Not only is it the most boring “sport” on earth (a procession of screaming cars with almost no overtaking or interesting dicing of the type you find in simpler motorsports), not only is it one of the last refuges of the use of women in swimsuits carrying placards advertising cigarettes, but Formula 1 is also a serious climate villain.

Over 17 weekends this year, Jensen Button’s car will emit more than 50 tonnes of carbon dioxide:

The cars emit around 1,500g of carbon dioxide per kilometre, which is almost nine times more than the amount of the average new road vehicle.

And then of course there’s the flying of the whole circus around the world every week… not you would have thought, what a decent, ecologically aware manufacturer would have wanted to be associated with.

* Why do you have to make a song and dance in the chemist’s to stop them puting your medicine in a paper bag? This is medicine that comes in a cardboard box, inside which are three individually shrink-wrapped packets of blister-packed pills. How many more layers of packaging do you need?

* Why is it that solicitors cannot manage the basics of customer services – nearly all solicitors, it seems. I spent three days leaving messages asking mine to ring me, and he didn’t. Although he did finally talk to someone else involved in the transaction, who was able to tell me what is happening, and is planning to relay the next message…

Dear Frank Dobson,
I write with reference to the free votes I understand are happening early next month on the composition of the House of Lords. I would urge you – as a democratic essential – to vote for a 100% elected chamber (and if that proves impossible the highest possible percentage of elected members), and the support the continuation of the principle of a bicameral chamber.
Yours sincerely,
Natalie Bennett

The background here.

How I spent most of yesterday:

(Well actually I was behind the camera pretty well all day, rather than holding the banner.)

As usually there’s a huge disparity in the estimated numbers – the police 10,000 is definitely an underestimate, but the organisers were probably a bit on the optimistic side.

A big demo anyway – and while most of the writing about it is as “anti-war”, there was a very strong, perhaps dominant, anti-Trident message – certain that the was strongest line for the Green Party.

Having a mad day yesterday, and with an allocation of approximately 30 seconds for lunch, I did as I’ve done many times before and grabbed a Snickers bar (on the ground that since it contains peanuts, it contains a marginally larger amount of nutrition than a Mars bar).

But on reading the ingredient list, I’ve made a resolution, not to do this again.

Ingredients: sugar, peanuts, glucose syrup, vegetable fat, skimmed milk powder….

It says elsewhere 24% of 27% is peanuts. So add the sugar and glucose syrup, it must be something over 60% sugars (adding glucose and “sugar”), some 20% vegetable fat.

Yes there is some “chocolate” in there somewhere – cocoa butter and cocoa milk are listed after the skim milk powder.

So I bought some bars in the health store and am going to try to always carry one; of course this takes a special effort, since Snickers bars are everywhere, and health food stores aren’t.