Green (Living) Review

On the first day of Christmas, True Loaf was sent to me

New from the Real Bread Campaign this Christmas is one of the most meaningful presents you can give the food lover in your life: gift membership.

Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is a charity gift that keeps on giving. As well as ongoing warm and fuzzy feelings from being part of the nationwide network of like-minded loaf lovers, during the year the recipient will receive four issues of the Campaign’s exclusive members’ magazine True Loaf; and be eligible for an ever-growing number of discounts on bread making courses and more.

Campaign members also have frequent opportunities to win prizes, which in the past year have included bread making classes with loaf luminaries Aidan Chapman at River Cottage, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou at The School of Artisan Food, Dan Lepard at The Cookery School, and Andrew Whitley at Bread Matters. For just £25, your gift is not only to the recipient but also to the only national organisation dedicated to helping to bring Real Bread back to the hearts of our local communities.

If your beloved breadhead is considering starting a baking enterprise, then you can add in a copy of the Campaign’s book Knead to Know, the guide to baking Real Bread for your local community - described by The Sunday Times’ Lucas Hollweg as ‘brilliant’- for £10 (plus £2 p&p).

Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is open to everyone who cares about the state of bread in Britain, full details of which can be found at www.realbreadcampaign.org

The Real Bread Campaign is part of the charity Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. Funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme, the Campaign champions baking loaves as locally as possible without the use of artificial additives or hidden processing aids, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet.

Current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign also include:

The Real Bread Loaf Mark: Want to find Real Bread? Then Look for The Loaf Mark! This is the at-a-glance assurance from a baker that a loaf is what the Campaign calls Real Bread.

Lessons in Loaf: helping to bring Real Bread back to the classroom. The FREE guide helps teachers to plan hands-on Real Bread baking sessions for any age, plus lesson plans to tie the topic of bread in with a range of curriculum subjects at Key Stage 2. Workshops for teachers in London and Bristol coming in January.

Real Bread on The Menu: the Campaign’s scheme to encourage more public sector institutions (such as schools, care homes and hospitals) and food access projects (e.g. co-operative buying groups, community cafes, box schemes) around Britain to make Real Bread available.

Bake Your Lawn: A FREE grassroots guide to support teachers and parents help children around Britain to sow a square metre of soil with a handful of wheat in the spring and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it, to follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on their own doorsteps. Returning in early 2012.

The Real Bread Finder: the only online directory dedicated to helping people find where to buy Real Bread locally. Free for bakers to add, and people to search for, places to buy Real Bread locally.

Source:

This press release is presented without editing for your information only.

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

Bamboo flooring is NOT green

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Time and again writers and makers try to have the consumer, that is you and me, believe that bamboo flooring is green, environmentally-friendly and sustainable. But this is NOT the case at all.

In the book Green From the Ground Up by David Johnston and Scott Gibson (Taunton Press, 2008) the authors state with regards to Bamboo Floors the following:

“Bamboo is a rapidly renewable resource, making it a sustainable flooring option and also a durable flooring material. Bamboo matures in 3 to 5 years, versus the 40 to 60 years that oak or cherry need to mature to flooring quality. Bamboo flooring comes in two grain patterns—flat sawn or vertical grain—and typically with either a blond or caramelized finish.

There are a few caveats. Of the thousand or so varieties of bamboo, only a few are appropriate for flooring. Of those few, some are better than others in dry climates. When inappropriate species are cut and milled into bamboo flooring, it can result in cupping, shrinking or delaminating. The old adage “you get what you pay for” really applies to bamboo these days. When you see newspaper ads for cheap bamboo flooring, run the other way. Go with a company like Plyboo or Timbergrass, a supplier that has been in the business for over a decade and offers high-quality bamboo and eco-friendly flooring.”

Nice advertising also, wouldn't you say… in a book.

The problem is that this is all bull dust, as out Australian cousins would say, and a repetition of what the bamboo industry is trying to make us all believe.

Bamboo grows round and is hollow and we must not forget that and the fact that it is, really, but a giant grass. Because of the hollow nature it is not possible to make “large” flat planks, as with wood, whether hardwood or pine.

A great amount of energy is required to turn bamboo into “planks” and most of bamboo flooring is, in actual fact, a laminate product which is not better than wood laminate and thus definitely not green and environmentally friendly.

