the ultimate madness

Look at the slogan on this machine. 'Turn Your Coins Into Cash'. Er, coins are cash fuckface!

I've actually seen people using these machines. You pay in £1 of real money, cash, yours indeed - and you get out 85p. The supermarket gets 15p! Well, they obviously need it and you don't!

I know the average chav hasn't got two brain cells to rub together, but how on earth have we de-evolved this far?? How did this machine ever happen? What makes somebody so STUPID that they use a machine like this?

fucking morons

'The UK population could almost double by the end of the century, according to Government projections.
The figures from the Government Actuary's Department (GAD) suggest that with high immigration and fertility rates, the population could reach 108,723,000 by 2081.'

LOL! Is this the same government that intends to increase capacity at Heathrow Airport? The same government that lost 25 million personal records? The same government that really, seriously believe that the British people will accept COMPULSORY ID Cards??

I project UK population in 2081 to be around 5-8 million.

looking backwards

Mmm. So Sudan is imprisoning a woman for calling her teddy bear Mohammed. Whilst the world burns up and we run out of petrol these spoilt mummys' boys and nutters have nothing better to worry about. How we envy them.

Don't tell anyone but I've just called my pet rat Jesus ...

too late?

So the IPCC report on Climate Change presented to the United Nations now claims that some Climate Change effects can not be reversed. We need to know - are these effects that will kickstart positive feedback? If they are then we are well and truly fucked, and every 'green' initiative will make no difference. Coupled with Peak Oil it really is a bleak picture, though not one without some degree of potential romantic adventurism.

Our kids won't be worrying about mortgages, traffic queues, celebrities and holidays. They'll be engaged in a daily competition with nature as they learn to live in a world where the slightest weakness is punished, where you grow your own food or starve, where you learn what you need to live and not much else. But they'll also have more time, they won't be wasting loads of it travelling, they won't be sat stupidly in front of the TV. Who's to say that CC and PO aren't good things?

dinosaur watch

I've had great fun with a group called We Will Not Be Paying Over £1 a Litre for Petrol in the UNITED KINGDOM [sic] on Facebook.

They are fair game because they are dinosaurs. I find it extraordinary that in 2007 with the first effects of Peak Oil starting to hit there are still a few people who think £1/litre is expensive! This is hilarious. In a few years it'll be £2/litre, within 15 years probably around £10/litre. There's no way out of this and there's no point bleating about it. It's simple geology and economics, a lethal combination. Even now we only produce 1 1/2 million barrels of oil over demand levels. Demand will rise by 2 million barrels a day next year yet the wells are now not only running at full capacity but are running dry. Is anyone willing to take bets that next year there won't be a REAL oil crunch?

The sad thing is that there are still millions of people in the UK that are too stupid or too decadent to take this on board. There are still 17 year olds learning to drive, there are still people moving into areas where there's no public transport or work.

But you know what? I'm not going to 'bother' them any more. If they want to live in a fantasy socialist utopia with petrol at 80p a litre forever then let them. It's probably not wise to spread the word too much - some of them may have the brains to see that what we're saying is right and they may then compete for all those lovely assets - land, trees, seeds, tools, networks, gold - that WE need.

Climate Change deniers - remember them - helped keep up demand for waterside properties and other useless assets, reducing the value of useful stuff, making it easier for us to get MORE of the real stuff, so perhaps we should let the Peak Oil Prats do the same? In a few years we'll all be fretting about Peak Oil and locating away from the danger areas, by then all the sensible folk should be well ensconced in their nice self-sufficient defendable homes. Let the lefties descend on us then - we'll wipe 'em out!

the romance of rail - is back ...

More proof that even this dumbo government realise the way things are going is the £800 million redevelopment of St Pancras for the new Eurostar trains. When is any money invested in roads nowadays?

But what chance does the car have against rail? There's no glamour in driving - it's an endless slog being stuck behind lorries, bikes, horses, old fuckers ... If you want to enjoy driving one last time head to eastern Germany where there are still no speed limits on many of the autobahns. This is going to change soon and all autobahns will have a 130kph limit.

