Tag: Sam Jones
20.04.2011 13:29:38
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It’s May 1998 and I am eleven years old. Ronaldo (the fat one, not the greasy one) is set to be the star of World Cup 1998, before eventually succumbing to host nation France in the final. But it is the legendary yellow jersey of Brazil that has caught my eye, but where am I to find the exorbitant £49.99 to buy one – plus the extra cost of getting ‘Samaldo’ emblazoned on the back? I’d still be saving if I’d relied on pocket money. The only choice then is to root through the cupboards and flog my expensively purchased, now unwanted wares out of mums’ car boot at 6am in a Church car park in Radcliffe. But it was worth it, and I wore that shirt every day in the summer of 1998. As the first thing I ever saved up to buy, it’s a treasured possession, and one I can’t imagine ever parting with.
I went to dozens of car boot sales after this; sold things in ‘Loot’ magazine and, when my offered items became fewer and more valuable, I started using eBay – the online car boot sale. Just because the things I sold were no longer of use to me, didn’t mean they had ceased to be of any value. Similarly, I’ve just paid £0.01 for a guidebook of Venice from the ‘used’ section on Amazon.com. Presumably someone paid £14.99 for the book before heading to Venice. They subsequently went to Venice (or simulated the experience by reading the guidebook cover to cover whilst sat in a canoe with a Cornetto). After this experience, the book was relatively useless to them, so they offered it for sale. I paid a negligible fee and postage and got a book I needed at 20% of the price I would’ve paid in Waterstone’s, and they saved themselves unnecessary clutter. In theory, Lonely Planet need to print one less guidebook to Venice, which saves paper, ink, time, money and so on. In essence, this is collaborative consumption.
eBay and Amazon are household names involved in collaborative consumption, whilst ‘Loot’ magazine and car boot sales pre-date these by decades and centuries alike. Some of you may have heard of the CouchSurfers website? Register you sofa online and people who need somewhere to stay for the night (at minimal cost) will contact you from time to time to arrange sleeping on said couch. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but cheaper and greener than staying in one of Lenny Henry’s hotels...
But what about Relay Rides, where you make your car available to others in need of transport, again for a small fee towards petrol etc?
Or TaskRabbit, where those that are cash rich and time poor can post ‘tasks’ (such as walking the dog, collecting dry-cleaning, posting parcel) online, for ‘runners’ to complete for a mutually agreed fee?
What about Zopa then? If you’re as tired of the banking system as everyone else is, why not loan money from a peer at a competitive rate, making repayments at an agreed APR over an agreed time period?
Parkatmyhouse (alternative to the spiralling costs of NCP multi-storeys)?
swap.com (self-explanatory I think)?
Bartercard (services for goods, or vice versa)?
Thredup (for those fast-growing nippers)?
And there are oodles of tool-sharing groups out there for budget conscious DIY-ers.
Collaborative consumption is a burgeoning movement. Not only does it have the potential to save people huge amounts of time and money, but it also eradicates our obsession with possession and consumption, hitting the cause of our environmental problems instead of looking for ways to allow us to continue in our fatally flawed economic and societal paradigm.
Hybrid cars, eco-tourism and carbon offsetting may well be pieces of the jigsaw, but they are not the ultimate solution.
I’ll leave you with a little statistic. The average power drill is used for 12 minutes in its life. I have never driven down a row of terraced houses and seen every single resident simultaneously engaged in carpentry or other such craft. Thus, I would wager that one power drill could quite easily be shared between the average UK street. The same is probably true of DVDs, books, slow-cookers, bicycles and so on. Collaborative consumption – coming to a street near you soon.
For more information check out this webpage...
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11.02.2011 11:55:10
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So it's that time of year again; the weekend when cupid curls his finger around the twine and takes aim. In some cases, lets hope he strikes the bullseye and melds people in a bubble of happiness. In other cases, lets hope the little mite misses just a tad and actually severs the bonds that hold the more unsuitable couples together. I for one will bid a fond farewell to the unfortunate duo who seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Poundland is a building soceity, and that by investing their jobseekers allowance there they are safeguarding their litter's future.
