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!

christian perversion prevails

'Right, now I'm going to cane the fucker!'


The government is planning to close a legal loophole which allows staff at a private Christian academy to smack their pupils.

The Tyndale Academy in east London avoids the ban on corporal punishment in schools by falling outside the legal definition of a private school.

Ministers want to change the law to bring this academy into line.

But Tyndale's founder and principal tutor, Ferris Lindsay, says the government is over-reacting.

Corporal punishment was abolished in all British schools a decade ago. But that ban, and other regulations, only apply to private schools offering a full-time education.

Mr Lindsay says he set up the academy in 1999 to provide part time tuition - just over 16 hours a week - in order to avoid the ban on corporal punishment.

The Christian academy has only eight pupils, but ministers want to use the Education and Skills Bill, currently going through Parliament, to make sure part-time institutions which are the main provider of a child's education also count as schools and have to follow the same rules as other independent schools.

Ministers are concerned that if this academy can legally avoid regulation there may be others in the future who will follow suit.
There is also the possibility that others are operating without the knowledge of the authorities they say.

On its website, the academy, which is based in the Hope Baptist Chapel in Forest Gate, is described as basing its teaching and training on the Bible. It says it welcomes boys and girls from all religious backgrounds.

Mr Lindsay argues that the parents of children at the academy fully support the use of corporal punishment.

He says the policy involves teachers using their hands to smack children on the hand, if they persistently misbehave.

Pupils aged four to seven can receive a single smack; those aged between eight and 11 can be struck a maximum of three times in one go.

According to Mr Lindsay, corporal punishment was used on 12 occasions during the past school year.

Each time parents were informed after the event .

Mr Lindsay described the policy to BBC News as a small part of what goes on at the academy, but said is was so essential to its ethos that if the government did force him to stop using corporal punishment he would close the school.

He alleges ministers are misusing departmental power and resources by pursuing the academy.

Source

Well, what can you say? I know christians are weird, but for a grown adult to set up a 'school' in such a way so he can physically assault the children?? Why isn't he up on charges of assault? Surely by any definition he's a paedophile?

The sooner this place is closed down and the teachers jailed the better. And if the kids' parents were aware of this going on - and approved of it - then the children should be taken into care and placed in decent Pagan homes.

christians think they have the right to impose their ridiculous 'beliefs' on the rest of us. The world will be a far far better place without them and their other monotheistic cousins who seem to thrive on bullying, violence, ignorance and terrorism. There's no place for them in this world.

project 2008

It doesn't look great does it? This is our 2008 project - to convert the garden into a permaculture haven. Some elements are already there - the compost bins, a few bushes and trees, the railway track. But there's loads more to do, and that trampoline's going to be a real pain! I'll update this as concrete progress is made ...

do not speak to us of the Crunch

Debs had an alarming email today from an old friend in which he rolled out the tired old myths about Peak Oil - that there's loads of oil left (yes, we know that!), that there has just been a new oil find off Brazil (yes, we know that too), that there's more oil under the poles than in Saudi Arabia (certainly true now LOL!) and that we will seamlessly become a 'hydrogen economy' within a few decades.

Oh dear. Hippies are still out there, blithely burying their heads and hair in the sand. They still think that it will be business as usual, no matter what we throw at the world or what we take out of it. They still feel that Peak Oil is a threat to their 4x4s. Idiots. That will be the very least of their worries!

Okay, let's indulge Steve and rip his hippy argument apart bit by bit.

Peak Oil is NOT about oil running out - it's about oil becoming so scarce that it will no longer be available to us, that the price mechanism will gradually price us ALL out of the market. A year ago a barrel of oil was around $50, now it is $115, and it's unlikely to ever go down to double figures again, no matter how deep we bury our heads. Demand is still increasing, even though supply has been static for a while - almost definitely because we are now at the Peak Oil plateau. Oil will NEVER be as easy to find again as it has been over the last 100 years.

There is still as much oil left in the ground as we've extracted, possibly even a little more. But what we have extracted was the easy half. It is now a major task to get anything out of new fields (when we can find any), they are buried deep under the sea or in the world's most inhospitable places. That doesn't suggest that future oil will be cheap!

