morning with a rambling speech about the new order (more borrowing, globalization etc etc), then his sidekick wooed us all with the staggering offer of a 2½% reduction in VAT to 15% (I remember when it was 5%!) - to be financed by an increase in NI in 2011 (as if Labour will still be in power then!!).

But the real crime (a capital one to my mind) is the total stupidity of this 'government' thinking it can BORROW itself out of this recession! Er - wasn't it borrowing that caused all this trouble in the first place?

In a way the pundits were right. Today has been a momentous one - the death of New Labour. We'll get a tory government by default even without an apology for Thatcher.

In reality the death of the globalized economy and the debt economy is now intricately intertwined with the two real crises - Peak Oil and Climate Change. But these buggers haven't figured that out yet ...

feral kids

Barnardos have just come out with a report that claims 50% of adults think kids are 'like animals'.

Fucking morons.

Did they ask anyone that actually HAS kids? Did they ask anyone that actually lives on the rough estates where these so-called feral kids live? Highly unlikely. We have the odd nutter here, but most of the kids are great - far more civilized and well-behaved than we were back in the 60s and 70s.

I reckon they only asked Mail and Guardian readers! Talk about biased.

And as for adults being 'scared' of kids - what a pile of drivel! Why would any burly and street-wise adult be frightened of some beanpole borderline divvy in a twat hat?

portishead railway - about time!!

As you may have seen in the local media FOSBR is running a postcard campaign to reopen the rail line to Portishead and the line between Avonmouth and Bristol Parkway via Henbury. Funding will become available from the government for transport priorities in the South West region in the new year. We want the West of England Partnership (ex-Avon authorities) to include them in the bid. Only items high up the regional list will receive funding. Previous funding bids have been exclusively road-based. Since the government have refused to allow Network Rail to fund these schemes, this is the only way. We think that we have a good chance, but need your support.
The postcard is now available on the FOSBR website here.

Please print it from the website, fold it in half and tape it together before you send it to the West of England Partnership. Sorry, but you'll need to provide a stamp!

Besides getting people out of their cars and into quick and efficient public transport, there are several good reasons to support the campaign

These rail links would provide a cross-city service and a new link between the Severn Beach line and Bristol Parkway.

There has been much talk about Rapid Transit. This is the original rapid transit: Filton Abbeywood to Temple Meads in 8 minutes & Parson St to Stapleton Rd in 12 minutes!

Greater Bristol rail stations have seen passenger numbers double in the ten years to 2004/5. There have been further significant increases since then. Since Bristol City Council put money into the Severn Beach line to increase the service in May, numbers increased by 30% in three months. The demand is there.

Portishead's traffic and that into Bristol along the A370 is notorious. The Henbury line runs close to major employers including Rolls Royce, Airbus and Royal Mail at Filton and would provide a public transport alternative where none may exist at present.
Road accidents!

The West of England Partnership (representing ex-Avon authorities) estimate that congestion costs local businesses £350 million a year.

Government funding will be allocated for new transport schemes in the new year but our local decision-makers must submit a bid for it prioritising the schemes they want. This gives local councillors the chance to show that they are interested in schemes other than roads and buses.

For those who see such things as important, at roughly £20 million this proposal compares very well with road schemes.

What you can do:

Please send the postcard to the West of England Partnership.

If you want physical (rather than electronic) cards to send or to give to other people please let me know and I will arrange to get them to you. The more people who are involved the better.

Please foward this email to your friends and anyone who may be interested.

If you are involved with trade unions or other organisations please would you ask your colleagues to send cards and if the organisation will issue a statement of support as that would be wonderful!

For those interested, there is a Facebook group about the Portishead Railway campaign which can be found here. There is a copy of the postcard available here too.

Originally posted on somerset and dorset

modern transport plans for Norfolk

(Photos Salhouse on Sheringham BR branch, 30.7.1984)

If you think restoring Bath to Bournemouth has some issues for the future spare a thought for the Norfolk Orbital Railway which plans to link the BR Norwich-Sheringham line to the North Norfolk and Mid-Norfolk Railways. This will create a huge loop around northern Norfolk, bringing modern transport back to this neglected corner of England and operating both commuter and heritage trains. I can foresee that their biggest problem will be line capacity.

There was a programme on TV about this last night. Most were in support of it, but amazingly Peak Oil was only mentioned once!

Originally posted on somerset and dorset

strange days

I'm a third of the way into a course of 6 injections which will replenish my B12 - my diabetes medicine has basically destroyed my ability to get this any other way. So after the 6 it will be an injection every 3 months to stop me getting dementia!

Out there things are getting madder by the day, with the Bank of England determined to destroy the pound - I reckon we'll be using the Euro within two years, though hopefully local currencies will flourish as well. The election of Obama is a bright point, but more because power in the US has switched to my generation rather than in any hope that he'll be able to solve the big financial problems. Suddenly, at least in the US, politics is cool again, and climate change and peak oil will now be firmly on the agenda, even if a little late!

Our next trip away is to St Moritz at the start of December. We're flying to Geneva, then taking the train (first class of course!) right across Switzerland. The snow's already down so it should be nice and yuley! I've got this really cute little mini-laptop so, providing we can load the software, I'll be able to report and blog from St Moritz! Fortunately I foresaw the fall in the pound so got our Swiss Francs at a good price!

police state advances

Look at this, received today. The first sentence is the telling one.

If you doubted you were living in a Stalinist state this should open your eyes. How dare Tesco, a PRIVATE company, give PRIVATE information to a government organisation.

How did this happen? Through a so-called 'loyalty' card. Loyalty to whom? Certainly not its customers.

The stupidest thing is that we've always had a TV license. The 'misunderstanding' comes from the fact that Debs has changed her name since getting married. This is the one good thing that comes out of this - Brown's attempts to become Big Brother will always be scuppered by the sheer stupidity of the sort of people that would not feel ashamed of doing such 'work'!

