GOODBYE MOTOR CAR?

Are you in love with your car? Do you polish it and pamper it? Or do you just get in it every day and drive it to work or into town to do your shopping?

How long is it since you had to use a bus or train and sit next to some obnoxious Cretin?

Chances are if you live in the City you will be used to the latter but if you are from elsewhere, particularly in the countryside, you are probably heavily dependent on Motor Cars and if you are anything like me, you won’t have been on a bus for donkey’s years.

Motoring is just one more thing that unless you are Middle Class or better, you are going to have to wave goodbye to if the leaders of our society have anything to do with it, which of course they have.

Those of us with eyes to see must surely be aware that motoring is getting more expensive. We know that oil is getting harder to extract and that prices are creeping up little by little.

The problem is that it is no secret. People in power are also aware of the fact and because they have power they can begin the process of preserving fuel for themselves.

That process has already begun and it is being done under the pretence of helping the environment.

You will have noticed that the rich are driving bigger cars than ever and there are two reasons for that.  One is because they are getting richer and the other is because the hike in fuel prices doesn’t even register on their radar.

It’s not being hiked to hurt them; it’s being hiked to help them by removing the poorer Motorist from the equation and the poorer motorists are the majority.

So it’s about preparing for the inevitable and adapting our habits accordingly. Get used to it now so that it’s not so much of a shock when it happens.

There are a few things that you can do to keep motoring longer. I can point you in various directions as this blog develops. We are all different and I don’t imagine that some of you will be quite so keen as others to look at down scaling straight away but it might be worth trying a few ideas out now as I have.

Smartest thing to do right away is take a look at buying a super economical car now whilst they are reasonably cheap and whilst the Government are offering the £35 a year road tax incentive.

Such little motors as the Renault Clio 1.4 DCI can be bought for less than two grand and they will do a ridiculous 70mpg if you are light on the pedal.

There are other cars of a similar ilk (and oddly enough most are French!) so there is the easiest start on the road to weaning yourself off the standard motor car.

Realistically though I think that most of us will eventually have to go further down the road.

I will be honest. I drive a great big Mercedes Benz and I am madly in love with it. I don’t want to have to part with it but I am fairly certain that I will end up growing tomatoes in it.

I know I probably lost half my readers then but I am not blogging to champion abstinence. I am not a Monk who feels some need for penitence. I am just an ordinary British person who can see a bit further than his nose.

The reason I have the Merc is because I could see that if I didn’t get one now whilst I had a few bob in my pocket, I was going to lose a fairly brief window of opportunity.

I do however take all of this seriously. I have a little bit of land a couple of miles away from home where I keep a few chickens and also do a little veg gardening.

I don’t use the car unless I absolutely have to. I cycle there or walk, twice a day to feed and care for my animals and even if I am in a hurry I go on a 125 motorcycle. I don’t cheat. No weather so far has made me say “sod it” and go in the Merc.

It’s my little bit of self discipline, because I know that one day there will be no alternative.

THE BEGINNING

Let’s face it, the world is a mess at the moment and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon.

We could go on about Peak Oil, Climate Change, Population Growth, Religion, Illuminati, and it would get us absolutely nowhere as far as I can see, because there is so little as individuals, or even as a Nation, that we can do about any of them that would arrest their progress towards social collapse.

So what then? Just carry on regardless?

 No!

 I believe the answer has always been there. The answer Nature has for everything. Adapt and survive. I can’t change a Chav. I can’t change a Telly Addict. I can’t undo what it has taken ‘The System’ two or three generations to do to the people out there in La la land, but I can work around it and try to teach my children how to survive.

A friend of mine reminded me today about the seven P’s.............. Prior Preparation and Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance.

Fail to prepare, Prepare to fail!

Army speak, and what armies have is exactly what we need. Experience, expertise, discipline and fitness. All of the above are essential ingredients for people who want their line to continue.

I think that we also need to find like minded individuals or groups who can help one another.

It all sounds a little like a paranoid Conspiracy Theory to some of you I suppose but are you happy with the way things are going? I doubt it very much.

So! You are still with me. That’s good because the more people who are thinking about this the better.

Let’s start with some of the basics. Connecting with people and businesses will strengthen the backbone of any group of people.

We are all feeding an Elephant and it has an insatiable appetite. The biggest Elephant is the Supermarket.

STOP FEEDING THE ELEPHANT

Supermarkets provide us with a wide selection of groceries from around the world. Thirty years ago the chances were that if you were watching cookery programs on TV that you were going to find it hard to get hold of some of the ingredients.

 Now there are fresh groceries, spices, wines and specialist products from all over the world, right at your fingertips.

The cost of food has also fallen dramatically over the same period. In 1980 the average family spent twenty eight percent of its income on groceries, now the average family only spends eight percent.

We all want cheap food and we would all like to have fresh produce, but are the underlying costs too high?

Britain was once famously referred to as a nation of Shopkeepers. I wonder what they would call us now?

  The largest supermarkets weald a kind of power that can only be likened to that of Kings. They have changed the face of British agriculture and in turn the shape of the countryside.
 They have all but done away with the practice of trading locally to the point where some small rural towns have been killed by them.


So why should we worry about it? Is it just progress that we should accept, or are we allowing ourselves to become totally at the mercy of the Supermarkets? I think that it is the latter and I think that if we do not change our ways we will bitterly regret it.

Just consider for a moment, if the supermarkets closed their doors because of some unexpected event. Day one,a bit of upset, a few people wandering around, scratching their heads because they had run out of milk or fags.
 Day two, a bit of flapping. Everyone descends on the local Spar or the Indian mini market and clears them out.
The big one would be day three. The doors would be smashed in and the supermarkets cleaned out and absolute pandemonium would descend upon Britain, because by day three, most people would have run out of food at home.
Okay, I know that sounds a bit extreme but it does demonstrate the fact that most people are totally dependent on Supermarkets for everything.