The new oil find off Brazil is great news for Brazil, although that should be tempered by the fact that it is going to be HUGELY expensive to extract, which again will keep the oil price high. In reality it's a marginal find. Yes, it could be as much as 30 billion barrels which sounds a lot, but assuming an extraction rate of about 30% (which is fairly high, the rest will be lost forever) that will last - at current consumption rates - just 125 days. Big deal! Even if every barrel at the top of the estimation range was extracted it would only last a year. One year. Think about it.

The oil under the poles is similarly expensive to extract, but I think only an idiot would seriously try to get it out. Pouring out yet more carbon in the future will almost certainly trigger climate change on a MASSIVE - and probably unsurvivable - scale. It can't be touched, even when oil reaches $1000 a barrel (probably around 2020).

Hydrogen is a bigger joke than biofuels. It is an energy CARRIER, not energy. It can only be produced from current resources and would require HUGE infrastructure changes even to bring it to the richest countries in the world. The generating capacity will never be there to make it anything other than a rich person's toy.

That's the reality. There's no head-burying, or indignation that the government will allow this to happen, no sadness as the imminent end of what's been a great lifestyle in many ways, no regret that millions, probably billions, will die prematurely as the oil age comes to an end.

We have to get on with the job, rebuilding our communities from the ground up, preparing for the end of oil and much that's become familiar to us.

I don't care if the hippies don't want to believe it. That's their problem. They will of course come round, just as they did with Climate Change, but it will probably be too late for them. I don't care. It's clear from their lack or vision or realism that they will hardly be useful in a post-oil world anyway. They aren't just burying their heads in the sand, but slowly digging their own graves.

Meanwhile the decent folk will continue to organise and plan for the post-oil world, making clever moves now to secure their futures as carefully as they can. A future that will be built on the graves of millions of dead hippies, if that's the way they want it.

crunch, what crunch?

And if you've been following the advice in this blog you won't be either ...

turkeys vote for christmas!!

(Source AOL 19/4/08)

Almost two-thirds of people would be more likely to vote for a candidate in the upcoming local elections who had policies to tackle climate change, a survey showed.

A poll for the Local Government Association (LGA) found 62% of people would be swayed by candidates prepared to address global warming.

But more than a fifth (21%) said it would make no difference to how they chose to vote and 15% even said it would make them less likely to back that candidate.

Wow!! That really takes the biscuit ... 15% of the UK population are hippies!!

transition

We went to our first Transition meeting last night, in Bristol.

Transition have really got a handle on the challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil, proposing positive solutions and using a ground up approach.

If you're not yet involved then now's a great time to start, either by joining your own local Transition group, or starting the process of setting one up.

earth hour

So did you manage Earth Hour on Sunday?

We had a great time, switching everything off at 8 and then watching the evening develop (some may say degenerate!) into a family sing-song, the sort of thing I haven't done for several lifetimes! I have a video but not sure anyone here would appreciate it going on, but keep looking ...

The biggest point of the evening is that once cast adrift from all the crap we're surrounded by - TV, rubbish consumer goods, the Pussycat Dolls etc - we're perfectly capable of doing stuff, and really fun stuff at that.

And before you tell me 'that's okay for an hour but how about for a week' I did two years in Scotland without electricity back in the early 90s, and it was great. In fact it's even easier over the long term because you learn new ways of coping.

Can't wait for Earth Hour 2009 - and next time let's all of us get our local councils to turn off the street lights. Fuckers didn't do it round here - too many lefties on the council!

tibet crackers

What is China's problem? Why does it need to impose its imperialist rule on poor Tibet? The Tibetans have a total right to self-determination, the settlement of Tibet by ethnic Chinese colonists is a pathetic throwback to the 19th century. These fuckers are planning to hold the Olympics this year - let's totally boycott it. For a start why not join this Facebook group.

James Lovelock has forecast that China will be uninhabitable by 2040. He's usually right. Let's hope that he's spot on. At least then Tibet will be free!

positive signs

Despite the miserable Easter I've been cheered by signs all weekend of real structural change here in the UK. It started with discovering this magazine [free on-line copy available] - from a local garden centre would you believe? Permaculture is a great way forward for food production. The magazine covers the essentials, as well as wider issues like Peak Oil and Climate Change. The articles are very positive and avoid the miserablism of the tory/socialist/hippy concensus.

The shops are full of seeds and gardening stuff, as are the weekend papers. It's as if the supermarkets already know that they're dying and are trying to shift into real stuff. The signs are everywhere.

Look, we all know that the oil economy is coming to an end, just as severe climate change kicks in. It ain't going to be easy, but for those of us prepared, debt-free, with our own gardens, woodland, tools, skills and networks it'll be easier, way easier, than it will be for the socialists, petrol-heads, consumer sheep, meat eater hippies and other assorted losers. So get on board and see it as a challange rather than a threat.

From now on I'll be concentrating on positive action for my readers, but will of course not shy away from having a good laugh at the losers that are trying to convince themselves that nothing's wrong!

moronwatch UK

Oh dear. This idiot government just don't get it.

It's Easter weekend. And what's happening? On the railways there are engineering works leading to delays and (LOL!) bus 'replacements'. And what's the situation on the roads? Two thirds of road works are being LIFTED over Easter.

What message do you suppose this sends to the British Idiocracy? Cars good, trains bad perhaps?

But then what else would you expect from a government where two thirds of the fuckers still use cars that are in the top band for emissions?

Pathetic hippy scum ....

the chickens are clucking

Wow. Down 4% Monday, up 3% Tuesday. The markets are all over the place. This is possibly the start of the first stage of the Collapse. We've been living a fantasy of consumption for the last 20 years, fuelled by easy credit and imaginary house price rises. Already many are cutting back on their credit cards. Unemployment and repossessions are howling from the wings. We have probably the worst possible government for the coming challenges. Today some stupid big aeroplane landed in London - a sure sign that things are on the verge. And mainstream TV is already talking about Depression - recession is old news ...

We all have to draw in the shutters, get rid of all our debts as quickly as possible and begin to think in terms of looking after ourselves first and fuck the rest, or at least those outside of our immediate communities. This is all happening a bit too fast.

Don't sell your gold and silver yet! But it may be worth looking for a safe place to hide it in the woods somewhere.

Can't wait till the markets open tomorrow!

got £3 million - want to lose it?

This was, amazingly, in YESTERDAY'S Independent.

Think about it - this stretch of coast is the most vulnerable in the UK. We flew over it coming back from Prague and it looked so fragile you wanted to hug it.

All of this will be permanently under water within decades. This has nothing to do with sea level rise (that's a little extra) but the effect of land tilting since the last ice age, which results in this part of the country sinking by about a foot a century. Already parts of this coastline are being abandoned.

I suppose the seller hopes there's some mug out there - perhaps a Sun-reading socialist lottery winner, a racist who's inherited cash or one of those wonderful climate change/peak oil denier hippies - who's stupid enough to fork out the cash.

Perhaps Joe Lewis can cash in his Bear Stearns shares and buy it??

there's always one!

This week's Moneyweek carried - without comment - a short piece referring to Nansen Saleri's article in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the Peak is still 40 or 50 years off. This is dangerous (and terribly unprofessional) stuff, balm to soothe the nerves of the nostalgists, but dangerous ground for anyone trying to make sensible investment decisions NOW for a future that we know is going to be scary without cheap oil.

I always listen to what the 'enemy' come up with. So I checked it out. It was pretty clear from the scant information in the Moneyweek article that this bloke was of the cornucopian school, people that simply don't want to face up to the truth and are prepared to be liberal with the truth to fit their own agenda - remember Climate Change Deniers??

This is the fairest dissection of Saleri's drivel!

The problem for many of the oil forever hippies is that they underestimate us. They ran with climate change denial for so long because the meteorologists really couldn't be bothered with having to talk down to them. But economists and geologists are a tougher bunch! I never realised when studying economics a few years back that I'd be thrust into such an enticing battle - but I'm glad I am.

People are scared. They are already dealing with the very real effects of climate change, now they're heading into the first recession of the post Peak Oil Age, they've had it so good for so long they don't want to face the truth. I suspect Peak Oil Denial will last at least another 10 to 15 years, longer than Climate Change Denial, because it can be buried within complex noise within the economic system.

As always - invest in gold, silver, land, forestry, oil and learn real skills, gather tools and seeds, buy that defensible small property and make strong links in your community.

premature armageddon?

I've got a picture of my mum in front of one of these cars in about 1955, posing in front of it as if she owns it. Back then the very idea of owning a car at any point in the future would have been a fantasy. Little did she know that she was in at the start of the most economically successful period in Earth's history. Fifty years later she lives in a 'nice' bungalow, has had plenty of cars, foreign holidays and few problems along the way. I think we already envy our parents' generation.

Back in 2008 things seem to be going terribly awry. The markets have been disturbed since August 2007 and still have a long way to fall. House prices are on the edge of a precipice. Soon that Thatcher favourite 'unemployment' will become fashionable again. But this time the reasons aren't self-indulgent Thatcherite socialism grinding the middle classes down, but the looming spectre of Peak Oil with its mischievous chum Climate Change in tail. These changes will be permanent and worsening.

There's a classic line in 'The Day After Tomorrow' when Raymond, the Vice-President, announces 'The economy is every bit as fragile as the environment'. He was magnificently correct, though perhaps not in the way he meant. The economy is actually far more fragile, and it is in crumbling economies that the real horrors of PO and CC will hit us all - except for those of us that have been preparing for it for decades of course.

And this current government's madness, supported by an ill-educated and nostalgic public, just keeps compounding it. Adding to the madness of a proposed new runway for Heathrow our socialist masters are now threatening a new runway at Stanstead! Just how are all these new planes going to actually fly? Idiots. A new coal-fuelled power station in Kent has been given the go ahead, and the minister responsible says 'we can't let the lights go out.' Well they will when the coal runs out moron! Nuclear has to be the way forward, supported by a huge increase in sustainables coupled with a massive energy saving programme. This is kids' stuff.

These are the first signs that fear is gripping 'our' 'government' as Peak Oil realities begin to change the very nature of politics. At least they are starting to extinguish democracy, a necessary precursor to putting through workable measures to alleviate the problems. The little sheep, watching the latest storm lash our towns on the telly, are bleating their last little protests as the wolves begin to emerge from the forests ...

cloverfield review

Most of the action takes place here.


The monster is terrific - and very scary.


These parasites were even scarier.

We've just come back from Cloverfield - the current must-see fillum.

It starts at a Greek wedding party where one of the guests is thrown out into the street for being Turkish. One quick mobile phone call and a group of friends invades the party dressed as monsters! It's all very gory and great fun.

Unfortunately the army get it all wrong and begin to attack thinking the dear little monsters are REAL. Cue hilarity, disembowelling and guns. It all ends up with the Turks being cornered in a dear little field but they are saved right at the end as a group of cows - or parasites according to the army - attack the soldiers with their horns.

Eventually all the partygoers cuddle and are friends again, the dear little cows go back to be milked and all the soldiers are dead.

thatcher, tebbitt et al

Thatcher in her 'prime'.

Norman Tebbitt's in the news again. Most of you won't remember this lefty buffoon, but he was one of Margaret Thatcher's most loyal comrades in the 1930s.

His latest slaverings suggest that all boys should be taken on shoots to watch birds being shot, as this will stop them getting in fights or playing 'video games'.

Now I agree, all boys (and girls) should be taught to shoot, but not innocent birds. They need to be able to handle guns so that in the future, when lefty losers like Tebbitt, middle class tossers, chavs and hippies come looking to grab YOUR land when they're starving, they are able to quickly shoot and kill them.

Tebbitt and Thatcher, like all socialist Peak Oil deniers, need to be buried once and for all. Their views are of no interest to real people.