Just under a year ago something happened that changed my life around, just when i thought this were settled. Isn't at always the way? I had been happily living on a small Welsh hill farm that i had been invovled with setting up as a coop some 14 y3ears ago. A dream, an ideal and it was real. Then something happend that made me realise that it was actually time for me to move on, when I least expected it, but here you go. So i gave up my lovely home, my place of work and the lovely garden.. and the stunning unpsoilt views and all it had to offer to try my luck in a differetn part of the country, ina new location with a new bunch of people. Not the easiest thing to do. But the new project is interesting and challenging and i guess that is what i neeeded.. with out knowing it maybe. But with a group of like minded people we have taken on refurbishing a big old Victorian workhouse which has stood empty for 25 years, and are turnign it into a centre for arts, community and sutainability. Needless to say we have no money, and are having to doeverything oursleves, working with recycled materials adn donations we ar slowly working our way round and doing it up. I am mroe involved in teh gardens and landscape and have already run three permaculture coruses here, bringing in eco minded enthusiastic people from all over to help get the ball rolling.

At teh heart of it all is the Workhosue festival a three day festival, a mad mixture of music, green crafts and creativity that the success of which in past years is what gave us the confidence and belief, and money, to take on the mortgage and to actually take on ownership of the place. Which we have dome for about 18 months now. The next fetival is next weekend, and we are all on tenterhooks.. that it goes off well, that we sell enough tickets, that the weather is ok and a 1000 other concerns... it really should be on e the best small festivals fo the summer, al the ingerdients are there...  we have afinal team meeting in an hour, having had weekly meetings for the last month or so.. with only a week to go.. it is really time to get on with it..

I have been going through some old boxes of photos and scanning in the best ones... its great fun digging through them, really brings them back to life, and brings back lots of memories as well.. Each one that I have put there has a whole story that goes with it really. hard to do it justice with a little caption. anyway welcome to have a look, it was interesting times. I spent three years traveling around in Africa, working on farms and generally exploring and meeting the people. it was an amazing experience and i think about it all the time even now all these years later. well not all the time, but you know what i mean, it stays with me.  I will add some more if I get a chance, or any feedback... 

Been a long time since I did the stroll....... carry me back, carry me back.. etc..

well hello if there is anybody out there. Not been here a while, in ages in fact, partly as I got sucked into Facebook and more mainly life taking over a bit. Change of job, location, life, it feels like an era has ended, its been a bit of whirlwind. will try and write about it all, but not now... its all still sinking in..

but i miss writing my little blog entries here... so i thought I would do something this evening seeing as I i have found myself here again. check the songs on the profile page, Harley Harland, they are really lovely songs, sort of Lily Allen ish I guess, but that's a bit of heavy handed description, they are lovely songs, highly original, personal quirky, witty and sort of insightful. Its the grown up daughter of old friends of mine.

Am staying on my own in little one up down cottage is a village in wales, pondering where fate will take me next adn what adventures are around the corner... what are you up to?

i haven't posted anything on MySpace for ages, become a bit of a Facebook casualty... but i have been busy doing some quite interesting stuff.. so i should say something about it. I am just loading some pictures of me and Dave at the Ideal Home Show - which is like a huge consumer trade fair I guess, at Earl's Court in London... ha ha the last time I went there was in 1980 to see Pink Floyd do the Wall show... I could even see the spot where me and my mate had camped out over night on the pavement outside to get our tickets... anyway.. there are loads of pictures, so have a look, they are in this Photo library A couple of the canal near Reading, then the site build at the show. We went as part of the Eco House, which was one of the central exhibits of this year's show. Our job was to do the Eco garden to go with the Eco House. The most amazing thing for me was the Shiitake mushroom logs we put there just loved the warmth in there, and at least till they started to dry out, they went absolutely mad and produced Kilos of mushrooms.. the only food actually grown during the show! they looked good

