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 

Short extracts from books

Scott was sitting at the table and she handed him a very white envelope with familiar handwriting. In some ways Linda couldn’t wait for Pat to reach sixteen, just because these letters wouldn’t have such an effect on him.      
       “I ’ll get you a coffee.” she said and went into the kitchen.  When she came out Scott said,
       “Why now? She wants to come and visit the girls in three weeks time, on their way north. Their sister isn’t coming, just them. If she sees the state we’re in, she’ll probably start some sort of legal proceedings over inadequate housing. She’d do anything to get the girls back.”
       “We’ve got three weeks.” said Linda. “Perhaps next week Ben will turn up and we can make him an offer. If we’re buying the house and we’re about to change the bedrooms, surely that’s all right? We aren’t officially anywhere near overcrowded, anyway and the girls are happy.” 
       “You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Scott.
     They left it for a week, but nothing happened. It was the only area in Scott’s life where he became irrational and insecure. The girls had asked to live with him, and he would do anything to keep them.  He always felt that his wife would find some legal loophole  to get them back, although, logically, he knew that there wasn’t one.
     Scott knew that the main thing in life was not to worry, however, in this situation he found it hard.  Linda found it very easy not to worry. It wasn’t part of her lifestyle and it was something she found difficult to understand.
       “I used to get angry with Peter for not visiting Kim often enough. ” she said. “But now, I’m coming to appreciate his laid back approach.” She thought for a minute. Although she didn’t believe in running away from things, she said,
       “Why don’t we take the children away for that weekend? We can fix another date soon and stick to it, for them to see her.  We’ve got the French holiday fund still to dip into, and we could go somewhere interesting.” 
       “I’m on call that weekend.” Scott said miserably.

A few weeks later:-

  “Are you O.K.?  It ’ll be all right. Just keep the kids out of town for the next hour or so.”
     Scott stared out of the window.
       “Am I a bit late? ”
       “Three minutes. ”
       “Well, they probably won ’t see each other.”
       “I know. I really appreciate Paul and Roger staying there. We owe your family so much. ”
       “Rubbish…See you later. ”    
  
        “There’s nothing I can do.” Scott thought to himself. He sat down on the floor and thought about the last problem he had to solve at work, as hard as he could. It seemed like an eternity before he heard the front door open and Alison’s voice. He kept having visions of their mother seeing them, and wondering what he would have to say in court to keep them.

         A bit about Kim...
        
       His mum always sang when she was cooking and working in the kitchen or going around the house and he loved to hear her as he lay in bed at  night time, before he drifted off to sleep or if he woke up after a bad dream. If he was honest, he still felt somewhat isolated within the new family, but hearing his mum sing made him feel that everything was all right. It gave him a strong feeling of continuity and he was comforted by it. 

Copyright J.R.Birch2004     from "Where The Fox Goes"  pdf ebook  £1.00 with  optional free amateur audio book from www.insideoutsider.co.uk     Inside Outsider Publications

One day I will sort my website out.... New Year's Resolution

     We made an audio book, in fact we made two audio books, but one still needs a bit of work on it. It's quite a fun thing to do, but incredibly time consuming if you are using a cheap voice recorder, because if you have one like mine, you can't just correct any mistakes immediately. This means that someone has to spend hours listening to the recordings and editing it, ... From now on,  I'm going to use a microphone and watch the waveforms!
     Anyway, that's why  my website is still a mess... and it is! For some reason, the colours won't upload anymore,  and I'm running out of space, which means that  I have to make links to new pages. Happily, the paypal buttons still function properly, which is a relief,  and it has Norton protection, so it is going strong at a basic level. It just needs three days to rebuild the whole thing, which is why this has to be a New Year's Resolution.
    Meanwhile, the blog is becoming the basket for an an increasing number of projects, and the audio books and ebooks are the latest projects to be dumped in it.
      The Eco Novel, "Everyone Can be a herO"  is still being sold, and the Ebook has been out for a while and as soon as the audio book is finished, I'll put some clips out.   There is an honest review you can find using Yahoo as search engine.
    "Where The Fox Goes" is still about society and people caring, but it's quite a different sort of book, it is about people, who meet up because they are kind, either to each other or to a small cat, or both, and it's set in the last recession. Things happen because they are kind and they do care, and I'm not going to tell you the story, because what's the point of reading it or listening to it otherwise? The only thing I would add is that there are positive references to Australia  and America and some history about the Enclosures.
    It has a Christian background, but it isn't dogmatic. I don't really know how to classify it, because it isn't like the usual Christian family fiction which is on the web.
    The only thing I would say about the audiobook is that this is like having someone you know reading to you, it isn't perfect or professional, but sometimes it is a bit better because of the way they do it.... and it comes free with the ebook.
   The Ebook is currently in the simplest format possible and is emailed to you as a pdf for £1.00  (around $1.50 U.S dollars). You are given a link to download the Audio book.
     You can order a copy from my website, Inside Outsider Publications, www.insideoutsider.co.uk
 Everyone Can be a herO  is on sale at the same price for the Ebook  and £10 for the book.
 ....   And I shall be sorting out my website... honest

Catching up.