What makes them so dangerous is their power over producers. You can almost blame them entirely for the decline in traditional farming and growin methods. A subject which deserves it's own blog and will get one soon. Meanwhile, here are just a few things to consider..........

CHICKENS.

This is how most of us would imagine chickens. Nothing nicer than to see a few hens scratching around a farmyard. Thanks to the likes of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall & Jamie Oliver, we now know that it is not how our table poultry is reared.

They are instead, kept in cramped conditions as in the picture above. The mortality rate is very high and their entire life, (which is usuall less than twelve weeks), is spent like this.

I live in the countryside & I pity the Farmer of today. Gone are the days of the Smallholder. The farmer of today has become an over worked, under paid Agri Businessman, jumping through hoops for DEFRA & the Supermarkets.

The price that Farmers are paid for milk is around 16p per litre. The average cow grosses around £1000 per annum. Take off the cost of rearing and keeping the animal and it is barely in profit. That is why dairy farmers have to have such large herds. The only way that they can survive is to play the numbers game.
http://www.farmersguardian.com/news/livestock/government-must-step-in-to-save-dairy-farmers/30015.article

I will come back to the cow, but meanwhile lets look at the pig. Take a look at this link. It is horrifying. The implications of intensive pig farming are extremely far reaching. I am not a Veggie or a tree Hugger, so I am not sourcing my info from a biased perspective. This is for real and it affects us all. http://www.pigbusiness.co.uk/

A very honest piece of Video Journalism by Molly Dineen helps understand the problems facing modern day farmers. It points the finger directly at the Supermarkets for a range of ills that have befallen the people who live & work in the Countryside.
A cautionary note for anyone easily upset. The film contains some strong images of animal suffering and also deals with Foxhunting primarily.
Lie of the Land

Another video for you to watch is ‘Farm for the Future,’ a wonderfully filmed and passionately presented comment on the state of British agriculture by former wildlife camera woman Rebecca Hosking.

Some people are very clever at putting across the message. I take my hat off to this lady. When you have watched this film you will come away a different person.

Farm for the Future.



Interview with Joel Salatin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/31/food-industry-environment
If you are interested in making a start on surviving the future there are lots of things you will need to change.
A good place to start is by growing your own vegetables.
 Everyone can think of an excuse not to bother and the most obvious one is the fact that vegetables at the moment appear to be cheap. Well as most gardeners will tell you, they are even cheaper when you grow them yourself and they certainly don't come any fresher, but most of all, the road miles are zero.

Another famous excuse is time. The simple answer to that one is, make time! I know that initially preparing a piece of ground can be quite labour intensive, but once that is done and you start to become organised, there need not be more than about twenty minutes work per day for the average sized family veg plot.

If don’t have a garden then there are still options open to you. Container gardening is very easy and can be extremely rewarding.

Allotment gardening is gaining in popularity. Many local authorities are now making land available for people to get together and grow their own veg. The good thing about that is that people can inspire and help one another and it can promote a healthy sense of friendly competition, whilst helping to develop a sense of community as well.

One of the most exciting schemes of late has been Landshare, which is helping to put people with land in touch with people who need land for growing and more.

SHOPPING LOCALLY OR PERHAPS MORE ACCURATELY, ‘TRADING LOCALLY!’

For many of us nowadays, it is easier said than done to shop locally because the Supermarkets have almost won the battle for our custom outright.

There was never any real need for that to happen. Small shops have always had to get a lot of their groceries from large wholesalers. They were just offering us a service by using their knowledge of local people to decide what to stock.

 When I was a child living in Yorkshire my parents would send me with a note to the shop, then on Friday morning a box would arrive with everything in. If there was something that they couldn’t get, there would be a note to say that there was something else as a replacement.

There are I am sure, plenty of shops that would be only too willing to do the same, but it is going to be hard work getting people out of the habit of going to the Supermarket where everything is under one roof.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the success of supermarkets was that some shopkeepers simply took their customers for granted and were not prepared to step up to the challenge when the Supermarkets started to gain momentum.

I have to admit that the shop in my own village is one such business. The sign on the shop window says, “Happy to see you, Happy to serve!” and it couldn’t be further from the truth.

 The proprietor looks as though someone has pinched his dinner and can barely be bothered to look up when he takes your money.

His vegetables are sad & wizened & a lot of the so called ‘Fresh Produce’ is out of date.

 The proprietors van has a sticker on the window blaming the ills of his trade on the Supermarkets. Well take it from me. It’s people like him who have given it to the Supermarkets on a plate.

I know it isn’t easy to completely avoid Supermarkets. There are people who do, and good luck to them but they can be cutting their nose off to spite their face.

In the next village to me there is a nice little grocery shop. Very friendly people, but not stupid either.

 Often as not if I have to go into Tesco I will see the lady from the shop getting her shopping at the next checkout. I wish I had the money and the contacts to give Tesco a wide birth altogether, but I am not quite there yet.

By the way, the lady from the local shop is Scottish so that might explain it.

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DIFFERENT BREEDS OF ELEPHANT

There are several species of Elephant, not just Supermarkets. Elephant dodging can become a bit of an obsession.

DIY Superstores are a favourite ‘pet hate’ for me. Because people are so gullible, these stores have managed to take business away from an array of, once familiar small businesses, from Builders suppliers, Gardeners supplies, hardware shops, Timber Merchants, decorators supplies to name just a few.

The worst thing about these Superstores is that they are so keen on trimming away quality to increase profits that a lot of the things people come away with are sub standard, imported rubbish.