The rest of the shots are mainly of what caught my eye at the show itself. They are a few of the house opening ceremony which was done my David Bellamy and Tim Smidt from the Eden project. I guess its a sign of the times that even the Ideal Home Show, consumer show is trying to go green. To be honest the whole thing depressed the hell out of me. Eco is not something you can buy. Its not another product range. And seeing the waste, the excess, the flashy showy excessive stuff they are selling there, makes me think, no one is really thinking about the environment seriously. From the huge jacuzzi baths, to the Italian designer everything and the acres of plasma screens hi fi and the rest... well you know... more than likely 2008 is going to turn out to be the peak oil year... the moment when demand began to outstrip supply for this resource we have come to totally rely on. It was sort of like the restaurant at the end of the universe, the last days of the mad consumerist fantasy we are all living... anyway check the pics and tell me what you think. ... work harder... buy more stuff... happiness is just around the corner.. the oil will never run out and climate change is not really happened, la la la, i am not listening....

anyway the garden looked alright.. onh and we are on the countdown to running our annual permaculture course here at Chickenshack, so that is exciting.. i will write about that separately

here's mylatest Blog entry for the channel 4 green site..... I was intending to write mainly about Green buildings, but got to thinking in a more general way that thinking green at all is all about having the imagination in the first place, to imagine something better, different. In this case to create newer, greener, energy efficient, but also beautiful human environments to live in. What we think about buildings reflects what we think about people and our wider aspirations in general. The piece includes a couple of links to visionary and inspirational low impact, eco-friendly buildings

Going Solar; life after oil

With record high oil prices, an impending peak in global production, an unstable
Middle East and a general lack of investment in the whole oil industry infrastructure..
it really does look like we are finally coming to the end of the carbon age.
Not only that, but it could be happening much more quickly than we realise -
oil could be history within 20 years! (www.zerocarbonbritain.com)

Big changes like this are often daunting and scary, but usually once done -
leaves you wondering why you didn't do it earlier. Weaning ourselves off
our oil addiction is going to be like a global give-up smoking campaign. It
might be uncomfortable at first but ultimately offers endless benefits for all.
There is life after oil and it is solar powered.

With renewable energy it is better to think of a family of technologies, each
one complimenting the other, rather than as separate stand-alone technologies.
Solar, wind, wave, tidal, biomass power, heat-pumps and fuel cells all join
together to offer a year-round genuine sustainable alternative to oil, gas and
coal.

With the exception of tidal power, powered by the pull of the moon the family
of renewable technologies can all be thought of as being solar powered. Heat
from the sun creates the temperature differentials which cause wind and waves,
whilst heat pumps exploit the difference between ground temperature and that
within buildings. Direct solar power takes the form of solar thermal for heating
water, passive solar for heating and lighting buildings and solar electric (photovoltaic)
technologies for creating electricity directly from sunlight. Its all solar,
even bio fuels, are solar energy converted by plants into usable materials.

Whilst the oil industry and its critics argue whether the oil peak is here
already or 30 years away still, what is apparent is the sun still has a billion
years to run; I know which one I am backing for the long term!

I like to think of us entering the solar age, or as oil-industry turncoat and
solar enthusiast Jeremy Leggett calls it 'Solarization'. Coupled
with hydrogen fuel-cell technology (which is essentially an eco-friendly kind
of battery, that gives off warm water as its only waste product) renewable energy
can offer us a clean and efficient way forward.

The know-how is all in place, all that is lacking is the scale of investment
needed to bring about economies of scale to it more affordable for all. If you
consider the trillions of dollars spent globally on oil each year then it becomes
clear that we really lack is the political will to do it, we are already spending
the money; only on the wrong form of energy.

Back in the 70's when we had the first oil shock and price rises many
people such as the Centre for Alternative Technology, (www.cat.org.uk)
were convinced that the age of oil was over, they started to explore renewable
eco-friendly alternatives. Even then before the realisation of the scale of
threat posed by climate change bought about by burning fossil fuels really took
hold, they like many others were convinced by the idea of a switch to renewable
energy even then.

