Green (Living) Review

Sky & British Cycling to launch third year of Sky Ride

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Major broadcaster Sky and governing body British Cycling are working together with marketing agency RPM to launch the third Sky Ride cycling campaign.

Running for six months over the summer, the nationwide mass participation and local cycling events will inspire families and friends to get on their bikes, under the tagline ‘Where will your bike take you?’ Sky and British Cycling share the aim to get one million more people back on two wheels by 2013.

The campaign includes local led rides and traffic-free city rides, complimented by a whole host of route side entertainment. This includes Sky Sports ‘Living for Sport’ Bike Freestylers, a British Cycling Bike Café providing guidance on where to continue cycling in your local area, dancing lolly pop ladies, buskers and music bikes.

Members of Team GB and the Sky Pro Cycling Team will also make appearances, including Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton.

Sky Ride 2011 builds on the success of the last two years, with Sky and British Cycling’s joint cycling initiatives so far having resulted in 376,400 more adults cycling regularly (cycling at least once a month or 12 times a year).

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s chief executive, says: “Sky and British Cycling have always set out to achieve big things; together our ambition is to get millions more people on their bikes and excited about cycling as a sport. After the fantastic response we received from the last two Sky Rides, we hope Sky Ride 2011 will be even bigger and better.”

This is an initiative that can but be encouraged even though – in the case of Sky Broadcasting – it may have a lot to do with PR and making oneself appear good and green rather than a real interest to green people's transport and to get them active.

Carluccio's restaurant chain to recycle waste oil

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Italian restaurant chain Carluccio's has announced plans to convert its waste cooking oil into bio-diesel and thereby slashing the organisation's annual carbon emissions by up to 90%.

Carluccio's made the statement last week after finalising an agreement with leading bio-fuel producer Convert2Green to manage the conversion process.

Although no details were given as to when the partnership would commence, it is understood that Cheshire-based Convert2Green will collect waste oil from the eatery's 54 UK outlets and recycle it into high quality bio-fuel. That in turn will be used to fuel delivery trucks, which is where the emissions savings are made.

Steve Kaddish, Carluccio's development manager, said the move was just a part of the business' overall sustainability strategy, stating that the chain "takes our recycling, waste management and carbon savings very seriously."

Mr Kaddish explained: “Waste oil collection is a way for us to take positive steps and by making changes to the way we behave as a business; we are aiming to improve both the social and environmental impact of our operations.

“Our aim in the first twelve months is to save 92.7 tonnes of carbon through recycling our waste oil - a big step in our overall aim to recycle in the region of 78 per cent of all our waste.”

Andy Webb, director of Convert2Green added that restaurants in the UK are increasingly looking toward more sustainable practices. He said: “Restaurants produce thousands of litres of waste cooking oil per annum which might otherwise go to landfill or be exported, and may even cause environmental problems.

“By recycling with Convert2Green, the used cooking oil will be refined into bio-fuel here in the UK for use in road transport and for the generation of renewable and sustainable energy, thereby saving even more carbon emissions.”

While it must be said that converting waste cooking oil into bio-diesel is a great idea and much, much better than using virgin oils, be this palm oil, or whatever, to produce that fuel, we are still trying to keep the status quo as to the infernal combustion engine. We must get away from that thing though.

The other problem with bio-diesel is that the particle emission are at least the same if not worse. On the other hand, conversion also should not be needed if the vehicles would have their engines adjusted properly. Most diesel engines could, really, burn a multitude of oils.

Our love affair with the infernal combustion engine, whether it burns gasoline, diesel or even “natural” gas, is something that we must reconsider and we must do this rather pronto.

There is simply no way that we can produce all the crops for bio-fuels, as that would either mean fuel or food, in the end, and neither can we get enough waste cooking oil from which to make bio-diesel.

A serious rethink is required and the bicycle – in it various forms – and other human-powered vehicles – must be brought back into the equation.

Using waste cooking oil for bio-fuels is a great idea and a way of disposing safely of the oils it is NOT the answer.

Green Party calls for transport re-think as report shows vulnerable are worst hit by bus cuts

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Green Party has called on the British coalition government to re-think its transport policy following August 11's report on bus services, which shows that cuts are disproportionately effecting the most vulnerable.

