elvie questions christianity

Spent a while chatting to Elvie, one of the cats this afternoon. She posed the question 'Why is Britain still riddled with an alien imported 'religion', and why are Pagans so loathe to kick them out (the christians)?

I explained that Paganism is a very understanding religion and that we value other 'religions' such as christianity because they point out clearly their own mistakes when interpreting the universe, which prevents us from doing the same thing. christians tie themselves in such knots when they try to 'explain' things that they are also most entertaining. Monotheistic 'religions' tend to constantly change to match the time and fashion and to suck in as many fools as they can to keep the cash and easy living going.

Paganism, with no book of rules, no male-dominated 'heirarchy' and no need or desire to proselytise, escapes all these traps and will endure long after the old monotheistic 'religions' have totally disappeared. Once the base need for some to control others vanishes, along with material excess, we'll all revert to the true religion of Europe, Paganism. It's the only certainty there is. We've endured for tens of thousands of years, despite all the horrors visited on us by the repressed foreign hordes, and will endure for tens of thousands more.

We have all the time in the world ... 

red bullshit

I don’t get this. The world’s overheating, we’re rapidly running out of cheap oil and what are the commies doing now? Flying planes through giant inflatables at Longleat!! In other words, just for ‘fun’, they are shoving tonnes of totally unneccesary carbon dioxide directly into the atmosphere for ... nothing! Are we mad or just stupid?

It really is time for governments worldwide to sit down and work out just how we are going to carefully manage the remaining oil, whilst at the same time rapidly developing a solar economy.

A few measures -

a five year rolling programme to remove ALL lorries (except for railhead-customer light vehicles) from public roads

the ending of the issuing of driving licenses

a committment to building at least 300 miles of new railways and tramways EVERY year

immediate imposition of full VAT on air fuel

removal of road tax and replacement by a fuel levy so that everybody (including foreigners) pays appropriately

Gradual closure of roads that duplicate existing routes

An end to all immigration to ease pressure on the environment

Grants to make homes sustainable and independent of the grid

Motorways to be converted to community railways

The immediate ending of all car and motorbike races and, of course, air races. 

kittenish

Heidi's mum had some problems with her leg and all the kits were left for about eight hours without their mum, so like good Pagans we offered to bottle feed 'em! This is too cute for words ...



This is her second helping, Trin's nursing hobby proving quite helpful in controlling what is, essentially, a wild and dangerous animal.



Heidi sated, it was Ginge's turn to be topped up with milk, which he was more than happy to do.



Dobby looking cute and less like Thom Yorke every day. 

why you ain't gonna get the petrol stupid ...

There is still a small (but shrinking) section of the population, both here in the UK and elsewhere, who assume that ‘they' are going to solve the problem of oil depletion, ‘they' being scientists and politicians.

But look at it logically. There isn't going to be a quick fix, or indeed any fix at all, because it simply isn't out there. Oil was a once in a billion year windfall, cheap and easy to access energy that hit us with a double edged sword of rapid technological development coupled with a veering off the course we were on - sustainability within a solar economy. In a way we shouldn't even be looking for a hi-tech solution to the problem, because hi-tech requires high energy inputs and is totally tied in with the availablility of cheap and easy fuel. Any solution has to be independent of oil, high level technology and complex social organisation, it needs to be local, simple and sustainable.

Now look at it from the point of view of ‘human nature', or so-called ‘human' nature which is anything but. Cheap fuel has helped create the get rich quick consumer society, fuelled by an inane media and companies that have no social conscience or involvement. Cheap fuel is even at the heart of our spiritual decline, with monotheistic monolithic ‘religions' like christianity, judaism and islam having a final fling on the back of rabid media coupled with mindless ‘education', both negative outputs of the cheap fuel mentality, whilst true religions that are whole earth centred, gentle and non-egotistic (Paganism, certain forms of Buddhism and Hinduism) are left behind, though now growing rapidly as the environmental crisis bites even the chavs.