     Somehow,  I seem to be missing some of the best things in the news, so I am really glad when someone else brings them to my attention. For example, before Christmas, I discovered a gem in London Glossy Magazine, which I was given as a freebie, that... to quote from the online account in the Irish Independent News in Ireland "

Monday November 22 2010:

     "US nuclear weapons convoy drivers have been arrested for being drunk and getting involved in bar brawls during their overnight stops, a report has revealed.". You can look up the whole report under Warning on nuclear drivers arrests on the internet.  I couldn't find it in any of the main English newspapers online, which probably shows how inept I am.    Thank you to London Glossy for this.. and to the Irish Independent News.
     An even more important report came from part of  a letter to the Western Morning News, which I have no hesitation in bring to your attention.
 
Dear WMNews,

    At a recent Division in the House of Commons, our 600 or so MPs were lobbied to vote in favour of building more nuclear power stations.  So they did - 570 in favour, less than 30 against, completely without any discussion in the House about the issues involved (and a week of discussions on this issue would hardly be enough).    Also, this is without either of the proposed designs having been given a licence to proceed with construction, owing to still unresolved safety issues.  Like lambs to the slaughter, you could say.

    .........." perhaps I can quote a few facts from a recent report titled "Health Risks of Nuclear Power", written by Professor Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen in Eindhoven, Holland. This was published on 22nd November and is available on-line, all 76 pages of it"..........

    1)    There are 440 nuclear power stations running in the world, plus 250 research reactors and 180 in ships and submarines.
    2)    Each one of them generates as much radioactivity, every single year, as is contained in 1,000 exploded nuclear bombs of 15 kilotonnes, which was the size dropped on Hiroshima.
    3)    All of this radioactivity is lethal to man.  Radioactivity cannot be de-activated except by the passage of time.   Lots of time.  So it needs to be kept away from any contact with man for at least a thousand and possibly more like a million years.
    4)    To keep it away from contact with man, it must be contained in a secure depository, buried in a supposedly "geologically safe" underground area.  No such depository has yet been completed anywhere in the world.  Meanwhile, it is being stored in hundreds of "pools" and  "ponds" all over the world, supposedly protected and guarded but easily subject to terrorist attack or environmental disruption by earthquake or tsunami or volcano.
    5)    The cost of a depository for the waste from just one power station for one year is estimated to be over £1 billion and rising.  This will be an ongoing annual cost, for as long as each power station is running.
    6)     The cost of a depository for the results of dismantling just one power station is estimated to be at least £4-5 billion.  This is a one-off cost, but a cost for each power station.
    7)     So when all the current power stations have been closed down - and their life is no more than about 60 years each, remember - disposing of the waste will cost the world at least £2,000 billion, and the cost for treating 60 years of radioactive waste considerably more than that again.
    8)    Considering the total estimated cost of all these safety-measures, it is evident that the world will be struggling to generate enough capital to finance costs on this scale.  Capital, I should point out, that will have absolutely NO return whatever on the investment.  Added to which our supplies of energy for building these underground warehouses are based predominantly on machinery driven by oil and gas, supplies of which are certainly not guaranteed for 1,000 years, or even 100 years.  Then what?  Can we build these depositories, and maintain their integrity, with picks and shovels?

    Even if we closed down every nuclear power station tomorrow, these costs will be burdening the world for generations to come.  Just closing down the Sellafield plant in the UK has been estimated will cost £60-120 billion, which is more than the entire cost, from start to finish, of the American Apollo project.

    But who cares as long as there's a football match on Saturday and the pubs are still open tonight?  It is quite evident that our MPs don't give it a single thought.

Sincerely, peter russell, earlswood, plymouth.

To be honest, I am more concerned with the human face of this, the sickness, the water and land contamination and possible mutations which future generations will be faced with for thousands of years... see my earlier blog.. Oct. 1st. 2010/

So Why Would Twenty Quebec Doctors resign en mass?

However, if you really think that the fiscal cost of all this nuclear power won't fall in part, on you in your lifetime, who else do you think is going to pay for it?  The energy producers and suppliers have a ready made means of recouping their costs, yes.. and if you have an electricity bill and haven't switched to green energy.it's probably you.

 Thank you Peter Russell and to the professor. 

Audio books

    My website is solar powered with Californian Sun, which is a cheerful thought at the moment. However, at present I need to do a major overhaul of the pages and I haven't got time, so I'm using the blog to keep everyone up to date..
     In view of the current financial situation,  we have produced both Everyone Can be a herO and Where the Fox Goes as pdf ebooks  which can be bought for one English pound each.  Where the Fox Goes is a basic text only production and so is a light download at around 600kb and we have just finished an audio book of this, which anyone one who buys the ebook can get free by emailing me for the link. It's around six and a half hours long and is read by a man and is avaiable as an MP3 file.
     Even if the website looks a mess,  the paypal buttons are working and we have Norton security. The audiobook for Everyone Can be a herO should be out soon too.
     My email address isinoutpublic@aol.co.uk and the website is www.insidoutsider.co.uk   (Inside Outsider Publications).
   

