It happens

58% increase in female breast cancer and 50% increase in lung cancer in men downwind of two Magnox reactors in Wales. Report and TV program

2011-12-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

On Monday 19th December, the Welsh-language TV channel S4C published new evidence of a cancer cluster near the nuclear power stations at Wylfa in Wales. Commissioned by S4C, Professor Chris Busby analysed official data for cancer deaths, showing a 58% increase in female breast cancer and 50% increased lung cancer in men downwind of the two Magnox reactors, which began production in 1971. The findings are statistically significant.

Today's program (Tuesday 2oth December)is the second of two investigating the significance of the Fukushima disaster for the proposed new nuclear reactor at Wylfa. This is the link for the trailer, **

http://www.s4c.co.uk/bydarbedwar/e_index.shtml

and the program begins at 9.30 p.m.

**If you have a problem with the links, try pasting them into the address box of your browser.

The first programme, Y Byd ar Bedwar - Fukushima, was transmitted on 12th December. It can be sen until 16th January. English subtitles are available - click on the "S" at the bottom right of the video screen. The video link is http://www.s4c.co.uk/clic/e_level2.shtml?series_id=482236265

This information was derived from llrc, the Low Level Radiation Campaign.

From the historical events in Where The Fox Goes".The people stand up for their rights at the time of the enclosures.. Some of the best people were sent to Australia.

2011-11-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

An extract from "Where The Fox Goes"
       “Rose saved your life, too.” said Edwin. “If she hadn’t shouted, Harry wouldn’t have reached you in time.”
       “Do you know who I am?” Michael asked her.
       “Yes. You’re the bad man who wants to take the wastelands away.” said Rose bravely.
       “But you shouted to your father to save me! ”
       “Yes.” said Rose.
       “It’s in the family.” said Edwin, dryly.
       “Would you do that for my child? ” Michael asked Rose, who was looking up at him, unflinchingly, with her clear blue eyes.
       “Would there be man traps in the field? ”
He looked down at his feet and shook his head.
       “No.”
       “Would we be hung or sent to Australia?”
       “No.”
       “If the field was hedged in, you wouldn’t be able to get there in time, anyway.” said her father.

To find out more go to http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk Christian family fiction with a difference.

Singing a favourite hymn in the mist.

2011-11-26T06:57:00.000-08:00

Singing a favourite hymn when things were tough was what Alan did, if he thought no one could hear him.
In "Where The Fox Goes" Alan does just that, but he had no idea where it would lead him and how it would help them all.
You can read more at http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/page19.html
This is a basic, drm free, low download pdf ebook which you can print out. It's about caring for each other and the doors that open. You won't find it anywhere but my website at the moment, it only costs £1.00 with a free amateur audio book if you'd rather listen. ( That's around one and a half US dollars today.) and you can buy on Paypal..

Why now?

2011-11-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

     Several years ago, when I wrote Everyone Can be a herO, (fiction from the future) I didn't know what was going to happen at Fukushima. In my book I guessed that the English government would be sparing when it came to the truth about the amount of radioactive contamination left and that there would still be people around wanting to make money out of nuclear power. There would also be a majority of people who didn't want it and just wanted a healthy and fairer life for the future generations, although they knew that, because of the accident, their future would be blighted by increased disease and mutations. In my book, however, no one speaks about it. The kids don't know much about nuclear waste, because they boycotted nuclear power lessons on principle.
     Society has learned to cope without oil and it hasn't been as hard as people expected, but when a nuclear accident happens, this is something that can't just be a forgotten event. The aftermath is there for millions of years.
     It takes people power and a deal of bravery to protest and stand up against the hidden lobby who want to make money out of the situation and whereas the good guys play clean, the bad guys play dirty. Plus ca change...

Find out more at Inside Outsider Publications http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk

A cat, the snow, and a kind heart.

2011-11-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

   Sometimes it takes a cat or another animal to melt a frozen heart, sometimes it's the cold snowy weather that brings out the hidden kindness in people, and sometimes a sprinkling of kindness can melt a path through a frozen landscape.
But the thing is....that it doesn't stop there.
To find out more, read Where The Fox Goes, a tale of kindness at a time of hardship, of people sharing and of people standing up for their rights in a time of recession and oppression. This is Christian family fiction with a difference, non judgmental, compassionate and inclusive.
    From Inside Outsider Publications,
http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/page30.html
    ...to read about the cat...

Regaining democracy.. in fiction

2011-10-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

Today I am selling books... ebooks and a freebie audio book. I can wrap it in a friendly blog, but what I am trying to do is to sell books. Like most other people I need to, but unlike most other people I wouldn't say the quality of presentation was that good. Everyone Can be a herO is fine. Micheal Smith of the Green (living) Review liked the book enough to suggest that we made an ebook too, and when I told him I hadn't ever done one before, he very kindly rolled up his sleeves and did it.
Where The Fox Goes is words... nothing but words. I thought that was what stories were about. It's also a very low download at around 600kb.. Everyone Can be a herO is around 1 MB and that includes one picture.
These are people's books, about regaining democracy and not accepting a post democratic society, about warm friendly people who don't just care about their own problems but are prepared to step in and help their neighbours, Where this leads them and the adventures they have is part of the stories.. One thing is certain, they don't use violence to solve problems..They are too bright to do that.
     Everyone Can be a herO is for teenagers, but other people read it.. This is set in the future and is a school library book due back in 2040. There has been another nuclear accident, but this time it's in Britain. It isn't as bad as Fukushima or Chornobyl but the same problems are there. The people who are left behind are the ones who can't buy their way out... but they are some of the best ones and they are trying to grow food organically and share what they grow. The oil ran out some time before the accident and they have already come to terms with this, there were even some surprising benefits, what wasn't so good was the nuclear legacy.... and the baddies have decided that there are a few quid to be made from it.
    "Where The Fox Goes" is Christian family fiction with a difference, it doesn't fit a conventional pattern and you don't have to be a Christian to read it.. There are various extracts you can read on my website, including this one from " The Fight to Save the Allotments"..Ivan is talking to his grandchildren.
     “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m right, but when ordinary people have something special, that they work hard at and take care of, someone always seems to come along and tries to take it away from them on the pretext that they’re doing it to improve things. Really, all they’re bothered about is making money out of it. Even if you can’t see who it is, they’re always there.” He smiled wryly. “It’s power or money, but it’s usually money.” he added. http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/page24.html
I have left the ebooks as pdf's because people have so many different readers that it seemed silly to try to limit what I was selling. If you have problems with this, please email me and I'll do my best to sort it out for you. Should you have a more modern Kindle, apparently you can just copy them into "documents" folder on your Kindle device when it is connected to your Mac or PC via USB cable.
To find out more, my website is pretty basic but it is solar powered!! http://ww.insideoutsider.co.uk

natural gas extraction - hydraulic fracturing.

