A court in Wales has ordered the arrest of an 81-year-old woman after she failed to show at a court hearing relating to an Asbo. Locking up an 81-year-old woman for Christmas – now that’s what you call a good use of police resources and jail space…
A solid piece in The Sunday Times (not something I say often) about the huge energy consumption of high street stores – the super-bright lighting, the OTT heating, and most ridiculously, the insistence on leaving the door open as though they were actually trying to heat up the whole planet.
According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, retailers use 275 kilowatt hours (kWh) per square metre.
That’s vastly more than, say, local government offices (39kWh), factories (47kWh), warehouses (81kWh) and commercial offices (95kWh).
One explanation for the waste is lighting: many stores are lit to the same intensity as television studios. And now to heaters, the craziest of which must surely be the ones installed over the open front door, which typically have a rating of 500 kilowatts — roughly 17 times as powerful as a domestic fan heater.
Environmentalists say the best way for consumers to tackle retailers’ wasteful emissions would be to stop going to shops altogether and buy everything online. Department for Transport studies show that replacing shoppers in private cars with delivery vehicles would reduce traffic by 70%. And without customers to dazzle and roast in shops, retailers could become wholesalers and reduce utility bills on their premises.
So get clicking next time you need to buy something…!
I’m slogging through the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which caused a bit of a splash in the history blogosphere (and the publishing world) a couple of years ago. I’m up to page 176 and I’m really bored with all of the obvious vampire stuff, and the pace is a slow crawl (a bit like me on the final leg of today’s bike ride when I was on my own).
Is it worth sticking with for the next 500-something pages? Answers in the comments please!
This was fruits of a visit to Camden Oxfam, where I also picked up Iain Pears The Dream of Scipio, which I did enjoy. Review tomorrow probably when I have a bit more energy…
UPDATE: I’ve read another 50 pages and I’m still bored, so it has gone into the “return to charity shop” pile. Sorry air!
A march to demand full abortion rights in the UK is planned for March next year. If I can, I’ll be there.
(Found via the Jim on The Daily Maybe’s Carnival of Socialism No 11, which focuses on gender and sexuality, while also managing to address the question of whether oral sex can save the planet…?)
Today the forecast was for cloud and mist and a maximum temp of 6 degrees, so of course I thought I’d take myself out for a nice little tootle on the bicycle, and advertised on the London Cycling Campaign email list was what was biled as a leisurely 12 mile run to Rainham Marches, starting from Greenwich, which is about 8 miles from home …. which I could do at him own pace.
I really should have known better. (On several counts – one of them being that Southwark cyclists’ idea of “leisurely” is my idea of “just keeping contact with the back of the bunch by gritting my teeth and giving it all I’ve got”.)
No, it was fun really – in a slightly beating your head against the brick wall sort of way. I just looked up the distance home from the marshes and it is about 22 miles – and that was after getting to Greenwich, and then doing, to one person’s odometer, 22 miles there (the scenic route via the Woolwich ferry.) So I must have done near 50 miles today… (if you say 80km it sounds even more impressive.)
If the text here is a little tilted my apologies – sitting rather oddly since my seat bones weren’t in the condition for this. (Not to mention my legs….) In fact (another use of the blog) I just looked up my last serious ride and it was August 12, which covered some of the same route – as far as Woolwich.)
Still there were some interesting sights, including these World War II concrete barges (possibly used for D-day? so made due to the wartime shortage of steel) rotting quietly by the river:
And we went through (scenic route might be an honorary title) London’s great rubbish dump. On the north bank of the Thames opposite Erith are these slightly out-of-place looking hills – and what indeed they are out of place – these were once marshes, like the survivor we were heading for, but they became London’s landfull site. The smell is awful – sour, fetid, almost indescribable really), and there are chimneys where the methane brewing up under these grass-covered monstrosities is burnt off.
Hate to think how much the Christmas season will be adding, if not here then elsewhere. And you have to wonder why it was put right beside the Thames. No doubt theoretically these is some lining supposed to stop it polluting the river, but…
(As this walker notes, this is also the end of the London Loop walking route – a bit of a rubbish finish…)
But Rainham Marshes have survived and should continue to do so, having recently been bought by the RSPB.
There’s a new and fascinatingly enviro-friendly visitors’ centre that even boasts defensive drawbridges, and 2.5 miles of boardwalks that would no doubt be great on a day with a little better weather. (Winter is supposed to be the best time for bird species.)
Unfortunately they haven’t got to the info panels yet – and since this area apparently preserves the medieval field system I’d like to have known more. Guess I’ll have to go back.
But next time I might catch the train…
Well it is in Scotland, and he does have a history of rebellion, but nonetheless, well done to the Labour minister who has resigned over the plan to replace the Trident nuclear subs.
Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm has resigned from the Scottish government after voting with the SNP over the replacement of Trident.
He was one of four Labour members who supported the SNP’s motion opposing the replacement of the nuclear submarines with up-to-date models.
Mr Chisholm said his decision had been a “matter of principle”.
The Scottish Parliament failed to agree a position on the future of the Clyde-based fleet.
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