It's 11:24am on the 1st October 2010, and East Anglian hip-hop overlord DJ Tim Westwood has just hurled the following Tweet straight into the face of an unsuspecting planet earth:

"On a small ass train from Hull to Preston stoppin everywhere. People goin Blackpool drink vodka out the bottle. This is my type of ride"
 

I'm all for celebrities articulately endorsing sustainable transport, and here Westwood encapsulates the joys of a late-morning train journey between Hull and Preston with all the precision you would expect from a consummate BBC broadcaster of over 15 years.

In this eco-friendly Tweet, Westwood's powerful rhetoric allows the reader no option but to picture the "big ass traffic jams” which contrast so strongly with the notion of a "small ass train".  Westwood then goes on to praise how the Hull-to-Preston service is "stoppin everywhere", which is kind of like a slang way of saying "stopping everywhere". Frequent stops to suit the customer are yet another benefit of modern day train travel, a benefit which was never going to elude DJ Tim Westwood.

Five years ago, a “small ass train” would not have been Tim Westwood's "type of ride". On the contrary, Tim would have almost certainly stated his preferred “ride” as a "big ass truck" (to use the parlance). Let's not forget that in 2005 Tim had just become the grinning centrepiece of MTV's 'Pimp My Ride’, one of the biggest televisual automobile celebrations in all human history. I’m sure you’ll remember how Tim beamed away as Fiat Pandas were given nightmarish paint jobs, modified to the hilt, and kitted-out with their own fully-functioning cinemas, Olympic swimming pools and multi-storey shopping centres.

It would have been easy to condemn the Tim of 2005 as some kind of out-of-control, car-crazed enviro-monster. Fast forward to 2010 though, and Timmy’s train tweet shows the progress anyone can make towards promoting sustainability in just a few years.

One of my longest held beliefs is that we could each benefit from having our own sustainable transport role model, a trusted figure we can personally relate to. I find it easy to relate to DJ Tim Westwood because in many ways DJ Tim Westwood and I lead parallel lives. We are both products of post-war East Anglia and we both get healthy amounts of 'respect' on the streets, although mine is largely for my energy-saving work.  

Given our many similarities, it follows in my mind that if Westwood travels sustainably, I should continue to do so too. Thoughts of DJ Tim Westwood travelling by train to ply his trade in the nightclubs of Preston and Hull strengthen my resolve to continue travelling sustainably, and also provide me with a general feeling of comfort in a way that is difficult to properly explain. Whilst the image of Tim Westwood boarding trains is arguably one that I think about a little too much, why not follow my example and find your own sustainable transport role model?

Tags: Patrick McLintock

Warm Homes Peterborough is PECT’s community-based fuel poverty project, providing free energy-saving advice and products to social housing tenants, and reducing the carbon footprint of 5 Peterborough neighbourhoods. Having successfully worked with 750 tenants in its first year, the project’s second year has recently begun.
 

Whilst the likes of Brazil, Spain and The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been battling it out for football supremacy in South Africa, our very own Warm Homes team (complete with new signing Bacar) has been working with residents to slide-tackle fuel poverty in three Peterborough wards not visited last year: Paston, Ravensthorpe and East ward. Having been largely Dogsthorpe-based in our first year, these new areas have taken some getting used to.

Similarly to my Dogsthorpe induction, there has been much walking in circles, head-scratching over maps, and ambitious attempts to commit all nearby bus-stops to memory. As with World Cup squads, internal disputes occasionally threaten the cohesion of the plucky Warm Homes team. “I could have sworn it was just round this corner” is usually enough to prompt a raised eyebrow and a slight look of contempt from my colleague. Thankfully such rifts have remained civil. So far.

Most recently we’ve been knocking on doors and visiting tenants in Paston, and it’s encouraging  that Registered Social Landlords appear to be as focused on energy efficiency measures here as we witnessed them being in Dogsthorpe last year. Unlike Dogsthorpe, where re-roofing appeared to be the order of the day, Paston has hosted a carnival of cladding. Yeah, I said it.