2011-10-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

     Since the discovery of massive amounts of shale gas in the U.K. I have been curious as to the extent of damage to the environment by hydraulic fracturing. Having a strong conviction that there are few truthful official sources of news coming out of the country, when someone can make a bob or two at our expense, and here I include the BBC's coverage of nuclear power and accidents which I, personally, would find laughable if it wasn't so sinister, I was grateful to come across the review in Grist of the best green films in 2010. This included a film called Gasland by the avant garde filmmaker, Josh Fox, who grew up in Pennsylvania on a gas rich shale formation and has chronicled the impact of natural gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing, on the American landscape.
     It's a very good review and if you live in the North West of England and haven't read it yet, I would strongly recommend it http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-29-the-best-green-films-at-sundance as I would also strongly recommend a visit to the Gasland website http://gaslandthemovie.com/
   These people have already walked the walk. And yes, if you read the review in Grist, there is the famous clip of flames coming out of the drinking water tap. It lasts around 15 seconds and it is spectacular!
    There are much better wind turbines on the way, with far higher energy output and much quieter and safer. We have solar power. Just for once, wouldn't be lovely if people cared about people and made a future we could look forward to leaving to the next generations?

Train drivers in Japan ask for your help.

2011-10-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

Years ago when I wrote "Everyone Can be a herO", I envisaged that train drivers would be some of the people who might be at risk during and after a nuclear accident and wrote this into the story.
Sadly, even this is coming true, but we can do something about it if we are prepared to stand up for the Japanese rail drivers when they need international support. Please could you pass the message on to other people. This isn't fiction, this is real.
There is a link to their attachment which I have placed at the end of their letter which explains in full the situation they find they are in.

----- Original Message -----

From: international doro-chiba

To: doro-chiba-international@auone.jp

Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 7:01 PM

Subject: Doro-Chiba QR#34: strike against radioactive workplace

Dear Friends,

Japanese rail workers launched a historic strike against radioactive exposure of train crews and passengers. "We are not slaves of the Government and Tepco. Refuse to be exposed to high radiation from Fukusima Daiichi!"

Please forward this email as widely as possible, send protest messages to the Japanese government’s email form below and organize anti-nuke struggle all around the world.

https://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment_ssl.html

And please read and fill the attached endorsement form of November 6 rally and send back to us.

In Solidarity,

International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba

http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english.htm

These are the two attachments: The first one explains the situation the drivers are in far more fully.

Doro-ChibaQR_034.pdf, Endorsement_to_Nov_6_Rally.doc in English.

Thank you.

Skulking in the bookshop

2011-09-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

Unless I've got it wrong and I'm quite good at that, I should be in the Barnet Waterstone's in Hertfordshire, tomorrow between 11.30am and 3.00 pm, gripping a pen or fumbling with it in order to sign copies of "Everyone Can be a herO"... I'm not expecting to sign that many (!) but if you want to come and have a look at how we made the covers, because they are fun and very eco or find out about some of the characters, or talk about the weather, you'll find me skulking somewhere amongst their real books written by well known authors.
Come to think of it, that's not such a bad way to spend a few hours!
(The branch is in The Spires, which is off the High Street and runs up to Stapylton Road, opposite the library, )

2011-09-16T04:16:00.000-07:00

Revolutionary wind power design can triple output. Where is the news coverage?????

2011-09-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Have you seen anything about this new cheaper, logical, simple, safe, elegant wind turbine invented in Japan in the main papers?... I just wondered if I had missed some, because this is a simple idea which has been shown to triple energy output and the turbines can be floated on hexagonal bases offshore and they even cut down on noise. So why aren't any of the national newspapers even mentioning it?.... There are loads of references in smaller eco friendly journals but I didn't even know about it until Eco-tube emailed me with http://www.eco-tube.com/v/ENERGY/New_Wind_Power_cheaper_than_nuclear.aspx
O.K. SO this is probably the best invention in years, and even if our national press apparently don't want to mention anything that isn't nuclear or massive biomass, or gas.. and if you think the same as I do about it, well, why not pass the message on. People power doesn't have to rely on the press, they proved that in Italy... so here is another reference for you from those I found on the internet, http://www.geekosystem.com/japanese-wind-power/
You can read about it as well, on the Geeko link if you don't want to run the video.
Geeko amazingly brings a comment from someone about a new wind turbine being developed in Canada which works on the jet engine system and can run at much higher wind speeds than was possible.. " load was completely removed from the generator at 80 mph wind speed with no damage" and it runs at lows speeds too..go to:
http://www.vortexwindfunnel.com/
there is a video as well, which shows it in action... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v..

Have fun! !

Sometimes you write it = and then it happens.