Want some real green floor then go for sustainably harvested wood, whether pine or hardwood, such as beech or oak, or, and now I know you are going to laugh, dirt floor, painted, as the old homes often were.

Bamboo flooring, as I have indicated, requires lots of energy to produce and, while it is true that bamboo grows very fast and renews itself much, much quicker as does wood, wood is the better and more environmentally-friendly option. And I am not just saying that because I am a professional forester. I am saying that because it is the truth.

In addition to that it has been found on many occasions that wood floors are a lot tougher than bamboo floors and while bamboo, in its original state, is very hard and hard wearing it changes when it is being made into flooring, cutting- and chopping boards and such. My beech wood cutting boards take more abuse than the bamboo ones I had to test do and did.

Bamboo does have its place in the way it has, as I have said before, in the countries were it is being grown, for centuries and millennia, and is, in that way very green indeed. But in a heavily processed form as with flooring, chopping- and cutting boards, etc., it changes in that regards and no longer is the environmentally-friendly products it may be perceived and advertised as.

In addition to that consider the carbon footprint, aside from the manufacturing process of shaping, gluing and laminating, etc.,, of transportation to the USA, the UK, and other far flung places from the countries of origin.

Let's get stuff made at home... that's being green and sustainable. And to get our way in this we must demand “Made in Britain” or “Made in USA” or “Made in Germany”, etc. and let manufacturers know that we no longer want “Made in China”.

UK government u-turn in face of legal challenge to London’s air pollution plan

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has launched a public consultation on the air quality plan for London, in response to a judicial review brought by environmental law organisation ClientEarth. This follows Mr Justice Collins’ ruling that the Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, must face a High Court hearing for failing to consult the public on the latest plan for reducing dangerous airborne particles (PM10) in the capital.

However, the case will still be heard before Christmas as ClientEarth’s other grounds for judicial review – that the government has failed to produce plans to comply with air quality limits for nitrogen dioxide by 2015 in regions across the UK – have not been answered.

James Thornton, ClientEarth CEO, said: “This is another embarrassing u-turn by the so-called ‘greenest government ever’. We repeatedly demanded that they consult the public on the plan for tackling air pollution. It is only now, faced with court action, that they have recognised Londoners’ legal right to have a say in one of the city’s biggest health problems. Now we will have a chance to properly scrutinise these plans, which we believe fail to address the root causes of the capital’s pollution: dirty old diesel vehicles in inner London.”

ClientEarth launched their judicial review in July. In London, 4,300 people die prematurely every year because of air pollution, which is more than died during the Great Smog of 1952. UK and EU laws set limits for air pollution based on science-based analyses of health risks by the World Health Organization.

Click HERE to read about the health impacts of air pollution
ClientEarth bases its grounds for judicial review on the following:

When amending an air quality plan the government is required by law to consult the public. The Secretary of State recently successfully applied to the EU for a time extension until 11 June 2011 to comply with legal limits for PM10 in Greater London, (the original deadline was 1 January 2005). The European Commission allowed the time extension on the condition that the government amended the air quality plan for London to include short-term measures to deal with PM10. ClientEarth wrote to Defra in April to remind them of their legal responsibility to consult the public.
In the UK 40 of the 43 ‘air quality zones’ do not comply with legal limits for NO2. The deadline for complying with these limits was 1 January 2010. The UK government plans to apply to the European Commission in the autumn for time extensions for 23 of those zones. To apply successfully it must demonstrate that it has plans which will bring NO2 within these limits by 1 January 2015. For 17 other zones, including London, the government now states that it will not be seeking a time extension. ClientEarth’s position is that all plans must demonstrate compliance by 2015 at the latest, and the Secretary of State has acted unlawfully by drafting 17 plans that will not do this. The plan for London acknowledges that compliance may not be achieved until 2025.

ClientEarth supports the Healthy Air Campaign

http://www.clientearth.org/

This press release is presented without editing for your information only.

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

Worry over proposal to make psychiatry a law-enforcement tool – again – in Russia

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A bill that would allow compulsory psychiatric treatment has human rights defenders drawing parallels with Soviet practices seems to be on the table again in Russia, according to BBC Monitoring.

BBC Monitoring provides in-depth news and comment from around the world, 24 hours a day, to help governments, businesses, policy makers, and analysts keep abreast of political, security, and defense-related developments worldwide.

Good to see this BBC service still exists though it would not surprise me if it also will fall prey to the axe that is being wielded in the BBC and Britain as a whole as far as government services are concerned, bar those monitoring the country's own citizens.

