Wow ! Just think… if we made guns and bombs we could go around killing people !  Yeaahhh !

Did you know that with just one little gun you can really kill someone ?  You could actually walk up to a total stranger, point that little gun at them, pull the trigger, and in one instant wipe out 12 billion years of evolution !

That is soooooo cool !

And if someone gave you a bomb and you strapped it to your waist and set it off in the middle of a busy marketplace you could kill lots of people !  Yeaahhh !

And if you worked really hard at it for a long time with your friends you could even make a bomb that would destroy the entire wor________________

Here’s an idea…. because bombs don’t just kill their targets (usually other humans) but they also kill totally innocent and defenceless creatures like birds, butterflies, spiders, worms, cats and dogs (to mention only a very few), why don’t we set aside somewhere really remote and desolate, somewhere where the minimum of life forms exist, and nominate it as the place where suicide bombers can “do their own thang“.  A circular plot of land of about 2 acres should be enough.

Then, whenever some moron wants to “make a statement” and terminate their own 12 billion years-worth of evolution they can go there to do it.

It could have a nice, cosy reception area with a video suite so that they can record their message to the world and their family.  They could put the video into the trash can post-box outside, strap on the belt, go out into the middle of the plot of land, wait for the siren, and….. kaboom !

After the first couple of visitors there wouldn’t be much wildlife left in the area to be desecrated by them, so that would help the environment.

If we were to really think about the environment we could build a big (armour-plated) dome over the thing and have air filters to stop any poisonous fumes escaping, all that sort of thing.  I mean, we might as well do the job properly ! Eh ?

The world would save on wasted explosives… I mean, these people use far too much of the stuff at the moment.  Don’t they realise that you only need a teensy-weensy little amount to blow yourself to whichever roomfull of virgins it is you are trying to reach ?  These prats use masses of the stuff !!  What a waste !

This way we all win !  They get to blow themselves to bits, nobody else gets terminated, the minimum of wildlife gets terminated, we save on explosives… hey ! … and even businesses don’t get disrupted, so that should make the money-grabbing corporations happy !!!!!!!

We could even seek conglomerate sponsorship for it.

Me, cynical ? …. never …..

Any good suggestions as to where we could put this place and what we should call it ?

Sounds like a fairly neat idea, doesn’t it ?  Except that, when applied to foodstuffs it makes no sense.

When buying something that will last a reasonable time, like shampoo, buying two for the price of one makes sense.  Whether it takes you a week or two months to get through the first bottle makes no difference, the second bottle will still be usable afterwards.

Not so with plums !

When Amanda (my Chinese fiancée) was over here in July we dropped into a supermarket to pick up some milk and Amanda spotted some plums on the shelf.  I’m not a great one for plums but Amanda likes them occasionally.  She was going home in about 2 days so only needed one tub.

When we got to the checkout the woman pointed out that they were on a BOGOF offer that day and really couldn’t understand why we would only want to take one tub when we could have another one for nothing.

What would be the point in taking the other tub ?  There would be far too many for Amanda to eat before she went home, I wouldn’t eat them, so they would just go rotten.  Wasted. Far better to leave them on the shelf for someone who actually wanted them.

There has been much written in the press and spoken about in the media lately regarding the amount of food we all throw away.  One article on the TV the other week showed a lot of the, perfectly edible, food collected from bins in one town.  Most memorable among the finds was a large butternut squash.  What’s the betting it was a BOGOF ?

Sure, offer things at half price… great for the consumer… but don’t try to force people to take stuff off the shelves that they simply aren’t going to eat.  That’s just plain stupid !

But you know the most ridiculous thing of all ?…. In all the media coverage I saw on this the one question that they kept asking at the end of each article was “How can we stop people throwing away so much good food ?”

Simple…. BAN BOGOFs ON FOOD, you plums !!!

“But what do we do with all the extra produce we have ?” I hear the multi-national, global, money-grabbing food chains ask.

Well it’s like this you numb-nuts… instead of buying up the produce in overly huge quantities in the first place and shipping (flying !) it half-way around the world just to end up with over-supply and have to do BOGOFs to get rid of it just so that people can throw half of it into the bin, why not open up some shops near to where the stuff is produced and sell it to the locals there ? …. or is that just a little too obvious ?