Needless to say Tesco will no longer get a penny of our money.

boris loses it

Poor Boris Johnson. The one person further to the left than Ken Livingstone ... and poor London's stuck with him.

What's the duffer gone and done now? Only cancelled nearly 3bn quid's worth of tramway development in London. What is he thinking of? And to replace these superb schemes - more buses (LOL!) and more provision for walking and cycling (cheap).

It's simple. A city isn't a city without trams. It's a joke. The problem was the plans just scrapped by Boris were nowhere near ambitious enough. London doesn't need a few km of tramways here and there, but a huge network reaching every corner of the city, plus extensions into commuterland, to totally replace the road network. Perhaps backwards-looking Boris simply doesn't get it.

London WILL get its trams, or die. It's just going to take a few more years than expected.

Bye bye Boris. You were fun for a week or two ...

Also posted to transition transport UK and future economics

interesting times

What the fuck is going on? How could apparently professional people, some with an economics background, drop interest rates by 1½%? It's madness - and here's why.

The banks are cash poor, that's why they are not lending to each other, let alone anyone else. To increase their balance sheets they need to draw in cash - and lots of it. To get that cash they need to offer high interest rates. Interest rates should be going UP, not down.

The second part of the equation is that the world is in an economic mess because of cheap credit. Yet our idiot government's cure is - make credit cheaper.

This is a potent moment of danger for the UK.

Those companies that depend on cheap credit, rather than cash reserves, should GO TO THE WALL, not be bailed out by this weak government.

Again, to flourish, hold gold, silver, oil shares with value, land, skills, seeds and friends. This is going to get a LOT worse.

Also posted to future economics

yes!

Well, despite the diabetes and B12 problems I can still manage an all-nighter on election night!

We stocked up with apple pie, pretzels, popcorn and Bud and celebrated the end of socialism in the USA.

What a night! Has there ever been such a political contrast in the US? Dipstick old-money socialist Bush being replaced by the urbane and charismatic Obama. Obama v McCain was never going to be a fair contest, particularly after McCain amazingly brought in the practically Mongoloid Sarah Palin as running mate. What a total joke she was - the Obama camp must have laughed all night when she started spouting her commie rot.

What an example to the world too. The US from being a pariah state and bully can now transform itself into a world leader. Who would ever have thought that of the US? Obama's plans for a Green Energy transformation is a first step in allowing the US to survive the 21st century. The end of dependence on oil and a genuine desire to tackle climate change are the two main pillars on which the US transformation need to be built. If Obama starts talking about citizens learning new skills and crafts and wiping out the debt economy who knows where the US will end up? And how about tying the dollar to gold again - that would be a stroke of genius.

Who knows ... one day even the UK may get a black prime minister, or even its first woman one!

cabot circus settles down

We popped to Cabot Circus yesterday. It has improved enormously from our first visit. The crowds are down and the shops are just about empty. The restaurants are busy still, and that was what we went for. Until Cabot Bristol city centre seemed almost devoid of decent eating places. Now we're spoilt for choice.

These developments are a problem for all forward-thinking people. The leftie scum are anti any sort of consumerism and will condemn absolutely any development. The hippies are so apart from normal people that they can't even grasp the concept of somewhere like Cabot.

The real forward-thinking people, the grounded working class right wing greens, know that places like this are LOVED by 95% of the population. The 'problem' is to make them sustainable and stay relevant to the communities they serve. Providing a cosmopolitan eating experience is one step, getting rid of all those crap shops and replacing them with hardware outlets, sustainable energy shops, seed stores and all the other stuff we'll need in the future is the next step. And for fucks sake GET A BLOODY TRAMWAY RUNNING TO IT AND THROUGH IT!

Also posted to future economics

new blog

We joined Bristol Zoo the other day and have now been five times! There's always something new happening there and the place has a great atmosphere. The left hate zoos, we love 'em!

So I've set up a new blog that will report on Bristol Zoo and the animals.

the english seaside holiday

Brooding Burnham



Nocturnal fairground impressions


Chav family ...

We had a weekend at Pontins, Brean. No idea why, though I think it was some sort of compensation for the girls for our trip to Majorca!

Normally I find Pontins quite fun, but the chavness this time was worse than ever. Smoking, Fosters, the Sun, Bingo, faggots and chips ... what can you say?

I first did this Pontins in 1964! It rained every day, the site flooded and my chemistry set spilled and ruined my pyjamas. In 2008 I spent most of the time dosed up against a cold and waiting to come home.

What exactly is the attraction of Brean? Too cold to go near the sea, no cultural pursuits catered for, dreadful people trying to look happy. Perhaps it's a lot nicer in August, but somehow I doubt it ...

Palma looks ahead

Route 52 - running along the front.

Typical off-peak bus loadings.

Route 15 in Palma.

The former station in Palma - everything has now shifted underground.

The authorities on Majorca have realised that the island needs to embrace rail to move forwards. At the moment there is a diesel worked line from Palma to Inca and Manacor. This is (currently) all that remains of a more extensive network - but restoration has already taken place between Inca and Manacor. There is also the (mainly) tourist route from Palma to Soller, and the tramway onwards to Port Soller. These two systems have adjacent terminals in Palma, off the Placa d'Espanya. There is also the newly opened metro line from Palma to the University.

But this is just the start. There are plans to build a route to Alcudia linking to a coastal light railway linking C'an Picafort and Puerto Pollensa. In the south there are proposals for another (more southerly) route linking Palma and Manacor, together with a metro line around the west of Palma.

Most interesting to us, as we've just returned from the area, is the advanced proposal for a tramway linking Placa d'Espanya to the airport and then on to the Playa de Palma and on to Arenal.

We used the buses to get from our hotel to Palma, and they were a nightmare. And this was in the off-peak low season! Many buses simply sailed through the bus stop showing a 'Bus Complet' board, meaning totally full. We waited in Palma for an hour and ten minutes for a bus back to Playa - all were full, and this on a route with a bus every ten minutes! And at three in the afternoon.

