Tuesday 22 March 2011

World Water Day

Today is, was, or will be, according to your position on the planet, World Water Day. I have always thought that water should be free, by right, ... there to drink, wash, swim and play in.  Furthermore, it should be clean.  It should neither be contaminated with pesticides or disease, nor should it be dangerously radioactive over thousands of years either from uranium mining, tritium leaks from nuclear power plants, or radioactive contamination from  leaking storage pools.
We are told that it is one of our most precious commodities, that we have to save it.  But perhaps we should save it from ourselves.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Census and Lockheed Martin

Today is the day of action against Lockheed Martin's involvement in the census.  This post is coming from England, by the way.  I'm sorry I didn't mention it before it was nearly all over, but iif you haven't read about it, this is a link from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/18/lockheed-martin-targeted-census-protestershttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/18/lockheed-martin-targeted-census-protesters

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Before you say "But it couldn't happen in England,,,.. It nearly did"

Reports have been coming in about the fire in the nuclear reactor storage pond in Japan and the fact that the liquid in one is now reported to be boiling.  Along with the news that one of the affected reactors uses MOX which is far more dangerous in this situation, than ordinary nuclear fuel, it is a dreadful  situation to be in.  What troubles people in the reports I have read is that they can't see the radiation, so they don't know what's happening... If they are being affected or not.
In a report published in 2004, eighteen years after Chornobyl blew, cancer rates in Belarus are 40 per cent higher than they were before the accident. Anyone who heard the "experts" saying that only forty or so people died as a result and was puzzled, is quite right!
   
In November 2004 The Swiss Medical Weekly published findings by workers at the Clinical Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology Research in Minsk, Belarus. It shows that between 1990 and 2000 cancer rates have risen by 40% overall, compared with rates before the catastrophe in April 1986.
Belarus has had a national Cancer Registry as long as anywhere in Britain, keeping a computer database of all new cases of malignant tumours.  This comes from the Low Level Radiation Campaign's website,   llrc,  http://www.llrc.org/

How many of you knew about the leak at Sizewell A on January 7th 2007, reported in the Guardian  in June 2009....Quite a long time later    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/11/nuclear-waste-nuclearpower
"A nuclear leak, which could have caused a major disaster, was only averted by a chance decision to wash some dirty clothes, according to a newly obtained official report."

Saturday 12 March 2011

This was my prologue

Almost a quarter of the twenty first century had passed, when life in the British Isles changed dramatically. The horror that they had pretended couldn’t happen, did. As the smoke drifted for days, weather vanes took on a new and grim significance and the life style of the humble snail became surprisingly important.

What hadn’t changed was the courage and resilience of the people. No one dwelt on the disaster. In the years that followed, it became a convention for them to say “Before it happened” or “After it happened.” The future was there to be protected and this time the teenagers weren’t leaving it to the adults. 


copyright J.R.Birch 2007
        
you can read some more pages at  Inside Outsider Publications, www.insideoutsider.co.uk 
This comes from " more sample pages" link from the Sample pages   Everyone Can be a herO,  or go to http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/page5.html  then   http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/page6.html

Where Love is.

Hi, my name is June and I have written a book called Where The Fox Goes.  It's Christian  fiction, but it isn't a genre book.  My characters aren't all in happy marriages, for one couple it's a happy second relationship. This is about people where they are, not how things necessarily are, in an ideal world. It's a story about animals in a landscape and people in the same area, it goes backwards and forwards in time.
This landscape has been protected during the enclosures, and now it's under threat from developers. Whereas my first book is in print and has been bought by bookshops, this one is being sent out cheaply as as an audio book and pdf ebook. It has the hymn "Who would true valour see" in it.  The people need to protect their wastelands, the area of beauty and woodland they love to visit,  and maybe if they talk to each other and care, they can achieve more than they had hoped for.  It was written about an earlier time of recession, but it is a book for today.
If  you have a wood or a forest you care about, Sunday 20th March is world forest day. In Britain there will be demonstrations throughout the country organised by Save Our Forests campaign and people will be visiting their local forests and woods to make their position clear.  We are not out of the woods yet, the threat to our woodlands and forests is still there.  Frank Dobson M.P. in a letter to me, strongly urged attending a local event and making your voice heard.

for a free short audio clip out of the story, go to http://ge.tt/76PUfkD
and to find out more  about "Where the Fox Goes", visit  Inside Outsider Publications at  www.insideoutsider.co.uk  currently a very simple site, or on facebook. at my author page, Inside Outsider Publications.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

When is a victory not a victory....yet ...and what can we do about it?

    The huge public outcry against the sale of 100% of the public forest estate has been one of the most heartening events this winter.... but like the winter, which doesn't seem to want to leave us, neither has the problem. The government is still entitled to sell off 15% of the land by law over a four year period. I am indebted to  Save Our Woods for the following information.
    " The Coalition Government is able to sell approximately 40,000 hectares of land over the four year period 2011/12 to 2014/15 under existing legislation even without the need for the Public Bodies Bill. On a yearly basis, this is nearly TWENTY times what was sold per year between 1997 and 2010. These plans, as identified in the briefing note, are only “temporarily suspended"
      If they were left in charge for another sixteen years, then if my maths is right, it's possible they could dispose of around 50% of the land. Since a  hectare is absolutely meaningless to me, it sounds more like a refined person calling their dog, I googled  40,000 of them and found out that these are 98840 acres.
     There  is another problem, which is that, according to The Woodland Trust,  Ancient Woodlands aren't properly protected and there are loopholes in the law which need changing.You may know of woodland near you which has been lost to developers or quarrying or a new road.  They say that 850 ancient woods have been threatened by built  development over the past decade. They have a petition to sign and let's hope that this time, someone listens.  These woods are too precious to lose.
Vested interest... Ebook and audio book,"Where The Fox Goes". Christian family fiction about people trying to save their woodlands. at www.insideoutsider.co.uk