Meanwhile rail just keeps growing. Soon all short-haul air trips will go. We still need to invest massively in the UK high speed network, now we've made a start. Within 20 years even medium distant air trips will go. I reckon we'll be doing Bristol to Budapest in 12 hours by 2037. And the light rail/interurban revival is only just beginning.

And the new Eurostar is promising ROMANCE again. This is something the railways always had in droves, until swept away by the socialists in the 60s and 70s. But romance is making a big comeback, and rail is - again - the big winner. In a car-less future we'll all become rail travellers, crossing Europe at 300 mph, catching the tram into town, visiting the coast and villages by light rail. We need romance. The car tried to kill it. It failed.

silence of the lambs

Our 'government' is proposing some ridiculously soft 'green' taxes that will encourage purchasers (NOT existing users) of new, large fuel-inefficient vehicles to choose more sensible options. AOL did a vote on whether this was a good idea. Duh - soft but could only be good. I voted just for the sake of it, expecting a 100% yes. Amazingly, unbelievably, the vote was 74% NO!!!!!!

This is simply more confirmation that the little soft lefty luvvies really don't have a clue what's coming! That they don't understand even the basics of the huge changes that are going to turn their lives upside down - if they survive. Twenty years ago this may have been a workable idea. Today it's irrelevant anyway - the soaring cost of petrol will ensure that we all opt for firstly smaller cars then for lifestyle changes that will mean we can live without the stupid socialist things.

It never fails to amuse me that the general public are so backwards-looking. This is OUR opportunity. All the time they're going the wrong way we can pick up the assets that we'll all need in the future at knock-down prices. Every 4x4 sold, every seaside house, every beefburger means that the real stuff - gold, seeds, land, woods, tools etc - are still available at reasonable prices. More power to the idiocracy!

flood disaster

Stayed in with some Stella and Mr Toms last night and watched the British disaster movie 'Flood'. And what a disaster it is too. Starring two icons - Robert Carlyle and Tom Courtenay - surely we could have at least expected something half decent? Had they played Begbie and Billy Liar perhaps, but Carlyle plays a gormless yuppie and Courtenay plays a rheumy-eyed humourless professor. The whole film from start to finish is a wish-fulfilment fantasy - London flooded, great loss of life. It could have been such fun. But it was so downbeat and lacking in character or spectacle that I'd rather have watched Wacky Races with the sound off.

But what's this? Vicious storm to the north of Scotland with 90 mph winds, storm surge down the North Sea, London flood barrier raised, spring tides ... oh dear, that's just what's happening in reality tonight! Looks like we may be in for a re-run of 1953. They're forecasting a 2.9 metre storm surge. That's scary. 1953 was 2.4 metres ... and the land has sunk 6 inches since then, and sea level risen about 2 inches.

But ... if you live on the North Sea coast surely you've taken this possibility into account, your house prices will almost certainly reflect this risk. Why are the people in Great Yarmouth fighting over sandbags? Surely if you live in Great Yarmouth you already have sandbags? And flood boards. And you're moving your furniture onto upper floors. You've got tinned food, bottled water and everything else ready - always.

This is the future. It will get far worse. It's your responsibility to be prepared, no-one else will look after you. Stop whingeing and just sit it out. This is the tame taster for a wild future. Get used to it. Be Dutch about it ...

idiots ...

(Nostalgic look back at petrol under £1/litre)

This on today's Moneyweek website

'The IEA reckons that oil could hit $159 a barrel by 2030, with demand of 120m barrels a day far outstripping supply of 116m barrels a day. And this is assuming we can get supply that high – it’s currently just 85m barrels a day, and if you believe in the Peak Oil theory, then it’s not going to go much higher than that.'

Perhaps the IEA should employ an economist? The idea that by 2030 production could reach anything like 116 million b/d is absolutely hilarious. Latest figures in the real world suggest a 7% pa fall from now on in oil production. Taking this to 2030 suggests a REAL oil production figure of 16,014,988 b/d, so there's a shortfall of just under 100 million barrels a day to find! Biofuels? Hardly. The EROEI is less than zero anyway for biofuels, so all biofuels will do is use up the existing oil that much faster. As will pumping harder, though that seems hardly an option now. All taps are fully open and stockpiles are still falling. And people still complain about £1 a litre petrol! It's hilarious. £10 a litre will seem cheap in ten year's time. They are like lambs to the slaughter.