Ah… no !…. of course…. the locals where it is produced don’t have much money do they ? … so you won’t make much profit, will you ?

But why haven’t those people got much money ? … after all, they’re selling their produce to a huge multi-national, global food chain, aren’t they ?  So you would would think that they would be earning a good living from it… wouldn’t you ?

As to the problem that the locals have a surplus of whatever product it is the answer is quite simple, diversification.

Instead of only producing one crop over a whole area (to serve the needs of the multi-nationals), your little local farmers could grow a variety of crops that help to serve their own needs… then what they need to survive wouldn’t have to be transported to them.

Multi-national, global b#$[#&]s !!!

Don’t get me wrong here, I think the Olympics are a wonderful way to showcase amazing personal achievements, especially when it comes to the Paralympics.

Watching Hou Bin lift himself and his wheelchair to the roof of the Birdsnest in Beijing last week brought tears to my eyes.

Hou Bin

(Photo – Getty Images)

There was a Chinese swimmer whose “arms” consisted of no more than a stump of about 1ft on the left side.  She got a great start but was rapidly overtaken towards the end, slipped back to third place, and was being chased down hard by a British swimmer.  Being British myself I should have been cheering for the British girl, but I was simply screaming for the Chinese girl to hold on and get a medal which she eventually did….just.  I don’t think I have ever been more pleased for any sports person in all my life !

But… the Olympics themselves are an environmental disaster, and we simply shouldn’t do them.

To find out why not, read on….

Well actually it’s quite simple.

Like all sport the Olympics involves people travelling around for purely recreational purposes.  Whether it be a soccer match between two neighbouring villages, the Olympics, the SuperBowl, or whatever…. competitors, spectators (and commentators and crews) make journeys which serve no useful purpose as far as the planet is concerned and consume valuable resources in the process.

Add to that the building of the various venues, all of which serve no useful purpose beyond that of human recreation, and you end up with yet another bastardisation of planet earth.

Yes, we enjoy it all.

Yes, we marvel at the achievements.

Yes, we support our own nation (or team) and may take inspiration from good results.

But sport in general does nothing for the planet except destroy it, with the possible exception of Ploughing Competitions.

So we should all give up sport and help save the planet.   That’s it.

Ban fertility treatments !

There are over 6 Billion people in the world today, far more than this planet can cope with, and yet rather than spending lots of this artificial thing called money on researching suitable ways of performing mass sterilisation in order to reduce our numbers what do we do ? …  We spend disgusting amounts of money trying to perfect ways of bucking nature and creating yet more of us.  As if there aren’t too many of us already !

This, to me, is abhorrent.

I don’t know if anyone has ever calculated how much of the planets’ resources are used up by the average person during their lifetime, but when you actually start to think about it the numbers must be staggering.

Just look around you now in the room in which you are sitting… look at all the things that you share your space with…

Start with the chair you are sitting on, the computer screen you are reading this on, the computer itself, all the cables that carry the electricity (!) to them, the clothes you are wearing.  Just look at how much of the world’s resources have been used up in just the one room that you are in.

And then ask yourself this.  How many times in your life do those things wear out or otherwise become redundant ?

Remember your toys from when you were young ?  Where are they now ?

Where is that first bike that you learned to ride on ?…. your first car ?… the school bus that you used to ride on ?

Remember your childhood and think of all the things that used to be a part of your life… where are they now ?  Where are all the resources that were used to make them ?

Is the house (building) you grew up in still there, or has it been reduced to rubble to make way for some other new development ?

How many times has the tarmac been relayed on the roads you travel on each day ?

Do you wear glasses ?… Where are all your old ones now ?

Forget recycling.  In reality very, very little of anything is actually recycled, even these days, and recycling on any meaningful scale (such as it is) is only performed in the “developed” (ha ha !) countries of the world.

The polar ice sheet is melting at an exponential rate year on year.  Weather trends are changing.  Numerous species of creatures are becoming extinct… gone forever; many more are clinging on but will soon be gone.