The report from the Transport Committee, entitled 'Bus Services after the Spending Review', reveals that local authority cuts to transport budgets have seen the young, old and disabled hit hardest. The cross party committee also criticised the lack of consultation undertaken before 70% of councils reduced subsidised services or raised fares.

Alan Francis, Green Party transport spokesperson, said: "The Select Committee report should be a wake-up call to government and councils that are cutting the funding for local bus services. Vulnerable people, especially the young, the old, the disabled and the poor, will be the hardest hit by the withdrawal of bus services.

"These people depend on bus services in order to access jobs, shops, education and health care, and are precisely the people that the government should be looking out for, rather than making their lives more difficult."

The report shows that the Coalition is failing to fulfil its pledge to provide better value for money in public transport, with prices set to rise above the rate of inflation, and further loss of services expected.

Transport Committee Report, ‘Bus Services after the Spending Review', available in full on the following locations:

The problem is, however, in Britain not just cuts but the cost of fares also. The cuts but hard because they actually reduce the services and cut some routes, often rural ones, altogether, thus making people depend on cars, and if they haven't got a car or a license then they are well and truly screwed.

High fares do the same – or a similar – thing in that they make it either impossible for people to get to places by public transport and thus if they haven't got a car and cannot afford the high fares they are disadvantaged again. On top of that such high fares make people with cars use them, regardless.

The entire transport policy of Britain, and not only just now, has been one, for a long time, geared only to the car user. Beeching already saw to that when he destroyed the railways. And ever since then everything was being geared more and more to the car and less and less to public transport, to cycling and walking.

We need a sustainable transport policy in Britain, a truly sustainable one, where public transport and all other alternatives to the car have priority over the car. But, I am afraid, that is wishful thinking.

Things will come by themselves, as far as the alternatives, other than public transport, are concerned, such as cycling and walking, with the ever increasing costs of fuel, in due course. But, we do need to have also a proper public transport infrastructure and one that is publicly owned and not run on a for profit basis.

Countries of the Middle East push towards renewable energy

Middle East's push toward renewable energy spurred by rising oil prices

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Do they know something that they are not telling us, many of which are oil producing countries?

There is a revolution sweeping the Middle East but this one has absolutely nothing to do with street uprisings or Twitter protests. It is a clean renewable energy upheaval with international implications that could transform the Arab world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.

Solar plants are cropping up in Jordan and Morocco. Wind farms are being built in Egypt and Tunisia. Eight Arab nations and the Palestinian territories have a renewable energy target, and at least five more are taking serious steps to promote the domestic use of clean energy. Some of the most surprising movement is happening in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and it is those movements that make me wonder as to whether they know something that they are not – openly – telling us.

Perhaps taking a page from Masdar, the famous carbon-zero city in the United Arab Emirates, these countries are spending their petrodollars on a budding number of their own alternative energy projects. And they are doing this because they are well aware of the fact that most of their oil is used up and they are about to run out of the black liquid gold.

Climate change, by all accounts, is not the primary driver for this, and has, to some degree very little to do with it at all. While rising global temperatures threaten to reduce the availability of scarce water and to raise food prices in the Middle East, analysts say that prospect is overshadowed by present realities of their main export: oil. Rising oil prices and growing energy demands mean depleting reserves. Thus, there is a new need to diversify, as soon there will be no more oil to sell.

Indeed, for some oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, several experts even compared the growing interest in domestic renewable energy use to a "Don't get high off your own supply" crack-dealer ethic. But, in the case of Saudi Arabia it may also be a case of “oops, we are about to run on empty” and rumors may indeed be true that Saudi Arabia is just about to run “dry” in the not so distant future.

According to sources a complete movement for renewable energy is afoot in the Arab countries, and leading, to some degree, are the so-called oil-rich nations. The plans are for everything for solar, over wind, to geo-thermal plants, creating energy for home consumption and for export to neighboring countries.

Already in the 1940s ideas were being played with to e3rect huge solar cookers in the Sahara desert of North Africa to produce energy for export to Europe. The problem encountered then was the distance that the electrify would have to travel in wires and this problem, though, has not gone away.

It is, however, extremely interesting to observe the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to pursue renewable energy sources, and, though people might throw the “conspiracy theory” thing at me here, it might be an indicator for something that no one likes to tell the world about, namely the fact that we are running out of oil, in a sense.