Whereas most of the properties visited in Dogsthorpe have insulated wall cavities, many Paston properties are not suitable for this heat-saving measure. In a solid wall property, or one with narrow wall cavities, the insulation choices are to dry-line walls from the inside of the properties or to clad them from the outside. One huge benefit of cladding, over-dry lining, is the reduced disruption to tenants’ lives during installation. Also it’s far more heat-conserving than dry-lining, making its higher price-tag worthwhile in the long run. 

This wave of cladding in Paston has brought a temporary abundance of scaffolding to areas like Crabtree. Retro pebble-dash houses here are being transformed beyond recognition, with the new rendered layers of being  painted shades of cream, brown and red. On a hot day in Paston you can start to mistake some of the terraced properties for neapolitan ice cream, particularly if it’s been a few hours since lunch. 

 

Tags: Energy Efficiency | Warm Homes Peterborough | Patrick McLintock

Heating is probably the most important use of energy in our homes, particularly for those of us who are vulnerable to cold.
 

However, a number of barriers to affordable warmth can exist. The best efforts of an efficient new boiler and central heating system can be in vain if heat then pours out through poorly insulated roofspaces, walls or draughty windows.

Likewise, bank accounts and prepay meters will be drained rapidly if homes are heated beyond the maximum recommended temperature (21c). Both of these barriers to affordable warmth also involve energy wastage and unnecessary CO2 emissions. Any inefficient use of energy (electricity, gas or other) impacts on our ability to heat our homes, both in terms of resources and personal financial cost.

The rising price of energy has been a contentious and highly publicised issue of late, an issue which makes it even more important for everyone to identify which of the various energy tariffs suit them best. 

Some might wonder why only Dogsthorpe and Central Wards are being focussed on as part of the Warm Homes project. Fuel Poverty is known to be most prevalent in areas which suffer high levels of deprivation. Whilst such statistics are always broad; Dogsthorpe and Central Ward have been identified as suffering some of the highest levels of deprivation within Peterborough, making them strong candidates for any fuel poverty project.

Furthermore, Warm Homes Peterborough is only offered to tenants of Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), not home-owners or those renting privately. As a sector of society, RSL tenants are vulnerable to fuel poverty.  A recent report from the New Policy Institute described how “RSLs house a very sizeable number of those in, or at risk or, poverty”.  RSL tenants are also generally exempt from government energy-efficiency initiatives such as Warm Front grants and the new Boiler Scrappage Scheme announced over Christmas. Despite  this, I have seen first-hand the impressive measures Peterborough RSLs are implementing to increase the energy efficiency of their properties, for example Cross Keys Homes’ work on roof insulation.

Read my first blog post about the Warm Homes project here...
 

Tags: Energy Efficiency | Patrick McLintock | Warm Homes Peterborough

With Christmas Day less than 36 hours away, and after six months of door-knocking, surveying and energy advice, the first year of Warm Homes Peterborough visits came to a close. As the snow fell thickly in Dogsthorpe, the completion of the momentous 250th home survey marked the end of the first phase of this new energy efficiency project.

In the latter half of 2009 I became something of a stranger to the PECT office, and became something of a fixture in the residential lanes of Dogsthorpe and Central Ward, to the extent where one Eastern Avenue resident recognised and welcomed me into his home as “the young man who keeps wandering up and down our street with a trolley and a clipboard”. The same resident revealed how, after repeated sightings of me and my ‘office-on-wheels’, he and his wife had reached the conclusion that I was “just out looking for something to do”.

Whilst the last comment suggests I have some work to do on perfecting a purposeful veneer, the truth is that I was out to deliver energy efficiency advice to 250 Peterborough residents. Warm Homes Peterborough is a project funded by ScottishPower’s Energy People Trust, designed to combat fuel poverty (fuel poverty is defined as where more than 10% of a household’s income is spent on fuel). A wide range of factors can feed fuel poverty, but thankfully an equally wide range of responses can alleviate it.

I’ll be revealing more about how the Warm Homes Peterborough project works in future blog posts.

Tags: Patrick McLintock | Warm Homes Peterborough | Energy Efficiency