Thing was back then renewables were in their infancy and photovoltaics (cells
that make electricity from sunlight) were non existent. Its changed a
lot since those early days and there is literally no excuse left not to begin
the switch to renewables in earnest. Solarisation is here!

www.zerocarbonbritain.com

CAT&8217;s alternative energy strategy for the UK

http://solar-aid.org/

solar-century,
read Jeremy Leggett's blog,

An article in the tabloid press this week reported that a significant percentage of people are suffering from eco-fatigue. Can we please stop going on about the environment, its getting boring…. A sort of collective 'Are we nearly there yet?'

Well I hate to be the one that tells you folks, but this environment thing isn't minor inconvenience that will go away if we ignore it, its not an optional add on if we can be bovvered. We are walking, largely unprepared into a huge double whammy.. on one side is climate change all that it might entail.. oh do check this YouTube clip if you still have any doubt that we should act.
http://www.slide.com/r/Wg1cdyuW1z-lyVHqA76nvJL-JRVUQPs9

On the other side is Peak Oil, as in previous blog.. there is simply no way the peaking global oil fields can continue to supply the exploding global demand for the stuff at the rate required… the cheap energy party's over folks… we are going to have to get used to that, else it is going to come as real shock. (www.theoildrum.com)

Its not all bad news, a lot of it is good – a sustainable, energy efficient planet isn't exactly our worst nightmare… but the fact remains, being green means working out how to get there, how to use 90% less energy and resources than we currently do and how to do it in away that prevents our economies from collapsing or does it at the expense of other, especially poorer nations.

No one knows how long we have to do all this, debate rages, but what is known is that it isn't going to be easy to make the necessary changes fast enough – time is against us. We have to make a massive global gear shift, from 4 wheel drive in overdrive, to an as yet to be fully-imagined sustainable alternative.

Pioneering towns in the UK, e.g. Brighton, Bristol, Totnes, Machynlleth are deliberately beginning this process of changes by holding public open meetings of interested people, discussing issues like Peak Oil and Climate change the huge challenges they thrown up. The idea is to begin to imagine a planned regional energy descent – a managed transition to a much more locally based eco friendly economy. They are calling it Transition towns and it's a growing movement with I think has a big future.

Part of the realisation fuelling this process is that there is no one single answer of how to respond to the challenges of life without fossil fuels and if we don't plan our responses then others will be forced on us by either government or circumstances. Answers and priorities are going to be different in each community but the sooner we begin the process of finding what we do want and what will actually work – the better it is going to be for everyone. This is how everyone gets to be part of the solution.

http://transitionculture.org

MC has just finished mixing the second band to record here at chickenshack. a young Brit pop band from Shrewsbury, the Long Nines, three really excellent tunes, i strongly recommend you check them out, there is a download facility here at chickenshack.co.uk/studio

Enjoy

Qu: what country has got a potential oil reserve of 6 times that of Saudi Arabia.
A: Canada. Locked up in the Athabasca Oil sands in Alberta

So phew! Peak Oil concerns over then is it? - enough to go all round? not exactly if you read this article. A Part from the fact that they can only access 10% of it, its extraction is having a huge and disastrous environmental impact. Apart from ripping apart a huge landscape, oil sands need a lot of energy to be processed: 1 barrel of natural gas is used to produce two of crude. So whilst only running at a few percent of its potential capacity Athabasca oil sands will already soon be Canada's biggest contributor to global warming; nearly as much as the whole of Denmark. This is not an acceptable alternative to the sweet light crude from the Gulf, that has already had a bad enough impact on the planet, surely this madness to develop this resource.

'peak oil' is the new green buzzword...here's my latest submission for channel4/green blog...Global oil production is approaching its probable all time peak, and may well have passed it already- while global demand surges...so the question is, if the likelihood of an impending energy shock is so obvious an issue, how come we aren't talking about it more than we are?? i would appreciate some comments on the blog, if anyone wants to get a thread going, because i really think this is something we should all be talking about more.. it changes everything. and for my part i am trying to bring this debate to alive in any way i can.