According to material that the BBC Monitoring Service has seen mention of the fact that extremists will be treated by psychiatrists has been made in several places and this has Human Rights defenders fear that the authorities' opponents will end up in ‘Loony Bins’. Not anything new in Russia, whether the Soviet Union or before.

All this is linked, in a way, but one can bet that this is just being used as an excuse, to a riot that happened a while back on Manege Square where an unauthorized rally degenerated into clashes with the forces of law and order. Let us recall that five people are being tried under this case. They are charged with calling for mass unrest and with hooliganism and using violence against representatives of the authorities.

While participants in the riot on Manege Square are seeking the appearance of high-ranking functionaries in court, the MVD is elaborating a draft law on preventive measures to deter infringements of the law. One of them is compulsory psychiatric treatment. Experts see this as the return of the punitive psychiatry of the USSR era.

Following the unrest on Manege Square, functionaries stated that it was necessary as a matter of urgency to study preventive measures against extremism.

The result is a draft federal law “On the Basic Principles of Preventive Measures To Deter Infringements of the Law in the Russian Federation,” which proposes conducting individual work with potential offenders, which has appeared on the MVD's website.

And Article 2.12 of this document includes among preventive measures to avert infringements of the law “compulsory measures of a medical nature.”

Yuriy Demidov, chief of the Russian Federation MVD Main Administration for Ensuring the Protection of Public Order, explained in an interview posted on the department's website that preventive measures of this kind include “outpatient treatment under a psychiatrist and detention in an inpatient psychiatric facility, including under intensive observation.”

Moscow Helsinki Group Chairwoman Lyudmila Alekseyeva fears that, in contemporary conditions, this clause of the law could be used in the way that it was used in the USSR. “A court could make a decision to carry out a psychiatric examination for an illegal action. But what is understood as such an action in the law in question? If by an infringement of the law dissidence is meant, we are talking about punitive psychiatric medicine, which was used in the Soviet Union,” she said in conversation with Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

The human rights defender's concern is shared by Aleksandr Yermolenko, a lawyer with the company FBK-Pravo. “The real situation in Russia is such that this clause presents a danger to citizens who are normal from the psychiatric point of view. This is because, in this country, the authorities and society are increasingly poles apart, as a result of which the situation in society is becoming more tense.” Yermolenko also noted: “An increase in punitive powers that comes from the law enforcement organs is probably an alarm signal that suggests that this measure will most likely be used against political opponents.”

The process of crime prevention is fairly complex, the expert stressed: “It should be handled not by the police, but by psychologists, sociologists, and other specialists. Today the state cannot, unfortunately, ensure the normal functioning of this system. From which it is possible to draw the conclusion that this instrument could well be used as a punitive instrument.”

In conversation with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Eduard Rudyk, a member of the management board of the Committee for Civil Rights and a member of the Public Monitoring Commission for Moscow Oblast, described the draft law as “the most blatant violation of constitutional and international legal norms.” “It ignores the presumption of mental health. With its aid, the authorities can send off citizens whom they find inconvenient to the nuthouse.” In the expert's opinion, the hands of medics are currently tied by laws on psychiatric aid, although there are plenty of incidents of punitive psychiatry: “For example, GRU [Main Intelligence Directorate] Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov [arrested and charged with involvement in the attempted assassination of former Prime Minister Anatoliy Chubays in 2005, though eventually acquitted in August 2011] was sent for study by psychiatric experts. He could be a nationalist, or anything you like, rather than a psycho.”

Rudyk is convinced that, if such a law is introduced, there will plenty of places in the psychiatric hospitals for everyone. “Currently, there is no public monitoring of such clinics; human rights defenders cannot check them out,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta's interlocutor remarked. And he stressed: “Some psychiatrists pine for their former laurels, and can do whatever they like with people in these places.” In conversation with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Rudyk quoted the deputy chief medical officer of a certain Moscow psychiatric clinic, who said: “We do not treat people for schizophrenia, we treat according to the verdict of the courts.”

We must, I think, be very careful of the bear that is wearing a sheep's coat and is pretending to be a cuddly animal rather that a ferocious predator. The new Russia is a little like the old and the USSR; afraid of all outsiders and of all dissent.

The Western World must thus be careful in dealing with this new Russia which is, predominately a political oligarchy with rich and powerful, often former military and intelligence service officers, running the show.

