Snow and steam

I remember the winter of 1963. School was closed for time when the outside toilets froze up. We thawed our 1/3 pint bottles of milk around the stove in our classroom.

On 1 February, 1963, Geoffrey Jones began filming "Snow" which was to win 14 major awards and an Oscar nomination in 1965. Jones was already working on a film for the British Railways Board when he had the idea of making a film contrasting the comfort of the passengers with the efforts of the workmen to keep the trains running during this abnormal winter.

The footage we see is mostly from the Western Region. There is also a tantalising glimpse of a Somerset and Dorset freight train as well as some archive pre-WW II shots of Jubilee class locomotive 'Barbados'.

Give up carbon for Lent

Christians in Britain are being urged to give up carbon for Lent and they can even download a 40 day calendar to help.

It's not a bad idea, but why just do it for Lent? But I do hope that it encourages people who don't already take these actions to begin doing so, all year round.

The cost of wasted food

I just read an interesting news release from WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme, an organisation in the UK), Food Waste Set to Soar over Festive Season.

I find the figures rather hard to believe. It works out at 8.5 pounds per person. The article raises a lot of questions, such as how do they arrive at the statistics, how many days does the Festive Season include, and do the figures include waste from food retailers? Elsewhere on their website they look at annual waste and say:

In total food waste in the UK is around 18 - 20 million tonnes, with household food waste making the single largest contribution (6.7 million tonnes).

Retailers are believed to generate about 1.6 million tonnes of food waste, food manufacturers about 3.5 million tonnes, with food service and restaurants producing about another 3 million tonnes. The remainder comes from the agricultural and horticultural sector, and commercial food waste (e.g. from hospitals, schools, etc).

However accurate the figures are, it does make good points about the environmental impact of producing, storing and getting the food to our homes. They calculate it is equivalent to taking 1 in 5 cars off the road in the UK. Food is wasted because we either cook or prepare too much, and we let food go off. Love Food Hate Waste is their campaign to reduce waste.

WRAP have a number of other initiatives, including the Courtauld Commitment which aims to reduce waste from retail packaging, including looking at ways to extend shelf life of food products.

Alternative energy use in the UK

The British Government seem poised to start building more Nuclear power stations. Greenpeace UK has many reasons why this shouldn't be allowed to happen. Instead, they suggest The Convenient Solution, and offer this video: