20/11/2009 by Poz.

What ever happened to the environmental group Population Stabilisation which existed in the early seventies?  This was a group dedicated to leveling the world population with the motto ‘PS Stop at Two’.   Well, if they had been successful and the population had been stabilised at the levels of that time we would not be in the mess we are now in.  The predictions for population for this country alone are unsustainable.  For the world as a whole, we sre going to get conflicts like no other when people start to fight for resources.  Of course the looser in this will be the planet and the diversity of plants and animals it currently supports. 

Is it time to start being ‘large familyist’.  We could stop benefits to those with more than two children (or maybe it would be wise to make that one) and give other incentives to encourage smaller families like increased pension allowance to make up for the lack of support provided by larger families.   Perhaps we should follow the Chinese and limit family size by law.  

‘What about the cost - providing pensions etc?’ I  hear you cry.  Tough!  Better now than in 20 years.  Of course it would have been much easier over 35 years ago when Population Stabilisation was around.

Just a thought.

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

04/07/2007 by Poz.

Could this be more of the effects of global warming (or should this be global warning). Anyway this has got to be retribution for building houses on flood plains. The trouble is that the effects are spread over wader areas, areas that did not flood before. We will end up paying for this through increased insurance premiums and taxes will go into flood defences to replace natures own.

Perhaps a little thought about the meaning of the term ‘flood plain’ should have sparked a little something in the brains of the councils and developers. On the other hand cheap land means bigger profits and, of course such people do not have consciences so what do they care.

Why do we need so many new houses anyway? The obvious answer is the ever increasing population. We now not only have our own population but also hundreds of thousands of people from other countries, most recently the eastern block of the EU.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I do not mind anyone, of any race, but why do we need them here and why do they feel they need to be here? Economics. We want to pay less and less for what we buy and the services we receive.

This means that the producers and providers try to pay as little as possible. We on the other hand don’t like to be paid as little as possible. In fact; we would prefer the exact opposite. Hence this is why we need these incomers; cheap labour.

But why do they come here to work cheaply? This is because, compared to their own countries, the pay is good.

Effectively, we are indirectly using these people as servants; getting them to do the jobs we least like whilst we have a number of people who sit on their arses all day and expect you and me to pay them to do nothing except, it seems, breed like rabbits whilst they pretend to look for work. Would it not solve several problems in one go if we enticed these people to work? Just a thought.

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

19/01/2007 by Poz.

A bit of wind!  Not me personally; although, as we had a veggie visit for dinner, I did manage a bean burger - so beware. 

I have been saying that it has been getting steadily windier for a number of years - but nobody takes any notice of an old fool like me.  Perhaps they will start to listen now.

Yesterday, it was batten down the hatches and hope the roof stayed on.  Well it did; but the pig arc took a stroll across the field.  Luckily the arc is only used by the hens at the present time and they had taken shelter by the hedge (hedging their bets perhaps!). 

 I bet the wind turbine up the road was whistling merrily, but I am not sure if the neighbours are that keen on the noise.  I wonder if, with all the wind, the electricity generators could turn off a power station or two.  There again I have my suspicions that wind power may be a bit on the line of British Rail - the wrong type of wind.  It would be interesting to find out the figures.

Talking of the wrong type of things; it seems I bought the wrong type of car.  My Rover K series engine may have blown its head gasket.  It seems that this is a common fault.  As a grumpy old man my though is that if they know there is a common problem then they should fix the problem and let everybody have a free update or provide a different engine - not continue to distribute potentially faulty ones.  But I suppose their argument is that to them it is only a rare occurrence (they probably all drive BMWs).  What failure rate should this kind of response kick in at?  Even I would not expect too much tea and sympathy if there were a few failures as I would be considered unlucky.  But, browsing the web has uncovered hundreds of ‘unlucky’ people with the exact same problem - it is even mentioned in the Wikipedia entry.  This could now cost me several hundred pounds for no fault of mine (except in choosing to buy a British(ish) car).  I can feel a letter to some motoring industry executive coming on. 

“Rover K engine.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Jan 2007, 03:33 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 19 Jan 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rover_K_engine&oldid=97865651>.

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

16/01/2007 by Poz.

Where do I start?  Another grey day; still too warm for the time of year; glabal warming?  The only real solution is to wipe out a large percentage of the world population.  This may be a tad impracticle.  But think about it.  The planet took millions of years to lock all that CO2 into coal and oil and we are now relentlessly undoing all this i a matter of a few hundered years.  And we wonder why the planet seems not to be coping too well!

Sadly we in the west have had many years of prosperity brought about through using all the carbon deposits we can lay our hands on; forests, oil and coal.  Others now wish to emulate this and destroy the remaining forests, dig out the coal and pump out their oil.  Can we blame them?  Probably not.  

Even now we do not set good examples.  We drive when we don;t need to - why do people drive to work each day round the M25.  We fly for business meetings when there are perfectly good video conferencing systems and we travel the globe to get a tan and eat fish and chips in some foreign place.  We buy goods make in sweat shops in China which are then transported thousandes of miles.  Most of these end up in the bin a few days later.  Even food like chicken is mass produced in shitty conditions, ripe for avian flu, and shipped thousands of miles.  People in Kenya grow green beans so we can eat them in December whilst large numbers of people die of starvation close by.

Depressing isn’t it?  Perhaps I will cheer up when we get some real winter weather. 

Posted in Environment | No Comments »