This is a sure sign of a route's viability for tram replacement! Trams handle far more passengers than buses ever can. There are plans to start building this line within a year. To me that's still too long!

After Peak Oil Majorca will, if these plans (and more) come to fruition, cope pretty well with the movement of freight and passengers in an energy-poor world. We may no longer be able to fly there, but hopefully in twenty year's time we'll be able to take the ferry from the mainland, pick up a tram at the port and reach every part of the island by sustainable transport.

Also posted to transition transport UK and future economics

majorca (1)

Exit from Palma.


Wooden opulence.


Soller in the rain.


The tram to the port.

A real gem on Majorca is the Palma-Soller railway, which we visited last Thursday.

It's a three foot gauge line that starts from a charming station right in the heart of Palma, then using a little street running and reservation passes through some rather shabby bits of town before heading into the mountains through orange, lemon and olive groves and then reaches the mountain town of Soller. From Soller there is a 4km tramway down to the port, which we didn't have time to visit, but I did get a few shots of the tram running down the narrow streets.

Also posted to somerset and dorset and european byways

reality bites!

It's been fun watching the markets the last few weeks. As an economist this has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, history as it happens. (It helps being debt-free, renting, out of stocks and into gold and silver!)

But what does it all mean? The USA's slide into socialism has been as surprising as it's been amusing, watching the rednecks having to confront the results of their love of debt and ignorance by using the tired old techniques of Lenin and Roosevelt. It's pathetic watching it.

Meltdown will not be averted no matter how much cash is thrown at the system. The old debt-financed globalised consumer 'capitalism' will die. In its place will arise REAL capitalism. Businesses funded by savings, run on a small scale from sustainable premises, sending their goods to market by train, tram and canal, utilising local currencies and hopefully not being taxed to the hilt by unimaginative bureaucratic self-appointed governments. That is what the post-Peak Oil world will look like. Who knows, this may even be the beginning of the end of global warming ...

circuses and bread

Milling penniless consumers at Cabot Circus,


Where to next - everything looks the same!


LOL!


REAL retail space - St Nicks.

We visited the new Cabot Circus in Bristol today. On the way we saw zombies, spat venom at time travellers from the SWP, signed an animal rights petition and missed the christians. The place itself was an infuriating tangle of different floors, totally unimaginative shops and some nice (but far too busy) restaurants. All in all a white elephant with a sense of timing that staggers. It may well be the UK's last major retail development and will probably be all but empty once peak oil hits.

Less than a mile away is the excellent St Nicks, a REAL retail development. Small units, tons of atmosphere, individually locally owned businesses, useful products and superb eating facilities. St Nicks will outlast Cabot Circus by centuries.

the US slides towards communism

This evening commie Bush will speak to the nation (thankfully not ours!) Our previous business model, based on consumerism fuelled by huge amounts of cheap debt, is coming to its natural end. But our left wing friends across the Atlantic want to keep the party going.

Americans have NO concept of a free market. Their mortgages are backed by NATIONALIZED companies, they bail out businesses that should be left to go to the wall by throwing rapidly devaluing dollars at them and they expect the poor US taxpayer to fund this socialist drivel. It's pathetic.

Big government is ALWAYS wrong. It always ends in socialism then decay. In the UK Thatcher learned that the hard way, now Brown is finding it out too.

LEAVE THE MARKET ALONE AND IT WILL SORT EVERYTHING OUT!! But then, of course, the politicians will all be out of a job.

super weston mare

A day trip to Weston super Mare!


We set the dinosaurs on the foreign christian invaders on a shelf in Marks and Spencers.


Took the obligatory tourist trip to the burnt out pier.


Stopped at The Cliffs tea room on the old toll road - a wonderful slice of 1930s Englishness.


Ah ...

We popped down to Wick St Lawrence to visit our aristocratic Finnish chums on Saturday and ended up visiting Weston. Not, alas, on the long-closed Weston Clevedon and Portishead Railway which once had a station at Wick St Lawrence, but in our new low carbon car/van thing.

littlehampton 2

Neil's garden.


Food.


Grapes.


Neil discusses Peak Oil.

On the second day we visited Chris and Neil up in Findon. We hardly need push Peak Oil any more - everyone gets it now. Neil is really looking forward to things breaking down as he's the kind of bloke that will thrive in a much harsher world! He's got a dog the size of a bear, knows the location of more community guns than I do, composts, beats up hippies and commies and grows his own food. He was also desperate to talk up Peak Oil.

littlehampton

Jeff's garden.


The ubiquitous Green Man - no English home should be without at least one!


Jeff's tree nursery.


The model railway.

We popped to my old stamping ground of Littlehampton - Britain's toughest town - a couple of weeks ago, calling in on family. This is Jeff's place. As well as numerous artefacts of Sussex - Jeff is a rabid Sussex nationalist - there were Green Men, a nursery for trees that he rescues from the Downs as seeds, then brings on and replants back on the Downs, and an excellent model railway.

only in Hartcliffe!

This gem appeared in today's Independent - other communities have playschemes, parks or coffee mornings. Here in Hartcliffe we have a community gun! I only wish I was party to where it's kept as there are a few climate change deniers and hippies I'd love to send on their way!

comment

Oh dear! When things are chugging along calmly Panther churns out post after post, but when the shit hits the fan I'm much more likely to be watching the news, Bloomberg and the markets. And what a week or so it's been! First Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, today it's Lloyds possible buy out of HBOS. The markets dither and don't always reflect the long term reality, but the drift is down.