if you don't now about Peak Oil already the check End of Suburbia..Wikipedia on Peak oil. Try searching on Amazon on 'peak oil'... if you are not convinced...! this is the elephant in the room folks

with MC now in residence here at the housing co-op, he has finally got his recording studio and equipment set up. it was always part of the original dream, to have the farm, the view, the location , a community, grow stuff, keep a few animals or whatever, use it as a base to explore and promote sustainable lifestyles, permaculture, and develop our own little business ideas and music and creativiey was always at the heart of that. so mike's is to use his considerable musical talents in helping other people put together quality recordings, especially for emerging artists without the access of experience to do this for themselves. he works closely with bands, sharing knowledge and teaching, so recording with him is a big learning experience. so its exciting for me to see these dreams come to fruition, and even more exciting for the artists concerned.. anyway here is a link
to 4 tracks by really exciting young Liverpool rock outfit... you would never guess it was recorded in our boiler house http://www.chickenshack.co.uk/studio/index.html

he folks, I am jsut starting a new Blog for C4/green... would appreciate any comments or encouragement... http://www.channel4.com/lifestyle/green/ask-expert/steve-jones.html

This is a piece I have penned for Clean Slate magazine Centre for Alternative Technology's publication, about the Dumped TV show. Hope you like it.

Living on landfill, 3 weeks on Croydon tip
CAT gets 'Dumped',
an Outline production for Channel 4
Steve Jones
sector39.co.uk

Its one thing to be confronted with one's own waste for three weeks - and
something else to have to live with that of half of South London.

Such was the central idea for the Ch4 show 'Dumped'. Take 11 unsuspecting
members of the public and put them on one of Europe's biggest landfill site for
three weeks and see how far they cope.

CAT consultancy dept get an astounding array of inquiries, including a good many
from tv researchers developing program ideas. This one certainly looked like an
interesting and a slightly different project to be involved with as well as a chance
to reach a wider audience than usual. Anyway, I got hired as a CAT consultant
and went off to the dump for most of June.

So how do you do green for mass media? Is it even possible without diluting the
message too far? Personally I don't think the 'green movement' as such has been
very successful as yet in engaging a broader audience with its message. We are
very good at preaching to the converted and not so good at finding ways to
popularise eco-ideas more broadly.

This recent comment by Tony Juniper caught my eye:
"The green agenda is often wrongly interpreted as being mainly negative, about
having less and paying more. However, lower congestion, reduced pollution,
stronger communities, warmer homes, lower bills, healthier food and more
durable products could all be part of a low carbon and more resource-efficient
future. ………"

Telling the world about dieing dolphins or some impending global catastrophe is
never going to sell well in the market place, strictly a niche product, no mass
appeal. Marketing exec's will tell you, don't sell the product, sell its benefits, Coke
is more than a drink, its youth, freedom, expression.. Green has to mean so
much more than do-gooders selflessly going without, its smart, forward thinking,
a new beginning. Whatever it is we could use a bit of spin control and I am
fascinated to see how others approach the subject.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh on our green fore-bearers but my point is there is
still a long way to go to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of the
masses. I am not sure, I hasten to add, that this show is the answer to all that,
but it is a genuine attempt to explore that territory from a different angle.
I also take this as a sign that Channel 4 getting more serious about going green,
trying out some different program formats and exploring new audience territory.
There is a website, a blog and all sorts coming off the back of this show and
others, part of building a C4/green interactive multi media presence. The
'Dumped' format is also a franchise having already been done in Norway - & there
is talk of an American version, so watch this space folks!

The backdrop to the whole 3 week experience is Croydon landfill site. 40 acres of
quarried out land, gradually being carpeted in a layer 67m deep (that's a 200 feet
mountain in old money folks!) of south London's finest waste. More specifically
this is the contents of everyone's dustbins, mixed with an awful lot of building
waste and capped with clay. There is a ceaseless freight train like queue of
heavily laden lorries disgorging their loads from dawn 'til dusk, while the big pile
just gets higher and higher. They compact it all down with huge monster
bulldozers, it almost looks like science fiction.

Ironically, you can see the BedZed building clearly from the top of the tip. The
Beddington Zero energy development is a profile Eco development. An integrated,
energy efficient living and working environment… great stuff I am sure but its
going a take few more of those to offset the energy we are throwing into this big
hole in the ground next door. Actually it was staggering how close the dump is to
major developments.