But nay, my whinge this week isn't about the great unwashed, rather about the absolute waste of everything that Valentine's Day has become. For starters, it has its origin in Christianity - some Pope or other decided it would be a good idea at some point - so if you're an atheist or a non-believer or of some other faith, there is a confusing issue to start with. Nowadays this celebration of love seems to be owned by a number of high-street card shops, lingerie outlets, chocolatiers and city-break touting travel agents. And I, constantly suspicious of what 'the man' is doing to distract the proletariate, am convinced the placement of Valentine's Day six weeks after Christmas is a conspiracy theory. Most people have just been paid for the first time following the glutonous spending in late December, and the coffers are back in the black. Put Valentine's on 14th January and it's a dead duck - nobody could afford the petrol to the garage to buy a cheap posy of wilting daffs, let alone an elaborate bouquet of roses. Seems to me old Pope Gelasius I knew what he was doing - probably links in to the Da Vinci Code somehow but I'll leave that to Dan Brown...
Anyway, back on to the waste side of things, lets look at the classic Valo gifts one by one...
Chocolates - Milk, yes. Milk means cows. Cows mean methane. Methane, like carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas but is twenty-five times more potent than it's more famous cousin. I'm not going to get started on the over-packaging, or the food miles or the fact that they make you fat. Alternative suggestion - locally-sourced produce, or a nice pint of organic milk.
Flowers - According to the Guardian, 55 million roses are traded around the world on the 14th. That means that 55 million roses are put in the bin on the 21st. If you work from the estimate that each rose stem grown in Holland produces 3kg of carbon dioxide emissions, when you hand over that beautiful dozen to your loved one, why not also pass her a bag and a half of building sand, just to demonstrate the carbon effects of this oh so common gesture. Alternative suggestion - some kind of origami flower, or just one rose?
Cards - We all know the scores here don't we; "You had me at hello..", "Love you baby..." and "You're the only one for me... (until next year when we've split up because you were seeing the guy from work behind my back for three months and I only found out because you text the wrong person by mistake one night!)" The global postal industry's carbon emissions are three times that of the much-maligned aviation industry, with 12 million cards delivered by the Royal Mail alone on Valentine's Day. Alternative suggestion - send an e-card, make a card or at the very least give the card to your loved one as opposed to putting in the post. Or don't bother with a card and just tell her how you feel, you cold, awkward thing...
I could go on... jewellery and gold mines and exploitation of workers in developing nations, clothes to replace ones that are pefectly wearable, beauty products that contain palm oils that contribute to the distruction of the rainforests.
How do I ever buy anything you might wonder, if I look behind every product to such a degree?
The answer is simple, I don't. I keep my money in my mattress and only use things I find on the street. This year I'm giving gifts of half eaten chicken tikka kebab, shoe and damaged wooden pallet, all wrapped in an old tarpaulin and sealed down with spent Hubba Bubba. Somehow I don't think I'll have to worry about it next year...
Check this out for more cool stats and facts...
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07.01.2011 15:23:18
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I’m not going to get involved in politics in this blog. Partly because I’m not allowed; the very mention of one of Nyree’s infamous ear-bashings would make David Haye quake in his boots; and partly because I think most politicians are self-serving, self-aggrandising, self-obsessed prats and berks. I also know nothing about politics really, other than the fact that ‘Margaret Thatcher’ is an anagram of ‘That Great Charmer’. I smell ironnnyyy! Anyway, I digress...
I don’t know much about politics really, but I do know that those marginal parties that don’t have a realistic chance of gaining an outright majority for themselves can make fairly outlandish claims in their manifestos to try and entice gullible/extremist voters. The BNP promise to... well I don’t know, but it’s obviously madness. The Liberal Democrats make vague promises they actually meant to do the opposite of – they really should sack whoever edited their manifesto as they appear to have mistaken the word ‘eradicate’ with ‘triple’ in all the sentences relating to tuition fees. Easy mistake to make. Any WWE fans will remember one of the great wrestlers of the early 00’s – ‘Eradicate H’. Might be a bit of an obscure reference that actually... Where was I? Ah yes, and the Green’s, in line with their core policy, promised to create a sustainable society... by reducing a working week to just 27 hours...