So what's the long term view? My own faith in capitalism will never be shaken, but I'm glad that we're beginning to see the end of this Thatcherite socialist populist 'capitalism', that's really just consumerism for sheep fuelled by cheap credit and tat. I think this is the beginning of the end for so-called 'globalisation' and a robust rebirth of genuine, small-scale, artisanal capitalism, funded by wealth rather than debt. The death of the dollar (and many other fiat currencies) is getting closer by the day, the death of pointless jobs will follow and the growth of the family as unit of production is on the rise. Our towns and villages will begin to fill with shops, business units and real people, our railways will be reinstated and energy will be produced in the UK, not imported at high prices from stupid places like Russia and the Middle East.

This is a major, pre-Transition, change to our society, and not before time.

morons

The Bank of England fucked up again today. They didn't raise interest rates.

To rebuild our shattered economy after 20-odd years of Credit Cruncher abuses aided by craven governments we need to rebuild our national balance sheet, and the best asset class is cash in a strong currency. We get that two ways - by building a strong industrial base that underpins a strong currency, and by encouraging our citizens to be thrifty and SAVE. We're not going to do that with interest rates so low. My money's going into gold, silver and land, REAL money.

These fuckers still haven't learned the lesson. We need economists running the country, not idiot politicians whose only interest is in keeping the sheep grazing.

Expect REAALY bad economic news over the next year or two, and to avoid it just read this blog!

oh dear

The poor Americans. Having to choose a replacement for dimbo tree hugger Bush. And what a choice they have! Smarmy smart-arse Obama, or zombie McCain. And as for his 'running mate', Sarah Palin, it's got to be a joke! She runs a village store up north, surrounded by a gaggle of kids with stupid names - she wouldn't be out of place in Hartcliffe! And now her 17 year old - called wonderfully 'Bristol' (How Hartcliffe is that??) - is up the duff by some chav loser.

I like my Republicans old school. Low IQ, loads of money and easily controlled.

So what does Sarah believe? Apart from that the Commie Centre is the best place on earth? She is convinced that 'global warming' is not man made. Impressive, as she'd be hard pressed to find a single scientist who would agree with her. But there again she believes in 'creationism'.

It's all crap anyway. Obama will walk this election, McCain will probably pass away before November in any case. And Sarah can go back oop north to sell fishing reels and bullets, whilst believing the world is flat. Fuck 'em all ...

the future and the past

Scene from the Great Dorset Steam Fair, near Blandford. Debs is interviewing one of the owners.



A few general views.


Our press pass - which gave us a carte blanche to wander the site and ask questions. This was at the invitation of ITV Local Meridian, who were experimenting with using bloggers to report on the show.

I suspect 99% of the visitors go for nostalgic reasons - but of course steam is likely to become very much part of our future. Bear in mind that the most advanced form of energy - nuclear - is really just a big steam engine. The nuclear reaction heats up water which turns to steam and works the turbines.

There are also HUGE reserves of coal in the UK, and the government is already eyeing this up. It's not hard to imagine the coalfields of South Wales, South Yorkshire, Scotland, the Midlands, the North East and even Somerset and Kent bursting back into life over the next 20-30 years. There is also a huge unworked coalfield under Oxfordshire. Of course coal is - currently - a dirty fuel, and any talk of using it sends the tree huggers into apoplexy (good!!) But clean coal technologies may well come along, even if expensive. But of course to be sustainable we need to grow and burn wood. Imagine the UK covered in vast forests, all sustainably harvested for fuel. With the vast increase in railways and rail traffic expected in the future many of these railways will, once again, be worked by steam, where electricity is too expensive or difficult an option. The future is beginning to resemble the past more and more.

Back to the fair! Visitor numbers are now in excess of 200,000. Almosst all arrive by car, by the fair organisers are looking ahead and considering building an on site railway. This will no doubt be steam powered!

The flexibility of the traction engines is amazing. As well as pulling heavy loads, they could also be used to work farm machinery and, of course, fairground rides. This flexibility is something we've also lost on the railways, as locomotives have been replaced in many cases by multiple units. A locomotive can pull freight or passengers, can shunt, work a snowplough or engineering trains. Flexibility is the key to keeping costs down. I bet the fair railway when it is built uses locomotives, and will be the better for it!

french lessons

The festival at Lizio. Breton music and other treats - and very chilled out.


Ploermel station. How long before the tracks return?


Josselin - lively as always.


I think this is the old railway (which continues to Ploermel and beyond) but still not sure!

A week in Brittany again. A great time despite raging sinusitis!

It still amazes me how far in advance of us France is. They will cope well with Peak Oil, though not so well with Climate Change. 80% of their power is generated by nuclear, though how long uranium will last is anyone's guess. There were plenty of wind turbines, and the roads were almost empty. Towns and villages still retain local shops, although the supermarkets are useful too! The French have invested heavily in some of their railways, the TGV in particular. Even smaller cities have brand new state of the art tramways. And their closed railways are generally protected as rights of way with reinstatement much easier than in the UK. And in many towns and villages council services have switched from internal combustion to horse and cart. Even the weather's better ...

The race to claim ownership of oil and gas-rich areas in the Arctic has been charted for the first time in a map showing the potential territorial ambitions of interested states.

Researchers from Durham University's International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) produced the map to illustrate current boundaries, possible future claims and potential disputes in the region.

Last year a Russian submarine planted a flag on the ocean floor underneath the North Pole, in a bold gesture highlighting its claim to a huge chunk of the frozen land.

Other disputes involve Canada, USA, Denmark, Iceland and Norway.

Martin Pratt, director of research at IBRU, said he thinks the race for resources is the key motivation for states. He said a new survey by the US Geological Survey estimates that a fifth of the world's undiscovered, technically-recoverable resources lie within the Arctic Circle.

"We are talking 90 million barrels of oil, nearly 17 hundred trillion cubic feet. I mean I cannot even imagine how much that is, but it is a lot," Mr Pratt said. "I suppose for any state, control over hydrocarbons is significant as other resources dwindle."

He said Russia could be particularly attracted to the region's potential for oil and gas extraction because it already has a well developed gas infrastructure.

Areas of the Arctic, once frozen all year round, now melt in the warmer months, allowing investigations in the region that were not possible before.

