Plucky Lucky Teasing Tuesday

Ode Notes to Photographing Chickens

1. They move

2. They hide

3. They sometimes group

4. They sometimes divide

They tease you... a lot.

So be prepared to miss your shot.

But they are very, very funny if you are of quick wit

So best NOT to chase them, you ninny noisy twit!

This one was definitely in charge and rather vain...

Beware, there be friends of chickens who run faster!
Can you spot one?

With many thanks to the Welsh family for letting me take the pictures.
I hope they get the worms supply sorted! 

Postscript: Sadly I haven't found red hens locally to photograph.
This might be because everyone likes killing red coloured birds or...
They are better at hiding than this lot because they are smarter than the average Dodo!
Either way we should look after all life on Earth much better than we have so far.

I hope you agree.

Article: Changing for survival

In my recent posts I have highlighted important areas for consideration when tackling things as they are at this point in human history. From what I have observed we are facing several major challenges and all require collaborative working to resolve them.

In the second decade of the 21st century have the rising cost of healthcare, the rising cost of energy with it's impact on the environment increasing unrest and mistrust as well as the usual security issues that are common to all nations.

News reports are all very grim and serious, but failure to report a problem that needs addressing only ever serves to allow it to escalate. In developed countries as distinct from developing nations we seem to be dithering about whether or not to radically change the way we do things. It would seem it is fast becoming a battle between Hedonists and Humanitarianists. It is quite normal and in many ways natural for humans to be a bit of both but much I think depends on finding the happy balance between the two.

It is perfectly fine to seek reward for our efforts and to treat ourselves and abnormal not to. It is perfectly healthy to seek to help others too. The two help us all keep in balance. News of corruption and cruelty though is rife and understandably people want justice if not revenge for unfair treatment of themselves and their loved ones. In my view, revenge is not a good idea as it tends to lead us all into deeper troubles. No, what we need is to put our heads together and have a tidy up and I think a review of our values and how we go about things.

Supply chains

If we want to save time, money and energy I have highlighted that we should start by learning to make things from what we already have by recycling. If we want to continue to enjoy the benefits of having mobile phones, computers, TVs, clothes, buildings and even food we have no choice but to renew the supply chain from whence these things came. We cannot continue in our disposable, wasteful, throwaway habits without recycling as logically, eventually we will run out of the raw materials that make everything we need to survive and want to improve the quality of our lives.

There is only a finite amount of copper, lead, iron, aluminium, silicon, zinc, gold, silver and platinum on planet Earth. Along with all the other elemental raw materials, if we do not re-use what we have we will ultimately run out of them all by burying them in landfills or burning them and poisoning ourselves in the process yet such has become our habit. Anyone who does not recycle is putting everyone's future at risk including their own. Separating out and bagging up our waste in itself is of no use whatsoever if we do not have efficient processes by which we can retrieve all those valuable raw materials. We can certainly simplify that by using fewer mixes of materials in the first place wherever it is possible, thereby making it easier for everyone to recycle. Sadly we only seem to be inclined to make do and mend and recycle when we are at war with others, never in peace time. That's quite a shocking indictment on us all.

Food does not grow without land being allocated for it to do so. Waste from the inedible parts of plants and animals enable the edible bits to grow but only if we recycle. Plants and animals need whole eco-systems to be able to provide the produce that we eat. Processed food seems to have become largely not just unhealthy but dangerous to our health through the introduction of too many sugars, preservatives, E numbers and additives. As one professor put it, "you might as well put a skull and crossbones on low calorie foods."

Like any species of animal on this planet, food is the most basic need of all even to us as news reports of starving people both home and abroad testify. With poverty comes greater health risks but these are not just confined to the poor. By eradicating poverty we do much to prevent thousands of diseases that any one could catch. There are enough famines caused by natural disasters to contend with without us adding to them through armed conflict. By being calm instead of vengeful to work through problems we stand a better chance of succeeding in overcoming them all. History has proved this repeatedly.

The fact is we have the answers to sort all our solutions and all it requires is better communication and collaborative working to achieve all our common goals - that of food, shelter and work for all. There is certainly no shortage of the latter but education in every form is vital to enable all to be able to work and to do so efficiently with minimum risk to life. Training is just as an important form of education as that which happens in schools and universities where so much helpful research is done. We should stop using industrial research to merely enable profits for companies and start to use that more to aid the world as a whole if only because we are all reliant on each other for our health, wealth and indeed survival.

Energy supply is another area that requires urgent attention and careful consideration. Again, the more inventive we can become about generating power through sustainable sources the better off we'll be in the long term. Quick fixes for fast bucks are causing more problems than they cure. They generate an ever increasing number of problems for us to combat which leads to an ever diminishing amount of time to find the solutions in. This is not the behaviour of an intelligent species at all, but rather a self-destructive one.

Fear of changing our ways

Would we really be changing our social structures that much to enable everyone the opportunity to thrive and flourish? The answer is no. People do not seek to have the weight of the world's problems on their shoulders. Success is all to commonly perceived in terms of financial gain rather than in terms of useful achievements. If we look at those who are extremely wealthy we find they are riddled with problems of who to trust, who to form close relationships with and how to maintain their position in the world without ever making a mistake. The pressure to perform perfectly is enormous and no one is ever capable of being faultless as no one is ever able to foresee every pitfall to avoid. Success in those terms is not all that it's cracked up to be.