The logic behind this is to eradicate (or is that triple?) economic growth, based on the idea that it is impossible to continue to accumulate wealth (often at the behest of nations we imprison in the chains poverty), whilst also reaching a state of absolute sustainability.
27 hours? It sounds like an innovative economic model, and a pirated copy of the new Danny Boyle film. Knocking off after lunch on Thursday? Friday night would be the new Saturday night, so you could go out on the new Saturday night and still watch The X Factor on old Saturday night, and then go out on old Saturday night as well, knowing that normal Sunday is there for eating eggs, ironing the curtains and making jokes about the “bloody squares what used to work thirty-eight hours an’ that!”
Everyone would be less stressed, so ailments like heart disease, high blood pressure, depression and the like would decrease (saving the NHS billions). People would have more time to exercise and stroll around, ridding the world of the super-obese (saving the NHS billions). And crucially, the majority would have more time to get green-fingered and start growing food in their gardens and on allotments, improving the general health of the nation (saving the NHS billions). At this point it is probably worth mentioning I don’t work as some kind of NHS fundraiser, just so you know.
The problem then? If everyone works 28% less hours, it’s only logical that everyone is paid 28% less. Less money basically means less ‘stuff’, and we in the West are obsessed with ‘stuff’. I’ve no doubt that whoever is reading this (well done for getting this far by the way – I know it’s useless ranting but I find it very cathartic) currently has a pile of ‘stuff’ in their house that they got for Christmas that they simply don’t want. Probably £10-£20s worth? I’d say a fair proportion (say 50% for argument’s sake) of the nation has a similar pile. That’s £350-£700m already wasted. Or 118,043,844 work hours at minimum wage. Or enough to supplement the wages of 1,809,655 people on minimum wage to the tune of 11 hours, reducing their working week from 38 to 27 hours...
Is this ever going to happen? No, it is not. Are we more likely to spend billions on a nuclear deterrent system that means we can at least contribute to Earth’s destruction when Kim Yong-Il decides he’s sick of being “wonewy” and presses the red button? Yes. Are the Green Party ever going to be in a position of power that enables them to make this a serious debate? No. But neither is Nick Clegg, so nerrrr...
Ooo, just got political. I can hear Nyree stomping down the doors looking for me. Better dash...
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22.12.2010 10:26:39
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It’s an odd time, Christmas. The clichés and rhetoric will tell you that the chestnuts should be roasting on the open fire, grandpa should be wearing that new reindeer cardigan and quality street wrappers should litter the coffee table. There’s more to it than that though for me...
Forget the Buzz Lightyear figure, the Tamagotchi and the JLS tickets – Christmas isn’t about gifts. It’s about appreciating what you have. We give to those we love by way of expressing how we feel about them. The bows, ribbons and wrapping paper house the feelings we are otherwise incapable of communicating through words, acts or love. We become trapped in a self-perpetuating maelstrom of love and consumption, and each present has it’s own environmental or humanitarian impact, from the Chinese sweatshops banging out the latest iPods, to the exploited poverty-ridden Ethiopians that see a fraction of the money promised when you ‘buy them a goat’ through a household-name charity. But what would Christmas be without the presents, and their associated impacts?
To start with, nobody would go Christmas shopping, so millions of car journeys would cease to be necessary. Whilst the environmentally aware will be buying FSC certified wrapping paper and cards, the masses will be looking for the cheap and cheerful. No presents means there’s nothing to wrap in golden glittery bin-fodder, and in these days of austerity you’d be better of sending an e-card than wasting money on stamps.
Bright an early on Christmas day – Bucks Fizz at ten o’clock (that’s the drink, not the 1981 Eurovision champions). And here-in lies the non-present void. Dinner and trimmings will come later. The Doctor Who special will still be on at seven, and your auntie will still be snoring loudly on the sofa by nine. Is there nothing else that can fill the time between ten and eleven? No other way to express our emotions without plastic gifts and Bangladesh-made textiles?