2011-09-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

     When I wrote "Everyone Can be a herO" I hoped that there wouldn't be another major disaster in the nuclear power industry.... It seemed pretty unlikely because there have been quite a few accidents which I, for one, would never have heard about if I hadn't started to research them... However, we all know about Fukushima.
    Much nuclear contamination won't go away for millions of years..there is still the problem of the nuclear waste we are allowing to be built up. This is one of the things the kids in the book have to face. Our waste.. their inheritance.
     I thought that there would still be decent kids around, however, like today, and they would be kids who couldn't see any point in violence and just wanted to have fun, look out for their friends, and have a sustainable future.
    It's up to us whether or not they do.
http:// www.insideoutsider.co.uk

Breakthrough in wind turbines from Japan

2011-09-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

     A new wind turbine which could triple the power of offshore wind turbines has been developed in Japan.. It's a revolutionary design. I first received the news from ecotube.com http://www.eco-tube.com/v/ENERGY/New_Wind_Power_cheaper_than_nuclear.aspx    They email out links for some of the best eco videos they encounter.
     You can also read more about it at http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/japan-has-wind-lens-turbine-design-that.html and see the video from the university.
     This new wind turbine would, I guess, make wind power much cheaper than nuclear. Apparently it cuts down the noise problem as well and is safer. It was lovely to hear such positive news from Japan. There are more references on the internet and another short link is http://skimthat.com/article/2703/japanase-breakthrough-for-wind-turbines
This is the wind of change!
.

Today I went for a walk.

2011-07-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Today I went for a walk, the footpaths were open and if I had had time, I could have gone into the stillness of the woods with the soft paths, paved with generations of fallen leaves. How long will these rights remain, though? If you have a wood or a forest you love to walk through, maybe one near you or one you have visited on holiday or on a day's walking expedition, there are two organisations who have a form for you to fill in, to tell the independent panel on forestry why the woodland are important to you... and there are only nine days left now before the consultation is closed..They say they want to hear from YOU. The Woodland Trust has one form you can access on http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/our-campaigns/panel/Pages/forestrypanel.aspx?WT.mc_id=panel and The Ramblers Association has a slightly different version at http://e-activist.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=117&ea.campaign.id=10747 They are thoughtful questions and maybe you will enjoy telling the panel what you feel about your woodlands... it's a great opportunity to really say how much they matter to you... and your family if you have one.

The mists of Murdoch

2011-07-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

     In the Mists of Murdoch, there are some hidden truths. One is that the Italian people managed to overcome the near monopoly of the media, and opposition from the politicians to mount an extraordinary and brilliant people to people campaign against nuclear power and for the public ownership of water.
     It is up to the people of Britain to say what they think should happen about nuclear power. According to a piece I read in the Guardian, God bless them, around 51 per cent of the people in the U.K.voted against nuclear power recently. I think I found reference to another poll somewhere, which was 57%. .
     Surely this is the time for a referendum, if ever there was one. We are not represented in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats, in case they have forgotten, were voted for by people who believed them when they said that they were against nuclear power before the election.
     However horrible and morally outrageous as the News of the World and some other papers reporting methods have been, I assume that they told the truth in some of these issues. However, I think that the recently uncovered emails revealing the Government's handling of the facts after Fukushima, hardly show a government committed to the truthful reporting of massively important facts to the people.
     Whatever the outcome of the Murdoch issue, I sincerely hope any inquiry will not be used for parliament to grab more protection from the truth for itself.
     I'm far from perfect, but I don't think any one of us has the right to leave this nuclear legacy to the coming generations. Perhaps it's about time for the government to ask themselves whom they really represent.. It's not to late ...yet.

Hello ice age...Bye Bye Global warming. Please let's get rid of nuclear power before the freeze.

2011-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

For years I have been getting fed up at at being told that nuclear power is zero carbon rated. This is an absolute lie to me because, for a start Uranium mining is anything but low carbon, and the legacy of sickness and contamination of water and soil that goes with it can be devastating. Are we human beings or unfeeling aliens? I hope the former and no one on earth should wish this for their neighbour.
We have had yet another nuclear accident at Fukushima and it is still out of control and the Missouri River is flooding and apparently if one of the dams burst it will be a very serous scenario at the Nebraska nuclear plant..
The people of Italy, Germany, Switzerland, have recently said No to nuclear and countries like Norway made up their mind years ago not to go down that road. Surely this is the time to begin to close down the plants before anything worse happens. We know that the leukaemias will already come in a few years time, the hard cancers will follow some years later.... and they will. There will also be other diseases and abnormalities which will be genetic.
Now, if the scientists are right, we are almost certainly heading into a new mini ice age and that means that global warming won't happen. This means that nuclear power industry simply can't use the carbon argument any more.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/ and, even sooner with the news: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
I personally think that peak oil will come upon us far sooner than most people are allowing for and that will have a huge effect on our contribution to global warming. I just don't want future generations to be trapped into drinking water which is radioactive, eating food which is radioactive and grown in soil contaminated with alpha particle emitters. It won't seem funny to them, I'd guess when they know that they and their children are tasting the future and it's one of leukaemias, cancers and other diseases, and a genetic legacy they hadn't asked for.
Certainly, it probably is a fact that whatever these sunspots herald, the earth has a habit of going into another real ice age every 15,000 to 20,000 years and as we are around 18,000 years we may not have too long before this hits in again.
A lot of the things that have come out of the global warming theory are useful. Every solar panel and wind farm out at sea, wave machine and tidal power station will be a boon and surely micro generation is a blessing. I love the idea of generating electricity at the site it is needed. It's fun!
Keeping your home warm will be even more important and if nuclear power is allowed to be one of the future
mix, heaven help the poor people because according to the bright guys I've read, the costs will be passed on in the electricity bill and they will be huge. Don't forget that decommissioning the plants after their twenty years or so, takes a huge amount of energy and costs a huge amount too, and we still don't know what to do with the waste, a lot of which which will be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. That will cost too.
Anyway, grease the runners on the sled and hold onto your sweaters, because you may need them!!

The harsh facts

2011-06-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

The harsh fact is that nuclear accidents leave a legacy of sicknesses which develop over the years and are spread across the globe. If the wind blows you "hot spot" particles to breath in or eat and those hot spots causes you cancer, it doesn't make much difference if your friends have them or not.. Those ones are yours. This means that countries have a global responsibility to their neighbours.
We seem to be very quick in offering to go and bomb someone else's country, in England. Well, not me, but our government. Maybe they don't mind what they do to other people, and it's up to us to point out to them.. because the Lib Dems certainly seem to have forgotten.. that nuclear power is dangerous, accidents do happen and countries like Norway have already chosen not to have nuclear power. However, the wind from Sellafield only takes minutes to reach them, if it's blowing in the right direction. We don't have the right to risk giving the Norwegian people cancer. They didn't vote this government in and my guess is that if a lot of people in this country had known how it would turn out.. they wouldn't have either.

