Watching Boris Johnson on BBC1 last night was an exercise in frustration. As usual he waffles on ??? using highfalutting, fancy words most people don’t even understand (I love a good fancy word myself; but time and place Boris!!) We all know you have a preppy education, have written books, and use words no-one has used since Shakespeare died…..now is not the time to show off.
So instead of saying “I am putting the UK on lockdown for 3 weeks with immediate effect”, he scurries about scrambling for placating words; words he strings together in long rambling sentences that by the time he ends it, we’re no wiser and have lost track of the message….. meanwhile his eyes and hands betraying his uncertainty. Talk about clenched. 👊👊
Is he trying to protect his city buddies investments? Just say “lockdown” ffs. You’re not dealing with reasonable people (on the whole). The number of people who are flouting the recommendations and still making unnecessary trips are thick, they need their heads banged together….use strong, solid, forceful words that get the message across. 💪💪💪
As for Michael Gove….can someone sew up his lips for the duration and ban him from speaking on TV…what a tosser. Seriously. 🛎🛎🛎🔔🔚
I was so impressed with the action taken by the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa….a short, concise, clear message “….decided to enforce a nationwide lockdown for 21 days with effect from midnight on Thursday”. Boom!!💣💥💣💥 end of. 🚷🚷🚷🚷🚷🚷 We’re on 🔐⬇️ “…a decisive measure to save lives”. ergo…stay at home.
We are living in uncertain times, Covid-19 is an unprecedented issue and if we don’t get our act together, we are going to be culpable for the deaths of any number of people…. people you may not even know, but they’re loved by someone else, but your selfish actions have caused their untimely death.
I messaged my daughter yesterday to say that even if I do finish this current job in 2 weeks time, I am not going to visit them at their home. Anyone who knows me, would know how terribly hard that will be for me to do….but I do not want to inadvertently infect the people most precious to me…my beloved daughter, my cherished grandson and my lovely son-in-law.
Instead we’re going to do video messaging and keep in touch on WhatsApp with lots of photos.
Be safe folks, please follow government guidelines and let’s beat this bastard virus
I’m not someone who panics easily. I tend to be calm and logical in the face of adversity and hold my meltdown for the after party…..LOL
Whether panic is needed seems to depend on those who seed it …~Na’ama Yehuda
But I must admit to having gone from “bloody Chinese eating wild animals and treating those and other animals in a most appalling way – the animals have risen and are taking revenge” a couple of months ago, to the faint stirrings of unease, and concern at how fast this virus has spread and how vicious it is.
I’m guessing that none of us expected this virus to jump borders and spread so rapidly, taking down swathes of people and leaving fear and despair in its wake.
But suddenly we’re in the midst of a pandemic that the authorities seem unable to contain. And so the infected numbers and deaths mount up. Every day now the figures go up in the hundreds rather than the occasional report of one or two.
For obvious reasons this has brought about a sense of panic and the possibility of a lockdown is causing irrational behaviour.
I know that I for one have started to feel somewhat stressed….mainly for my little family; my daughter, son-in-law and my cherished grandson.
While we were away in Devon last week the first reports of panic buying started to filter through. I said to my daughter that as soon as we get back we must go shopping. Well that turned out to be a bit of a fright since the shelves were practically bare of essentials and necessities…..panic buying was in full swing.
However, we calmly walked along the aisles and bought whatever we could find, particularly things that can be used in soups and stews. Baby food was high on the list of essentials and nappies. We bought as much by way of prepared food as we could without emptying the shelves.
Since then I have raided my tax savings and on a daily basis I buy a small quantity of whatever I can find focusing on dry goods and tins where there’s availability.
We went shopping at Tesco’s a few days ago and the shock of the empty shelves was so overwhelming for my daughter that she had a meltdown in the store. Like she said, she has a baby to consider, and besides that her levels of empathy for older people wandering about looking for something they could buy was just too much.
