Surviving A Fuel Strike

Driving smarter can greatly reduce your fuel use, saves money and reduces your carbon footprint. Faced with a fuel strike it will also help you last longer between top ups.

For someone spending roughly £50 a week on fuel, an equivalent 20% efficiency increase would save around £500 a year. So how much was your pay rise this year?

It is possible to drive the same distance in the same time, yet use considerably less fuel, chopping up to 30% OFF your fuel costs without cutting your top speed. It's simply about driving more smoothly to boost your fuel efficiency. Driving smoothly will also significantly cut your CO2 emissions.

·         Accelerate gradually without over-revving.

Speed up smoothly. When you press harder on the pedal more fuel flows, but you could get to the same speed using much less power. A good rule is to stay under 3,000 revs.

·         Drive in the correct gear.

Always drive in the highest gear possible without labouring the engine.

·         Slow naturally.

Rather than brake all the time, let your car slow naturally and use its stored momentum.

·         Think about your road position.

To do all this takes road awareness. The more alert you are, the better you can plan ahead and move gradually. Keep an eye on brake lights beyond the first car in front of you and decelerate before you have to apply the brake yourself.

Every time you put your foot on the accelerator, remember the harder you press, the more fuel you are burning. Braking is reducing the momentum that you have just burned fuel to achieve.

Just being conscious of this, and your road position, should massively increase how far you can drive on a tank of petrol. It's estimated someone who averages 35 miles per gallon could reach 40 mpg by driving better.

Generally, the faster you accelerate, the quicker you come to the next stop, and everyone else then catches you up. Fuel consumption shoots up when you travel above 55mph. An increase to 75mph raises fuel consumption by 20%.

If you are at a standstill for more than 30 seconds it is more efficient to turn your engine off and re-start it.

Additional savings can be made by addressing the following:

·         Keep your tyres inflated.

Lower tyre pressure increases the drag on a car, meaning you need more fuel, so regularly check the pressures are correct and your car needs less oomph to keep it moving.

·         De-Clutter your car.

The lighter your car is, the less effort it needs to accelerate. By de-cluttering, clearing out junk from the boot, and not carrying unnecessary weight, you can make extra savings.

·         Take your roof rack off.

A roof rack, even unused, adds massive wind resistance to a car, increasing drag and making the engine work harder. So if you don't need it, take it and anything else that's inefficient off. Even closing the windows will make the car run slightly more efficiently. If you have a bike rack on top you might as well be dragging a small parachute.

·         Don't fill it up.

In an ideal world you would run your tank to a safe minimum and top up regularly in small amounts. Fuel is heavy, so by filling the car up you're adding quite a weight. The less fuel your car has in it, the more efficiently it drives. As your fuel level decreases you get the benefits. Here’s hoping you can outlast the strike.

·         Keep your car tuned regularly.

A poorly tuned engine can use up to 50% more fuel.

And finally, do you need to drive?

Save 100% on your fuel costs by walking or cycling



Tweet your way off marketing lists

Slightly off message, but here we go.....

Tweet your way off marketing lists

As Google gets all the more pervasive & what we put online gets sold to the highest bidder here are some suggestions to tweet/facebook/blog to get you off the marketing lists:

Called to God, joining a silent order.

My power of attorney goes to (email of someone that deserves your spam)

My committal hearing is not going well, I may not be available for a while.

Farewell cruel world.

Won Euromillions, please contact me only via my lawyer .

My penis is too big, I need a reduction.

Doctor gave me three weeks to live, 20 days ago. Not feeling so good.

Didn’t realise that jury nobbling actually added to your sentence. Might be away for a while.

Hacked into Twitter/Google/FaceBook accounts, News of the World thought they had problems!!!!

If anyone else tries to sell something to my dead husband/wife I will accept the product as a gift in their memory.

My brother the dodgy pharmacologist, supplies all my needs.

Please deal direct with my relative Mr V Big, The President, Government Representative, Mucho Money Bank, Abuja, Nigeria. Who has access to all my bank account details.