This should at least give us some kind of warning signal, I would say, and a wake up call to consider the way that we are going and we must pursue the same road, namely one of renewable energy sources, for before long oil-based products will be unaffordable to the ordinary mortals.

Thus we need to work on transitioning now, not next week or next month, to a fossil fuel free future, for coal is also finite and if we are going to use that instead of oil then there will not much be left of that either in a few years time.

Scientists warned already at the close of the 19th century that we should not base our economies on fossil fuels and they kept reiterating such warning every since that day. Problem is that the fossil fuel lobby, coal and oil, were far too powerful and always in bed with our governments, and thus their warnings were not heeded and still to this very day everyone seems to be suffering from the ostrich syndrome.

But sticking the head in the sand, even the desert sand, is not going to make the problem go away. It will still be there when we surface for a breather and will have just gotten worse.

Dangerous fungi in most dishwashers

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Scientists have found a possibly harmful fungus that grows in dishwashers, surviving high temperatures, aggressive doses of detergents and rinsing salts and both acid and alkaline types of water.

A black yeast called Exophiala dermatitidis was found with a cousin fungus, E. phaeomuriformis, in samples taken from dishwashers in 189 homes in 101 cities in six continents.

Fifty-six percent of the dishwashers contained the fungi on the rubber seal on the appliance door and both species “are known to be able to cause systemic disease in humans and frequently colonize the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis,” says the study.

The fungi are “extremophile” organisms that are rarely encountered in nature. This suggests they have found an evolutionary benefit by occupying a household niche, thriving on warmth and moisture.

The study appears in the latest edition of the journal Fungal Biology, published by the British Mycological Society.

The probe did not focus on whether the dishwasher fungi had been any threat to health and it says, though, “further search is imperative” given the risk of genetic mingling in this unusual environment.

“The co-existence of different genotypes of the same species possibly enables genetic recombination, resulting into new genotypes with unknown pathogenic potential,” says the paper.

Other microscopic species found in the dishwashers were members of the Aspergillus, Candida, Magnusiomyces, Fusarium, Penicillium and Rhodotorula groups.

While those fungi and fungal spores are certainly something to worry about anyone who has any knowledge of commercial dishwashers and their use would not just be worried about fungi.

I have seen those latter things in operation and let me put it this way...

While a domestic dishwasher pulls in new fresh water at each and every cycle commercial dishwashers do not do that. At times the water can be as old as a day or two in some hotel and restaurant kitchens and I would not put it past some places to even go beyond that. I have seen it more than once that water was about thirty-six hours or so old.

Some fungi are the least to worry about in those settings, I am sure, and having seen what happens in some catering establishments is what has turned me off going to many places to eat and even to drink.

Another reason to wash your dishes by hand and avoid places with commercial dishwashers.

Deputy leader of Green Party says Britain should avoid dangerous nuclear distraction

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Green Party deputy leader Adrian Ramsay responded to the government's announcement that up to eight new reactor sites have been designated for development. Chris Huhne signalled that Britain will be “open for business”, and hopes to attract foreign nuclear investment, despite recent events at Fukushima and elsewhere.

Mr Ramsay said: “While the Conservatives and LibDems often talk about being 'the greenest government ever', the coalition partners show their real priorities with their policies. Reducing carbon emissions must be a top priority, but this fixation on nuclear will divert investment away from the real solution – energy efficiency measures and renewable energy.”

With the recent revelation that three of the four affected reactors at Fukushima experienced full meltdown, and plants in America being put on alert or shut down as a result of flooding alongside the Missouri River, the risks involved with nuclear power are being illustrated all too clearly. And the public is taking notice; Italian voters have overwhelmingly rejected Silvio Berlusconi's plans to restart the country's nuclear programme, and Germany has committed to closing all of its plants by 2022.

Mr Ramsay concluded: “There are good reasons why countries across Europe are turning away from nuclear power and yet the British government is taking us in the opposite direction. Nuclear power creates a toxic legacy of waste and is bad value for money. Investing the same amount in energy efficiency and renewable energy would make much more difference more quickly in reducing carbon emissions, making our energy supply more secure and creating skilled, lasting jobs.”

Many countries in Europe and around the world are reconsidering nuclear power and some are standing now against it. Britain, on the other hand, just does not seem to get it while other countries do. Nuclear power is (1) way too expensive and (2) way too dangerous. Britain – nor any other country – cannot afford nuclear and that not just for costs.