I’m due to leave tomorrow morning for my next job…in the depths of Somerset, a 4.5 hour journey on 2 trains and the tube, and frankly I have no idea what will happen in the next few weeks. Will I contract the virus? Will my elderly client? How long will I be stuck there? If I do get ill basically I have no home to return to for either recovery or self-isolation.
Of course I wouldn’t want to return to my daughter’s home because I may well end up infecting them, and it begs the question….when my assignment is completed in 2 weeks time, should I even have any physical contact with them at all? And what of my accommodation? It’s on a very tenuous basis anyway. I rent a tiny room on an adhoc basis in a shared house. I have no lease and no guarantee that the landlady who currently rents out the room would even allow me to return to the property if I need to self-isolate.
Besides that, I have no food where I stay between jobs. I can’t store stuff there because not only have the permanent residents recently helped themselves to some of my fridge stuff, but where would I keep it….its not a permanent place of residence with a secure place to store anything? And even if she agrees to let me stay there, I wouldn’t be able to prepare anything in the shared kitchen if I was ill as it may affect the other residents.
So even though I don’t normally panic, I do confess to feeling rather uneasy and uncertain. I can only hope that the person I’m going to care for over the next couple of weeks doesn’t turn out to be a nightmare, and if I’m required to extend my stay due to a lockdown, that we’ll have sufficient food to see us through.
The other aspect is the worry I have for my family….will they have sufficient food for an extended period if there’s a lockdown? Will they be safe from the virus? Will I be able to return to help out if they happen to get ill? I have urged my daughter to be very conservative with her food and to not waste anything….I can only hope that they do.
My grandson is right in the middle of weaning and I worry that she will not have enough food to cope with his requirements. A lot of food already goes to waste when he plays with the food instead of eating it and it ends up on the floor and subsequently into the trash.
So while I am not normally given to panicking, I do admit that I’m beginning to feel incredibly stressed and worried, especially if there is a lockdown and all that that implies.
The Brexit campaign promised that Britain could survive and thrive without the EU, that we could manufacture and produce what we needed.
Now that the coronavirus has raised its ugly head, suddenly supplies from chin are starting to dry up.
What now then Brexiteers? Will our Brexit PM encourage and provide the means for British manufacturing to kick in and start making items that we import from China?
As part of my ongoing pledge to do better by this world and help save the planet, leaving it in as much a decent condition as is possible for future generations, I’ve taken the XR52 (extinction rebellion) pledge to not buy any new clothes for the next 52 weeks. The programme actually started on 30th April 2019, but since I’ve been working over this last 2 weeks, I’ve not bought anything anyway.
Not that I’m either a follower of ‘fast fashion’ or a prolific clothes buyer, my last purchase was a light top for summer on 8th March 2019 LOL- so no fear of me being a follower of fashion…..I usually have to be dragged off to the store kicking and screaming. I simply can’t be bothered. For me clothes are merely a way of covering my body, avoiding arrest for indecent exposure and keeping warm. Buying clothes is tedious in the extreme and I can’t be bothered with looking through a rack of items that for one reason or another do not excite me much, usually don’t fit for one reason or another, whilst looking at myself naked in front of a full length mirror is not for the faint-hearted LOL
Prior to March, the last time I bought anything was in December 2018 when I took a pair of harem pants and slippers off my daughter…she had bought them but they didn’t fit comfortably, so rather than her ditching or giving them away, I bought them from her. Besides these few items, the last major purchase I made was in March 2018 when I bought an outfit for their May wedding. I’m still wearing shoes (very seldom I might add since they have heels) I bought about 15 years ago. They’re almost brand new as I only wear them about once every 3 years.
My only major purchases are trainers and hiking pants. I go through a pair of trainers every 1500miles or so and my hiking pants were bought in 2016 when I started training for the Camino in 2017.
So, am I a follower of ‘fast fashion’? I think the answer to that is obvious 😉 When I do buy any leisure clothes they are invariably from a charity shop and when I’m done with them, I return it to a charity shop.