In essence what we all have in common is the desire to be acknowledged for the part we play to make the whole work. No one wants to feel devalued. What each and everyone of us really seek to be successful at is to being seen as a someone who is accomplished at something. Luckily the world is not short of opportunities to do so at every level in every field of human endeavour. It is the act of doing things that give us a sense of acceptance and respect that is the true measure of our own very individual sense of success. What distinguishes the best from the rest is how we go about things and what we do to correct our mistakes.

Our species have really screwed up our guardianship of this planet. Knowing that though gives us the opportunity to put things right and fix it. Surely that is a much more positive way forward than merely resigning ourselves to the thought that we can never do better or that all is lost. Instead of repeating our worst habits, I think it's high time we learnt to acknowledge and learn from our best efforts. We are after all also the most innovative species on Earth capable of truly great things.    






  

Article: Boffin's Booming Bin Business

Recently I was approached to write about where we are at with recycling and sustainability in the UK by a rather lovely foreigner. Rather than scrawl something for someone else I've opted for the freedom of my more wry take on the subject which I hope suits our British sense of humour.

First though I should like to point out that in my view all forms of recycling are a route toward sustainability, and with modern innovation I believe it offers huge possibilities to safeguard our future in terms of the raw materials that enable us to function in business and indeed financially. The money saved could, and I think should, be invested in community services by way of a safety net against any misfortune that any of us might encounter - not least health care provision, housing, emergency services and national security to support our armed forces. What follows is very much my overall impression of how we in the UK are responding so far with regard to recycling with an strong hints of what else we could consider trying.

Recycling UK style

Here in the UK we are very quaint about everything we do and recycling is no different.

On the domestic front our local councils collect our rubbish once a week; in recent years once a fortnight it is recycled rubbish that is collected where I live. We are asked to separate out our paper from our tin and aluminium cans, our compost from our plastics and I think most of us do so now. Some councils collect glass, some do not. Our councils have dumps for when we have a major clear out. We cart a lot of rubbish to these (usually on a Sunday) from old mattresses, to batteries and rubble. If you go there with a van you will be charged for dumping rubbish more often than not so sadly some small businesses end up fly-tipping (dumping it in the countryside) which costs millions of pounds a year to clear up. Some members of the public at the council dumps separate out their rubbish, some still do not. Council staff, having no time or remit to sort it for them have to resort to unsorted rubbish being buried in landfills as of old which is what happens to all rubbish we don't know how to sort.

What happens to the recycled things the average British citizen is not quite sure. We are told it all goes to recycling plants, but we seldom hear of new ones being built. There are many complaints when they are as despite there being many disused industrial site throughout the UK, recycling plants along with new power stations seem to regularly end up being built somewhere brand new on virgin soil as the cost of cleaning up the pollution of disused industrial sites is often deemed too expensive. It probably seems so... in the short-term. We Brits don't seem to like to think about anything long-term if we can avoid it. 

Most of our supermarkets have overflowing glass recycling bins. Our local Fire station has a bin for clothing to raise money for its charity. And every week arriving through our letterboxes are plastic bags to fill to donate clothing and shoes to other many other charities from Air Ambulances, the NSPCC to Cancer Research and Disaster relief - we are not short of choice. We also have many charity shops who will gladly accept furniture, ornaments, DVDs, shoes and clothing. Some, but not all, will accept electrical equipment and try to get it to work again to raise money and to equip homes for our poorest residents - those that have a roof over their heads, many don't. Many people use Freecycle to donate items for free to any who want them or to ask for items they need but these are usually not antiques.  If things are vintage, retro or antique then items get taken to specialist shops and auctions. 

It would help if packaging of every kind was more easy to sort and not a mix of materials such as plastic, card and foil we find in juice cartons, as many of us are baffled as to which recycle bin such items belong in. The sheer size and quantity of packaging used to protect foods has become ridiculous with containers the size of a fry pan for a single Chelsea bun. Apparently we need it for the increase of information that is required. The fact it is often incomprehensible and that you need a magnifying glass to read it is neither here nor there. There was a time when no such labels existed on packaging at all but with an increase in allergies of all kinds everything merits warnings these days, so much so that soon what the food item is likely to get missed off the packaging some day soon. A sensible option would be to highlight food ingredients on a notice board where it is in the shop in legible type, but sensible ideas don't seem to be fashionable just now.

Industrial innovations

In the building sector there are superb innovations for using eco-friendly products and for building with recycled materials but these are often cost prohibitive for many and not used as standard. Most of our construction industry would need to be retrained to use these products. Old skills are slowly being revived such as building houses with modern versions of wattle and daub, straw, wood, clay and lime. Other modern innovations include sips (boards filled with a special foam) for insulation and strength and insulation from recycled paper.