German Children, Swiss Children, Norwegian Children...

2011-05-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

German Children, Swiss Children, Norwegian Children, amongst others, all have parliaments who want to safeguard their futures. Are British Children's or American Children's futures something that their governments have the right to risk? and do we have a duty to neighbours who want to have a nuclear free future not to pollute their countries? It can be done and the countries who are the most progressive in true green renewables will surely be the countries who prosper.
We are also told that the global temperature is rising too quickly. What part do the billions of gallons of sea water whose temperature is raised up to 25 degrees F, by once through nuclear power plant cooling systems, play in this temperature rise and can anybody tell me if this heat is taken into account when the carbon footprint of nuclear power plants is worked out?

A typical once-through cooling system draws into each reactor unit more than a billion gallons of water a day, 500,000 gallons a minute.... from NIRS http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/licensedtokill/executivesummary.htm

It was an ordinary Sunday morning,... but radioactive water was seeping into the laundry room

2011-05-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Yes it was... One of the contractors working on the decommissioning of the Sizewell A nuclear power station in Suffolk in the U.K..decided to wash out some dirty clothes and while he was in the laundry room he spotted something out of the ordinary: radioactive cooling waster which was leaking out of the pond which holds the reactor's extremely radioactive spent nuclear fuel... No... none of the alarms had gone off and Yes..by the time the next patrol came round, the pond level would have gone down enough to expose the nuclear fuel rods. Potentially, they could have overheated, caught fire and sent a plume of radioactive contamination along the coastline.. or which ever way the wind blew. Does the scenario sound horribly familiar?
This is very well reported in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/11/nuclear-waste-nuclearpower but the episode took place on January 7, 2007 and when was it reported? June 11, 2009. Why the gap, when it was so significant?
   This report from the HM Nuclear Installation Inspectorate was obtained under the freedom of information act by John Large, when he was compiling a dossier for the local "Shutdown Sizewell Campaign, otherwise would we have found out?
     The U.K is ringed with nuclear power plants and this government would still like more. This is a link to a dynamic map, to show what would happen if there was an accident at a nuclear power plant in Britain, it's from No 2 Nuclear Power and you can make the wind blow in different directions. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/Chernobyl-UK.php
    I don't suppose the leaking water looked different to any other leaking water, but the contractor knew it was...what if he hadn't. Would you know? Why did it take an independent nuclear consultant to ferret this out? Luckily there are a few.
     Do you feel confident that we won't ever be in a similar situation to Japan? We don't have earthquakes of that ferocity, but even if less people would develop cancer some years later, if that cancer is the one which affects you, it probably doesn't make too much difference how many other people are suffering in the same way, except for the NHS resources to treat you.

People can hack into a car's microprocessors, "Stuxnet" happened, now we're told about "Stars" how safe are nuclear power plants ?

2011-05-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

Did you know that cyber criminals can use the microprocessors in cars to disable, track or cause the car to malfunction?
Apparently so! Microprocessors, and there are a lot of them in modern cars… seem to me to be just waiting to be hacked.
From what I can recall reading yesterday (!) horns have already been made to blast and cars have been disabled, and apparently it has been proven that the pressure checking system in the tyres can allow a car to be tracked, while I gather one of the universities managed to write a program which would disable brakes!!!
Now this is just cars. Do you remember the Stuxnet story that came out about the virus being fed into the nuclear power plant in Iran last year? O.K. well, how many of you read the more recent update from Iran that they have been infected with another virus the call Stars. I remember reading a comment at the time that Stuxnet wasn’t that clever a worm and that it was probably masking an attack by much more efficient virus.
O.K. So as usual this sent me thinking… Like isn’t it a tad arrogant to assume that just because one or two countries together or separately, are capable of messing up a targeted nuclear power plant, no one in another country or even the same country but with a different agenda, couldn’t have a lot of fun with any nuclear installation, cooling system or even waste disposal, just by sitting back and firing a few extra neurons and flicking a few keys? Especially if there were a bunch of guys who really enjoyed this kind of thing ?
Just wondered??

Source for car information http://cybercrimenews.norton.com/articles/car_computer/index.html

Christian fiction

2011-05-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

It seems a long time ago, but it isn't so long. It was the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century and things were not well for many poor people. The enclosures act had forced many of them off the land, and into the cities or made them emigrate to America. They no longer had the right to gather firewood from the common and even cooking their own food became a problem. Those places which had been theirs and their forefathers to roam and live on, were no longer theirs.
In a few places, there were Christians who cared, who didn't want to see their fellow villagers ousted and reduced to poverty and then treated like criminals through no fault of their own... villagers often had to work as roundsmen to qualify for poor relief and the system was abused by the farmers and overseers.
One village where there were Christians who were prepared to help and who were in a position to do so, is the place I describe in Where The Fox Goes.
The first part of the story is set in the end of the last century, less than twenty years ago, when people discover that the same land is threatened by developers. They love the wastelands, the woods and the allotments, but they are in the middle of a recession, jobs have gone and homes are on the line. What can they do?

www.insideoutsider.co.uk Ebook plus free amateur audio book £1

The last day, the last evening, and soon, the last moment.