"The other aspect is the melting of the polar ice and that is making it easier to explore the area which is why the oil and gas industry is looking at it," he said. "It is now becoming a potential area of development rather than a hypothetical one."

But he said this was likely to cause concern about the "unique environment" in the Arctic. "It is vulnerable and extracting oil and gas is not an environmentally friendly activity." Source

I felt obliged to add this comment!

Even if it's 90 BILLION barrels it is little more than 3 years' worth at current rates of consumption (86 million barrels per day). It will be very expensive to produce (the arctic is still pretty cold and dangerous for half the year or more), it will cost a fortune to transport, this is also the gross yield - huge amounts of energy will be expended getting it out. My best guess is that this will actually supply about a year's worth of energy - and as such would be a total waste of time and effort. This is before any further negative effects from climate change are factored in, many of which will need energy to correct/contain.

What it does reveal is the absolutely desperate position we are all in over energy supplies. It's pretty clear from this that Peak Oil has already passed the real danger point and that we're all going to learn to live with far more expensive energy and, often, no energy at all.

By their actions governments and oil companies reveal that they are desperately worried, but don't have the guts to tell us directly.

The real answer is energy efficiency and conservation, massive investment in renewables and a huge increase (as a stopgap as uranium is rapidly running out) in nuclear generating capacity. Don't let the hippies, tories and Daily Mail reader socialist scum dictate the agenda - they don't have a clue what they're talking about!

100 months left?

Let's hope not, but there are real dangers that positive feedback mechanisms may well kick in (or may already be doing so) and that if these aren't addressed we won't be able to stop runaway climate change. Whilst my main interest is Peak Oil I don't totally disregard climate change - it's the synergy between the two that is so difficult to quantify.

Anyway, check out this site for the apocalyptic view of climate change.

socialism - a long time dying

First they tried to destroy eastern and central Europe. Then in their Thatcherite form they tried to destroy the UK. It all ended (or so we thought) as the 80s became the 90s - the fall of the Berlin Wall, of Thatcher, of the USSR. The end of socialism, for ever.

Now they are churning out their bile and exercising the chips on their shoulders.

IT'S NOT OUR FAULT THAT YOU'RE MIDDLE CLASS YOU TWATS.

Middle class and low IQ - the typical socialist.

Now they are targeting Global Warming and Peak Oil. Why? Because both threaten their vision for the world - endless suburbia, a detached home for all, a B&Q on every street corner, an end to voting, two cars for every family, a pointless government job for life and an endless succession of benefits, subsidies and grants.

Fuck 'em. Fuck Martin Durkin, ex-communist, extreme lefty and the creator of the Channel 4 joke documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Yeah, well you'd fucking know all about that wouldn't you, you toffee-nosed, po-faced divvy?

Go and discuss Marx with Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher and the Chinese in one of your posh gardens. Just leave us alone to protect our own families as Global Warming and Peak Oil kick in big time.

spineless tossers

Oh dear, our 'prime minister' Gordon Brown has just quivered yet again and decided that the miserable 2p fuel surcharge will not now be imposed in the autumn. How many times has this Scottish tory tart done this now? Every time the hippy lorry drivers whinge he backs down. So where is the revenue going to come from??

As drivers we can choose to drive less and, in the longer term, change our lifestyles so we no longer depend on dinosaur cars. But now we'll all have to pay so the socialist toffs can continue to drive for a few more weeks. It's pathetic.

1848 all over again

Potato famine 2008 style. A timely reminder that the sooner we learn survival skills the better - in a few years time this would be a real disaster! A combination of wind, rain and ...


... slugs.


The crop from 2 containers. Next year we'll deal ruthlessly with the slugs. Nemetode worms and hedgehogs, and environmentally-friendly pellets.

don't miss

In between baiting socialists and hippies whilst spreading the Peak Oil message why not recharge your batteries by watching the BRILLIANT Summer Heights High. It's the best Australian comedy ever and is nudging the Boosh out of my favourite comedy show of all time!

why tories don't understand business

Arch-socialist scumbag Margaret Thatcher almost wiped out the middle class with her total misunderstanding of business. But then should we expect anything other from these socialist toffs?

And things don't seem to have changed.

From today's AOL a quote from George Osborne, socialist.

Fuel duty would be slashed to help hard-pressed families deal with soaring prices, under radical Tory plans.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne promised to link tax levels to oil prices, so the Government "shared the pain" of hikes.
If the measures had been implemented at the last Budget duty would currently be 5p lower - easing the impact on motorists at the pumps.

Speaking on BBC1's Andrew Marr programme, Mr Osborne described the system as a "fair fuel stabiliser".

"At the moment fuel duty goes up even when the price of oil goes up," he said. "So instead of Government helping you with the rising cost of living, they are actually adding to it. The Government revenue flows in because the price of oil goes up."

Oh dear! In reality the purchase of fuel has DECREASED by 20% over the last month or so, severely denting government revenues from fuel duty. So as the price of fuel goes up revenues DECREASE! This is just common sense, but toff Osborne doesn't seem to understand it. Don't give up the day job George - your understanding of economics seems to be as vague as that of your namesake George Monbiot!

chinese peak oil prep!

From Lewis Geary's Rich Life letter, some really interesting facts about Chinese attitudes to money!


*** Being frugal is a virtue. Frugality is an integral part of the Chinese culture... it's a concept that's been taught for thousands of years. The classic Chinese text "Dao De Jing" states that the three greatest treasures one can have are love, frugality, and generosity.

*** Save as much as you can - The personal savings rate in China is incredibly high compared to the UK. Chinese households save around 30% of their family income every year, while according to The Guardian, in 2007, we Brits saved just 2.1% of our income.*** If you haven't got the cash - don't buy it! Credit cards are still fairly rare in China and most people pay for everything in cash.
Recently, the Chinese government relaxed rules on home ownership, and many ordinary Chinese people were able to pay for their properties in CASH! Teachers and factory workers were able to call upon 10-20 times their annual salaries in actual, physical money! Imagine how that would go down at your local Halifax...