A poem, a song, a sentence? A moment, a kiss, a hug? A promise of time...?
I’ve moved around a lot – Newcastle, Manchester, Cornwall, Uganda, London, Nottingham, Peterborough, Lincoln – since June 2009. You soon realise that a phone and an Inbox are only disturbed by the people who care about you, and about whom you care. Time is the most valuable gift, whether given or received – and it has absolutely no carbon footprint.
Don’t get me wrong – I love this time of year. I love buying people presents, and receiving them in return. But, with budgets tight and the Cancun talks doing nothing to protect our world, consider giving something other than a product to your loved ones on Saturday. There’ll be no cellotape mess, it’ll save you a fortune, and I’m pretty sure the memory will last longer than any pair of socks...
Having said all this, if you manage to reach a point where you are happy with what you have and exist in a euphoric state of contentedness, please get in touch...
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29.11.2010 10:49:12
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Schools closed. Cars stuck. Daily Mail dismisses global warming as a complete load of cr... apparently winter is upon us. In the same way I use Sue Barker as a dipstick for the emergence of the summer months, I can gauge our descent into winter by the amount of column inches devoted to claiming the latest icy blast has proved climate scientists wrong once and for all, again, for the last time.
Presumably then, at this very moment, scores of experts and PhDs and doctorates are sat dumbfounded in the offices of the International Panel on Climate Change and the Tyndall Research Centre? Heads are being scratched. Brows are being furrowed. Chins are being worried to the extent that beards are being eroded. Millenia of ice cores are being re-examined. Climate models are being run and re-run. The Espresso machine is fit to burst as the brightest minds work through the night...
“But there’s been six centimetres of snow in Whitby, Jobson... we must’ve got something wrong!!!”
“Pull yourself together Watkins, we did the sums on my phone; global warming is going on and that.”
“You’re wrong Jobson... Have you not been outside? It’s quite cold.”
“Quite cold you say? Blimey Watkins. Maybe I did a multiply instead of a divide in that big sum what we did. Get the felt tips and some scrap paper – we’re going to have to think again.”
I joke of course. I’d be very surprised indeed if this scene was being played out anywhere in the world right now. I may well be mistaken of course, but I think it more likely that Jeremy Clarkson and other environmental nay-sayers have got it wrong on this one. God forbid they’re actually right; but it wasn’t too long ago that our best and brightest dismissed the idea of the Earth being round as, and I quote, “poppycock!”
Fortunately, the climate scientists in the aforementioned institutions are actually quite intelligent. They can finish the crossword in The Independent, sometimes understand the questions on University Challenge and probably already know which branch of the Carphone Warehouse this year’s X Factor winner will be working in come April. These chaps and chapettes were even bright enough to stop calling it ‘global warming’ a number of years ago, opting instead for the catchier ‘climate change’. Why? Because there’s more to it than warming.
In simple terms, the amount of energy in our atmosphere is increasing, meaning more extreme weather patterns; hence hot summer followed by cold winter. Fewer, stronger hurricanes in the Caribbean (ask the residents of New Orleans if you don’t believe me). Increased flood risk. More powerful tsunamis. Soon there’ll be no room for Kerry Katona in the paper – darn! And if you think this is mindless hyperbole, check out this rather convincing graph courtesy of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Judging by the reaction of the general public to snow in this country (i.e. tinned food stripped from supermarket shelves, children being forced to wear ALL their clothes while they have a hot bath to warm through, people crashing their cars into hedgerows out of a sense of duty), we as a collective consider snow as an extreme weather. In relative terms, it isn’t. Thousands of people are not going to be evacuated from Salford to take refuge inside Old Trafford. Homes are not being swept away by ‘heavier than last year’ flakes of snow. Snow is about as extreme as Bill Oddie, but that is a moot point.
The point is that a cold snap does not mean global warming/climate change is a myth – quite the opposite. It does mean you’re going to want to turn the central heating up. Don’t. Buy a jumper instead.