In the 1950s and 1960s in Britain nuclear power was promoted with the “too cheap to meter” when the government adverts claimed that electricity would become so cheap that no one would bother metering it anymore. The fact is that this never happened and nuclear electricity is, in fact, the most expensive one.

Nuclear power has cost us already dearly, in the UK and in other places. I do not think that anyone will forget Chernobyl and Fukushima is now being added to the same list. Other incidents that were about as bad or a little down the line could also be listed but I don't think I have to.

Atomic power is not the answer and – unless we can get fusion to work – never will be. Wind, water, methane and solar are the only answer for our energy future.

Plastic bag use on the rise again in Britain

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

After a number of years of decline, the use of plastic bags by shoppers in the United Kingdom has risen again in 2010, so government authorities said.

Usage had had gone down by 40 percent after 2006 when the government, retailers and environmental advocates led a campaign to cut down on the 11 billion plastic bags Britons used annually.

But last year more than 6.8 billion were used, which is an increase of 5 percent from 2009, the government's Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) said.

Part of the increase has been probably due to shoppers making more short trips to stores, rather than a single large weekly shopping trip, the British Retail Consortium said.

But the small increase should be considered in the context of the "massive" progress made since 2006, it said.

“It's encouraging to see the majority of consumers are continuing to reuse their carrier bags and are taking as few new bags as possible,” Bob Gordon, the consortium's head of environment, said.

“We urge customers to keep that up, particularly when changing shopping habits, including more trips to stores, present a challenge to maintaining the progress made in recent years.”

He rejected calls for a total ban or charges for bags, saying it could be a burden for shoppers in difficult financial times.

“The overall numbers remain the sort of result other environmental campaigns can only dream of,” he said. “But it's time to accept bags are not the be-all and end-all of environmental issues.”

The British Retail Consortium said that the increase has been probably due to shoppers making more short trips to stores, rather than a single large weekly shopping trip. But what feeble excuse is that?

When I was a child, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s our mothers and grandmothers did not go to the stores ever without their shopping bags and they did daily shopping trips. Neither did they ever send us children to the shops without handing us a shopping bag and those were all reusable, made from American cloth, vinyl, leather, etc. The plastic carrier bag, especially free, did not exist back then and no one had any problems.

The British Retail Consortium also seems to make light of the issue of the plastic bag when its spokesperson states that, after all, plastic bags are not the be-all and end-all of environmental issues. It is a shame to see such an attitude and it is even sadder when this comes from the so-called “head of environment” of the consortium.

British consumers are packing away their green credentials along with their weekly shop, as last year an increasing number of us bundled our purchases into single-use plastic carrier bags instead of seeking out environmentally friendly alternatives, it would appear, and the question is as to whether it really is due to the fact that they make more frequent trips to the shops, rather than the single weekly shopping one, and thus come from work and don't have a bag on them or whether it is a lot more.

In all honesty it is not difficult to have a reusable shopper or two on one's person when going to work and that at all time, be that in the briefcase, the rucksack or the whatever bag.

I believe that as long as shops have free bags and often simply pack the things you have bought, without even asking as to whether you want a bag or not, into plastic one-way bags, things are not going to change.

Should a charge of 5pence or 10pence (I would advocate the latter) be levied for plastic bags then, maybe, shoppers might rethink.

A good incentive would be also to give shoppers money back on their purchased when they bring their own reusable shopping bags. That is a better incentive still than one loyalty point per reused bag, as done at Sainsbury's.

Stop drinking bottled water

Some good reasons why... and that aside from your wallet

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It is a common misconception for many people that bottled water is safer than tap, that the majority of the plastic bottles get recycled, and no harm is being done to the environment during the extraction and in the bottling process.

Unfortunately, nothing could not be further from the truth!

So in case you either needed more reasons to stop drinking bottled water, or a few extra talking points when discussing with your friends, here are a few solid reasons to kick the bottled water habit:

The tap water in the great majority of developed countries, such as the USA, Britian, Germany, Netherlands, etc., is safe and American, British and German tap water is among the safest in the world.

As much as 40% of the bottled water sold in the U.S. (and we have no idea as to other countries) is just filtered tap water anyway. Be sure to check the label and look for “from a municipal source” or “community water system”, which just means it is tap water. In many European countries there is no such label and thus we may never know.