Nothing can really prepare you for an up close view of the enormity of what we
currently throwing away. Not only the waste but the investment into all this plant
and machinery that goes with it – those big trucks for example are £150k each!
Yes it hits you right away but after three weeks of relentless queues of groaning
trucks, the true scale of it all really starts to sink in. When they talk about Albert
Hall's full of waste, as they sometimes do by way of illustration, you still have to
really see it to begin to appreciate what an Albert Hall of waste actually looks and
feels like, and we generate one of those every minute in this country. The scale is
just breathtaking

I must add here that the longer time I spent on the tip the more I came to
respect the complex and difficult processes that they were charged with. Its no
mean feat processing such an amount of rubbish, and the way they are doing is
becoming increasingly sophisticated. The guys there are doing a good job, the
problem is the sheer amount of waste.

So the show, it's a reality show, Big Brother format and was aired first week of
September, 4 one hour episodes, prime time. I'll assume you've not seen it,
being more aimed at a Big Brother audience than Clean Slate readers.
The big TV invite had gone out for contestants who were up for a 3 week 'eco
challenge', that was all they knew, they had to have jabs and turn up with their
passports and so many kilos of luggage, ready for anything. There was a £20
grand pot and who was left at the end got a straight share of it. Cruelly, the
production crew drove the contestants right past Gatwick on their way to the tip,
just to let them entertain their fantasies of Costa Rican jungle or whatever right
to the last. Its just a short jump from there to Beddington landfill site, where a
designated quadrant was to be their home for the next 21 days.
The challenge was this, starting with nothing but a bit of ingenuity just how far
can you go trying to build a life from the waste that the rest of us are currently
throwing away. Shelter, washing and toilet facilities, cooking, comfort, recreation,
all those things we take for granted. What might they learn in the process, and
will it make good entertainment watching?

Contestants crossed the spectrum from the eco aware to never having really
thought about the issues at all, with a smattering of practical skills between
them.

CAT's role in all this was to act as technical advisor, on the practical tests they
were doing and to generally be on hand ready rise to whatever particular
challenges arose. So an off screen role but quite actively involved. It was both
hard work and lots of fun with plenty of opportunity for input into the show.

Having see the broadcast I am slightly frustrated that the editors focussed mainly
on the human drama side of it, rather than the actual tasks themselves, quite a
few we did weren't even shown. I think my first observation was how wasteful TV
is. The lengths they went to get a shot that wasn't even used. The number so aa
batteries they got through in their radio mikes etc. etc. This must have cost a lot
of money to make, with a big crew on location and all the support and materials
required.

The thing that most tickled me was Eco aware student Lawrence set up a
recycling system for the group. Landfill, cans and recyclables, and compost.
Which looks so bizarre, on a landfill site. You are camped on rubbish, so the idea
of having a bin is utterly pointless. Although I might add the set was constructed
out of 1000 tonnes of sifted skip waste, arranged by the set builders; real black
bag waste is far too random, dangerous and toxic.

It took the contestants ages to get any sense of urgency after the initial rush to
put together an emergency shelter and compost loo. Finally though' they did rise
to it and built a fairly impressive shelter, a solar water heater, a kitchen, décor
and all that. They got used to the compost toilet and they even got as far as
making a hot tub and sauna from the waste. I found myself wishing they had
another week or two, to take it a bit further.

In many ways the star of the show was the site itself. I came away feeling I had
learned a lot and had been forced to think about these things in a much deeper
way. Waste let me tell you is BIG business: Big budget. Big politics, even Bigger
machines, and absolutely essential to our day to day life currently.

I get a tour with the site manger, and a glimpse of the rate of change and
investment in the whole area. Not that it was said as such but I can imagine that
back in the bad old days, like the 1970's or 80's these piles of waste were still a
relatively new phenomenon, on that scale anyway, and waste was just literally
dumped in old clay pits, quarries and gravel holes. Just dump the whole lot into a
huge whole in the ground, cap it off with clay and leave it to leach toxic chemicals
into the ground water and methane into the atmosphere for ever after without a
care in the world.