Russia has been rearming – at least in conventional weapons – its force at an unprecedented rate with the most modern developments of its weapon system, some which are so good and sophisticated that NATO countries are even buying them rather than equipment made at home or in NATO countries.

Let's beware of the Bear.

Message in a (recycled) bottle for local authorities

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Demand for recycled plastic material in the UK could outstrip bottle collection rates in the next five years, according to a new report. And if that is not a wakeup call for not just going through the motions.

Recoup, the organisation which represents a number of plastics manufacturing and recycling interests, said there had been “encouraging increases” in the rate of plastic bottle recycling in 2010, with 48.5% of bottles being collected, up 2.5 percentage points on 2009’s figure.

However it warned that collection rates would “struggle to meet the burgeoning demand for material”.

Recoup said its data would “ring alarm bells for policy makers, as well as those organisations across the plastic supply, collection and recycling chain”.

Non-bottle collection rates would increase significantly in the next five years, a trend which would require “urgent investment in sorting infrastructure and further development of sustainable and auditable end markets”.

Announcing the imminent publication of its latest report on UK household plastics packaging collection, Recoup’s deputy chief executive Steve Foster said the figure of nearly 22 million households in the UK which benefitted from a plastic bottle kerbside collection service was a “testament to 10 years of progress”.

“Bottle collection rates have risen from 3% to 48.5% during that time, the number of bring-collection points has more than trebled and non-bottle plastic collections have evolved from effectively nothing to 76,300 tonnes,” he added.

The greatest problem, the way I see it, is at least two-fold. The first one is that too many plastic bottles are simply tossed out by the consumer and end up in street side or park litter bins from there they go straight into landfill via the waste transfer stations.

The second one is also that where council have plastic bottles included in the kerbside collections, both that collection and the collections per se are but a sham often.

There is only one answer to that and that is to actually have sorters working at the waste transfer stations to separate the recyclables that have been collected and/or that have come in from the litter bins in parks, open spaces and by the road side. Only that way will we be able to fill the demand, if this demand comes to pass.

In addition to that maybe, just maybe, a deposit on such plastic bottles of, say 5pence or even 10pence, might be an incentive to either for the consumer to bring the bottle back to a store or for some other people, kids amongst them, to go out collecting, as is done in other countries.

Not rocket science, just common sense and old “technology”...

Recoup’s 2011 report will available from its website, www.recoup.org, in November.

Spirit of journalism shines through in times of devastation

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In the aftermath of the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan which led to the Fukushima nuclear power station meltdown editors and journalists of the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun paper kept the spirit of journalism alive by publishing with pen and poster paper.

Not being able to run the presses and all the paraphernalia needed for publishing the news today and delivering it to the masses the publishers and editors of the paper reverted back to the old method of the wall newspaper.

Instead of publishing a printed paper they wrote it on poster paper in ink and then posted those pages on to the walls of the evacuation centers.

This is also not the first incident of Japanese papers – in the face of disaster – reverting back to the tried and tested methods of old when the modern methods of printing and distribution do not function.

Actions such as these epitomize, in my view, the inexhaustible spirit of the journalist and of journalism.

It might be even a good exercise for many journalists and publishers to, every so often, to work on emergency contingencies for just such events and to have ready some old, tried and tested methods and means of producing a paper.

Fragmented habitats fragmented thinking

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

October 3rd marked World Habitats Day, yet there certainly was no cause for celebration for the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) has serious doubts over the UK Government’s ability to protect and reintegrate vital habitats which provide a number of valuable ecosystem services in light of the new National Planning Policy Framework. A much more integrated policy approach is needed in order to halt increased habitat fragmentation, vital to increasing our resilience to the impacts of climate and demographic change.

The fragmentation of habitats can considerably undermine the integrity of whole ecosystems - reducing genetic diversity, limiting migration and reducing predators’ range. In the UK the degree of habitat fragmentation has long been recognised and the 2011 National Ecosystem Assessment found that of the 8 habitat types assessed, 30% are in decline.

The importance and value of ecosystems and the services they provide to the economy, to society and to individuals are now widely recognised, with the international TEEB study (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) placing a value of trillions on the potential loss of ecosystem services. The recent Natural Environment White Paper offered a welcome recognition of this value and a shift in approach with the promotion of ecological networks at a landscape scale to deliver increased resilience to ecosystem pressures.