By drinking tap water, you can avoid the fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, and other chemicals that studies have found in bottled water. Thames Water tests its water in all its plants for quality and safety at least eight times in any twenty-four hour period, and that is also legal requirement for municipal water. There is no such requirement for bottled water.

Tap water costs about $0.002 per gallon compared to the $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon charged for bottled water. If the water we use at home would cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000. Mad isn't it?

88% of empty plastic water bottles in the United States are not recycled and I am sure it is a similar percentage in the UK. The Container Recycling Institute says that plastic water bottles are disposed of (not recycled) at the rate of 30 million a day. And that is just in the United States. I dread to think how it adds up on a worldwide basis. Plastic bottles can leach chemicals into the water if left in the sun, heated up, or reused. PET bottles should never be reused for any drinks for humans. Many people, including parents, reuse such PET water bottles again, and again and again, totally unaware of the fact that they leach the now infamous BPA.

Production of the plastic (PET or polyethylene) bottles to meet our demand for bottled water takes the equivalent of about 17.6 million barrels of oil (not including transportation costs) and that equals about the amount of oil required to fuel more than one million vehicles in the United States each year. Around the world, bottling water uses about 2.7 million tons of plastic…each year.

Bottled water companies mislead communities into giving away their public water in exchange for dangerous jobs and it can take nearly 7 times the amount of water in the bottle to actually make the bottle itself. On a weekly basis, around 40,000 large 40ft trucks of the 18-wheeler kind are driving around the country delivering water, and once again those figures are just for the USA alone.

The authorities set, as I have indicate already, much more stringent quality standards for tap water than they do for the bottled stuff.

There is no need for bottled water in the great majority of locations in the developed world and it is a total waste of money and resources, yours and those of the Planet.

I must say that I have never been a great consumer of bottled water as I have always refused to pay for something that I can get for free or almost free, and I always now have a receptacle, called a bottle, with me so I can fill it at refilling stations and public fountains – not many of the latter around anymore really, though they used to once abound. Therefore I carry water with me from the start when I go out into London or elsewhere so that I do not have to buy bottled water.

There are now so many good ways of carrying you tap water that spending around $2 on a half a liter to a liter of bottled water does not make sense at all. Bottles of all kinds and materials can be had and, in all honesty, there are strong glass bottles too that you can simply upcycle as a bottle for use with your tap water, if you do not want to buy a bottle. Glass is always safe – as far as water use goes – as it does not contain any nasty chemicals.

The only drawback with ordinary glass and thus with upcycled bottles, such as Snapple lemonade bottles, is the fact that glass is breakable. However, making a nice little coat for it, ideally a padded one, and things should be fine, as long as you are nor throwing it about.

On the other hand, if you want to purchase a bottle for use with your tap water than the choice is rather legion. There are stainless steel ones, there are toughened and laminated glass ones, there are BPA-free (still questionable) hard plastic ones and then there are HDPE and LDPE bottles, and then there is the Aquaqtina.

FREEDOM IS NOT FREE!

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Freedom, yours and mine, is not free, even though the word free freely forms part of it. Far from it.

Freedom comes at a high cost in effort and sweat and often in blood and hast to be fought for tooth and nail and that time and time again.

At this very moment in Europe we are on the best way of loosing many freedoms that were hard fought for during World War Two against the Nazis and the first country in line trying to – once again – abolish them and demanding that they be demolished all over the EU, is... and you guessed it right, Germany.

All across the European Union freedom is under attack.

Already a year or two ago the German government instigated the “Bundestrojaner” (Federal Trojan) with which they, legally, can infiltrate anyone's computer and not just discover what an individual (or organization) has on the computer. Nay, they can even alter, destroy, remove or substitute files, folders and programs, and all written into the appropriate laws.

Germany would like to have the entire EU adopt such measures in the same way as it is Germany, and one or two other EU member states, who presses for the introduction of “Vorratsdatenspeicherung”, which means the retaining of all Internet data for individuals and companies via their service providers for several years. And this includes every email, every website visited, every contact made via social networks and every post, etc.

France and Italy have enacted laws against (foreign) Gypsies on their soil and rumor has it, via a number of Russian news agencies, that the EU has been or is in discussions with the government of the Russian Federation (and the Ukraine) to take all of Europe's Gypsies. It would appear that the EU would like to ethnically cleanse its member states of the Romani People.