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08.10.2010 14:37:52
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Up until recently, supermarket giant ASDA held the record (UK, but maybe not world) for the biggest Naan bread ever made. I don't know the specifics about whether it was garlic, peshwari or just plain, but it's some feat nontheless. However, the Walmart-owned grocer has recently lost it's crown to a Brewer's Fayre establishment in Lincolnshire. More commonly known for their all-you-can-eat carvery's than their curries, the staff at the North Hykeham branch pulled out all the stops in creating the 10ft x 4ft side order. And I for one am proud of them.
"Naan bread? I know this guy spouts some rubbish but why is he telling me about naan bread?"
I'll tell you for why... naan bread is the dipper/scooper of choice for one of the most environmentally sound food stuffs going - curry. Officially the nation's favourite cuisine - move over sausage rolls and cod and chips - an impromptu curry is a wonderfully green dish (not literally, obviously).
Curry is such an adaptable dish you see - there's hardly anything that can't be curried up. okay, you've got your classic meat-leading options, with your chicken, lamb or prawns. Beef can be used, as can pork, mince makes a cracking keema, and white fish can be made with tikka principles to provide a mouthwatering dish. And I haven't even started on vegetables and pulses...
Chickpea and potato for a vegetarian delight? Pepper and tomato and you're talking rogan josh? Bang some peas with your mince to add a bit of coulour to your keema? Use a lentil base for your classic daal? Something to do with spinach or cauliflower for a derivative of aloo gobi? And any combination of the aforementioned can be wrapped in some filo pastry and labelled a samosa...
these are things people always have left in the cupboard. A tin of chickpeas bought during the latest health fad or left over from student days where that spare pound was better spent on 3 litres of Diamond White; Bird's Eye petit pois that have been at the back of the freezer since Thatcher was in power; potatoes because... well, everyone has potatoes in the cupboard don't they; and on and on and on. Bang these left-overs in a pan, add a bit of garlic and few herbs and spices and you've whipped a meal out of nothing. Granted, you could probably make the same things into soup as well - but let's face it, homemade curry sounds loads more impressive the next day when you're trying to impress that attractive receptionist/postman/waiter [delete as applicable].
"Oh... so you can cook?..." they'll say as they twirl that loose strand of hair, "...you'll have to make something for me sometime..."
So you've turned an onion, a sell-by-date bag of spinach and a cauliflower left over from Sunday lunch into a hot date with that certain someone. You've saved the ten quid you would've spent on a Lamb Bhuna from the corner takeaway. You won't have eaten as much so those jeans will fit nicely tomorrow, and you've refrained from throwing good food in the bin - so done something good for the environment as well.
And if you're lucky enough to live in North Hykeham, there'll be plenty of naan to go around to wipe that plate clean, so no need to do the washing up either.
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24.09.2010 10:18:54
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In the same way that I gauge the dawn of the summer season by the appearance of Sue Barker on my television set, I know winter is upon us when the offer of a post-work fruit tea sounds more appealing than a bottle of Corona and lime. On second thoughts, that could be the onset of middle age? As I stood on a grey Aberdeen pavement, trapped by a granite maze, the icy tongues of North Sea wind pierced my flimsy jacket and made me long for some of Twinnings finest. But alas, the Dee Valley is not a place for herbal remedies, but a place for shortbread, Angus burgers and a spot of environmental training.
That's right, I spent last week based at a 'Hotel and Spa' in Scotland being trained in the lesser-known martial art of Environmental Management Systems and Auditing. Quite a week it was too. To my left there were delegates from British Petroleum - "too little, too late" we cried - and to my right were people employed by NATO to ensure efforts in Helmand Province adhere to certain environmental regulations. And then little old me carrying the flag for the Nene and all those who sup from it's banks. An eye-opening course in every aspect, not least for the hypocrisy present in much of the environmental industry. (Note the word 'industry').
