MOB rants - Page 12

Me too GG!

Talk about people leaving rubbish about hows this,, when we were in Cornwall we went for a drive to the seal sanctuary and on the way i took the coastal route which in parts gets along side the very end of beautiful water inlets and there in one was a 30 foot old cruiser  having seen much better days and resting on its but on the thick mud, access to the craft was on a scaffold board to where the fishermen sat in style fishing!!   on a huge old leather green settee, how they got it onto the craft i don't know but they had and it looked so funny people were stopping to photo it ,now that's recycling at its best so this time im not moaning

Alan 4711

Alan4711

Now there's something I don't want to rant about. I just love recycling, to the point where people probably think I live in poverty or am slightly mad. (No comments, please!) I buy grotty old houses every time and do them up. I keep things nobody else would keep and try to do something with them. If the garden centre has sad-looking plants, I have to buy them and try to revive them. I shop on ebay. In fact, I like renovating old things so much that even try to paint and renovate myself. 

well i do recycle up to a point but the thing is where i live which gives me a rant is that i pass loads of recycling bins outside houses all stacked up it looks a right state especially when the gulls are screeming and diving in the bins which then are all over the road why dont people keep there bins out of sight untill bin day baffles me

Recycling rubbish is a great ideal but a total pain in the neck to implement. The complications of sorting rubbish mean it all makes a horrible mess and you need a shed to accommodate the various bins! It is also expensive to collect and process. After all that, councils struggle to find anyone to recycle the stuff. Much of it used to go to China on ships that had delivered Chinese goods to us,  but we buy less from China these days so there are fewer empty ships ready to take it. We don't recycle much in this country because actually it is often cheaper to make tings from scratch. Anyway, we no longer have much of a manufacturing industry (now that does warrant a rant!). I, of course, am the best person to advise the government on these matters  and would tell them that the real answer is to provide far less packaging and to nake it all recyclable.

why oh why do they put bananas in a plastic bag,i take the bag off at the checkout and say you can have this as i dont need it.if looks could kill.

Hi GG and Chica, Ah yes packaging, ? I remember many years ago going to the local butchers, mam selecting her choice of meat and getting the butcher to mince it (no horse meat) and then going to the Grocery shop with her carry all bag she would get a stone of spuds some carrots and what ever vegetable that was in season there was also the local slop man who would come around once a week for to collect kitchen scraps to feed his pigs ,the paper packaging used to be kept for lighting the fire in the mornings and ashes used in the garden also when the chimney was swept the soot was plied for 6 months before digging in to the veg patch now that's recycling now because of E U rules the farmer has to buy feed that may or may not have animal bits in it ,Cows were fed meal some years ago which was contaminated result BSE ,.You know you could go on and on  ,. My haven't we all advanced since the War .

Derek

We're all much bigger than consumers than we were then, of course. When I was a kid, around 1950, my dad had two suits. That's all, apart from the underwear and shirts to go with them. I don't even remember him  wearing a sweater. The suits weren't washable, which boggles the mind a bit.

There wasn't any spare money and we lived simply. There were three cars in our entire street and one television - ours, bought for the coronation. 

When you compare that with today's consumption, its no surprise that there's a bigger problem with recycling.

i also remember the time when all seven of us would rush out in the street to watch the chimney sweeps brush come of the chimney.playing skipping with muvers washing line,knocking on street doors and running away,nicking flowers out of gardens and giving them to me mum.only to get a clip round the earhole for pinching them.oh well times have changed

I disagree G/G we are not bigger consumers in lots of things we do expect things to come clean wrapped and all looking the same, well some do. I go to the farm shop and fill a bag with veg, none of it wrapped some still has the soil on, how could you do that in a supermarket?
My local butcher will wrap the individual meats I buy in a single sheet of paper and it all goes in one box, again you could not do that in the big shops.
As to recycle we separate paper tins bottles plastic and just plain rubbish plus of course the green waste which will start soon, we then find the recycle people send some to land fill and some to burn as they cannot get rid of it.
I do re-use lots of stuff and make my own compost although a lot will go to Green waste, pots are used and re-washed for years, some of the large ones get a coat of paint and used again although it is all a drop in the ocean and will solve nothing until packaging is reduced.
Even wartime recycling turned out to be a bit of a con, iron railings dismantled then left in scrap yards until the end of the war then sold back to people, aluminium pans turned out to be the wrong kind of scrap for planes, paper was turned into briquettes and sold as fuel, we never win, why do we keep trying I ask.

Frank

I think that in the long run there will be stricter rules about packaging and only reusable materials will be allowed. In time, uses will be found for the materials we now struggle to recycle. For example, I heard on the radio a few years back that bricks can now be made of plastic suitable to build houses, durable and fireproof. No-one does it, but it could come. I'm no blind optimist, but necessity is the mother of invention and we have to learn a more sustainable lifestyle. Also, frightening though the thought is, it is possible that the west is in permanent economic decline and will be overtaken by eastern countries where wages are lower and industry still flourishes. If so, we'll all be more careful with what we waste!