In reality I suspect the retreat from oil will make all this speculation seem silly in 2030 - we'll wonder why we ever bothered.

And as for $159 a barrel by 2030? My guess is somewhere between $1000 a barrel tops and $0 if we're in a post oil economy. And yes, I will remind you of this forecast in 23 year's time!!

Figures for projected oil production assuming a 7% year on year fall in production capacity starting from a 2007 base of 85 million b/d are as follows -

2008 79,050,000
2009 73,516,500
2010 68,370,345
2011 63,584,420
2012 59,133,510
2013 54,994,164
2014 51,144,572
2015 47,564,451
2016 44,234,939
2017 41,138,493
2018 38,258,798
2019 35,580,682
2020 33,090,034
2021 30,773,731
2022 28,619,569
2023 26,616,199
2024 24,753,065
2025 23,020,350
2026 21,408,925
2027 19,910,300
2028 18,516,579
2029 17,220,418
2030 16,014,988

motor news

Today unleaded petrol broke through the £1.00 per litre barrier generally for the first time ever. Peak Oil effects are hitting much quicker than anyone dared guess just a year or two ago. Hang on tight, because this is just the start!

Other welcome news today is that General Motors, a dinosaur American company, has posted third quarter losses of 39 BILLION dollars. Getting the message? The oil economy is heading towards the rocks, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. As always my advice is prepare ...

Hopefully you've invested in gold and silver as I recommended. Silver has risen 10% in just two days, gold is up to $820/oz. I'd still recommend buy, in dips if possible. Of course physical silver and gold has become much harder to find over the last few months, the price has risen steadily since August, so you'll have to search around for it.

My forecasts were for petrol at £1.10/litre and gold at $900/oz by the end of December 2007. I think both will fall just short, but remember most other people were recommending property LOL! And they were whinging when oil was about $50 a barrel! Again, this is just the start. I think we've all been over cautious in our predictions of both climate change effects (see positive feedback loops) and Peak Oil (it may well already have peaked). Keep switching paper to gold and silver, look for that land, learn how to defend yourselves, network like buggery and clear all your debts. We're talking survival now ...

pretties ...

Some shots from yesterday's firework display at the Bristol City ground. We had to endure about half an hour of the worst music imaginable as an accompaniment to the fireworks. If only it had been Enter Shikari ... or Mahler.

Being brought up in Sussex I know how to do Bonfire Night properly! Torchlit parades, bangers through letterboxes, random indoor bonfires ... we had it all. Lewes bonfire night is the best on earth.

And what do we celebrate? The getting rid of half of this idiot 'religion' that still clings on in this most Pagan country on earth. The ditching of the even more deranged half of christianity as the catholics were removed from society by their fellow religionists - and all in the name of their imaginary 'god'.

So why not let's move on, declare the 5th of November as Pagan Day, 5 days into the New Year, the elements of fire to the forefront (but often with earth, wind and water taking its part!) Let's really let go, turn the whole nation into a big version of Lewes!

happy new year

Okay, so I'm a few days late, but we've been busy!

You've no doubt read my post about Enter Shikari, New Year's Eve/Hallowe'en/Samhain at Cardiff. It was funny going to a different country to celebrate it, but it was definitely worth it! Cardiff was full of ghosts, werewolves, skeletons etc, the atmosphere was brilliant.

So why do the vast majority still celebrate 'New Year' on 1 January?? This is a Pagan country, why are we still lumbered with christian legacies? Why is it still called 'Christmas' and not Yule? Why do the christians pretend that Easter is anything to do with them? With Easter the buggers didn't even bother changing the name! They changed the hare to the rabbit, lose the fertility aspects and try to blind us with drivel about 'resurrection'. Resurrection is merely misinterpreted reincarnation. Some of the christians really, truly believe they get one shot of life (though preordained by their 'god' (male, white, left wing) despite being granted free will!!) and then they're judged on it, to spend eternity then either in a suburban hell of worship, warmth, sanctimonious drivelling and church fetes (heaven) or a pikey idiot-riddled inner city hell of no education, no sleep and no pleasure (hell). It's laughable. Of course we all know that we live an endless succession of lives, some here, most elsewhere. Life's the point stupid!