The christian/socialist/thoughtless monolithic capitalist system requires war, destruction, isolation, ignorance to thrive. It has its own agenda of what is important. The fact it is going against the grain and worsening the global crisis merely encourages them. With their hands on rapidly-declining fossil fuel these buggers will prioritise its use. Priorities will be military, emergencyservices, ‘security' services, the political elite and the gormless super-rich. Most garages, the ones we need to use, will have little or no supplies of fuel. The road system will collapse, first at the margins (rural areas, council estates), then increasingly everywhere. There won't only be gated communities but gated transport corridors. Obviously, at local and county levels, the rail network will gradually be restored, providing the resources are accessible, and in the long-term even the elite will suffer from both post Peak Oil effects and increasingly climate disasters.

It's in your own hands how you ride the rollercoaster that's the future. I've written before, and will no doubt write again, about how to do it. At least I know the ‘elite' are too stupid to read blogs, so in the end the decent people will win. But, as I said, it's going to be a bit of a rollercoaster ride! 

autumnal august

These shots of Longleat yesterday have an almost autumnal feel about them. As if to confirm the damage being done to our climate by all of us, blazing June and July have been followed by an August that seems more like late September. It is a relief to get out of that bloody heat, but I now wish it would warm up a little, especially for the bank holiday weekend when we’re going to Pontins to catch the end of the summer. That's if it hasn't already gone ...

I'm off to check Gulf Stream flow ... 

the death of debt

It’s a strange idea, living beyond your means, even if nearly all of us have done it. In a way it’s a form of gambling, assuming that you’ll have the wherewithal to pay for things in the future that you just have to have now. As with all gambling it is, well, a gamble.

Apparently Britons now owe a trillion quid, on mortgages, credit cards, loans etc. And now, with the economy stammering a little, the roosters are coming home to roost. The interest rate was raised by a quarter percent last week, and will almost certainly go up again in the autumn. Inflation is starting to reappear in the system.

The biggest effect of debt is that it already inflates prices, particularly the lunatic ‘value’ of property today. Property prices are extremely fragile, and could crash any time soon, especially with the pressure of increasing interest rates. Houses simply aren’t ‘worth’ the mad prices that they still fetch today. Most of the Barrett Estate type boxes are no better than shoddy coffins for those left behind in the future, especially those built in cities, suburbs, at sea level or on flood plains.

The only real item of value is land, defensible and productive land, well above sea level and well outside of the cities and bigger towns. The only other ‘investment’ I’d ever consider is gold, which is a wonderfully mobile and recognisable source of mobile capital, and would act as real ‘money’ if we don’t adjust to a solar economy soon and the old hippy oil-based economy collapses quickly, which seems more likely with every passing day.

How to escape this? Simple really, as I’ve said before the trick is location, location, location. A decent detached house, far from big cities but near a working or future railway or tramway, in a defensible location and preferably with enough land (and no more) to grow your food and enough wood for warmth. Your own windmill, solar panels or water power for electricity if you need it, a good woodburning stove for heat and cooking. Become a member of the community now, not when things get bad. A food store, a wood store and perhaps a light railway to move stuff around. Your own water supply from a stream or spring.

Escape the credit trap by paying your credit card off in full every month, don’t give these chinless buggers a penny in interest! Pay off your mortgage as quickly as you can. If you do have assets, possessions or cash start converting it into gold coins whenever gold takes a small dip in its current bull run.

Start redesigning your life so you’re not reliant on using a car - these will be unuseable within ten to twenty years, possibly less. You need to plan ahead now. Let the hippies stew in their own juices in twenty years time when they’re stuck in the suburbs with a 4x4 and a flooded Barrett Home! You’re smarter than that, ‘cos you’re reading this blog ...

big balloons and little kittens

Saturday night at the Balloon Fiesta at Bristol! Great fun watching the queues for the toilets (1 bucket full of lukewarm bleach) and the crowds of puzzled onlookers (many with crossed legs). There was music by ‘new’ Bristol artists who seemed to think the world stopped with Musical Youth, helicopter rides - I was tempted when someone said £50 each until I realised you paid THEM - cannabis smells and scary rides.