2011-04-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

If you have an allotment, if you ever wanted an allotment, if you'd like an allotment or you'd like your kids to have one, some day.... this is the last chance you may have to take part in the government consultation to take that right away from you. Yes, it's a lovely evening, but your two minutes to comment online could blossom into years of happy growing, or hapless landless years of government inspired loss of your previous rights. These rights have existed since 1908.
To read more and link direct with the consultation site, go to Landshare and the article. Act Now to Save Allotments

A is for alpha particles

2011-04-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

It would be good if A was mainly for apple, a round, red, wholesome flavourful, juicy organic apple. Right now it's for alpha particles. Why? Well you can't find them with a Geiger counter... you may have been told that you can, but you can't. You can make a reasonable assumption, I have read, from spikes in Geiger counter readings from other radioactive sources, that they are present.... but you can't actually detect them with a Geiger counter.
What is so special about them? I was taught at A level that they couldn't get through a thin sheet of paper...bumbling, heavy kind of things in an atomic kind of way. Oh how little we knew then! I reckon that when you thought you knew it all, then... when you realise that you know very, very little, in fact almost nothing at all.... this is the beginning of true learning.
     Actually, alpha particles emitted from plutonium or uranium which has been inhaled or ingested can very definitely cause you problems in the long term. It isn't just alpha particle emitters, some of the other radionuclides aren't too people friendly either.
   This is why, when people in the Tokyo region reported that they have swollen lymph nodes and sores in their nostrils, it is concerning.
The website, which I, personally, am very grateful to be able to use at the moment is that of the Low Level Radiation Campaign. It has always been at the forefront of exposing uncomfortable truths and right now, people are beginning to value its content more than ever. If you want to find out more, you can look up alpha particles and cancer for yourselves and I seriously recommend a visit to http://www.llrc.org/ if you want to find out about Japan right now and see what practical steps the Japanese people can take.
I don't blame anybody... we can all make mistakes... let's just learn from them. We are possibly at a cross roads in the future of mankind... whether, frankly, we are going to survive or not .. and I am here only looking at the whole nuclear scenario.... Don't think we haven't had scares in the U.K. because we have. Belarus or Britain, it can happen anywhere.
We still have time.... some of us.

World Water Day

2011-03-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

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

Census and Lockheed Martin

2011-03-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

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

2011-03-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

Reports have been coming in about the fire in the nuclear reactor storage pond in Japan and the fact that the liquid in one is now reported to be boiling. Along with the news that one of the affected reactors uses MOX which is far more dangerous in this situation, than ordinary nuclear fuel, it is a dreadful situation to be in. What troubles people in the reports I have read is that they can't see the radiation, so they don't know what's happening... If they are being affected or not.
In a report published in 2004, eighteen years after Chornobyl blew, cancer rates in Belarus are 40 per cent higher than they were before the accident. Anyone who heard the "experts" saying that only forty or so people died as a result and was puzzled, is quite right!

In November 2004 The Swiss Medical Weekly published findings by workers at the Clinical Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology Research in Minsk, Belarus. It shows that between 1990 and 2000 cancer rates have risen by 40% overall, compared with rates before the catastrophe in April 1986.

Belarus has had a national Cancer Registry as long as anywhere in Britain, keeping a computer database of all new cases of malignant tumours. This comes from the Low Level Radiation Campaign's website, llrc, http://www.llrc.org/

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

This was my prologue

2011-03-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

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

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

copyright J.R.Birch 2007

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

Where Love is.

2011-03-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

2011-03-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

    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

2011-01-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-30T03:57:00.000-08:00

     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.

2010-12-29T13:23:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-26T20:19:00.000-08:00

    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?

2010-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-10-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

     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.

Extract from "Where The Fox Goes,"

2010-08-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

      All he could do was press on. He would get to the Nativity play. Perhaps someone he knew would spot him walking and offer him a lift. In an unusually gritty voice, he started to sing one of his favourite hymns as he trudged back up the hill.
   "Who would true valour see
                 Let him come hither:
      One here will constant be,
                Come wind, come weather."
     The mist was closing in now and it swirled around in the wind. Sometimes he could see a fair distance, before it rolled in towards him again.
     Ahead of him, he heard a voice. He was certain that he heard a voice.
He stopped singing, but the voice of a young woman carried on.
   "There's no discouragement
       Shall make him once relent
      His first avowed intent
                      To be a pilgrim."
     Alan caught sight of her, now. His fellow chorister was wearing a red head scarf, a blue rain coat and gum boots and she was walking down the hill towards him. She waved to him, a joyful, friendly wave and turned abruptly into the hedge and disappeared from sight.
     He could still hear her singing and he hurried up the hill, joining in.
   "Who so beset him round
            With dismal stories,"
   Where was she? There was a small gap in the hedge and the singing came from the other side.
     "Do but themselves confound:
           His strength the more is."
      Alan walked through the thick hedge and came out onto a wide expanse of grass leading into the mist from which he could still hear the singing, exultant and floating further away as the singer hurried on.
   He raised his voice to carry with hers. He didn't care what he sounded like, he just wanted to join in.
      "No lion can him fright,
       He'll with a giant fight."
The words of the hymn rose through the mist, bravely,
     "But he will have the right
                       To be a pilgrim."
Alan knew where he was now. He was walking on Beatrice's Way, a raised swathe of land, which ran directly across the wasteland to the almshouses and the road in which St. Mary's Hall stood. It was an old green lane used by the drovers, but he was amazed that it was still clear.
     The girl's voice, sweet and soft in the damp air led him forward in the right direction even when he couldn't see more than a few yards ahead.
He sang now, without fear and with a sense of inner peace that he hadn't known since Mary was alive.....

Later in the story,

     Alan made contact with his friends and feverish activity went on for several days. Documents were found and copied, advice was taken, opinions sought until he knew the case was complete.
     They decided to hold a public meeting in the church hall and invited their M.P., the developers, the council planning committee members and the general public.
     On the night, Alan was surprised by how many people he knew had turned up. There were numbers of grandparents whose battles he had fought when they were young, with their children and even grandchildren. The local vet was there and a couple of architects he had approached, when he had needed to provide alternative schemes.
     The history society was well represented and to everyone's surprise, the owner of two of the empty factories was there. The general public was considerable: people from throughout the town who had played in the wastelands as children, walkers' groups, the chairman of the allotment holders' association. Teachers, who used the wastelands for educating the children about the environment, people who went there from the town when they needed space to think, bird watchers, bat watchers, the list was impressive. The natural history society was there in force.
      People were standing at the back of the hall, because there were no more seats left. Both sides spoke....
(copyright. J.R.Birch 2004)

Where The Fox Goes.