You would think that a course for environmental professionals would involve the height of efficiency and recycling techniques; solar-powered heating, pens with wind turbines on to power the organic ink out of the pen, and triple-sided paper made from recycled cars, or something along those lines. But no. Reams of paper were used and binned. Lights were left on at all times. The heating was on and the doors were open. We had fish for lunch that was probably the last of an ancient species, and carrots modified to the extent that they were brighter than the sun. To add to this litany of environmental faux pas, 6 out of the 7 people (including the trainer) made the journey to Aberdeen on short haul flights from London and East Midlands. Who didn't fly I hear you ask? Yours truly. I indulged in an eight-hour bout of "entertrainment", with the train partly powered by own sense of smugness at being the greenest member of the event.
But jokes aside (yes, they were meant to be jokes), people have got to practise what they preach. The recent furore surrounding the Pope's visit is a perfect example. Priests have to be holier than thou. Fitness trainers can't gorge on Big Macs. Accountants should know their bank accounts pretty well. Plumber's taps shouldn't be leaking. Environmental consultants should be recycling their paper.
Fortunately, I can take the moral high ground. PECT strives to be an exemplar of sustainable officing. We print double-sided. We recycle paper, We compost food. We turn off computer monitors. We cycle to work. And on and on and on. But this should be the status quo for those in the environmental industry. But it comes back to the word industry.
This time last year I a third of the way into a three month stint in Uganda, working in an orphanage and a local schools and the like. As I have more than a passing interest in international development, I was constantly asking senior members of charities what changes they had seen in communities throughout their careers. The answer was always the same - very little. Pushing further, I wanted to know why. The fact is, international development is an industry. It employs tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, in charities, the public sector, governments, aid agencies and so on. If at some point this century the collective West was to dust it's palms down and say 'job done' - all poverty, famine, disease, deprivation and inequality had been eradicated from the so-called third world - we would be up the spout. Hundreds of thousands would suddenly be joining the queues down the job centre. It is an industry, and it pays for the west be involved.
The same is true of the environment. If by some miracle we were living in a zero-carbon, or even a carbon negative world in 2050, a great many of those now plugging away to achieve such ends may find themselves out of work.
Now, I'm not asking you to start driving to the shop across the street to keep me in a job.
In fact, I'm not even sure what I am saying. I think I'm just posing the question - it's important to be able to ask questions of yourself.
Or maybe I'm just being miserable because it's winter.
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10.09.2010 12:33:04
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"I love the North - my husband's even from there..." said Patsy Kensit to Chris Moyles on Radio One this week, as her attempts to gather supporters for her Strictly Come Dancing foray began in earnest.
A quite ridiculous statement, up there with David Cameron's infamous, "I Was speaking to a black man the this week..." opener on one of the televised election debates, and Nick Clegg's constant reminders that his constituency is in Sheffield, so he must be 'a ri' good blouerk'. And these are just the biases that reach the surface. But if you dig a little deeper you get to the real Eyjafjallajokulls. Take BBC correspondents for example. The correspondent for Westminster. Correspondent for Bristol. Correspondent for East London. Correspondent for Mike from Clapham's fridge. And the, correspondent for the North, Wales and Scotland...
I've spent time living in urban London and rural Cornwall and Peterborough, as well as in Manchester and Newcastle, so my view does come with a degree of experience. In fact, I don't mind the divide. I'm actually quite proud of it. What I don't like is southern people's attitude to the North (especially the powerful few in London).
Everyone know's that the North is the heartbeat of this country. The Beatles changed the world. The Jarrow march changed the way the country was being run. Wainwright changed the way we look at countryside. Busby and Ferguson changed the face of sport. Feminism was invented in Manchester, as was the Labour party. Marx and Engels wrote a few paragraphs of the 'Communist Manifesto' somewhere with an 0161 telephone number. For railways and canals and mining that our economy was founded on look north. And What do you think the north pole is named after? I feel sorry for the poor correspondent who has to cover all these places; switching between a scouse, a manc, a yorkshire and geordie accent; and choosing to favour Carslberg, Boddingtons, Tetleys or Brown Ale accordingly.
But the divide is there, and I revel in it. And to finally close a debate, if you draw a line intersecting Chester, Sheffield and Grimsby on a map, you have the North my son, and all that is in it.
