health,waste,environment,life

Flight free travel Its 2023 - I am now entering my third years pledge via flight free UK, flight free travel can seem troublesome at first thought! But is it? I cannot deny that my first year 2020 was a major challenge for me, at that time - I was still working on a gas plant on Shetland, this work was fly in fly out to work every three weeks, it was 2020 and the world was coming out of its pandemic, I informed my work I would no longer be taking flights home from my work, this is not financially beneficial; it cost me money, not that I expected the company to pay to me any savings they made, that’s not how the system works due tax relief among other things, it was my own choice! In 2019 the previous year I read about an anti-flying movement known as “flight shame” – or flygskam in Swedish, where the movement began – it has been gathering pace in Europe. I now fully support it, I now feel guilty about the amount of flights that I have taken in my life, I am absolutely ashamed of this ...

The running out of time relay baton had been moving steadily down the UK in the time I was in London, I got up early and went to see my friend that was filming the just stop oil protests, these were taking place around parliament every day for the whole of October, this time I did march with them and it was wonderful, its great to feel you are not alone there is others that are trying to do something about this whole worldwide clusterfuffle, we are the few that care, I have on numerous occasions previous to meeting these wonderfull humans, felt; that I was the only one that cared, I went marching in Glasgow for cop26 totally alone there and back, I never even had a friend to talk to about it, as there’s absolutely no`0ne in my community that cares at all, they all say they do of course – but that’s because they have been socially conditioned by the media to say they care, its like saying that your fit but not actually keeping fit, speaking of being fit - I was marching in my r...

1st of oct 22 I had done the ROOT baton relay section at auchinleck at 02:00 alone then had to get to Glasgow main bus station for the bus to London, the trains were on strike and I had to get to London I had a protest march to take part in and Claire to support in the London marathon. I had been helping her train for this, it was a massive achievement for her as it was her very first ever marathon, she had hoped to have done this while her mum was still alive, unfortunately that didn’t happen. if I wasn’t there she would be there at the end on her own, the bus journey from Glasgow to London is a long one. I had a long wait at the bus station in Glasgow to begin with, witnessing the opening of the station and the subsequent massive que at Greggs the bakers once open, the irony struck me of the likes of Liz truss saying she had the interest of ordinary people as her main agenda! this makes me laugh, apparently climate activists are no longer ordinary people according to her! I was pon...

Feeling un`gloved 22 One off my new year’s resolutions for 2022 was to? - not wear any gloves for a full year this was an extremely hard challenge for me, I normally have a glove obsession wearing them constantly from November to April, I detest my hands getting cold even worse; - many years ago I fell in the squash court on my racket hand and crushed my pinkie! this ended up with the curious scenario that every time the temperature drops below minus two I end up with my rihight hand pinkie getting white finger syndrome on the tip, this is extremely painful which makes me overly cautious whilst out in the cold, why then should I take the crazy notion to spend a whole year without wearing gloves? There was a few reasons for this one was to highlight to me how much Warmer winter has become due to human caused climate change, this is no longer an accident , our species is now doing this intentionally, I am trying to be the changes we need to see in the world, also; on a personal note t...

Running out of time relay I heard about the running out of time relay (ROOT) through the green runners, I had signed up to the green runners as soon as I heard about them, some of the founding members are my running hero’s, I am extremely proud to be part of that community, COP26 in Glasgow was a life changing event for me, the opportunity to take part in the relay thus combining my love of running cycling and environmental activism, made this event extremely important for me to be part of, this along with being a proud Scotsman who loves an outdoors adventure and a chance to speak out, I was determined to do as much of it as I could, at the time the stages went live and the relay organisers were looking for a crew, I was completing my long adventure down the UK`s flagship cycle route the NCN1, I had cycled it down the way from skaw beach on Unst Shetland isles to home then taken a break from it, but at this time I was approaching nearing the end point of that cycle adventure, when ...

What does a just transition mean? Being a supporter of Greenpeace gets me a subscription to their newsletter, one such newsletter I received contained a link to a film about something called a just transition? This piqued my interest as it appeared aimed for North Sea oil and gas workers. Having at one time been in that industry and still many friends and family in that industry, I was interested to find out what this film was about? After watching it I could not work out what the message was or who it was aimed at? It seemed to be aimed at people like me who worked for climate criminals, an encouragement to get new work in environmentally friendly workplaces, the message seemed to be saying that the oil and gas industry were bad employers anyway, which is fair enough, I left the industry with a bad impression of the employers throughout this industry so; I couldn’t agree more, I suppose it had been a growing disillusionment for me at that time, I was becoming incr...

Keswick mountain festival It seemed like absolutely ages ago when I first booked this festival, I had looked at it in previous years but the timings were never right, this time I had been looking forward to it for ages, the plan was to get away from all my climate concern activities, and my busy stressed brain (I was unfortunately wrong about that! Because for most of the weekend I still stressed) Camping is probably my favourite way to enjoy a festival of this kind, getting back to nature sleeping in the fields, as a bonus in this camp site I would wake up to the view of Skiddaw Mountain Its Located-on Springs Road, Keswick, the KMF campsite had plenty shower and toilet facilities, its near Springs Farm which has its own nice wee cafe serving hot food/drinks every day, the vegan option was ok but I was disappointed when on the Friday they moved everything to disposable plates and cups only, this put me off going back the campsite opened at 10am on Thursday 19th May and close...