Tiny Rant!

Today was the start of the G8 submit being held in Italy. And on the agenda today was global warming. 100 Greenpeace activists from 15 countries occupied four coal-fired power stations across the country, demanding decisive leadership on climate change. In America more activists climbed Mount Rushmore challenging Obama to be a Leader on global warming not a politician.

And closer to home, while our leaders discussed the worlds fait. Other individuals concerned themselves with more important matters like, who has a right to start their own forum about cats! I mean for crying out loud people. Does it really matter? I guess you could say it matters enough for me to be blogging about it. But that is only because I am completely exasperated with the small mindedness and petty stupidity of some people. I mean come on. There are much more important things to fight about. How about world poverty or, simple pleasures, like the right to free speech. All these things that here in the west we take for granted. So much so that our days can be consumed by such pathetic issues like who’s set up a new forum. And just think if we only got as worked up about global warming as we do over the petty things in life, how much more we could achieve.

Who would have thought it (certainly not me!)

When we we left the protest and the rally yesterday, we stopped off at a restaurant for dinner. We used to live in Kent, for many years, so it was a real pleasure to meet some old friends, who we hadn't seen for years. Oddly enough, they have moved away too, so to suddenly meet them like that, was doubly pleasurable. They asked, of course, how we all were and what was going on in our lives. Well, where do you start? Because, so much has happened in the past seven months, it is hard to know where to start, in truth. And all of it, everything is down to Jacqueline. I read this blog from the beginning, today and as Jacqueline says, in the introduction to it, who could have foreseen that a simple little decision to become a vegetarian, would have had such an impact on our lives? It is like ripples on a pond and I can honestly say that life in general, has never been so much fun and having new experiences is fantastic, we are all learning loads and life is very, very exciting, these days! Thank you, Jacqueline. Thank you.

Doing The Miliband

Both Ray and I joined Jacqueline on the protest yesterday, at Kingsnorth and it was a really good day. In my youth, I cared about stuff, was a member of CND and did my wee bit to try and change things for the better. But yesterday set me to thinking. When did I stop caring? Life got in the way, I guess and bringing up children, putting food on the table and a roof over our heads became more important to me. Not any more. How can we, as a nation, commit to reducing carbon emissions, for instance, then go and build a brand new plant, which is going to belch filth into the atmosphere? Seems crazy to me (and presumably to the other thousand or so folk who were there yesterday too!) And it surprised me just how normal we all were. OK, there were one or two rather obvious professional protestors, but the majority were just like us. Normal, ordinary people of all ages, colours, shape and size, who just care about the environment and the legacy we are leaving our descendents. Like Jacqueline, it will not be the last protest that I will be going on.

Mili-Band Kingsnorth

Today we all went down to the E-on power station in Kingsnorth to protest about the new coal-fired power plant.

It seems insane to me that whilst the government is, quiet rightly, calling the west to a greater commitment to reduce climate change. That they then agree the go ahead for a dirty coal burning power station. If we are going to preach to the rest of the world we need to put our carbon free foot print where are mouth is.

So today we joined around a thousand other like minded people to march on Kingsnorth to form a human band around it in honour of Mr Ed Miliband to say no to coal. If the goverment is going to be agreeing to a new power station it should be wind powered.

It was the first protest I've ever been on and I'm telling you know it won't be the last. The overwhelming feeling of achieving something today was good. As Mum says it might not achieve anything. They may still go ahead, but if nothing changes and when it's too late to turn back the clock. I don't want to wishing I hadn't actually at least tried to do something when we did have the chance.