The issue though, is that neglect of the North by those in power could hinder our chances of a greener future.
I spoke to someone once who told me that London is a self-creating insular place. The lie of the land - gently sloping down towards the Thames - and the height of the buildings mean it is relatively easy to forget what's outside. There are no high point for views out to the sea or across acres of farmland. London is absorbed within itself, or so my acquaintance tells me.
But the industrial centres; the places with the skills and labour and plants to build turbines and panels are in the North. In Stoke and Hull and Sunderland. The places with hills and prevailing winds to propel the blades are in Buxton and Keswick and Otterburn. The places to absorb the waves are in Blyth and Scarborough and Bridlington.
Alastair Darling promised £60 million to inprove the infrastructure of ports in the Newcaslte and Hull and Middlesborough to attract global leaders in renewable technologies. The double whammy of economic recovery in those areas worst affected, and securing pole position for the UK in the green tech industry was a snip at sixty mill.
But, having sold the calculator to save money, Osborne's been doing the sums on his fingers; "Can't afford it!"
I can picture it now... a couple of years down the line and it's a wet Wednesday morning number 10. The Telegraph headline reads - "China global leader in renewables". Cameron is sat holding up a pipe-cleaner windmill that little Florence Rose made at school, while Osborne and Gove stand, flushed in the cheeks, huffing and puffing trying to blow the blades round...
So my vote on Strictly will go to Matt Baker instead...
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02.09.2010 15:49:26
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Has anyone else heard the jingle on that advert? I think it's for 'EDF Energy' or someone, but it doesn't matter to be honest. The end line, sung high-pitched like the name of toilet roll or kitchen floor cleaner so often is on adverts (because we as consumers are more likely to buy things we are told about by people impersonating Barry Gibb)... Where was I? Yes. The end line goes, "it's not that easy being gree-een," as some renewable-powered superhero flies off in to the distance, presumably to save Louis Lane from a wonky turbine.
I don't like the advert, and I don't get the message in relation to a gas-guzzling, coal-burning, oil-sucking energy provider, and I don't like the overall idea. It IS easy being green - you just have to make the right choices.
Yesterday, I made the wrong choice.
Stocking up at Jamie Oliver's favourite supermarket, I whazzed some spring onions in the basket, mashed some broccoli on top and flipped in some egg-fried noodle and some soy sauces. (Prize on offer for what I had for tea - or 'dinner' if you herald from below the M62!). Last but not least though, two pints of semi-skimmed for the morning muesli.
But whoooah. Whooah nelly. Whooah there. What is that? Red top milk - yes. Blue top milk - fine. Green top milk - that's ma' boy. But milk... in a bag? Milk. In a bag?
For those of you reading this thinking it all sounds a bit Brian Potter (i.e. Garlic Bread? Garlic... bread?), that's exactly what it was. I was flummoxed. Mind-boggled. My flab was gasted. If I was Coronation Street's Ashley Peacock, I would have said something along the lines of, "Eh... 'ar Clure... 'ave you sin' this? They've put milk in't bag now. By 'eck Clure it's potty."
Hold do you hold it? How do you pour it? Where is the lid? How do I put it down on the counter? How do I rest it in the door of the fridge? The mind boggled... It was 38p cheaper though, so I rolled up the sleeves, wiped the sweat of confusion from my brow, and squinted closer - nervously.
I'll spare you the gory details, but my CSI-style investigation found one key fact. The milk was indeed in bags, but the idea is that the bag is placed into a jug-like receptacle. This holds the bag secure, pierces it, and allows the cow juice to flow freely on to the intended surface/food stuff with the classic pour motion most commonly associated with kettles, tea-pots and watering-cans.
Why, you ask?
The bag uses 75% less packaging. It is recycable as it is made of the same polymer plastic as carrier bags (all good supermarkets have a carrier bag recycling point), and the boxes the bags are transported in are recyclable cardboard. Oh, and did I mention it's 38p (about 30%) cheaper for a two-pinter?