2010-08-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

     This post is in addition to my usual ones. As well as Everyone Can be a herO, I have recently put onto PDF the first novel I ever wrote, updated and rephrased in places, but nevertheless, a book of the early nineties, which were surprisingly relevant to our current situation.
     This was the time just before nearly everyone had a mobile 'phone and most people weren't conversant with computers, unless it was for work. It was also one of the last times I remember when kid had more freedom and used to play outside. It was another time of factory closures as trade was moved to places where they paid less and made more profit.
     I first wrote it as a television series and sent an outline to Alan Yentob, in 2003. This series never happened (!) but it actually makes a better book anyway. We are flogging it for a pound a pdf on my website, www.insideoutsider.co.uk when I can get the Home Page on line.
     A fox makes it's way through a town and the surrounding countryside, the path it takes leads it through the gardens,allotments and landscape of the families in the book. They have cut backs and job losses and the allotments and wastelands are under threat from a developer. This is a book in which Christians are not afraid to sing hymns as they walk down a country lane. These same paths were trodden by Christians in the times of the enclosures and it is their commitment to the people around both in the eighteen nineties and in the nineteen nineties which counts in the plot. It is a family book and it also contains the story of a lost cat, who, like the fox, touches on people's lives, arousing compassion and affecting their lives for the better.

Raising the temperature... Whose water is it anyway?

2010-08-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

     A week or so ago I reported the good news that all we have to do is to eat organic and bring back the world to an organic system of food growing, as well reforesting, to not only stop global warming but reverse it. This came in the form of an article and alert in organic byte #227 from the Organic Consumers Association via a tweet.
     Never in the history of mankind , surely, has such an important piece of news been delivered in such a singular way!.... but there it is... you don't need to do anything more fancy than going back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, to save the world.
     This cannot come soon enough. This week, I had a news update from The Ecologist, the ecological early warning e magazine, reporting on a paper by a Canadian researchers, headed by Daniel Boyce, a PhD student at Dalhousie University, published in Nature.
     It appears that while the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil can seqester back all the CO2 we produce and more, given half a chance; the phytoplankton in the surface layers of the sea have not been doing so well.. In fact their numbers have been going down worldwide each year by 1% since 1950. The Northern hemisphere has lost 40%. This seems to be due to the temperature of the water going up.
     The Phytoplankton produce half the world's oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to Boris Worm, another member of the team.
     You can find mention of it on the internet.. CBS has a short report, for one, which is where these figures came from, and which the link is to, but there are others.
     It raises the question, do the billions and billions of gallons of water, sucked in by the nuclear power plants every day around the world, which also suck in and kill billions of small marine animals, have a crucial role in this?
    From some figures I obtained from Beyond Nuclear, by going to " Licensed to Kill" (or go to 'Animals' and choose it from the drop down menu, or key it in their search box), "Once Through" systems can raise the temperature of the water taken in by up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit when it is returned to the sea. These temperature changes and the huge volumes of water being returned to the surface layers of the seas makes me wonder if the very air we breath depends on their being closed down? It may depend on no new ones being even considered..
If these "once through" plants were all forced to close down until they had been retro fitted with cooling towers, it would reduce this problem..but before you think that's the answer, just look at the problems with cooling towers and tritium leaks and ask yourselves whether that is an especially good answer.
     In this country, Sellafield can take 4 million gallons of water a day from Wastwater, a beauty spot in the Lake District, to keep the high level liquid wastes from boiling, that's a lot in a year, but unlike the nuclear power plants, you can't shut down the cooling to the tanks, because the radioactivity in them causes the liquids to get hotter and hotter, and the wastes have to be kept cool for years and years. Meanwhile, local people are complaining about a hosepipe ban!
   There are alternatives and you are entitled to a secure future... all of you. But don't worry about global warming, you can still munch your way out of it. Will there be enough for everyone... well, if you read "Don't Panic, Go Organic", also in the OCA., of course there will.
   Just a note about holiday reading. Everyone Can be a herO is available for two u.k pounds as a pdf and we'll email a freebie to a friend..

available at www.insideoutsider.co.uk

The End of Oil

2010-07-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

A lot of speculation is happening about how and when. Personally, I very much hope that Renewables will cut in before it gets too bad. Anyone who thinks that mining Uranium and the whole process of building, running, cooling, protecting and decomissioning nuclear power plants, let alone trying to deal with the waste, has less carbon footprint than all the other forms of energy, will do well to look at the recent figures..The further you go into the future, the move damage you are doing to people, the environment , and the higher the carbon footprint becomes.
The end of oil, as we have known it, is coming. There are a a lot of lovely transition people out there, planning a better future and I was amazed at just how many groups there are in the U.K.
One person who lives sustainably as well as writing about it, and not just from the countryside homesteader point of view, is Micheal Smith (Veshengro) of The Green (Living) Review.
He has recently written a short book, called The End of Oil. It is one man's view of the future and a genuine, not overly theoretical, summary of some of the ways to live in this new society. It is honest, forthright and original and comes with years of experience of dealing with things as they are, rather than as consumersville would have us live.
I have benefited from Michael's genuine warmth for anyone writing whose work he thinks is of value and have read his attacks on greenwash. I read his blog regularly because it has its own voice, I learn from it and I am never bored by it. I love passages in his book which come with the sense of humour I now expect from him,.viz : the American approach to writing upside down in space and the Russian one. The former was thousands of dollars of research into a pen which would do this...which to be fair, they achieved... and the Russians? Used a pencil.
In his advertisement for the book, there is a whole chapter for you to read, to find out more. The End Of Oil by Michael Smith ( Veshengro)

This one, you can eat your way out of!

2010-07-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Does any of you ever have a sneaky suspicion that the scientists may be missing something when it comes to global warming? We know that it's real and we know that it's happening and apparently it didn't happen before man stood up, but doesn't it ever occur to you that there must have been a lot of dust and ash and stuff being shoved into the earth's atmosphere in its turbulent history, so have they really got it right?
Well yes and no! The answer is so stunningly obvious that I don't know why we didn't all get it straight away.
It took The Organic Consumer to produce the answer to it all in one of their "organic bytes" on Twitter. Funny isn't it, how one of the most important pieces of information this century comes as a tweet. http://bit.ly/cAp1JV on June 3rd 2010. " Go organic change the world, not the climate". If you don't like using links, just search with organic bytes 227 and the page will come up on the Organic Consumers' Association website. The two extracts below are from the first two articles, which I really recommend.