Times are changing and they had just invested £9m in new plant to compost the
separated organic waste. They are now producing literally tonnes of compost on a
three week turn around. Massive blowers fill the composting silos with
thermophillic bacteria, specially bred for the purpose, before sucking them out
again on completion. They struggle to get rid of the compost they generate fast
enough, some of it goes off to Epsom and Ascot racecourses, some to
Wimbledon, to feed the hallowed tennis lawns as well as every park and green
space in the district.

All skip waste is sorted and anything recyclable extracted, firstly by machine,
finally by hand. So really all that is left for landfill is building waste, sorted skip
waste and all those black bags. Waste management is changing fast and reflects
the accelerating paradigm shift, bringing us ever closer to the realisation that
there really is no such thing as waste.. only unutilised resources.
The paradox, the site is actually quite beautiful at night, once the engines and
dust have subsided. I started to feel differently about it all, its actually not all bad
or out of control, its very carefully managed. The foxes, badgers, the millions of
birds, the nesting geese seem to like it anyway - nature is very adaptable and
never lets an opportunity go begging. When we so readily endorse developing
brown field sites by preference we overlook the fact that actually many of the
brownfield sites sustain much more biodiversity then the green belt does. Part of
the Croydon dump has even been designated SSSI, due to the bird life there. Its
unexpected in so many ways.

As for the show, truth is the weather was too nice for the first two weeks so the
pressure wasn't on, with quite a lot of sun bathing, preening and bickering and
other BB type behaviour and not enough creative, lets all build a new eco
paradise thing going on. It took a long while to build any consensus in the group
and there was a distinct lack of hard skills. Especially when the carpenter walked
on the 2nd day, claiming it wasn't challenging enough and he didn't care about the
environment anyway and he was off Vegas for a holiday instead – just to prove
how much he didn't care.

But they got there is the end, an ever expanding residence, with veranda and
summer house, an evolving range of stoves and ovens, they charged cell phones
with bicycle generators, rented in a wind turbine from scrap they sold from the
dump and generally got their act together. Tasks were structured in way to
introduce key facts about waste in the UK in 2007, and to confront the
contestants with that in a tangible way. Like actually giving them in 3 huge family
size suitcases the 1000 mobile phones we throw away every half an hour in this
country, and then telling them one of them has a £10 sim card so they can call
home.

It was a deliberate ploy to confront the public with what it wastes. It had a big
impact on the contestants –with only the one walking and the remaining 10 all
left saying they would be disappointed with them selves if they didn't make
personal changes as a result. I hope it had a similar impact on its audience.
I shall end this with a quote form Milan Kundera who somewhere said that the
definition of 'kitsch' is the philosophical denial of the existence of sh*t. And we
live in a kitsch society. We want to pretend it doesn't exist. Well Milan to add to
your definition, let me offer you a definition of the S word, its an unutilized
resource and polite or not polite to say it.. Judging by what I witnessed in
Croydon we need to get or unutilised resources together sometime very soon!

Some landfill stats..
Our landfill site are rapidly filling up, yet we remain one of Europe's worst
recyclers. Our target for recycling by 2012 of 50% is lower than what some EU
nations are currently achieving, Germany 50%, Belgium 75%.
This one is my favourite stat, (favourite?) . We in the Uk landfill 3 Billion
disposable nappies a year.. that will take up to 500 years to biodegrade

Links: http://www.channel4.com/green.

here's a quote from yesterday papers from Tony Juniper - said in response the the Tories latest green policy statements.. I couldn't agree more with what it says...

"The green agenda is often wrongly interpreted as being mainly negative, about having less and paying more. However, lower congestion, reduced pollution, stronger communities, warmer homes, lower bills, healthier food and more durable products could all be part of a low carbon and more resource-efficient future. We could put in place the investment and markets to create new enterprise based on cutting-edge environmental technologies. Equipping the world with the means to protect resources and ecosystems while cutting pollution is perhaps the biggest business opportunity in history, and we should be making moves to be a big part of it. Sadly, however, no mainstream politician has yet seized this obvious territory."