Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Woodburners not so healthy after all..

“The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”
"Don't vote. It just encourages them....”
― Billy Connolly

My tank is a Tricel Vento, thus logically has three cells built in.

Circa 20 years ago my wife and I thought to move to Spain if I was made redundant buy the mass downsizing and delayering that had been going on in UK industry, the thinking was perhaps to buy a Villa in Los Romanes, having rented villas over the years with wonderful views over the beautiful blue reservoir to the mountains beyond... In time we decided against that as my wife`s parents began to have age related issues, and fortunately I was able to keep on working till retirement at 65. I spent my "spare time" building on to the former pig farm`s bungalow to provide all that a modern minded lady might require, effectively doubling the size of the original home.. and of course I built a new larger garage too...(-: Had we moved to Spain ,given all that life subsequently presented us with, things would have been far more difficult to cope with in Spain than here at home...

No beautiful blue reservoir to look down to here, a somewhat more populated valley below, with houses a plenty, high flats too, old riverside shipyard crane, occasional ships on the river, airport beyond, and beyond that another town, and on the other side of the valley, a large windfarm peeking over the top of the hills in places, the valley lit up at night like a Christmas tree.... So all in all, feeling in no way disappointed not to be sitting in the sun in a warmer climate... Good for the soul....? you bet.. (-:

The description of the conditions of the test dont remotely resemble the conditions I live in here in Wales. We have a constant wind / breeze/ howling gale so I will continue to ignore any suggestions to give up burning the rubbish wood I recover from the river bank. Just as I will continue to ignore Dwy Cymru @ advice to save water in a country where it is either raining, about to rain or just briefly stopped raining.

And before anyone suggests that I am being irresponsible, I grew up in Bradford in the days when factories were powered by coal and you literally could not see across the valley. The current situation isnt remotely in that horrible and dangerous league.

What we suffer from in the UK is a media controlled by well meaning idiots obsessed with the latest intellectual fashion. Usually, but not always, woke fashions. But never ever tempered by common sense and a sense of proportion. Sorry for the rant but alarmist media pronouncements drive any real news away and mislead the public. To give a classic example, the public have been led to believe that if you smoke you are likely to get lung cancer. The reality is that the male lifetime risk for smokers is 14.8%. Still a daft and expensive idea but an awful long way from a death sentence.

As you know Howard one size doesn’t fit all but the “new” knowledge likes to think it does.

I thought it an interesting article, certainly made sense to me recalling our many visits to Bath when No1 daughter was studying there, down in the town where her flat was the air quality was atrocious.

I remember those days growing up outside Manchester. Sometimes you couldn't see the bus in front of you,the smog was so bad. In the 1960's we went smokeless on Merseyside...coal was banned and we had to use coke for our kitchen stove/ water heater. It was lit by a monster hair dryer which frightened my mother

Now I live on the East coast US and we are chopping trees down by the acre to provide wood pellets for UK power stations. There's a port in my area where they ship them from.

Natural gas is also sent to UK, US is the biggest source after Norway. With Trump the trade will increase and hopefully, given increased supplies, the price will drop.
So the well meaning idiots, in Westminster and the green press, better be careful what they wish for, for without pellets and gas the future of the UK energy industry looks a little dicey!!

Howard/Georgetoad……the trouble is that none of these modern zealots were about or can remember what it was like in the 50s and 60s. . The smog in Manchester, Sheffield and other Northern towns was horrendous. They have no idea what a
Pea Souper was - not a trendy northern recipe ! They were horrendous and still bad occasionally when I moved to London in 1967/8. The Houses of Parliament buildings were soot black . Sure there is more pollution from cars, tailpipes, brakes and rubber particles and no doubt other areas that are more hidden. We continue to kill ourselves with modern processed food.
The government will continue to try to tinker at the edges , restricted by modern capitalism which it has to accept ..The public will always react to change and respond creatively. Often in the opposite direction.eg restrict parking and charge for it outside your house and we knocked our front garden walls down to parked free. The other effect to restrict normal rain run off !
Charge too much for building skips or restrict recycling of certain waste and it gets dumped/flytipped.