Anyway, if you get the chance visit Cardiff at night, and watch Enter Shikari every chance you get. You may not get the opportunity in your next life! And kick a christian for me!

chofnoda shikari

The world is divided into two groups - those that have seen Enter Shikari live and those that haven't.

We joined the important group on Wednesday. Hallowe'en, Samhain, the most important night in the Pagan calendar. And we crossed over the bridge to Wales to see them.

I've seen loads of groups. From Geordie through The Police and UB40, New Order, Pulp, Mumm-Ra, Plan B - 30+ years of fun and excitement (and crap). But Shikari topped them all. The energy put out and returned in the 100 minutes they were playing was like nothing I've ever seen before. Their music is the savage but beautiful child of Rachmaninov powered by the beats of a Stewart Copeland on industrial strength Metformin and presided over by a cool and literate clone of Jools Holland. And latching on to the energy of the best club night you've ever been to.

The scary thing was that we were by far and away the oldest people there - in fact we seemed a good ten to fifteen years older than the PARENTS that were waiting outside to pick up their kids from the show. What's that about? Why weren't there hordes of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s there? They need energising like everybody else, possibly more so. Some of the kids couldn't handle the terminal moshing down at the front, and were being dragged out every few minutes.

Shikari's trick is that they blend the most monstrous vocals (sometimes) with the most elaborate music, then switch to Rou's 'listen Mum, I CAN sing' voice that beats Boyzone and Westlife at their own game. This switching, from the ridiculous to the sublime, creates the most powerful breaks that send the crowd wild. The songs are driven by powerful drums, bass and guitar, multi-layer Rachmaninov-style complexity coupled with some of the most clever hooks around. These are real songs and the whole band are natural performers, there's no irony or posing here.

Well, there is, but it's smart! Like turning up dressed as the Furies from the brilliant 70s classic film The Warriors, complete with face paint and baseball bats, or slipping in 'Insomnia' just when the crowd were at their most perceptive (and didn't they do it well!!), or giving us 3 minutes of formless and gut-mashing drum 'n' bass before the brilliant encore of 'Sorry You're Not a Winner' and 'OK, Time for Plan B' (cleverly referencing both one of the best films and best acts of our time!)

Loved it. Lads, you're welcome to visit Hartcliffe at any time!!

dirty faggers

A new poll shows that the majority of publicans want the smoking ban to stay. I wasn't aware that there was any other option anyway!

Amazingly 26% of the respondents genuinely believe that the ban is negative!!! The sooner these losers are out of business the better - they clearly don't have a clue and are bound to go out of business anyway.

But the agenda is shifting. Now 72% want smoking banned when driving. Big deal. There should be a TOTAL ban on smoking in the UK, and the sooner the better. It serves no purpose at all except to make one bunch of losers look uncool, stupid and dirty and another bunch look wealthy. It has to be the most pointless activity ever.

I want the twins (above) to grow in a world without faggers. It would also be nice if they grew up in a world without that other bunch of lamebrain losers - meat eaters (or 'hippies' for short). That is also likely as the current rush to produce uneconomic, negative energy biofuels is rapidly squeezing out food production in any case. The Americans must be absolutely TERRIFIED of Peak Oil if they're allowing this to happen!

the state of things

Expect a far more active Looking Ahead from now on. I'm having one of those life-changing moments, giving up my boring finance role at the S&D, signing up for my PhD and getting building skills over the next few months - and pushing this blog as my one and only! So expect the usual polemics about idiots and CC/PO, the occasional foray into chavdom, diatribes against faggers but also far more cultural input, loads more economics and investment advice and even bits about what I'm doing as we get ready for our own personal push towards post-Collapse survival!

On Tuesday we went to see Reverend and the Makers at the Carling Academy at Bristol. Now the Carling sound may be as flat and lukewarm as their beer, but the Rev cut through all that to put on a brilliant show! Interestingly just before the show started, whilst the Ting Tings were on stage, the Rev and a few of the band stood next to us and watched them. It's a strange experience being so close to genius, but the Rev seemed to handle it well.