Change the World Go Organic
"If you do just one thing to change the world, go organic"
"going organic is the single most critical (and most DOABLE) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. Every acre of of ground that's farmed organically has the potential to pull thousands of pounds of warming greenhouse gases out of the air."...
"Organic living can stop the climate crisis. When you combine the impact of protecting the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil (which absorb and neutralize carbon) and eliminating all the toxic chemicals (and their packaging and the energy spent producing them), the carbon problem in our atmosphere is practically solved. We will still need more renewable energy, but restoring the earth's ability to sequester carbon is a good place to start. And you'll do it while eating."
- Maria Rochdale, Organic Manefesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World and Keep us Safe.

Alert of the Week: Demand Organic in Climate Change Bill
"A shift to local and organic food and crop production would eliminate most fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, including deadly methane and nitrous oxide emissions, while saving the world's forests and turning our farm and ranch lands back into carbon sinks or storage areas, instead of emitters. Transitioning just the world's 3.5 billion acres of cropland to organic would sequester 40% annual emissions! Transitioning all range and pasture lands as well, along with global reforestation, would enable us to remove enough excess greenhouse gases to reverse global warming and stabilize the climate."

If we just went back to growing food the way our great grandparents did, we wouldn't have a problem any more. ...and, it tastes a whole lot better.

Peak oil and transition....It's not so bad!

2010-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

About Peak Oil....It wasn't so bad ...Kirk and Maria discussed this early on in the book...
Just for the record, I wrote to the effect that the oil had nearly run out some time before the nuclear accident. It was so expensive that most people couldn't afford it. Local communities started up again, traffic accidents went down, the air was cleaner...The only problem was nuclear fuel... as Maria says wistfully, "without that we'd have had a good future."
The nuclear accident happened afterwards. It did not take out the old fashioned cars, but leave the computers and televisions working. No, the petrol driven cars had already stopped working. The computers, as is mentioned in the book, were solar powered, and the television service was limited. The fact that I already have a marvelously sun powered website, genuinely powered by Californian sun, and very cheaply to boot, makes me think that it is just possible that this might still be happening in the future. Furthermore, as I read that certain computer giants were already looking at Scottish wind and wave power for energy to power the internet, maybe the internet would be functioning.
Also, if you were a government in a post nuclear country, where an accident had taken out some of the counties, but not all of them, and the prevailing wind at the time meant that there was still a population which was not yet drastically affected, although everyone knew the cancers would come, and come sooner rather than later, which which was one reason why no one talked about it...... Maybe you would think that the internet was a good way of communicating with people.
I didn't explain about the cancers, or the risks of their children having mutations in the story, but the way the reality hits Maria, just when life is full of promise, was more than enough. I have blogged about the resulting problems as a guest author on another website.
The teenagers in this story want to have fun, they like being with their friends and life is for living.
Anyway, it's your future, it can be great, so be positive, take a look at the next post because life CAN be brilliant. Absolutely, utterly, amazingly, brilliant.

An Ebook you don't need a reader for.

2010-06-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

And another thank you to the editor of Green (Living) Review. He suggested an e book and now Tatchipen Media, have joined with Inside Outsider Publications to produce a downloadable e book, available by email, which anyone can make a single A4 copy from. The opportunities for inventive covers are huge and I'd love to see what people have been doing with their copies. We are still producing the hard copy version, this is a cheaper, possibly greener, version. What matters is the story, and that's what we're here to tell.
If you haven't already been to our website, the e book is emailed to you as a pdf and it doesn't need a reader, just download it. How much does it cost? £2.00 and if you give us the email addresses of a friend when you order, we'll send them a pdf free. Go to www.insideoutsider.co.uk ...to order. And yes, we'd love some feedback from you.
Did anyone else see the Homer Simpson tweet about the oil spill and nuclear waste... Very astute and it had been re-tweeted masses of times when I caught up with it.

The Green(Living)Review

2010-04-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

A huge thank you to Michael Smith for the really great review..It's so good when someone sees what you are trying to do. If you haven't visited the blog, I'd recommend it, and I personally found the obituary of Dug Out Dick, a cave dweller who died recently at the age of 94, very interesting and out of the usual.

Leaks from nuclear power plants, birth defects from Chornobyl. Go to Beyond Nuclear for the latest news

2010-04-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

Have just read some of a fifty page report from Beyond Nuclear, mainly about tritium, and page after page of recorded leaks in the USA of radioactive waste. Just because tritium isn't a large atom, it doesn't mean it can't do you any harm. It replaces hydrogen in the body. Do you know how much of your body is made up of hydrogen atoms? Have a guess. Research it...It's in their report and it might surprise you!
Beyond Nuclear is written to inform the public, so there isn't anything I have come across which hadn't been explained so that I couldn't understand it easily. Tritium doesn't just leak from underground USA waste pipes.
The other recent report is about birth defects in babies being born in the Ukraine, around Chornobyl. This is an up to date report and is different from the previous U.N report.These babies weren't born when the accident happened.

UKAWARE2010

2010-04-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

On Friday and Saturday of last week was at Olympia, at their green exhibition. It's one of the best places I know to meet friendly helpful people and network in the most positive way. I land up winging that I can't sell stuff like other people, because I am rubbish at selling to anyone! I prefer giving stuff away..and I am so impressed by people who can sell and they do there! I love talking to people though, and unfortunately mostly about nuclear power.
Someone who makes an immediate impression is Michael Smith, Editor of GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW, bursting with ideas and information. I really enjoyed talking to him and he was so helpful.
You know when you get that lovely feeling when you are on the same side as the people you are talking to? It happened a lot there, with visitors and other stall holders, who wander round and chat to each other.
There were a lot of young people there too, especially taking part. It was great.
More of the other exhibitors later .. Meantime..ukaware.com is the place to see a variety of green ways of getting around and all sorts of bright ideas.