Now, after the attack by a right-wing extremist in Norway the German government once again in the forefront calls for restrictions to the Internet use and for total surveillance of where people go, what they do, etc.

Italy already tried to, basically, outlaw Bloggers some two years or so ago when it dug up the old postwar law that made it illegal for all but government-approved journalists and newspapers to be reporting and writing news and editorial pieces and, according to the government a Blog was, therefore, an unauthorized newspaper and thus illegal. When governments head into that direction we know they are running scared of the people, in the same way when they try to disarm the citizenry.

Freedom is not free and we must always fight to retain our freedoms but too many have decided that they would like to have more security and as soon as that demand is made freedoms go out of the window.

Demands for more security and “peace of mind” to governments always seem to be a license – or so at least they see it – to put in more and more surveillance and more and more restrictions to freedoms until those freedoms, hard fought for, no longer exist. Then it is too late.

We must demand from the governments not more security but the right to defend ourselves against those that may wish us harm and those that wish to steal from us, and those that wish to destroy our freedoms. But, alas, too many people are not prepared to think and do for themselves. They want their governments to think and do for them. After all, they say, that is what they pay taxes for; to have everything done for them.

Do not sacrifice freedoms for peace of mind and an illusion of security. Fight your own fights and demand the right to defend yourself and your own neighbourhoods. The police always is reactive anyway. We must be proactive and also proactive as far as our freedoms go.

The world is headed for a new (financial) crisis and the government fiddles

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Hello!!! Anyone home? Apparently not.

While the world is headed for another financial crisis and a few others to boot the entire British government, and especially its leaders, have taken leave of their senses and leave of absence. They fiddle in Tuscany and other places while London burns; the financial sector at least, though only literally while not actually being in flames (as yet).

Are we in trouble? Hell, are we ever.

On Friday, August 5, 2011 S&P downgraded the USA's triple-A credit rating but sort of half a point to a AA+ but the markets have been in a nigh free fall ever since the US government could not – properly – agree on how to handle the debt crisis and the Euro Zone going from bad to worse.

They next person who tells me that the recession is over and there is no chance of anything bad happening, such as a double-dip or a full-blown depression, I am, I think, going to give a lesson in reality, and this might be by means of a pickaxe handle.

Now we have had a full blown riot – though nothing to do with the money woes – in Tottenham, North London, with looting and burning and Tottenham, the scene of the now infamous Broadwater Farm slaying of PC Blakelock, resembling a war zone on Sunday, August 7, 2011.

And where are our country's glorious and fearless leaders (and yes, I am being sarcastic as to their titles)? They are and remain on holiday with the Prime Minister being in Italy, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the USA and the rest of the cabinet in this or that country, including, it would appear, our Minister of the Interior, the Home Secretary.

The riots in Tottenham – and we will be looking at those in another article – could have been dealt with much better and differently if the police and government had the willpower to let looters know that it is a no, no.

The financial situation, however, with the Euro also headed, as it would seem, for a bit of a meltdown, is something that will affect us long-term and for many, many years to come.

As the Governor of the Bank of England not so long ago stated the living standard of the people of Britain may never, ever, return to the pre-crunch level. And especially for people in the public sector, and here very much the lowest paid though the most important ones when it comes to service delivery, are looking at a rather bleak future with all the costs rising and their pay having being frozen for two or more years. In some instances they have had to accept new contracts that even reduced their pay. The unions are rather quiet on that level, though.

But everyone will be feeling the squeeze bar those, obviously, who are the ones who caused the problems in the very first place, the bankers, whose bonuses still are in the multi-million pound range, and that even at banks which are now, basically, owned by the taxpayer. We are in trouble indeed.

Anyone in government who is still saying that we are not is not living in the real world. Then again, they don't.

Prices for everything are on the rise and as an example I just want to list the fact that the price of butter, of Sainsury's Basics butter, went up in two weeks by 40pence. The price of 6 Basics mini-jumbo toilet rolls by 40pence and and Basics full flavor cheddar cheese went up by over 50pence.

On top of that energy prices, that is to say cooking and heating gas and electricity, are on the up and that by several times the rate of inflation, with the companies quoting rising wholesale prices. It is just amazing that when those very same prices go down they very rarely pass the savings on to their customers.

We are in trouble and our leaders remain on holiday. Great one guys. I hope the electorate won't forget that. I certainly won't.

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