Yup

I was just thinking (as noted): Why did Gore win the Nobel Peace Prize? and lo another Australian blogger, though not that one, has reflected precisely the same puzzlement. Meanwhile the Committee have stirred up quite a hornets nest here and one particularly flush and well connected sceptic is preparing to flood the nation's schools with not one but two rebuttals of An Inconvenient Truth in film form: one a parody of the original, the other a straight response that is at least as contentious in scientific circles as the original it seeks to undermine.

This comes as the school governor who launched a law suit over the original film has 'sort of' won his case (thanks to a judge who has appeared strikingly sympathetic to the plaintiff in those parts of the judgement I've been fortunate enough to read) and had some part of his costs awarded to him. And this seems like a very partial victory, notwithstanding the chummy judge.

Well it seems there was a 'peace' argument within the case for Gore - by saving the environment we will avert the potential catastrophic consequences of many tens if not hundreds of millions of people more and more agressively seeking to move into parts of the global land mass less deprived and hard to make a living from than those they currently occupy.

So if you buy into us destroying or causing critical damage to our planet then you almost have to buy into Gore being a strong candidate for averting war and conflict which would be an inevitable consequence of large scale desperation driven migration.

Another thing that annoys me, today

The house two doors away was bought by a young woman on the make under a buy-to-lease type arrangement which she probably expected to put her securely on the path to financial security.

By my reckoning the place has been let for no more than six months of the three years she's owned the place and the reason is simple. She bought a dump that had undergone a very superficial smartening up. Beneath the coat of cheap paint there's mould just busting to come through; all because the leaking roof was patched up rather than properly repaired. That's just one reason of many for potential occupants running a mile.

And she can't sell the place without doing major repairs or accepting a pittance for a place in need of those repairs.

She's there occasionally to air the place out, which we now know is forewarning of an visit by a prospective tenant.

This week, on Tuesday as I went to work I saw a bit of a plastic supermarket carrier bag sticking out of the top of my garden waste bin (subsidised, but partly funded by me and provided by the district council on the strict understanding that garden waste and garden waste only will go into it on pain of having the bloody thing taken away without a refund of any proportion the annual rent I've paid in advance).

Needless to say I took the damned thing out. Domestic rubbish of the junk mail and cereal box variety. Happily the junk mail had a house number (incidentally does this dumb bitch known nowt about identity theft?). I left it in the domestic rubbish collection point and there it has sat.

And this morning when I returned from the school run the door of the house in question was open so I knocked. A frightfully, frightfully skinny bint bounded the stairs under the mistaken impression I wanted to make friends.

When I explained in words of very few syllables that she mustn't put her domestic rubbish into MY garden waste bin she came over all 'gosh, frightfully sorry!" and then ruined the whole effect by blaming her 'partner' who she gave me to understand is a bloke and therefore not to be relied upon to do the right thing with anything at all.

What annoyed me? Well this silly cow and I should have nothing in common, should we, but as the last sentence indicates - we do. How bloody annoying is that?

I just had an 'oh' moment

It wasn't an OMG!!!!! moment, it was more elegant, and less extravagant than that. It was a gentle little 'oh, that's quite interesting' moment. The news ticker's carrying word that Al Gore's won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Could someone please remind me which wars and / or conflicts Mr Gore's resolved?

High Court judge says Gore Film is seditious nonesense

Well I'm exaggerating slightly. But schools wishing to screen Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth before an audience of students will have to follow guidance calling for balance when showing the film (which has been distributed to thousands of schools across the country that it might be shown to students).

The High Court judge hearing an action brought by a school governor who believes the film is "politically partisan" and "sentimental" and has been distributed by the government as a way of "brainwashing pupils on global warming" has said in court that the film does indeed promote "partisan political views."

Dangerous stuff then. The full ruling is due next week. Gore might have to give up film making and return to politics, that is if there's any difference.

Recycled subject matter

The rubbish is collected weekly. Pretty commonplace. We're not (yet) one of those parts of the country to endure fortnightly collection. We've only got two receptacles for recyclables. We put newspapers in one, everything else the recycling collection will take in t'other. That means cardboard, tin and glass. On a bad week we take up the box plus another couple of bags of empties. This week it has all gone up in one with room to spare.

That's the trouble with this you see. Don't drink, don't recycle. That's a totally drunk argument. If I don't drink I don't add to demand for glass, so less is produced. And that's probably a better thing, so scrap the 'that's the trouble with this...'

Whoo hoo. [Five whole days.]

The curvature of light

Putting a bit of a twist on the normal course of events we seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to the environmentally critical questions of car usage and low energy light bulbs.

On the one hand we haven't had a car for years. Okay, okay I actually gave up the car because I knew that I was sooner or later going to kill someone (him possibly, both of us probably, potentially one or more innocent by-standers).

On the other hand I converted the house a couple of years ago to low energy light bulbs when our supermarket was offering them on a buy one get one free deal. Cynically I bought enough for every fitting in the dark and then two spares for each. I have no idea how much energy I've saved, how many pennies better off we are or the extent to which the planet is less depleted than in otherwise would have been. But I'm sure what I did wasn't a bad thing.