I live in Dordogne (beginning to sound like a recording, I've said that so often!) and we are provided with yellow 50L bin bags to put all our packaging materials into, drink cartons, plastic bottles, paper, tins, bubble plastic packaging, yoghurt pots etc. It's so easy, don't even have to sort it out. Only problem is I live about 3 miles from nearest village so I have to take all my rubbish to the big bins near the village, but it's worth it for the service.

Hi Busy-Lizzie. I've been admiring your garden on another thread. I've spent some time in the western Loire where my brother in law has a cottage and have fantasised about living there. How are you enjoying living in France? Have you found that the cost of living has risen a lot since the exchange rates changed so much?

Gardening Grandma if only but economics do not work predictably. At Wilton over the River from us is a brand new plant for the recycling of plastic milk bottles, it has been open a year and is now being moth balled as not enough milk bottles to salvage??
On the same site once ICI's largest plant now long gone they are building power stations to run on Gas, Green waste and specially grown brushwood, that is grown on fields that could produce food. It must be economically viable more than probably with all those green taxes we are paying so we can run out of proper power stations in four years time.
China and South East Asia are at the moment running fast although the time will come when they want wages to buy all the things we take for granted, as the world turns so it will become cheaper to manufacture in Europe and full circle.
This area still has a good manufacturing base mainly because we were still making things long after other parts of the country, when we do lose those skills then it will be back to the stone age and my woad will be colour of the month once more.

Frank.

Wales has lost its coal mines and its steelworks. No country can prosper witout an industrial and manufacturing base, and short-term money-saving by governments who wanted to be re-elected has led to a disastrous situation, I think. You have to create wealth in goods, not by printing money and borrowing.

I've spent a lot of time with eastern students, They are the cream of their country's youngsters, I suppose, but their discipline and work ethic are immensely impressive. It makes me wonder how we can compete. I know what schools are like in this country. In placces like Japan, children go to state school followed by private cramming schools and have to work really hard. I'm not saying it is altogether good, but it is a different work ethic from us.

I will give you that G/G, the parents of those children see a way out of poverty in their children as our parents did with us many years back. My mother a dress maker Father Haulage contractor, probably better off than some around but they made sure my Sister and I had a full education and it paid off.
The visitors we see coming to this country are the cream that rose to the top and many once here wish to stay which says something about our way of life.
Our education system is getting better in this area, my Grandchildren from the youngest appear to have a goal in mind, the discipline is back, politeness a trend and bullying now well and truly cracked down on. These are of course better Schools in better area's although most of the sink schools have been demolished and rebuilt as smaller more compact units. We have a very good extension in Stockton of the Durham College with more being built and as I said previously still have a good ground base in industrial production.
Of course we have losers mainly because as you said Government short sighted policy led to it, now we have economic cuts which as usual hit the worst off.
What is the answer? wish I knew although in this area it is not all doom and gloom.
Do not worry too much in a few years time the then government will wake up to a melt down of power, realise we are sitting on billions of tonne's of coal as the Germans already have, the Welsh Valleys will sing once more.

Frank

"OH dear" I seemed to have killed this thread, what happened?

Frank.

Frank, perhaps everyone is happy now they've got it off their chests!

People were talking about class a while back, but no one represented the middle class! (perhaps I missed it). I'm middle class, descended from clergymen, Naval officers, doctors and teachers. Also have what is probably a "posh" accent - have been teased for it. But I really agree with what Discodave said

discodave wrote (see)

I HATE it when people assume you are of a lower social level than they are because of your accent. I still have a slight accent even after moving away from home when I was 18 (so been away longer than I was there now). I mix in several social circles, some of my closest friends are well to do and some arent. I can honestly say that being upper class or even middle class doesnt make you a better person, you make the person you are and social class, money, upbringing, breeding and stock means nothing in my eyes. 

You are who you are, but you can make a difference if you care for and are cared by your fellow human beings, class should not count. My OH came from a coal mining family but, encouraged by his mother he worked hard, got a scholarship and went to university. We have so much in common and I love him to bits.

The army was a good leveler Lizzie apart from a couple of the household Regiments class was long gone. We had Honorables and such many of them allowed to finish University so much older than us Regular and inured youngsters. In the Desert it all came down to being as comfortable as possible in the circumstances and that meant the said Honerable had to wash the pots and pans, make the tea with the rest of us, they also relied on us to keep their heads on their shoulders.
You could say we worked our way up the the standards we live at today, some of it was pure luck in that we were sure of pensions over and above the norm although at the time it was not in our thoughts, I do feel sorry for the pensioners of the future, what will they have?

Frank.

 Here's my rant for the day. Why, oh why, do those gardening caltalogues that come with magazines - T and M, Parkers, etc - contain so little information? The very minimum information for plants should be height, flowering period, type of soil and hardiness. You have to use a gardening book with them before being able to order safely. I'll bet a lot of inexperienced gardeners order on the basis of the photograph and get disasters.

I don't really understand the attraction of some of the plants either. They are not cheap for their size, often have to be grown on before they can be planted out and quite often fail. Again, I'll bet new gardeners get their confidence undermined when they lose these plants.