However, any optimism over the White Paper is quickly called into question in light of the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which outwardly compromises many of the outlined objectives. The loss of regional tier planning, the removal of any protection for local wildlife sites (placing some 40,000 at risk across England) and the absence of any reference to the Nature Improvement Areas introduced by the White Paper misses the opportunity to integrate this new thinking into practical delivery via planning.

CIWEM’s Executive Director, Nick Reeves OBE, says: “Fragmented approaches across government departments raise serious doubts over this Government’s green credentials. A lack of compatibility between the NPPF and Natural Environment White Paper leaves huge questions over how planning delivered at a local level will incorporate wider strategic aims. The NPPF reduces the environment to a series of discrete protected areas rather than a dynamic set of ecosystems interacting with our built environment. At the current speed of the planning reforms, England looks set on a trajectory of increasing biodiversity loss and fragmentation, further reducing the ability of this nation’s ecosystems to undertake the valuable services they provide threatening our natural heritage.”

It is such a shame that the “greenest government ever”, as Prime Minister David Cameron claimed, has so far failed to materialize and I must say that I very much doubt that it ever will materialize. The fact is, the way it looks from where I am standing, that they have not the slightest inkling to green the government and the country.

Claims are being made that certain things cannot be implemented right now in the economic climate as it would be hurting British companies and the economy of the country. Poppycock.

A great many jobs, more than any elsewhere, could be created, if the country would adopt the right green principles but, I would suggest, there are not enough backhanders to be had in that. Hence it is business as usual.

We must overhaul our monetary system

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Our monetary system is in direct conflict with the basic rule of “Though shalt not steal”

It is becoming clearer day by day that we must, already from ethical and moral reasons, urgently put our monetary system on a different base. But not only that. We also need a fair distribution of resources of this Planet.

All over there world basic rules for life have been established, which make it possible for us to deal with one another in a more or less trusting atmosphere and which, at the same time, create the foundations for a life that is more or less free of fear.

However, all around the globe we, the people, are becoming aware that those basic foundations and tenets are being eroded and they begin to shake.

The number of crises around the globe as well as the more and more ailing society is proof enough that the inner forces, which are supposed to be holding our communities together, are breaking and failing.

On the other hand are the worldwide protests a vehicle that clearly permit us to see and read the feelings of the people, that we need to move in order to reverse the trend of the destruction of our society and the world as a whole.

A most urgent problem here is presented by the monetary and banking system which has brought greed into our world and which, in the last years and decades has become more and more unrestrained in that there remains but one direction of transfer; that from the poor to the rich.

This flow is breaking a number of basic tenets. The “thou shalt not steal” in but one of them. It might be better to formulate it a little more positive like “thou shalt share”.

Sharing is the one cooperative act and basic need and “rule” that has made us strong as humans and able to withstand the often fickle nature of Nature in community.

This principle of giving, of sharing, has been burned deep into our neurons and psyche. When we give to another person something of ours, and that can be a simple smile, holding an umbrella over him during rain, a bed for the night, or whatever, then we see in the face of the recipient happiness and joy.

This happiness and joy in turn stirs in us also a happiness and joy of a different kind and on a different level and by this mechanism humans are being molded and welded into a community and a caring society. That is why we already our youngest ones to share fairly and those youngest ones often feel the sense of unfairness better and faster than do us grownups; or so at least it would seem.

Often it is also our children that have the most affinity for the World, the Planet, the environment, Mother Nature, and our neighbor. We, when we grow up, somehow, via the career path or whatever, seem to lose this sense of justice for all and everything.

It is, simply because of the fact that as children we seem to have, often, this deep sense of justice and injustice, to watch how, as grownups, we find it good and acceptable, when someone is being rewarded in the lending of money with interest, when it should be a matter of course to help someone in need. Would it not be much better to punish those that hoard money as means of exchange and in doing so create bottlenecks in the economy.

A fair number of religions, theoretically, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, make usury – the lending of money on interest – an ethical issue and a crime even but it is, and this is not intended as an anti-Jewish rant, Jews that are the big money lenders and bankers.

But, worse still than lending money on interest is the practice of creating money from thin air, the quantitative easing, often referred to as the “printing of money” and other such actions. Why do we permit banks to then demand interest also for this money that never existed before? And worse still is the practice to demand collateral, often of several times the value of the loan, plus interest, should the lender default. This is robbery, not just simple theft, in my eyes and view and something that goes against the most basic tenets of our societal rules.