So how much is the compound interest on a student loan after you haven't paid for five years?

I don't know but I guess it's an awful lot and just when you think things are looking up and you get a reasonable bonus for all that extra hard work, will the loan computer decide that your income has suddenly gone up and take most of it off you? My guess is "Yes" but I suggest you ask an M.P. since they were so keen to inflict this on you.
If the universities are so determined to have this kind of fee system, they should be more flexible and allow students to opt in and out on a yearly basis, paying off their degree before it mounts up. I think it is tragic that after years of a fairly egalitarian system, suddenly the most expensive courses to run are only easily available to the kids of rich parents and a handful of the token poor.
If the government wants students to pay, why can't they fund an interest free loan, even if it costs a bit more?  At least you would know where you are. I am not kidding about interest.. You need some hard figures before you look at any deferred payments and no one I know had seen a chart telling you how much you will owe if you haven't reached £21,000 annual salary after five, ten, or fifteen years, or if you take a break or do part time work to fit in with looking after a family.
I'd love an answer and I am really sorry that this is happening to you.

So why would twenty Quebec doctors resign en mass?

     It's not usual for one doctor to resign on principle but when twenty Canadian doctors walk together, there has to be a pretty powerful reason.  The cause for this extreme move was the concern they had about the proposed mining of uranium in their province.  Two other provinces had already refused to allow it.  This happened in December of last year and I only recently came across it.  You can read the details in the Spring Edition of Nukewatch Quarterly.. under: twenty doctors resign (!) These guys aren't stupid, nor are the members of the Australian trades union, who refuse to work in uranium mines.
    ....Last year twenty doctors, including specialists, resigned en mass from their hospital in Sept Isles, Canada in protest at the Quebec government's decision not to ban uranium mining in their province, unlike British Columbia and Nova Scotia, who already have. There were plans for Uranium mining on the North Shore of Quebec.  The doctors wrote about the historical contamination of drinking water,environmental destruction and, irreversible health hazards. You can read the full report at http://www.nukewatchinfo.org/Quarterly/2010spring/page1%5B1%5D.pdf (It's at the bottom of the page on the right hand side.)These are professional people, and they resigned as a group in an advanced nation.  Canada has around 20% of the world's uranium supplies.
     Cross to Australia and you will find that the electricians in a  trades union.the ETU Queensland and Northern Territories Branch are opposed to uranium mining....The branch refuses to let any of its members work in uranium mining projects "When the Dust Settles" is a DVD production to explain to Members and the people of Australia the dangers and effects that Uranium mining creates.
     Now come back to America, and an indigenous people.  I read that the Navajo Nation has banned Uranium mining on their land.
     According to Wikipedia,
     "For a people that historically had almost no cases, currently several types of cancer are in evidence at rates higher than the national average on the Four Corners Navajo Reservation. (Raloff, 2004) Especially high are the rates of reproductive-organ cancers in teenage Navajo girls, averaging seventeen times higher than the average of girls in the United States.
      It has been suspected that uranium mines, both active and abandoned, have released dust into the surrounding air and the water supply. Studies done on mice, exposing them to a soluble form of uranium similar to what might enter groundwater from the mines, showed heavy increases in oestrogen levels which might explain the increased cancer levels among Navajo girls. The amount of uranium given to the mice was half the level permitted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and one-tenth the level found in some wells on the Navajo reservation."
     Water contamination for many thousands of years is one of the problems that people fear in the areas surrounding uranium mining.
You will see that this is one reason why they don't want it, apart from a history of exploitation, sickness and deaths,from mining..
     Now, ask yourself where the uranium mining  exploration and granting of licenses is going on at full speed, and one of the places is Africa, and the people who will be affected are some of the poorest and least formally educated in the world.  Do you think that their voice will be heard?  It's a struggle for people in developed nations with a history of sickness and deaths from uranium mining.
       High burn up fuel is not the answer. The waste  has to be kept on site for a minimum of 50 to 160 years before it can be safely moved.  This is hardly a fair legacy to leave a generation in this country as yet unborn, facing we know not what problems and who will get no benefit from it? I have read that it is too hot to bury safely. 
     We have brilliant people working on renewables. In this country we have enough wind and wave and tidal energy to keep us supplied and have spare to export.  In Australia, in the desert, Dr. Karl states that an area 50km by 50km of solar voltaic would provide enough electrical energy for the whole of Australia and an area 500km by 500km would supply enough electrical energy to supply the whole world. Come on guys, we can do it.   Think what a future you could be leaving your grandchildren.  Think happy.