There are seven on stage, two percussionists, two keyboardists, bass, guitar and the Rev. So you get a really full, groove driven sound to highlight his amazing voice. The songs are about real stuff, dropping Etam, council estates, babies, all the usual material. With me music has to pass the Hartcliffe Test - be relevant, cool and sound good loud with the windows down on a Friday or Saturday evening. This does!

Support band were the Ting Tings, who seem to get more publicity than almost anyone else around at the moment. Singer Katie is an ex-girl band type, but seems to have found her forte with this new two piece. And it was a nice touch when the Rev invited the Ting Tings on stage for a final rousing 'He Said he Loved Me' which has to be about the best 3 minutes of live music I've ever seen!

So catch the Rev if you can whilst they're still fresh and hungry. Although I suspect they'll be around for years.

Next night out - Enter Shikari, Hallowe'en, Cardiff!

population implosion

There's been a lot of wild talk about population recently. That Britain will have 81 million in a few decades etc. It's drivel. We all know that population has to start falling soon. Latest crap is this, a report that suggests we need MORE housing - over a quarter of a million new houses each year! Where, exactly? Why, exactly??

The fact is with Climate Change marginalising millions of existing houses and Peak Oil making most current housing patterns unsustainable our population needs to start falling RAPIDLY now, not in 20 or 30 years time. Step one - end ALL immigration. It is insane to import people just to keep up the charade of economic 'growth'. Step two - encourage a one child per family scheme - not through compulsion but through the tax system. Parents with one child (or none) pay NO tax regardless of income, parents with more than one pay 50% flat rate tax on all earnings, increasing by 10% with each additional child. Similar incentives and disincentives can be built into the benefits sytem. Twins/multiple births should count as one child of course! Step three - encourage people to become self-sufficient wherever possible to alleviate CC/PO effects, this should match family size to land use within each family discouraging large families.

So let's forget all this rubbish about new houses. Let's stop ALL development of green field sites, encourage redevelopment of all sustainable brown field sites and get the idea of falling population into the general mindset. Let's get ahead of the game on this ...

reaping the whilrlwind

So half a million people are being evacuated as wildfires detroy homes and businesses in California. Do you suppose this will convert a few more Americans to the challenges posed by Climate Change, or will they just keep on behaving as they have before? In the fire above can be seen burning one of the principal reasons for the US's unreason on this issue - the bible, which encourages the stupid to destroy the Earth and to lord it over the animals and have as many ('christian') children as possible.

At the moment we have a phsychotic in denial 'nation' trying to rule over the rest of us. And we're having none of it. The USA, the world's last communist state, will suffer more than most from Climate Change, more than all from Peaked Oil, and will collapse into 50 warring and squabbling mini-states as things begin to bite. At least California has a reasonably astute Governor who will probably do more than most to smooth the transition ...

oh dear ....

All over Bristol there are posters begging that Cadburys at Keynsham be 'saved'.

This is ridiculous. It is closing because it is uneconomic. A factory doesn't exist as some sort of social club for losers. It exists to make money for its owners and shareholders. Workers choose to be workers. They choose the easy option. They fail at school, get married young, have idiot kids early, slump in front of the TV eating KFC and envy those that have made something of their lives. There is no security in employment and neither should there be. Workers should not be cossetted.

What they should be is harangued by their superiors. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that unless they educate themselves, constantly reskill themselves and learn the basics of decency and culture then they will always be nobodies. That doesn't mean they should be ill-treated, but they need to know their place. Closing their little factory reminds them sharply that the world is a harsh place, that nothing should be taken for granted and that uncertainty and discomfort remind you that you are ALIVE. Not a cog in a huge machine, but a thinking individual that should have aims in life beyond working in the same job forever and being able to remember the name of Elsie Tanner's first husband.