Nothing goes in the bin except my underwear and socks, and usually only when I have worn them through. However, going forward, I’m going to see how I can recycle those items as well.
If you’re not familiar with extinction rebellion, they are a protest movement that recently brought London to a standstill and upset a few commuters and of course the government (no bad thing that). Ironically, the Government had just declared a ‘climate emergency’ but nonetheless, they were seriously pissed at the protesters. Many of the people who were ‘inconvenienced’ by the protests are likely people from 1 of 2 camps: 1. people who are trying to make changes by reducing their plastic waste and being active in reducing their carbon footprint, and supported the protests, despite being inconvenienced. 2. people who don’t give a shit so long as they can continue to buy their pretentious takeaway Starbucks latte and their Evian pure spring water, and really couldn’t care less one way or the other about the state of the planet. Now before you breathe flames, I have no doubt that a lot of people were inconvenienced going to work or business meetings or whatever it is that people get up to daily, but consider this…..
We are in a dire situation. The latest UN report is the stuff of nightmares…..100 million species are on the brink of extinction!!! This is besides the thousands, if not millions of species already extinct due to mankind’s exploitation of the planet and her resources. The Amazon forest is reduced by 50 football pitches every SECOND!!! Not year, month, week or day…but SECONDS. Read that again… Seconds!!! The Amazon, along with other forests in places like Indonesia are the planet’s lungs, and we are destroying it by the second!! Billions of trees are razed to the ground for agriculture, for feed for beef, for palm oil plantations (and don’t even get me started on that).
Extract from the report : “PARIS, 6 May – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was approved at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary, meeting last week (29 April – 4 May) in Paris.” you can read the full report here. The last mass extinction was 66 million years ago. fck sakes. It’s insane. This folks, is happening on OUR watch.
It’s terrifying and if anyone is not afraid, then they have not been paying attention.
So back to ‘fast fashion’ and my XR52 pledge. For me it’s an easy one. I have a grandson now whose future is of vital importance to me. This pledge is just another cog in my determination to make a difference and reduce my impact on the planet and her ecosystems. I signed a pledge to never use plastic straws again in 2016. I’ve persuaded our chippy to change to a more sustainable container for take-aways. I persuaded a local restaurant to ditch plastic straws. I litter pick as often as possible when I’m home. It’s tiring, it’s hard and I incur a fair amount of abuse. But, and it’s a HUGE but, I have to try and make a difference for my grandson’s future.
If you’d like to learn more about extinction rebellion, you can read more here
Join me, come on board the XR52 campaign and reduce your impact on the planet.
Oh and if you were wondering about the impact that fast fashion has on the planet, then I can recommend that you watch the Stacey Dooley documentary. It’s is quite frankly just shocking and terrifying. “A sea half the size of England has dried up because of the horrific impact of fast fashion.”
If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it here.
The garment industry is the 2nd largest polluter in the world, whilst the UK, Europe and the US are the largest consumers of ‘fast’ fashion. These days clothing chains bring out a new ‘range’ every week. I remember when I was young/er the fashion industry had ‘seasons’. You waited a full 3 months for the next season. The clothes were invariably well made, stood the test of time and didn’t choke landfill and end up in the ocean by way of plastic micro-fibres. Lots of people think that donating the items made today; threadbare, badly made, last a few weeks (if you’re lucky) to charity is a good idea…well it’s not. The charities are beginning to have to dump tons of old clothes because they are not fit for purpose and because they have too much. Africa is fed up with our cast-offs and some countries are beginning to reject the charitable donations made by the west in favour of encouraging home-grown, local businesses to produce cultural and traditional garments. Bravo to them.