Oh and those pellets imported,I thought mainly from Canada, are truly a benefit as the carbon cost is in the manufacturing , not the burning - No CO2 for U.K. then - it’s like magic or creative accounting .
I’m going to have a day without radio, tv news and no TM and be blissfully happy and oblivious to the world.,
MM
PS Our Fakemass filet steak was bought in Dorset, frozen at home, nearly 40% cheaper than London cost and cheaper than Costco ! We need to move in 25 ……..
PPS anyone remember the tripe hanging in the windows of butchers - does anyone remember the UCP - united cow products ! Aggh I couldn’t stomach that !!!! Now that’s a trendy northern dish .

Absolutely right - we all know that pure clean air is better than dirty air. Ditto water. Ditto food. What makes me grumpy is the output of the overwhelmingly non numerate arty types in our media which then serves to create a bandwagon of the ignorant.. We are short of a baseload on nuclear power for exactly that reason - the scaremongers of Greenpiece , FOE putting the fear of god into those who dont know fission from fusion with the result that the UK industry died for lack of orders and we now have to import either the plant from China or the leccy from France.


Apologies for being grumpy

Spot on, just the masses being manipulated by those with a vested interest again..
No apologies needed Howard - it was I that started the thread after a Grumpy evening stroll in the smoke of the village

Where I grew up in the Midlands in Tipton one of the most industrialised towns in the country, we had coal fired steel mills every where and we lived in the shadow (about 400 yards away ) was a massive coal fired power station, the power station was built after my grandfather had built the house. We had such peasoupers often we weren't allowed when at school to play outdoors in the winter and often not allowed to leave the school until your parents or neighbours collected you it was that bad,

In the summer when we had the industrial fortnight where everything shut down, with a few days we would have fabulous cloudless skies and sunny weather as all the pollution producers had shut down for the hols.

The Doctors waiting room and hospitals were full of bronchial problems.

I lived on Killiney Hill in Dublin in the late 80's looking down the hill with Dublin Bay and all its splendour stretched out in front of us. Whilst only smokeless coal could be burnt in County Dublin, every weekend people would take a trip to just outside the county boundary and buy their normal coal and peat not available within the county. Needless to say smog was a very real issue, we were elevated enough to be above the smog layer in the plateau below. All you could see was the tops of roof lines and a halo of street lights almost as if suspended just at the slightly thinner edge of the smog ceiling. Great spectacular sight across Dublin and the bay with coal and mainly peat fire smells everywhere. .Not so nice when we had to descend into it on our daily trip into town.


Whilst these were difficult times, I still remember them with fondness and smile at the current eco warriors who have no real idea how far we have already come since most of our childhood days. We will never achieve zero emissions its impossible just human and agricultural/animal waste will be a constant source of methane impacting the ozone.

Interesting ref the pellets being imported from the USA. Our local wood supplier told me last year that he was struggling to buy large amounts of timber as they were shipping a lot by rail from the West Country to be turned into pellets for the Drax power station.. This info is 3rd hand, so I dont know if its 100% correct. I do know we have a "trial" bio digester 15 miles away, that coverts organics into gas, that then powers a generator. Good idea in theory, but they are increasingly going further and further on the roads, over 12 miles, to source the locally grown fuel and hauling it all by a fleet of huge John Deer tractors. I imagine that if you looked at their fuel consumption it would be just as green to burn diesel directly for the generator.

On the other side of this green agenda. I help undertake wild deer management ( with all the certification and training that is involved ), you would think local sourced Venison would be a great green plus point, but we just learnt that our game dealer will not accept any more as they cant get rid of it.. its bonkers.. When they were accepting it, we recieved 1£ per Kg.. for many many hours of work..