*** Be wary of debt. Most Chinese people HATE to be in debt - hence the relative scarcity of credit cards and the reluctance to take on mortgage debt. That's a good thing. The less debt you have, the more financial freedom you enjoy.

*** Always look for a bargain - In China, haggling is a way of life. I've been told that if you ever visit China, it's expected that you ask for at least 50 to 75% DISCOUNT in stores.

You'll find plenty of shops and market sellers willing to negotiate with you, because bargaining is ingrained in the Chinese culture. Can you imagine how much more money you'd have if you only ever paid half-price for everything? Try it on your next shopping trip up the high street. Remember: don't ask - don't get!

*** Don't make your salary a secret - If you ask a Chinese person how much he or she earns, the chances are they'll tell you. It's not seen as bragging or a way to score points. It's actually seen as a way of getting to know another person.

It's not thought of as rude or bad form in Chinese culture to talk about money, and I believe that's a very good thing. We're way too guarded in this country about our finances and that can lead to jealousy, bitterness, envy and a reluctance to face up to financial problems.

*** Give the gift of cash! Every New Year and every birthday, Chinese children usually get cash from relatives in a red envelope. The tradition is that they save this money until they reach adulthood.

That might sound pretty unimaginative to you and I, but in China it's considered extremely thoughtful. It's not a bad idea when you think about how much useless (and expensive) rubbish we accumulate as kids that we discard after a few weeks.

the great unwinding ....

An interesting comment from an RAC spokesman at the end of this short AOL piece!

Temperatures rose to 27.8C (82F) today - the hottest day of the year so far, Met Office weather forecasters said.

London and other parts of south east England, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia and the Midlands have seen the highest temperatures, while Northern Ireland and western parts of Scotland have missed out on the sunshine.

A Met Office spokesman said: "I think it's squeaked it as the hottest day of the year, although we can't validate it yet.

"It may even have risen a couple of points higher than the 27.8C recorded at the London Weather Centre."

But the heat does not appear to have sent Britons flocking to the coast, according to motoring organisation the RAC.

"The roads have been comparatively quiet," said an RAC spokesman. "People are really thinking about whether their journeys are necessary and trying to economise on fuel while prices are so high." source

watershed, bad weather, weddings, cash

A few more shots of progress on the garden railway! Next job is to build the garden wall.

Oh, I'm getting married on Saturday!

We bought a nice little escape chalet today, hidden in the woods near Clevedon, a little wedding present to ourselves. The aim is to make it just about self sufficient in water, power and food.

We had October style gales last night that played havoc with my potato plants. A little warning that no matter how carefully we plan for Peak Oil Climate Change can still kick us in the teeth!

My strategy of renting, investing in gold and silver and not having any debt seems to be paying off now that the long-expected credit crunch is hitting home.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks ....

taking it easy

So our marvellous tanker drivers are on strike? Oh dear - back to the seventies.

And what do the general public think of their (in)action?

Results of an AOL poll today -

Do you support the strikers?

Results: .......Votes ...Per cent

Yes.................793.........44%
No...................944........52%
Don't know...... 68..........4%

Mmm. Well you can discount most of the 'yes' votes as they're probably from tanker drivers taking it easy at home, and from a few rogue cyclists and Peak Oil types.

So it's an overwhelming no then.

GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY FUCKERS WHILST YOU'VE STILL GOT JOBS! £42,000 FOR DRIVING A TRUCK IS OBSCENE.

garden progress

The railway after pegging out but before ballasting.




3 shots with the first panel ballasted and the second panel levelled off. The railway's the first element of the garden to go in as the rest of the garden will take its shape from it. It'll probably be next year before the vegetables go in now!

Second job will be the brick wall to go in just behind the tipper truck.

wanker drivers strike

So the latest blow to motorists' sanity is a tanker drivers strike.

I won't go into all the usual stuff about lorry drivers being an endangered species etc, but what struck me was this -

The pay row has erupted because members of Unite claim they are paid the same now as they were in 1992, just under £32,000 a year, despite their working week being 11 hours longer. Source.

Hmmmm. Really? If true one has to ask -

a) What on earth justified these people getting £32,000 in 1992 for a part time job?

b) What sort of union allows its members to lose pay on such a huge % over 16 years?

or

c) Does the union employ a five year old chimp to do its maths and PR?

norway and forest fires

Norway has a generally wet climate, far wetter than the UK on the western side, but just look at this weather warning map from Meteoalarm Europe. Red is, of course, the highest warning level. The whole of southern Norway is under threat of forest fires. This was a prediction for climate change but again it's surprising to see it happen so fast. Finland was on forest fire alert throughout much of April.

the new reality

Britain's new reality is starting to take shape. Falling house prices, 38% of adults frightened they can't repay their debts, petrol and diesel starting to become expensive, the spectres of unemployment and inflation on the horizon.

The lucky ones are those who rent and have no debt, who have recession-proof businesses and have stored at least part of their wealth in physical gold and silver. And the clever ones are already positioning themselves for life in post-oil Britain. A life of tools, networks, gold, silver, trees, skills and books. The crunch is now only a few years away now, you can see the signs of decay everywhere.

The real clue is costs. Watch everything get dearer in step with the rising costs of energy. We're seeing socialism re-emerge as people start to doubt their own ability to get through it. The lorry drivers are the arch communist scum at the moment, begging their government to subsidise their idiotic and anachronistic lifestyle.

There's no point in turning to 'government'. It will collapse everywhere as the costs continue to rise and as chaos enters the system. We all need to harden ourselves for the tasks to come and build our communities - no government is going to help us, they'll hardly be able to help themselves. We need to build our localised, solar-powered economies and if necessary create local defence forces to stop the hippies, socialists, peak-oil deniers and middle-class losers from trying to butt in.

who would have thought it?