I could go on and on about the terrible impact the ‘fashion’ industry is having on the planet, the animals that live on it, our water systems, and people’s lives, but……
Seriously? Look at how they’re making the plastic problem the consumers responsibility again!! 😤😤😤
Making the consumer re-think how we use plastic?? Ffs. Think about how to not keep PRODUCING plastic!! “Many companies, including Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola and Asda, trade associations and campaigners have joined forces with the government to form the UK Plastics Pact. It’s aimed at making people re-think the way they use plastic and its dangerous impact on the environment if it’s not disposed of properly and recycled”.
There is no away!!! There is no way of disposing of plastic. It takes centuries to break down…and even then it doesn’t just ‘disappear’, it just morphs into microplastics, of which we are now eating a portion in our food and water.
This article is an advertising plug for solent plastics, however the information it contains (up until the advertising bit) is useful, albeit mostly old news.
“Statistics show each person in the UK creates an average of around 76kg, or 167lbs, of plastic waste per year. This compares with US citizens who produce around 120kg of plastic waste per person per year.”
Why is the UK Government making it about the CONSUMER once again. We are always being blamed for the mess. But we are FORCED to buy our products in plastic and in 95% of cases have NO OPTION but to buy something we need DESPITE it being encased in plastic.
We’re told to recycle! Okay fine, except that every bloody council in the country has their own rules, and many are breaking the law!! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45911794 >
Besides that no-one has YET EDUCATED the citizens of the UK how to recycle properly. I travel a lot in the UK due to the nature of my job. Every single place I go to has a different set of rules for recycling, and for what the council will or will not accept. Most of the people I work for are elderly and have NO IDEA how to recycle properly, what impact their incorrect recycling has on every load, and what can or cannot be recycled. I’ve worked for people who recycle their tissues, or soiled serviettes…because it’s paper!!! And paper is recyclable right?
Yes there are numbskulls who refuse to recycle, who chuck their trash any which where they please because they are as thick as the proverbial brick, people who dump stuff in the streets, parks, rivers, mountainsides etc etc but those are the minimum. The vast quantity of plastic, especially single-use plastic, is used in the home….
It doesn’t surprise me in the LEAST that companies like Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble are involved….what they want to do is make it OUR FAULT with the Government’s full support and make it about us being FECKLESS citizens and not recycling properly. The REAL ISSUE IS THEM!! They are the ones producing the plastic, they are the ones who are packaging their products in this pernicious shit in the first place, after that the SUPERMARKETS are not taking any responsibility because they then sell these products to us the consumer who then gets BLAMED for the plastic pollution, while they shrug their shoulders and continue to make obscene profits.
THE ONLY BLAME LIES FAIR AND SQUARE AT THE FEET OF THE PRODUCERS OF PLASTIC, THE CORPORATIONS AND COMPANIES THAT MAKE THE PLASTIC PRODUCTS AND THE COMPANIES THAT SELL IT ON TO THE CONSUMER WHO HAS NO OPTION BUT TO BUY THEIR FOOD AND NECESSITIES IN PLASTIC.
The UK Government are complicit in the waste issue and of course we know just why they are teamed up with these plastic waste criminals, it’s because they’re getting MONEY from them. It enables the corporations to continue producing plastic without recourse. It’s called CORRUPTION. End of. Stop producing the stuff. There are OTHER OPTIONS. Support the companies that are making packaging using other methods rather than PETROLEUM PLASTIC. Only when our governments, corporations, big businesses, manufacturers and suppliers/sellers stop being bribed by money and start employing some ethics in business will this plastic issue start being resolved. Now, if the government fined these corporations for the plastic they continue to produce, then they’ll start making the necessary changes.
AS I said in a previous article: Rwanda, Mauritania and Morocco all have bans in place and it’s worth noting that there is no such ban enforced in the UK, US or China, all of which have highly developed plastics industries; producing and exporting plastic bags across the globe – ergo we in the developed countries ARE TO BLAME!! It’s all about making money, the bottom line and obscene profits, and the manufacturers have no interest in the fact that it’s killing the planet.
But, hey….easy way out….keep producing plastic and blame the resulting pollution on the consumers/population.
