Comments and views, gardening and recipes, football and lots more
With it getting a bit chilly I. am thinking these could be on the menu later in the week. Recipe for cinnamon rolls here. Cinnamon is a definite winter spice.
Just made pizza with a bit of homemade chilli sauce and portobello mushrooms. And thinking about what to bake later this week.
First off some facts. Almost 50%of our electricity needs were met by wind power in the. early months of this year. With fast falling costs wind power does not need or get any subsidies. renewable energy contributed £46 billion turnover to the economy. The UK really is the world leader in wind generation and it could treble in then next decade.
Which is just as well as we phase out fossil fuels completely! It would seem sensible to lift the total ban on onshore wind farms, although nobody wants to see the industrialisation of rural landscapes. Future expansion will need to be co-ordinated carefully. Surplus electricity can be used to manufacture hydrogen for use on short haul train routes and buses. Battery capacity will increase.
Our many deep mines could use their mine shafts to raise heavy weights which could then generate electricity when needed by allowing them to fall generating electricity. For many year I have thought the same thing could happen in peoples homes with the unused chimneys. Unfortunately I doubt the chimney in my bungalow is high enough. (Martin will verify that I suggested this a few years ago whilst pondering what to do with a mostly redundant chimney?
Like everything else we need to move away from centralised government to smaller local projects. In Somerset we have the potential for exploiting tidal power – not necessarily with a mega scheme, but with smaller ones as the technology becomes more efficient. And around here we have seen a huge (and I mean huge) project to build new pylons, and an underground cable across the Mendips involving building a new road. Why can’t the pylons have wind turbines on them?
Housing and buildings need to be as efficient as practical, Car journeys reduced as much as possible, and the electric car switchover made as practical as possible by fast development of the infrastructure.
So Bullshit Johnson announces more figures he has dreamed up – and then spoils it my announcing that the figure for investment is £150 million (or about £2 per head, or £15 per household!). Maybe he could start with the 32,770 schools in the UK. If all had solar panels and heat exchange pumps not only would they save many thousands a year, but have a great teaching resource (maths, economics, environment, geography, English, Science, technology, ICT, and more).
Driverless cars – I do not think these will work practically on the open road or in cities – nor are they needed in cities. However road trains (or lorries with computer systems to allow them to follow in each others slip streams would seem sensible.
And finally whilst I am creative mode! Supermarket deliveries. We are informed that supermarkets do not make much from home deliveries. But if they allocated different areas a time slot they could at least co-ordinate deliveries; and people could make what ever necessary decisions to have the deliveries received. Delivery slots could be allocated to Post Code areas. It might not work for all areas, but certainly in the village I can see the potential for a driver to make double or even treble the number of deliveries?
OK that’s all for now!
Round 4 – Definitely a season at sixes and sevens! But first the easy bits! Everton continue unbeaten start with Calvert-Lewin on fire. Fulham, Burnley and WBA look to be struggling, as do SheffieldU, which I find surprising.
The shocks – ManU 6-1 loss at home (will this result in major signings before midnight?). And then Liverpool 7-2 at Villa, and even with their missing players a major shock. Chelsea 4-0 vs Palace shows their potential. And Leicester 0-3 to WHU must also be seen as a shock. And now it is getting fascinating we stop for international breaks (which just proves that those in football administration have very small brains, if at all. Who in their right minds would send players around the world in the middle of a pandemic, for a meaningless tournament?).
Bristol City remain top with Reading and Bournemouth and Swansea not far behind. I would expect Watford to join them. Sunderland – who knows? Gas heads off bottom with a win. Forest Green look set for mid-table.
I am fed up with hearing g apologists for the Lackofgovernment Party stating that this pandemic is unprecedented. It is not. It might be on a world scale unprecedented since 1918-, but is just the latest of many this century. We spend billions every year in case there is a nuclear attack, but dismantled preparations against a pandemic.
I recently bought some avocado and lemon mayo at great expense! But Martin has given me the following recipe clever hyper link to recipe click here. Or have a look at the Waitrose Recipe. So I will try my own version next week.
Just making it now. Tastes great. next time I think I might add a bit of chilli or smoked paprika.
I am fascinated by all things weather and climate related. So I am going to start a monthly weather blog. So see p2 for details of October, which I will update as we go through the month. I thought this might move to top of the list when updated, but it does not. So I will update here, and then repost as a months worth at the start of next month.
I never know what to do with the soil from the tomatoes and cucumbers and chillies in the greenhouse at this time of year. So I have a plan. Mix the soil with wild seeds like yellow rattle and then just spread out onto of the grass – hopefully this will give the seeds enough of a chance to get started and compete with the grass.
Trying to understand the data is difficult. Rate of infection in N.Somerset has halved to 14, Cornwall has also dropped, whilst the national rate goes up. BBC site.
Donald Trump getting covid-19