"The cause of rising prices is clear - growing demand and too little supply to meet it both now and, perhaps of even greater significance, in the future.

"Our goal that Britain becomes a low-carbon economy is now an economic priority as well as an environmental imperative." Source.
Who said this? A clued-in economist, a Peak Oil advocate, Transition?

No, none other than our 'Prime Minister', Gordon Brown. And - this is the hilarious part - he said it in response to the barely believable lazy, sorry - lorry, drivers' 'protests' of yesterday.

So arch enemies of the environment and economic sense have managed to make possibly the worst Prime Minister since Thatcher publicly admit to Peak Oil!!

This is a wonderful world!

(Cynics (deniers) may claim through the comments page that Brown is merely making this all up to avoid losing extra tax revenue (for fitted kitchens no doubt)). (Conspiracy theorists (Daily Mail readers etc) may claim that Brown and his chums in the 'illuminati' and New World Order (big lizards department) are manipulating the price). Post drivel if you dare!

the return of chaos

Oh dear. A few lorry drivers trundle their dinosaurs into our uncool capital, whining about the price of diesel, that they seem to think is expensive when in reality it's dirt cheap and will never be as cheap again. They are bleating for the return of socialism - but is anyone listening? I doubt it.

One of their 'leaders' (I thought socialists thought we were all equal, or is that identical?) was asked on the BBC News where the money would come from to subsidise their dying industry. Should it be schools, hospitals, old people - his barely believable answer was 'from fitted kitchens'. If any of you thought these losers had a case I imagine that was the moment you realised that these people aren't serious about anything, especially their own industry.

Another whine we hear from 'em is that they have to pay VAT on diesel. Yes, but surely they claim it back as an input when they put in their quarterly returns? Or is that too difficult to explain to them?

The fact is they haven't got a clue. They tell us they're poor then waste 'expensive' fuel and lose a day's work driving into London of all places. And every step of the way they were alienating car drivers who were held up by their useless driving. They're now talking about picketting refineries again. So bloody 1970s! More time wasted, more work lost, more decadence. More chaos.

Because chaos is what this is really all about. Your average lorry driver lives a totally uncultured, unadventurous life. They park their mounds of blubber behind a big steering wheel and drive from factory to factory spreading prejudice and delivering the odd bit of cement, wood or extractor fan. They crave excitement - and every now and then they try to stir up trouble and get their latest tattoo on telly.

We don't need chaos. We need people working together to get us through the end of the Oil Age. Climate Change will bring enough excitement for us all. The real challenge is to convert our society WITHOUT chaos - and that message obviously hasn't got through to this unholy alliance of lorry drivers and politicians who love looking backwards rather than forwards.

fresh angle

Oh, the big bad truckers are scaring me by coming to this site and leaving comments! As always they totally miss the point and don't get sledgehammer subtlety and irony, but at least they are fun.

In checking how they found me I discovered this site, which has an interesting approach to Peak Oil - the psychological perspective. Perhaps some of my trucker chums should visit this site after flaming me and they may get clues as to why they are acting so irrationally to the end of cheap oil!

bloody idiots ...

Lorry drivers are to pour into London for what organisers hope will be the largest-ever fuel duty protest in the capital.

Hauliers are angry at soaring fuel prices which have resulted in the average cost of diesel passing far beyond the 120p-a-litre mark.

Led by lorry drivers from Kent, the protest is expected to attract hundreds of hauliers from all around the UK.

The convoy will make its way to central London, parking close to Marble Arch.

Transport for London said the A40 will be closed between White City and Edgware Road, west London, from 10am until 3pm so that demonstrators can park their lorries.

The westbound carriageway of the A40, going out of London, will remain open.

A delegation from the demonstrators will hand a letter to 10 Downing Street demanding the immediate introduction of an essential user rebate which would allow HGV operators to claim some of the fuel duty back.

Mike Presneill, a leading member of Transaction 2007, who is helping to organise the protest, said: "Fuel is rocketing. The Government has the power to act but appears not to be listening. Hundreds of UK transport firms are being driven to the wall. Thousands of UK jobs are being lost.

"Foreign hauliers are entering the UK with cheaper fuel purchased abroad. They contribute nothing to our economy."

Kent-based haulier Peter Knight said: "This is the economics of the mad house. If we are wiped out, the work will be done by foreign hauliers who pay nothing to the UK in tax."

A smaller fuel protest convoy hit the streets of London earlier this year. Source

A few points from the sane side of the argument.

1) These fuckers can't be short of cash despite their bleating because they can afford to lose a day's work and waste thousands on diesel.

2) This fantasy about 'foreign' lorries coming over and stealing OUR work (and women no doubt) is ridiculous. What do they do, drive across the Channel? What about the hundreds/thousands it would cost 'em in ferry fees? And why don't these socialist scum - most of whom appear to be Kent based - go over to France and fill up and do the same thing?? Many UK hauliers have branches in Europe anyway. And, despite what these tattooed Humpty Dumptys claim, fuel in the EU is almost as expensive as it is here in any case.

3) Tax is high in the UK on fuel, but where do they think foreign countries get the tax from if it's not on fuel? Yes, on everything else. If fuel tax fell in the UK it would only be taken somewhere else - and possibly somewhere where we'd not have the choice to reduce consumption (and our own tax).

4) Even the most fanatical road supporter would concede that road haulage is a dying industry. As oil/petrol/diesel runs out ALL medium/long distance freight will have to switch to rail. This is rail's opportunity to grab this trade NOW, by offering good deals to companies needing their freight moved by modern transport. Far from going to foreign companies, freight will continue its switch to rail, though at an accelerated pace. The switch to rail will also be a huge opportunity to forward thinking haulage companies who could set up their own railfreight departments to use their existing contacts and networks to modernise their industry.

5) Poor Peter Knight may think that this is all 'the economics of the madhouse' but he seems keen to want to make it even more so!