Sueing Twitter/Google/FaceBook for invasion of privacy is even better than PPI, you didn’t even have to pay the money up-front.

My spam filter finds your ‘freepost’ address and is connected to my waste disposal.

My account automatically replies to spam with a copy of suggested terrorist targets & bomb making diagrams which will bury itself in your hard drive & any portable drives & will then email them to your client list.

I didn’t realise you cared, I’ve been watching you for weeks, I’ll upload my photos of you, might take a while.

Congratulations, you are the 9 billionth person to access these details.  

Please feel free to add.



Climate Change Threat to Oldest Living Organism

Ancient patches of a giant seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea are now considered to be the oldest living organism on Earth after scientists dated them at up to 200,000 years old.

Australian scientists sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows in an area spanning more than 2,000 miles, from Spain to Cyprus.
The analysis, published in the journal PLos ONE, found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. This is far older than the current known oldest species, a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,000 years old.
Prof Carlos Duarte, from the University of Western Australia, said the seagrass has been able to reach such old age because it can reproduce asexually and generate clones of itself. Organisms that can only reproduce sexually are inevitably lost at each generation, he added.
But Prof Duarte said that while the seagrass is one of the world's most resilient organisms, it has begun to decline due to coastal development and global warming.
"The seagrass in the Mediterranean is already in clear decline due to shoreline construction and declining water quality and this decline has been exacerbated by climate change. As the water warms, the organisms move slowly to higher altitudes. The Mediterranean is locked to the north by the European continent. They cannot move. The outlook is very bad."

So, humans are in danger of destroying an organism that has survived for over 100,000 years with our actions over the past 100 years.

Freeze, Step away from the bin

Another victory for common sense has just been announced.

Long-standing ‘freeze on the day of purchase’ food guidelines are being changed by Sainsbury’s as they relax their rules in a bid to reduce food wastage. The supermarket discovered that 800,000 tonnes of perfectly good food could be saved if a new food labeling system was brought into place.

The new initiative, in conjunction with WRAP, will involve changing food labels advising consumers to freeze food at any point prior to the use-by date, rather than immediately after purchase. The move comes after research by WRAP revealed that 60% of people believe the current reinforced labeling ‘rule’ that food has to be frozen on the day they buy it.

However, only 21% had frozen food that was nearing its use-by date and many admitting that they throw food away when it approaches the use-by date because they weren’t aware whether it was safe to freeze it.

"The 'freeze on day of purchase' advice needs to be changed as there is no food safety reason why it cannot be frozen at any point prior to the use by date," Beth Hart, Sainsbury’s head of product, said in a statement.

Food experts are hoping that this initiative could save up to £2bn worth of good food every year.
What the advice should read is that you can freeze the item (if suitable for freezing) up until the use by date. Then defrost and use immediately.

As one customer pointed out while giving feedback on previous labeling, 'How does the product know which day I purchased it on?'



Taking the Pizza out of the Queen’s Jubilee

I’m sure that there will be a lot of bad taste trying to cash in on the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee but M&S have already lowered the bar significantly. As part of a range of products to celebrate the occasion with a Best of British theme they are launching ‘The Great British Breakfast Pizza.’

Apart from being as British & authentic as Chicken Tikka Masala, pizza must be one of the most abused foodstuffs on the planet. Just because it is conveniently shaped to have all manner of ingredients heaped upon it does not mean doing so at a whim is a good idea.

My ideal pizza has a light crispy base with a few, distinct ingredients on top. As the ingredients become more complicated and heavier the base has to become more robust and stodgier to hold up. The resultant ‘brick’ loses all appeal unless you are someone who is looking to consume the highest number of calories in a sitting. If that is what you are after then why not just go the Scottish route and deep fry the thing.

Jamie Oliver is a prime offender with his Union Jack’s restaurant where wood fired flatbreads meet great Britsh flavours -Fish Pie Pizza anyone?