When we now come to realize that this theft and robbery has been going on for years, nay decades and centuries, and that those stolen moneys and assets were used to buy concessions for the exploitation of the resources of Mother Earth, it is then that the dimensions of this perverseness of our society becomes clearer still.

For what reason should individual people and corporations have the rights to call resources of this Planet theirs when such resources belong to all of the Earth's children and not just those with the right amount of money and assets and where such assets that were used to buy those “rights” to exploit those resources were stolen in the first place?

It is high time that we begin, once again, to share the resources of our Planet fairly and to use them sustainably. Utopia, you say. I do not think so. But it requires a change of mindset and a return to the understanding of a child in certain aspects.

It is in this context too, it would seem, where the words of the New Testament come in that there state “you must become as little children”. And it is the churches that best begin with themselves there.

This could be the beginning of a new world order, one where all of the Earth's children have enough, and that should be enough, to have enough.

US EPA claims that waste incinerating power plant emit more carbon dioxide

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

According to a recent Tweet by TerraCycle the United States Environmental Protection Agency claims that power plants based on waste incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than coal, natural gas or oil-fired power plants.

This claim should not and does not surprise anyone who knows how compromised the EPA is as regards to the industry lobby in the same way as the FDA is compromised by its contacts to Monsanto and the likes.

Where the government is in bed with, or indeed is, the oil and coal industry claims such as this one are hardly surprising and also not that it is the protection agency that makes such claims. It is, after all, but an arm of that very government, and thus has to say what it is being told.

Scandinavian countries have been using closed loop combined heat and power generating plants based on waste incinerators for decades and, apparently, they work well and have very low emissions.

Anything that burns this or that to create heat and power will put out carbon dioxide but we must not just look at CO2 emissions. We must, once again, consider what worried us in the 1970s; air pollution and acid rain and this was solved via scrubbers in the chimneys and other measures.

Air pollution is killing millions each year in the developed world and we won't even want to talk about places such as China and India, do we now.

While I can hear the likes of the Friends of the Earth already singing their mantra again about we should not incinerate waste but recycle more the fact is that, and Sweden who recycles more than most, knows that well, there will, with the best intentions in the world, always remain some waste that cannot be recycled or turned into methane gas even. Some of that can, however, be burned in order to create energy and heat. Better than putting it into holes in the ground, I should think.

Waste incineration to create electricity and heat must be part of the “renewables” circle as much as methane gas powered electricity plants and others. Otherwise we would be wasting resources. Oil (and natural gas) are coming to an end and there is no such thing as clean coal.

Pellets from the wood industry too and chippings should find a use in power plants but here best in heating homes and offices, as well as producing electricity via Sterling engines, for instance.

Britain will stand with America if it attacks Iran

British military is readying contingencies for the eventuality of a more or less imminent conflict with Iran

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Sources of the British government have confirmed that in the event of a US strike – or should we say US/Israeli strike – against Iran that British forces will stand shoulder-to-shoulder in support of the USA and its forces.

This is all we needed; NOT!

Already for more than three quarters of a year two US Navy carrier groups – with at least one of the flat tops full of Israeli helicopters – are on station in an area near the Straits of Hormuz. They are there, in readiness, no doubt, for the moment President Obama gives the green light to attack.

The more we are seeing of this first Black American President the more is there to dislike and especially in the way he goes about breaking one election promise after the other.

Tony Blair made Britain into a poodle to George W Bush, the previous US President and his warmongering operations and endeavors and the new government in the UK appears to be no different. The USA should not be our master and the UK should not follow them into each and every stupid war. If the US believes that they are the world's policeman then they can carry the can alone.

A war with/against Iran could have serious and sire consequences indeed for all involved, especially, as it would appear, if the US allows the Israelis to fire the first shot, with “The Unit” going in as the first wave. Bad move indeed on all counts.

The British people are being told that they have to accept austerity measures not seen for about half a century or more, and pay freezes and even pay cut, and public sector job losses and cuts in council services, etc., while the government is committing the country to yet another illegal and stupid war for oil as America's sidekick.

When is the British government going to learn that Britain no longer is a great military power – as of Friday, November 4, 2011 we do not even have our own Navy protecting our waters anymore – and neither should it be and that our government's obeisance to the United States makes the country and its people a serious target for revenge attacks and the quasi 51st State of the Union.

Britain cannot afford another war for oil and neither can the world.

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