Yes, the jug-type receptacle (a 'Jug-It') costs £1.98, but this means you make your money back and start saving money after you've bought five bags of milk! Save 38p two or three times a week and you've got yourself a few nights out, some fancy shoes or you could buy a bike on eBay and pedal to work. Then you start cutting more of your CO2 emissions and save money on petrol to boot... Clever, eh? See what I did there?
So back to me making the wrong choice...
I bought a 'Jug It' device and a bag of milk. I'll make my £2 back inside three weeks, and it's the right thing to do.
But the wrong choice was deciding to open the bag with a knife before placing it in the jug. Don't do this. Milk volcano.
Please follow the instructions on the side of the packet...
To get jugged up, go to www.jugit.co.uk
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20.08.2010 11:18:36
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I love a sausage roll. I'm a big fan of a pastie. And I'm more than partial to a caramel slice (aka. millionaire shortbread). I even follow one particular bakers fortunes on the stock-exchange, to the extent that I felt a certain pride when the high stree.jpg) t chain was recently awarded the freedom of Newcastle. I often decide whether I like a place based on the meat-to-pastry ratio of it's baked offerings.
But you've got to know where to draw the line. If after handing over your money in the bakers, the hair-netted Pie Operations Supervisor (or whatever their suped-up job title is these days) asks if you'd like a carrier bag for your purchases, you have clearly bought too much. If you have inhaled this food (and the bag) before you leave the shop, there is a problem. You must be, for want of a better word, a bit of a chubber. But I don't place the blame solely at your feet. What messages is society sending us?
I picked up a set of green living top trumps cards this week; a whole range of sustainable lifestyle choices such as recycling, composting and fitting solar panels are rated 1 (low) - 10 (high) on their Co2 impact, general environmental impact, ease and cost. A lot of them make sense, and the game is fun to play until Kim Coley decides it's got to be best of five, and then best of seven and so on and so on.
But I take issue with some of them.
With '1' being the easiest possible action, walking scores at '2'. After breathing and talking, I've always thought of walking as a fairly basic action for the majority of people. Sadly there isn't a card dedicated to 'Walking to Pete’s Pies' which is presumably easier than general walking if the queue waiting for it to open is anything to go by. So as a group we have deemed walking to be a marginally difficult task. Interesting. But it gets worse when compared to some of the other green actions on the top trump cards.
Building and installing a bird box scores a '3' for ease. This task that demands carpentry abilities, tools and precision. As someone who once built a bird table (which actually seemed to repel birds), it ain't no walk in the park. So for walking to be considered only a tiny bit easier than fashioning a hollow wooden box from slats of timber is quite a statement.
The walking difficulties don't stop there though.
The 'Walking Bus' (e.g. walking in groups)scores an ease rating of '4'. As if walking somewhere on your own wasn't difficult enough. I can see the headlines now... "Teens combust as shoulder-to-shoulder friction sparks blaze", "OAPs tied in knot: Cameron urges public to keep safe distances from one another as they stroll" and "Busy rush-hour pavements cause people to go to wrong jobs". Walking in groups scores a '4', and so does catching the bus.
Catch the bus then - safer - and you won't burn any of those precious calories. But the fact that walking with company is deemed twice as difficult as walking is mind-boggling. Is it the multi-tasking of walking and talking? Or the knowledge that you have to move in a reasonably straight line? Or that you haven't discussed where you are going and are struck by uncontrollable fear that you will never be able to stop and will end up circling Bourges Boulevard until judgement day?
But the one that really gets me is cycling. This also scores a '4', so is also deemed twice as difficult as walking. But its well easy! Especially in Peterborough which is FLAT, when it becomes nothing more than sitting down. So sitting down scores a '4' on the difficulty spectrum? I honestly don't know a more basic human action that 'the sit'.
So if the cards for 'Cycling', 'Walking' and 'Walking in groups' score '4s' for ease/difficulty, I reckon the rating for 'Overcoming the greatest threat to life on Earth since that meteor hit that T-Rex' is going to get at least a '6' or a '7', and I don't fancy our chances.
Incidentally, the only card that scored a '0' for ease (i.e. no effort what-so-ever) was 'Eating butter.'
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