Recycling has been the go to opt out for us to assuage our guilt over our wasteful throw-away lifestyle. For years now, we have been fed, and accepted the lie that recycling is the socially acceptable way to dispose of our trash.
In reality our trash has been shipped to other countries like China (until they put a stop to buying it in January 2018) and now apparently its being shipped to Indonesia. This has allowed us in the West to gaily make it ‘someone else’s problem’.
But in reality, unless we are living on a different planet to the Chinese or any other country you care to mention, our oceans are interconnected – Trump hasn’t yet managed to build a wall between the oceans. This means that our trash travels. It may start off in your household recycling box, but from there it travels…across the world (why?) = huge carbon footprint – one negates the other. It gets stripped down and besides polluting the soils and water systems in those countries, it gets dumped into rivers and makes it’s way to the sea….and thus into the world’s oceans.
As we now know, fish are eating this plastic…we’re eating the fish and voila…..now it’s catching up with us. Scientists have discovered plastic in our poop. Nice one.
We in the west have been exceptionally lazy about sorting out our own trash. We are wasteful and have trashed this world even more than the developing countries we love to blame. African countries were only introduced to our plastic production in the last couple of decades. Unlike us, some many African countries (you know, those 3rd world ‘less than’ countries that white people in the West are so disdainful of!?) are way ahead of us in taking action against plastic.
Kenya placed a total ban on the manufacture, sale or use of plastic bags on 28 August 2017. This became law and has been enforced with remarkable effectiveness.
“Plastics are being replaced with natural materials and there has been growth in small-scale bag making, creating jobs”
“More than 40 countries have now joined UNEA’s #CleanSeas campaign, which covers more than half the world’s coastlines. The threat is very real. If nothing is done the oceans will have more plastic than fish by 2050, according to leading environmentalists”.
Rwanda, Mauritania and Morocco all have bans in place and it’s worth noting that there is no such ban enforced in the UK, US or China, all of which have highly developed plastics industries; producing and exporting plastic bags across the globe – ergo we in the developed countries ARE TO BLAME!! It’s all about making money, the bottom line and obscene profits, and the manufacturers have no interest in the fact that it’s killing the planet.
After watching the Fashions Dirty Secrets documentary last week, my attitude to our wasteful lifestyle has intensified exponentially. I don’t want my grandchild growing up in a world that is polluted by plastic and toxic lakes, rivers, seas and oceans. I’m hoping there will still be fresh water available to this child in the future.
In this child’s name I am now naming and shaming:
TESCO
Iceland
Iceland
Iceland
Sainsburys
Sainsburys
Sainsburys
Sainsburys
All of these products are wrapped in totally unnecessary and pointless plastic. These companies are also forcing their customers to buy in bulk; much of which ends up in the trash…”In the UK alone, 8.4m people in the UK struggle to afford a meal, according to the UN’s FAO – despite the UK wasting billions through food waste every year, according to food waste charity WRAP.”
“Unsurprisingly, the proportion of food waste is highest in western countries, while developing countries are more likely to suffer from food loss.”
We have to face up to our waste and make some drastic changes if we are to preserve the sanctity of life on this planet.
If you haven’t seen the documentary on BBC yet, then read this to see how growing cotton for our clothes has dried up a sea and changed the climate of a country its horrendous. In the UK, 300,000 tonnes of clothes are dumped in landfill each year.
This is a very timely and useful article. It definitely pertains to me in that climate change and the effect that plastic is having on the oceans has been causing extreme anxiety, especially since I learned that my daughter is expecting a baby…her first child; my first grandchild. Since her and her husband announced the baby’s pending arrival, my stress levels have gone up quite a lot #understatement
I’m doing as much as I can to negate my impact on the climate, but as they say in the article, individually we can only do so much. But if our governments are not taking responsibility or massive action then that in itself will cause more stress, and I can well imagine the scientists must be under extreme stress. Just the very fact that the UK government has allowed fracking to go ahead tells us the story of their interest in their citizens and community. Of course we know that they’re going to make money off it, and not necessarily for the public purse… #justsaying
There are people who will continue to deny it…. “It’s the people who don’t seem bothered by environmental crisis who need therapy the most, to figure out why they are so numb and in denial,’ he tells us.”