We have dumps for old cars, and I assume aircraft, boats and trains. What we don’t have are people working as they do in developing countries to extract gold and other elements from mobile phones and other IT equipment. This is not surprising as we don’t believe in sweat shops and are not that keen on working conditions with no health and safety precautions whatsoever even though we complain when they are in place. That’s just part of being British though. We like moaning, queueing, talking about the weather, sport, food, music and fashion – it’s a tradition we like to maintain along with drinking tea.

As to saving energy, we seem to be busy building wind turbines and the additional gas and nuclear power station here and there. We could use water turbines under the sea with no danger to the wildlife because marine life is smarter than us anyway and avoid them, but I've not heard of us doing that. We’d rather carve up more of our countryside it seems until the whole of the British Isles hums and throbs to the unsettling noises of power generation. Modern nuclear power stations are said to be ‘mostly safe’. I think we’d prefer to know that they are totally safe but I guess we can’t have everything. I’m not sure that we’ve yet worked out how to get rid of nuclear waste but it seems we’ve decided to leave that one for future generations to deal with. We are exploring fracking now. Allegedly it’s safe. Funnily enough people said that about using fossil fuels and nuclear power so it remains a bit of a concern. The British people love being sceptical about just about everything. What we’re not so very good at is asking probing questions. We tend to leave that to the media and then panic when an issue comes up on the news after a problem has occurred.

Consumptive bad habits

Car usage does not seem to have gone down and most people still prefer petrol engines to anything else including using public transport, walking or cycling. We try to avoid sharing our cars when we can as we tend to chatter, party and argue in them as son as the engine is running. Our attitude seems to be that passengers in a car cause stress and potential injuries. Sometimes we get beyond running the engine when stationary and drive at great speed to the nearest traffic jam so that we can use our full range of expletives. It's a kind of protest against there being insufficient car parking spaces to create traffic jams. A few people insist upon driving under the influence of illegal drugs and alcohol to try to kill people when they find a traffic free road. Anyone who doesn’t use expletives when driving is considered an oddity and abnormal especially those who ride tandems with former news presenters. 

The mood is gradually changing toward recycling and sustainability but not very quickly. We Brits don’t have a tendency to change our habits very quickly unless it’s entertaining, profitable or in a national emergency e.g. because we’re under attack from foreign armed forces shooting bullets and exploding bombs on us...  much like America or any other democracy I believe. I think the best way to encourage people to recycle and opt for sustainable resources is possibly to turn it into an international competition to see who can save the most money and resources in the shortest possible time, but that’s my idea and they are seldom very popular. 

I recently suggested that people (particularly industry) should be fined for not recycling items which is not likely to be a popular idea at all. I also think manufacturers could do a lot to help reduce the amount of rubbish we generate by cutting down on packaging and entering into recycling things direct e.g. refilling milk bottles - as we used to when we had milkmen delivering to every household in the 1970s.  

What things are made from becomes a bigger nightmare for those in business and industry when we consider things like electronics, plastics, oils and metals. Are we to have labels informing us of what everything is made from soon? Our desire for everything to have a label was initially to document and help explain things, but the result is annoyance, apathy and confusion and no time to read anything at all. The fact that the latest technology uses some of the Earth's rarest commodities doesn't suggest that such things will be available for much longer unless we recycle what we have. Even commodities that are abundant such as iron come in many grades and forms, often mixed with rarer elements to become alloys and what we Brits don't know is how much of this ever recycled to prevent any of them running out.

It strikes me that it is only in times of global armed conflict that recycling becomes popular because then it is a necessity. Only then do we learn the value of each and every item and material we produce. Only then do we use our ingenuity to make the most of what we have. Sadly we have become a nation so used to our disposable items of luxury that it's become a massive undertaking to change our attitudes. We look to government to help but like so many nations, belly ache when it tells us what we could be doing ourselves to improve matters. Our parliament is beginning to move toward putting the matter back in our hands as it doesn't want the responsibility for which it is voted into office and paid handsomely for. It is well aware that our population of 60 million people never agrees on anything for more than five minutes and is looking forward to the day when we all beg them to take charge. In effect our politicians seem to be sulking because they don't feel loved or appreciated.  

To me the answer to becoming self-sustaining is to recycle and to use our ingenuity to maintain what we have already achieved. We just need to do so without being wasteful. In my opinion it would require a phenomenal collaborative effort from business, industry, our government and the public to do it, but I believe it is possible. It's preferable to moaning, bickering and worrying; it is preferable to running out of materials to work with. It is preferable to becoming poor - it is also preferable to entering into war again over the Earth's resources which I feel we should, after 2 millennium, all be sharing anyway. Have we forgotten the maxim "waste not, want not"?

 As any Yorkshireman knows... "where there's muck there's brass."

There are plenty of ways business and industry can take the initiative by ensuring that only recyclable products are on sale in the first place - a smart company is one that develops in that direction. I predict it is also set to be among the most profitable too. If nothing else, recycling, make do and mending saves money at every level and if we are to get clear of financial hardship for good it is prudent to invest in new products only when they are vital for a prosperous and secure future. 

PS: Boffin is a reference to a character from 'Our Mutual Friend' by Charles Dickens - his trade? Collecting rubbish.