6) Roads with fewer/no lorries will be a far pleasanter place for car drivers. Less lorries would equal less demand for diesel (trains use a quarter of the amount for the same weight carried) and the price would rise less than if much was being wasted on inefficient road freight.

7) No car driver should support this 'action'. It is not in our interest to do so.

8) The price of fuel will continue to rocket. Diesel will probably hit £2 a litre by the middle of 2009. Haulage companies need to make hay whilst the sun shines and start organising their companies' switch to rail now, not in 2 or 3 years time.

traitors

'Isn't she lovely ...'

The Scottish government, in a move than further puts England and Wales to shame, is to ban the public display of cigarettes in shops. This total no-brainer move is actually being opposed by - shopkeepers! This callous regard for people's lives, health and coolness is disgusting.

[T]he prospect of legislation to restrict the display of cigarettes met with a frosty reception from Andy Willox, of the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland.

He said: "Forcing thousands of small independent shops to redesign their premises does not seem like the actions of government committed to sustainable economic growth."

John Drummond, chief executive of the Scottish Grocers' Federation, said the display of tobacco products is "essential" to allow customers to make a choice based on availability, price and brand. Source.

Just fuck off and move to England if you don't like it you pair of hippy wankers.

it takes two to contango

The oil futures markets are in contango. Basically this means that the further into the future a futures contract is for the higher the price. This is the opposite to what normally happens.

No matter what the hippies and socialists say oil probably is now past the peak. World demand is currently 87 million barrels/day, supply is 85 million barrels/day. Nobody seems to be able to make up the difference. 2 million barrels a day is a huge shortfall and with China and India growing phenomenally it can only get worse. Don't believe the crap about recession dampening demand - it doesn't. Petrol seems to be 100% inelastic - just look at all the Facebook groups demanding the price falls (they seem to think the price is fixed by the UK government and some unholy alliance of oil companies) but they get really pissy if you suggest driving less!

Supply and demand are dancing a fascinating dance and nobody can possibly predict where they're heading for - but I suspect $200/barrel by early 2009 and unleaded at £2/litre at around the same time. Wonder what the Facebook hippies will make of that??

what got it all started

I surprise a lot of people. I don't come across as a typical Green - far from it. With my boy racer cars, successful business, right wing politics, regular holidays abroad and taste for the good life I probably appear more like your average hippy denier ...

So how did it all start? Simple. 16 October 1987. If you don't remember that date you weren't there. It was the night of the infamous 'hurricane'. It changed everything.

We were right in the front line, on the Sussex coast. Wind speeds reached 108 mph. There was a lot of damage!

Now I'm not suggesting for one minute that this was a direct result of climate change. But what it was was a wake up call. This was the sort of event we're all going to experience a lot more in the future. Coupled with the end of cheap oil it is a dangerously potent combination - or possibly an opportunity if we follow the Transition model.


Chilling scene on Littlehampton sea front - I loved those pines in the background.


Bad parking.


Howards Way took a direct hit. It was only yards from the sea.


Desirable seafront properties.

garden progress

Overview.

Railway track and truck.


The apple tree!


It's starting to look a bit better and taking shape! Hopefully by the end of the summer we'll be producing some of our own food. If we can do it anyone can!

different colours, different shades ...

We had a visit from the local Green party rep yesterday evening. It was an odd experience, a bit like going through a timewarp. I explained that our main thrust now is Transition and that as far as we're concerned the Green Party exists merely to get people into power so it will make our job easier. I'm not sure he totally got it!

I also made my favourite point that environmentalists are ridiculously out of touch. I brought up the nonsense that Greenpeace recently came up with, that air travel will account for as much CO2 in 2050 as from all forms of transport now. This is of course total drivel - there won't be any civilian air travel by 2050, so why even bring it up? His amazing response was 'well, that's a matter of opinion.' No it's fucking not, it's a matter of geology! Sometimes the greens come across as as thick as the Daily Mail reader. Why do we even bother?

a tale of two cities

Build-a-Bear, Bristol



St Nicholas Market, Bristol

We did the trip round Bristol today, first visiting the Mall, then going down to the market. What a contrast! The Mall is all pointless chain shops struggling to sell stuff that nobody needs and even less can afford. The market is buzzing with local people buying local produce, but also sampling the various delights from many of the cultures that make Bristol such an exciting place. From the blandness of the Mall (which is being developed even further right now) with its escalators and chain shops, cash points and bland food outlets to the market is less than half a mile, but it's like going forward 50 years in time. Transition Bristol will be like the market all over. Bustling local businesses selling food and goods produced within ten miles of the city, probably using cash that is only useable in the immediate area. People coming in by foot, bike and tram and taking it easy.

I wonder how the hippies live like they do, flashing their credit cards, buying cheap tat, rushing around, driving. We'll look back on these days in twenty years with a mixture of incredulity and intense amusement!

socialist hell

I've had some fun ribbing some socialists, but what total idiots they are! Hardly suitable foes at all.

I visited, quite properly, a Facebook group that was for haters of the Daily Mail. As a 100% hater of this comic for the learning difficulties community I had every right to visit it, as do we all. But almost straight away this group seemed to be a dark lair for those dinosaurs of the 50s and 60s, the LEFTIES! What a joke.

So I mischeviously started a thread 'The right hate the Daily Mail too' and didn't I get some serious gip from the twats!

Anyway, the technique went like this. Make a bold and bald statement along the lines of 'I'm right wing' then write paragraphs basically stating the opposite and see if anyone twigs. Not one. The kneejerk reaction was to take on board the first bit then ignore the rest. No wonder these middle-class losers were so easy to control in the sixties!

There were still idiots on there talking about 'nationalising all the large industries'. Pathetic.

So I finished on a bit of Transition and you know what? These Marxist-Leninist fools put a block on me, making sure I couldn't answer or challenge their statements. Pathetic. I think that makes it 15-love to Transition!