The queue for the toilet.


Dolphins publicly having sex - in public!


Fiesta colour.


Balloons.

Up to Priddy this afternoon to see how Heidi is getting on. Her mum, almost a kitten herself, seems to be coping well, but the next few weeks will be hectic, as they’re just finding their feet, with Heidi managing to climb out of the basket today for the first time!

babies

Yawn - terrorist alert ... yawn, government’s new security measures ...

Can’t these hippies - terrorists and politicians - realise that the world’s moved on? That only chavs and bloated businesspeople use planes anyway, and the average ‘terrorist’ is a teenage dreamer who can’t get a girlfriend or boyfriend?

What moron brings in a rule that mums have to check their baby milk by drinking some in front of a uniformed jobsworth? Remind me when any of these ‘terrorists’ have ever managed to get their leg over, let alone produce some half-bred lunatic baby to bring on a plane to blow up with them?

We need to live more dangerously, not be totally mollycoddled in the arms of the unholy alliance of failed middle-class prefect divvies acting out the (identical) roles of terrorist and politician. I blame the monotheistic patriarchal imported ‘religions’ that want the same thing - total domination of human thought so their leaders can live in unearned luxury whilst laughing at us slaves and shagging virgins (Anne Widdecombe anyone?) left right and centre.

If I’d (heaven forbid) been running the country I’d immediately lift ALL security measures at airports to make travel easier and as a kick in the teeth to the mummy’s boy terrorists.

The trouble with your christians is that they worship and fear death. Pagans don’t see personal death as anything much at all; at worst an inconvenience, at best liberating. Why should anyone fear ‘death’? You immediately become somebody else, perhaps a starving baby in Africa, perhaps a future king, perhaps a strange intelligent being on a distant planet. Remember that we live forever and have lived forever, and no acne-ridden toerag with a chemistry set is going to make any difference to that.

Climate Change and Peak Oil have and will remove these egotistical posturings - div terrorists, George W Bush, the Chuckle Brothers and the mugs ‘fighting’ in the Middle East - from the cool agenda. We should hit them in two ways - through indifference or laughter.

Fuck ‘em. 

fragility

A mad few days. Couldn't blog earlier as I'd cut my finger!

Lots of odd news. Like the fact that bread is rising in price because there is ALREADY competition for land use between growing food and producing biofuels. ALREADY!! So how on earth do our great leaders think they're going to switch every car to biofuel? What are we going to eat? What's more important - food or cars? OPEN NEW RAILWAYS STUPID!!

And Brent Crude reaches a new record price because one poxy oilfield in the USA has rusty pipes! That oilfield produces just 400,000 barrels a day, and it causes ripples throughout the world's financial markets? Just how acute is the oil supply/demand position ALREADY? What would happen if there was an all-out Middle East war for example? Or more major hurricanes on the Gulf Coast? OPEN NEW RAILWAYS STUPID!

And the UK 'government' has just agreed to contribute £92.5 million towards converting the EXISTING Cambridge-St Ives railway to a guided busway!! Hilarious. Get this thickos - we don't want buses - they spell l-o-s-e-r. How's a guided busway going to shift thousands of tonnes of goods when oil runs out? What's a bus going to use for fuel? I know, let's convert it to run on electricity, and while we're at it replace the tarmac with rails to give three times the efficiency for fuel use. Or better still refurbish the EXISTING railway for a third of the price and run ultra-modern trams on it that people will use. Morons ...

All these snippets have to jostle for media-space with idiotic stories like the Israel-Lebanon war, a pointless anachronism in a WORLD that's going to die if we don't all pull together. How much oil is that idiocy wasting? Will the lemmings never learn? 

loves you Trin!

Amazingly I was, apparently, 50 yesterday!! To be honest I don't feel 20 yet, but I've a Pagan age of about 17 so that's no surprise. This was the day's first birthday cake, a £4.99 job from Sainsbury's.


After dropping Wulf off I whizzed up to Hartcliffe, where I was fed champagne then whisked up to Priddy to see my bestest present - an 11-day old kitten! Mine's Heidi, the little torty!