The article suggests joining local community based groups who are also environmental activists in order to keep sane. I have already joined a number of community groups on instagram and Facebook and its encouraging to see how much they are doing, it keeps me focused, as well as which I do what I can. But quite honestly, it does keep me awake at night 🌃
Converting to veganism – an ongoing process and I do fall down occasionally when it comes to dairy products, although I have now finally converted to soya milk in my tea. 🙂
Saying no to plastic straws – I took a pledge nearly 2 years ago to never again use a plastic straw and I haven’t. Someone at a local coffee shop put a plastic straw in an avocado drink I was having and as my daughter said to the waitron “take it away before she goes into meltdown”. LOL
Saying no to plastic water bottles – I stopped this a long time ago. It’s bloody ridiculous to sell us water in plastic bottles that take thousands of litres to produce. We have tap water. We live in a 1st word country. We don’t draw water from an infected well. fck!! This is the one thing above all else that irks me the most.
Buying products in glass where available, even if its more expensive.
Buying products in cardboard where possible.
Not buying for fashion, but rather as I need it. Have you seen Stacey Dooley’s documentaries about the fashion industry?
Conserving water 💦 and being mindful of my usage.
Changes made by others due to my persistent requests:
Our local milkshake bar changed from plastic straws to biodegradable.
Our local chip shop changed from polystyrene boxes to compostable.
As individuals there is so much we can do, without experiencing overwhelm. I love the #2minutecleanup campaign on instagram
I share the devastating images of dead seabirds and other sea creatures from @balloonsblow in facebook
I am constantly alert as to what more I can do to make a difference and reduce my carbon footprint, and mindful of what I buy and why I buy it.
I try and set an example by modifying my behaviour
I try to share information for others to be aware of the catastrophic effects our throw-away plastic lifestyle is having on the planet.
I realise that we can’t live a life completely without plastic in the immediate future, but we can drastically reduce our consumption of the product by avoiding it wherever possible. – I used the word consumption, because as you know, microscopic plastic fibres are now in our water supply and our food chain….even in salt.
Regards going vegan, I get mocked by family members who feel comfortable with sending me what they see as humorous images of what is tantamount to cruelty to animals. Friends come up with the old bullshit of vegetables having feelings too and how they feel pain. That is throwback to when people who were going vegan were regarded as nutters or veganism was considered a fad. Its not. Try watching ‘What The Health’ on Netflix then come talk to me again.
The biggest impact you can have on saving this planet for future generations is to cut back on plastic, stop buying bottled water and if you can’t become vegan, at least try being vegetarian or flexitarian.
Our local coffee machine at the station; Andy of the Red Bean Machine has gone ‘green’ 👏👏👏👏💚💚♻️♻️♻️♻️♻️ He’s now using fully biodegradable cups and lids made from starch, making them compostable. I’m well impressed at these small independent coffee shops/vans making a difference NOW and not PHASING it out by whatever date the large corporations and our governments come up with as a pathetic excuse to try impress us. THIS is impressive, time ⌚ for the big coffee chains to step up and BE THE CHANGE we want to see. There is no longer any excuse, alternatives to PLASTIC are available @starbucks @costacoffee @caffenero @pretamangeruk etc etc #bansingleuseplastic #nomoresingleuseplastic #nomoreplastic #bethechange #saveourplanet 🌏🌎🌍 #saveouroceans🌊 #saveourwildlife #stepup #BeLikeAndy #beaplanethero
This is one of the most visually powerful images of the destruction caused by plastic that I have seen to date. Shared via Instagram @balloonsblow and @kayak4kuwait
Not Just a Granny 
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