So let's celebrate the fact that Cadbury's are leaving Keynsham to move east. Let the ex-workers find that there's more to life than a bar of Dairy Milk, that there's scenery and animals and swimming and walking and reading. They may just rediscover themselves in the process ...

doing it right

This is the view of Lake Geneva from the Easyjet flight back to Bristol. Yes, I flew. It's often a misconception that I am anti-car, anti-flying etc. This is a big mistake. I love driving, I love flying. But I'm sensible enough to know that these things are ending, that they are rapidly becoming part of history. I'm not personally worried about adding to CO2 in the atmosphere, because all this frenetic drivel about Climate Change (we must recycle, must change to low-energy bulbs, switch off appliances etc) is just cover for the really big issue, Peak Oil. The environmentalists are as guilty as the leftists on this. They are REALLY scared about Peak Oil because it will change everything. And leftists and their polar opposites environmentalists have this one thing in common - they are terrified of discomfort. Climate Change, in its diluted developed world form will merely offer a Hollywood spectacle to our fat friends in the US and elsewhere. Okay, millions in the UK are going to lose their homes to coastal and inland flooding, but we're overpopulated anyway.

So I'm no more guilty about flying than I would have been guilty about riding the last real steam trains in the UK in the sixties. Seeing history unfolding is great. Air travel and car travel are quickly becoming nostalgia as they breathe their last. And we're flying twice more in the next 4 months, to Budapest and Prague.

It is funny seeing air travel still convincing itself that it's a developing industry rather than a dying one, with new routes opening, laughable airport extensions still being considered and all the infrastructure coming in just twenty years before it all withers.

So, like me, make the most of it. We will if we're lucky develop a Europe-wide high speed rail network that will still get you places at a reasonable pace, but our kids will never experience a one and a half hour trip to Geneva, not as adults anyway, any more than we can experience Mach2 travel to New York any more.



The Swiss transport system is superb. As well as trolleybuses running to the centre from the airport there is also a direct train link from the terminal to the city centre that takes 5 minutes and costs just CF3, about £1.30!



This is a tram from Cornavin station to the UN Building. This line is just 3 years old, Geneva is rapidly expanding its tram system, which had withered to just one route in the 80s. Travel is effectively free as hotels give their customers free public transport tickets. The trams are fast and clean and vastly superior to diesel buses.



This is the terminus of the Gornergratbahn, near Zermatt. This is at over 10,000 feet above sea level. Again it is electrified, using hydro electric power, from power stations hidden somewhere in the mountains.

Switzerland is miles ahead of the UK in preparing for Peak Oil. We need to begin to develop an all-embracing, cheap and efficient public transport system here at enormous speed, using renewables and nuclear power. We owe it to ourselves.

books as currency

The latest in the ever increasing range of Climate Change and Peak Oil books is the above, cleverly bound in plastic for durability. I'd advise all of you to get this as it addresses plenty of important issues and has information that will be invaluable once things break down.

Books will be one of the great survivors of the Collapse. They don't need energy to access, contain loads of information and/or entertainment and are reasonably light and transportable.

This book makes an interesting point that hadn't occured to me. As well as gold, silver and skills, another post-Collapse currency may well be books. So build up a good stock now whilst you can. I imagine the most valuable will be guide books to post-Collapse living (like the above) but also those mindless 'airport' style novels that help pass the time. Because free time is something we're all going to have plenty of in the future!

as gay as it gets

How fucking gay! The post office 'workers' have decided to attack their management by - attacking the public! Why don't these loser scum - union members, deadbeats, hippies and socialists - just for once wake up and realise this is 2007, not 1972? It is pathetic. These featherbedded numbskull hippy scum live dead easy lives with houses, food, TV, cars, everything, yet they still want MORE for doing their 'job'.

Well listen up losers, you will all be out of work within 5 years because your business model and your idiotic pandering to blubbery brain-dead union 'leaders' will allow REAL business to take yours away, especially if this strike lasts more than a few days.

Know your place in the grand scheme of things - you are at the bottom and need to stay there. You are uneducated cannon-fodder. The world is falling down around you and you still can afford the luxury of 'striking'. Unions for essential services should be BANNED.

But hold on, the management have it all fixed. They're offering the following advice - 'A Royal Mail spokesman said: "We will do all we can to mitigate the impact of the strike action but we would ask our customers to avoid posting mail during the strikes and if they do so, then to post any mail at Post Office branches, which will all be open for business as usual.'.

Well I shall keep posting where I want you middle-class wankers. Get off your arses and actually POST the letters, or you'll be on the dole too!

Now, let's google 'delivery services' and let the GPO lose a little more business - for ever!