Tenner Films

2010-04-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

Hi, Have just been in contact with Tenner films. Check them out! They have a new approach to the issue. A number of films about nuclear issues. They have completed some, I watched number one and looking forward to the rest.. This is reaching new people instead of the same people! www.tennerfilms.com If you are into films, these are different!

Thanks for coming to this blog!

2010-03-13T12:04:00.000-08:00

Hi, thanks for making it this far!. Just to update. If you are thinking of buying a book, don't forget that we care about your security as well. We only sell online using PayPal button or PayPal invoices. If it isn't authentic, don't go with it.. You can pay with a cheque or postal order or even cash if you live near enough! If you are overseas, we use PalPal invoices once we know how you would like your order sent.. Please email us for the extra postal charges. It isn't the full amount, because the U.K. price for the books has postage included, so it's the extra. If you prefer to use surface mail, and it is greener and cheaper, we can send this way. I also think that all direct sales from me to you are greener, rather than going via a distributor, because it cuts out at least one journey. It also should mean that you get your books faster and we can let you know as soon as they are in the post.
                                                   http://www.insideoutsider.co.uk/
                                                        If you aren't thinking of buying, "Hi" thanks for visiting and please come back - This blog exists because I think that there are far better and safer options than having more nuclear power and nuclear waste. I would far rather be writing fiction without this content.
    If you don't think there are any risks, well, there was some pretty scary news from France this week. And thank you to the person who made this public. We can say "This needs looking into!" but someone did it.
     What was the scary news?
   Go to Sortir du Nucléaire to find out. It's in French, but there is a translation button in the top right hand corner! This may just take you to some general information, so go back and click on the first item with EDF by it and then look for the blue outlined box on the right hand side which gives the English press release.                                       www.sortirdunucleaire.org/

It's still online!

2010-03-13T06:43:00.000-08:00

I am so grateful. Twilight Earth still have the article "Whose Future is it?" up. It's been a week and I thought it would just be a day or so. , but wow...and you can still find past posts on their home page. I really love this site...and I'm telling people.."Whose future is it?" is about the book and the future of kids to come...it's up to us.

Twilight Earth

2010-03-09T17:11:00.000-08:00

     Twilight Earth has a guest article called "Whose future is it?" about the book and about the future. It's one of my favourite sites. (obviously)...but it really is!
     If anyone goes to my website to buy a copy of the book and you live abroad, please be aware that we take your security very seriously. We only use PayPal buttons or send you an official PayPal invoice when we know how you want the book/s delivered. If you are in doubt...don't buy! You can always write to me! The address is there, or contact me on Facebook.... June Rosemary Birch.   I tweet as "notedthat", but not that often!
     The main online bookshops will also currently mostly sell you a book, but I have no control over when their orders come to me!   If you email me and tell me if you have a problem, I can contact them..
   My website is www.insideoutsider.co.uk

You blog, I glob.

2009-09-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

My Blog.

This, if you are a fast typist like me, can turn itno my glob, my bolog, my blog. it just depends on the wind speed. Thank heavens for spell check.

However, spellcheck approves wholeheartedly of glob..... Not a crinkly red line or suggested alternative spelling anywhere.

I have this horrible feeling that one day the earth could come to an unitneted end because someone spelled no go as on go.

So let's do our best to cut down the chances.

"But you are probably the worst typist in the world." I hear you say.

"Right on, but who's the next worse?..."

And the fact is that solar power, wind power, wave power are an awful lot more people proof than nuclear power.

"O.K." you say...."but there's global warming."

And I say

"If you take the carbon footprint of nuclear power from the time you start mining the uranium to getting it (and don't forget dealing with waste and decommissioning afterwards) and look up the facts, you could be surprised. (Hint: Wind, solar, tidal and wave might come out better.) Also, don't forget that the more uranium is mined, the less there is left, the harder it is to find and the more energy it takes...(Hint: this one was mentioned by the Oxford Research Group.).

(Big hint: "The energy cliff")

( Massive hint: Go to page 17 of their pdf

SECURE ENERGY? Civil Nuclear Power, Security and Global Warming, written in 2007.)

Did you? Bit of a mind blower, isn't it?

So here's looking at Solar. -0^0- (shades)

A new generation of solar voltaic panels are on the way, cheaper, more energy efficient and easy to produce on a large scale.

     In April I got this information from No 2 Nuclear power:
     "The U.S.Department of Energy, for example, reckons that by 2015 solar voltaic will be economically competitive -so that any new reactors ordered will be economically obsolete before they are even open..."
     And maybe you say "The U.S.A. have a lot more sunshine than we do." And maybe I say:

     "The creation of quantum dots which can be squeezed so that they absorb energy from a wide range of wavelengths, not just when we can see the sun is shining, mean that large scale solar voltaics don't just have to be used in sunny countries."
     This is like being a size 18 and being able to get into a size 14 and looking good in it! Amazing!
     You can look it up in Wikipedia.

      More facts in later blogs...

     And if it's heavy being back at school, or college, if you're a student, stick in there kids.
     When I was at my second school, the mother of my then boyfriend said that although it seems like it's going on for ever at the time, in fact it's only a small bit of your life, and she was right.


Dendelion, posted on Sunday, 20th September.

www.insideoutsider.co.uk

But it doesn't have to.

2009-06-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

The year is 2040, but some things don't change....Somewhere there is a school library book which needs renewing. It's due back in October. It tells the story of some teenagers who wanted to know why the nuclear trains were running at nights, where they were going and why no one would talk about it....Also, where had all the good guys gone?
There had already been one nuclear accident, resources were scarce, people were growing food wherever they could, and most of them were trying to make a better, kinder society. The only question the teenagers had, was did the government share their aspirations?
This was a new England, where people looked out for each other, grew organic food, shared what they had, but there was something wrong. It was up to the teenagers to find out what and time was running out.
The year is 2040. There already has been a nuclear accident and somewhere there is a school library book which needs renewing, but it didn't have to be written. Fast track back to 2009.The future is up to you.
If you want to know more, go to www.insideoutsider.co.uk and look for Everyone Can be a herO, or find a copy in selected Waterstone's bookshops.