I haven't yet had to replace one of those light bulbs; they've turned out to be exceedingly good value.

Late August resolutions

For the sake of appearing to be opinionated I've decided to believe very strongly that The Environment should be the Government's Paramount Public Policy Issue. I might believe something completely different or even contradictory tomorrow; you'll just have to come back here to find out (obviously) - as will I.

I've also decided, in a complementary stand, to become ever so slightly pink around the gills in order that that I can hold the view (however briefly) that this Brown-led British government is inadequately interventionist and thereby delinquent.

Now in this adjusted frame of mind I can write to the Prime Minister and inform him that the Government must move as a matter of urgency to hold a public enquiry into the decimation of vast swathes of rain forest perpetrated by The Times in the cause of that Fucking Woman.

I'm referring her to the woman formerly kw-towed to and public funded and known as Her Royal Highness, subsequently demoted and sanctified and here ever after to be referred to as The People's Princess - cue sigh, wistful remembering look, sniff and wipe of eye.

We spent the day she died in the pub getting drunk and laughing at the spectacle that unfolded before us in real time on television. We managed to offend just about everyone in the bar. It was probably the last time The Slug and I were totally on the same wave length.

This dead parasite was, among other things: dumb, manipulative, vacuous, sly, needy, foolish, vain and destructive. She was a slut and a fool. She was born into the fucking aristocracy and cried foul when everyone else stuck to time honoured, tried and tested rules. Well might her husband bemoan his fate, shackled to the only member of the Upper Ten Thousand dim enough think she could make him the first Prince of Wales in history not to keep a mistress.

What exactly did she get from her marriage that she shouldn't have expected?

I'm enraged that The Times has squandered so many acres of newsprint on a Handy Lift Out that is three parts hagiography, one part conspiracy theory digest. As Mohammed Fayed would say, Fug Off. Enough already. Long since. Get a life. Get over her.

Guess What

This really is a post about waste management. Not his ability to pee and fart at the same time. That's my dawn chorus, and I'd shoot it if I could.

No, I've digressed. What this is actually about is us earning another elephant stamp because, for the third week running we've actually got our shit together and put all the rubbish out, and the recycling boxes out, and all in good time so that they've actually been collected.

Aren't we clever?

Unsolicited advertising

Picked up a some new beers today and I've just enjoyed one of them with my supper. They are output of a local company called St Peter's Brewery. The three I got are a Golden Ale (4.7%), an Organic Ale (4.5) and a Best Bitter (3.7). The bitter, which is the one I've tried, isn't as substantial as I'd expected but has interesting notes and reminds me of something I haven't yet put my finger on. The retail price is highly competitive, this is a local brewery which almost but not entirely is grounds enough to buy the product. I like the fact that they're not scared to shift down the alcohol content rather than weigh in on a par with some of the more familiar ales.

Finally the stuff comes in gorgeous bottles. The only shame is that they can't be returned. I think the brewery should be supplying the store selling the stuff with a crate and providing some kind of incentive to consumers to return the bottles. I hate to think of them going into the district recycling scheme where they'll be pulverised. Or even worse, going to land fill courtesy of indolent householders who can't be arsed to separate their waste.

When I was a kid pensioners going around the MCG after a big match with sacks for all the cans was a very familiar sight. When I was very young you could still take some containers back for a few cents a piece.

Then we all went to plastic and tetrapak. A long time later the milk people reintroduced milk in glass bottes. Not those dated pint bottles with the foil top birds could peck through but elegant bottles with metal screw tops. Retail milk is never better than out of glass, and moreover when kept in an air-tight container so that the milk isn't tainted however slightly by whatever else you've got in the fridge.

Within weeks of the glass bottle's reintroduction the supermarket I shopped at would be cleared out before mid-morning of the glass bottle variety, leaving slugs to slope out with their foul tetrapak version.

Ok this turned out to be as much of a rant as a pat on the back. Sorry. The bitter's got to me, I guess.

I'm doing my bit

I've bought myself one of those frightfully fashionable cotton/linen shopping bags. Now can I have my gas guzzler please?

On a serious note it - the bag, is a bit disappointing. It is so big that if I carry it in my hand the contents at the bottom are almost dragging on the ground, and anything made of glass (or some other fragile material) is at serious risk when I'm climbing a kerb or stairs. At the same time those black handles are too small for me to be able to put my arm through and comfortably so I carry it that way over my shoulder. Still it makes me feel slightly virtuous and that's got to be a good thing.

I suspect the novelty of this thing is going to wear out quite quickly. You'd better cancel that gas guzzler order.

Through the Looking Glass

Lib Dems. advocate Tax Cut.

The Lib Dems like to think they're the most environmentally sound of the 'main' national political parties. They are certainly the most consistently voluble outside the fringe and single issue parties, not withstanding Cambo's efforts to usurp them on that policy front.

Any hoo, now we're on the verge of runaway warming we've kindly been provided by the Lib Dems with incontovertible evidence of a safe harbour downstairs; hell has obviously frozen over.