Another shot of the kits with Heidi staring oddly!


A real treat was a visit to the post-modernist wonderland of Symes Avenue, now threatened by the faceless bureaucrat toffs that think they have power over us. I love this place!

Thanks Trin, Wulf, Abby, Danz and Heidi for making this birthday the most memorable ever!!

peak oil and the tax take

Petrol is now generally above the £1 a litre bracket, and it ain’t going to fall any time soon, if ever.

So what about alternatives? LPG is less than 50p a litre. That’s the future isn’t it - alternatives to petrol? Well, yes and no. There are alternatives to petrol but they all suffer from the same problems - affordability, technological shortfall, climate change contributions (direct or indirect) and oomph.

Oomph is that delicious feeling you get with high octane petrol when the vehicle responds powerfully as you put your foot on the pedal to get past that idiot grandad doing 20 in a 60 mile an hour zone. You won’t get that with the alternatives. You’ll find it sluggish and gutless as the alternative just won’t have that octane rush. It ain’t going to be there.

All the alternatives will add to climate change, even the best option which is the electric vehicle using wind or solar power to charge the batteries. There will still be a large energy requirement in making and maintaining the car, windmill or solar panel. The other options are far worse - particularly biofuel which will hardly produce more energy than goes into its manufacture.

The technological shortfall is there for all to see, with no real viable alternatives to cheap oil finding their way on to the real market. It is quite simply never going to be as easy to run vehicles as it has been over the last 100 years. Cheap oil was a unique situation, the lazy man’s way to transport. Hydrogen, biofuel, even electric cars are all pipedreams except at the margins.

But the real crunch is economic. Our all-embracing cradle-to-grave government depends on the tax take from cheap oil to keep everything afloat. This is the main reason huge investment in the only real alternative - heavy and light rail - is still a few years off. Motorists fall over each other to hand governments billions in taxes - road tax, fuel tax etc. Then they pay more to maintain the roads.

Even this government is not totally stupid. They know that this tax take will reduce year on year, even with the increasing cost of fuel. They’ll either have to be inventive or honest in the future. They really need to be saying now that the Oil Age is Over - that we need to roll back suburbia, switch investment to rail, create incentives to allow young people the right to travel in the future (by rail rather than car), to build the infrastructure to keep moving our freight (new railways) and moving people (railways and tramways). They need to invest heavily in dedicated cycleways and bridleways so that truly sustainable transport (bikes and horses) become even more popular.

And they need, most of all, to forget a useful tax take from transport in the coming decades. They can either spend less on big inhuman-scale projects - city hospitals, ring roads, road pricing, ID cards, military drivel, foreign adventures - or create a truly sustainable tax system, localised and transparent. 

the next great extinction

The ‘government’ has just announced that it has given up trying to tackle road congestion. And the icing on the cake is that the city that will suffer the most from this is - Bristol!

Can this be the same Bristol that cravenly backed away from developing its Supertram network last year due to pressure from a few old (car-owning) codger dinosaurs who didn’t want to pay a few extra pence on their council tax?

And which is the only British city that does not have a forecast of increasing congestion? Manchester. And what is it that Manchester has that Bristol may have to wait decades for? You’ve guessed - trams!!

Of course there is a covert message behind this. For all their doddery empty-headedness, even these flat-capped prefect northern toffs realise that once Peak Oil hits, congestion will vanish almost overnight as cars grind to a halt. But the cities (and many towns) will still need trams.

The sooner we start adding to the seven systems we now have the better. Why must the UK always be behind the rest of the world, and wallow in nostalgia and inertia as more enlightened nations tackle the problems of the future head on? 

celebrate

Proudly flying the Swiss national flag, we celebrate National Day, 1st August!



Brother Jeff scans the horizon for girls and ice rinks, back in 1982. This was before he became a Humpty Dumpty tribute egg.



The Vag!! This was the absolute hub of the scabby ski scene from the late 60s to the early 90s. Now sadly no more.



A touristy shot of Leysin in snow and sun. with the ice rink in the foreground.