Other countries have also added their own slant to the classic Italian dish:

·         India - pickled ginger, minced mutton, and paneer

·         Russia - mockba (a combination of sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon, and onions),

·         Brazil - green peas

·         Australia - shrimp, pineapple, barbecue sauce

·         Japan - eel, squid, and Mayo Jaga (mayonnaise with potato & bacon)

Widely available already in Britain are pizzas with Chinese, Mexican and Indian toppings but Iceland’s (the chain, not the country) Donner Kebab pizza cannot be aimed at either a sane or sober audience.

Finally, back to the M&S tribute to her Majesty. The icing on the cake, as it were, must be the sachet of brown sauce that comes with it.



Does Vertical Farming Stack Up?

Since 1970 population growth has halved the amount of arable land per person to half an acre. By 2050 there will be an extra 3 billion people on the planet. Just providing their drinking water will reduce what is available for agriculture by 18%. Soil based farming will no longer be sustainable.

The future may well look something like the pilot project run by Valcent Products at Paignton Zoo. The farm  grows red chard, mizuna, mixed leaves, and a variety of herbs as well as edible flowers and fodder crops such as wheat grass and barley. Currently the farm imports a wide variety of veggies for their animal feed, so this provides a local, sustainable alternative for the zoo's residents. (click here for video)

The ‘farm’ requires just 5% of the water for field crops, produces 20 times the yield per acre, and can be built almost anywhere.

The growing operation works on a conveyor system, with automated loading of plant trays for harvesting and replanting. The whole set up has been designed for minimum maintenance, with computerized controls to regulate irrigation and water supply and the environment within the polytunnel. Valcent claim the farm will require one staff member working approximately two hours a day to keep it running, and could cut the zoo's feed bill by as much as £100,000.

Another benefit of this system is the fact that it can produce food very close to where it will be consumed. This means that food miles are minimised, that the food is fresher and loss through damage & spoilage during transport will be cut out. Better still, the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can be kept to a bare minimum by growing plants indoors in a controlled environment. Soil erosion will not be a problem because the food will be grown hydroponically, recycling techniques will ensure that only a fraction of the amount of water and nutrients will be needed compared with conventional farming, and there will no problem with agricultural run-off.

Initially it is predicted that units with large catering operations like hospitals will all have their own vertical farm and supermarkets may well take up the idea if it is commercially (& politically) a success. Then, according to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So it makes sense to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.

As technology progresses, skyscrapers with different floors of fruit and vegetables will be common place with a shop on the ground floor and crops harvested to order. Our current practice of shipping produce around the country (if not the World,) growing crop varieties for their longevity when picked rather than their taste & vitamin content, and washing & coating them in chemicals may one day seem totally bizarre.



Dig For Victory - Part 1



A bit of home gardening is an ideal way to reduce your food carbon footprint.

Any produce that you grow at home will save on transport. Then, if it goes straight from garden to plate you are cutting out packaging and storage.

If you are composting your kitchen and garden waste then you are definitely on to a winner. Even if your council provides a recycling service for this waste you are cutting down on the fuel required to transport it to the recycling facility.

If you have a large garden and plenty of spare time then it is relatively easy to grow your own vegetables and fruit. In reality, you can get started even with a window box.

The following list will fit into window boxes, pots, grow bags, containers or in the garden and require just 1.5 m². It’s amazing how much food you can harvest from such a small space.

Dwarf French Green Beans x 3, Mixed lettuces x 10, Rocket x 10, Mizuna x 10, Spinach x 10, Golden Streak mustard x 10, Spring Onions x 10, Beetroot x 10, Basil x 1 pot, Parsley x 1 pot, Chives x 1 pot



Recycling your food waste need not take too much space either. Wormeries are ideal for compact areas.

-          Worms can eat and digest up to half their own body weight each day.

-          The casts they produce contain top quality compost and a concentrated liquid feed.

-          Ideal for those with a small outdoor/garden space or for those looking for an alternative to a compost bin.

-          Can provide a useful backup for those who want small quantities of very rich compost

Worms are not too fussy and will happily munch on items that might otherwise go into landfill:

waste from vegetable juicers ,  soaked and ripped pizza boxes, paper, tissues, dirt , leaves , hair, cardboard fast food packaging, egg shells, potato peelings , apple cores & pea pods.