And what do we do ?  We waste the resource that we have created and in which we place so much value (money) on trying to find ways of creating even more of us so that we can rape this planet even more quickly.

We should be concentrating our efforts and resources (money) on finding ways in which we can safely, and humanely, drastically cut the number of new humans being produced.  Yes, I am actually advocating a global sterilisation program on a massive scale.

Now I realise that, even from anyone who agrees with me, the first response is going to be “but what about the economics of it ?”, to which I reply in two ways:

1.  The planet knows nothing of economics, nor does it care.

2.  Economic policy will always be driven by the (perceived) needs of the masses.  i.e. when there are very few young people trying to look after very many old people then the economic policies of the time will reflect that situation.  The need for changes in economic policy are already being recognised now that (very slightly) fewer babies are being born and, generally speaking, people are living longer.

But I don’t give a flying f#%k for economics.

Try explaining economics to the Bengal Tiger, the Giant Panda, the Great Barrier Reef, the Polar Bear… or the last species to become extinct on this planet, probably earlier today and totally unbeknown to us humans who had never even discovered its existence,  when the very last one of its kind died…

I sit here tonight as guilty as the rest of us for having a computer, carpet, clothes, TV, car, fitted kitchen, bed, electric light.  I live in Britain, my fiancée is Chinese.  She will visit me again in 2 weeks.  Yes, we are both guilty.

I very rarely buy newspapers these days, but I was impressed by an article the other day about a woman who had lived for a year on £1 a day.  She carried on a fairly “normal” life in the process, but a major side-effect of the experiment was that her relative impact on the planet was vastly reduced in many ways… not least of which was that she ate lots of “buffet” food which, naturally, led to less food wastage. (That will be the subject of a future post).

As individuals we can do very little, not much more than token gestures.  It is the way of the world that it needs politicians (with balls) to start taking dramatic action… and fast !

The lip-service that has been paid to the Green aganda through the likes of Kyoto are less than a drop in the ocean.

“Carbon Credits” ? … If that weren’t such a pathetic two-faced sham of an idea it would be laughable.

The only answer is a massive, and rapid, reduction in human numbers… and just for once could we do it sensibly and not just bomb ourselves (and other creatures) into oblivion ?

09:10  TNT deliver to our office block

09:25  Initial / City Link deliver to our office block

09:45  NextDay deliver to our office block

09:50  Interlink deliver to our office block

10:05  The Post Office delivers the mail to our office block

etc etc

15:10  DHL collect from our office block

15:30  TNT collect from our office block

…. do I need to go on ?

I just looked on Yell.com for National Couriers in the UK, and there were 10,504 results !!  This is ludicrous !!

We all want everything now !  Everything has to be “Next Day Delivery”.

Okay fine, if that’s what we so desperately need.  But why, oh why, do we need any one of 10,504 companies to deliver it ?

We, ourselves, mainly use Initial / City Link for sending stuff to the UK and TNT for the international end of things, and we may well use both on the same day.  On average there are probably 5 deliveries and 5 pickups each day from our block and the chances are that different firms will be used for each one.

Is it any wonder that the world is suffering from global warming when our small block alone is generating five times the amount of traffic than is necessary ?

Come on people … think about it !!

I have long advocated that each town (or “part” of a city) should have its own Local Distribution Hub… a large, out-of-town depot where everything that is going into that town should be delivered to, and that hub would preferably be serviced by a rail link as well as road links.  All deliveries to the town would go through the hub to be distributed, in an organised fashion, by small vans from the hub.  This would have the added advantage of keeping many larger vehicles off of local roads, thereby making them cleaner, safer and less congested; after all, what is the point of a large artic going into a town just to deliver one small part of its load (say 4 pallets) to a shop in the town centre, only to then move on to the next town to do exactly the same thing again ?

As is always the case the huge environmental benefits of such a system are thrown away due to our ever-increasing demand for everything “now”… our impatience… and, of course, economics.  It is so much better, is it not, to have 10,504 companies buying (or leasing) vehicles, maintaining them, paying Road Tax on them, employing drivers etc etc, all to make multiple journeys to the same place….. ?

And to hell with the planet !