Thursday, June 19, 2008

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 ....
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Friday, June 13, 2008

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.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

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.
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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?
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Friday, June 06, 2008

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.
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Thursday, June 05, 2008

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.
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