Fran Buckland

Boris Johnson, the shit, has slashed London’s cycling budget in half. It appears the bike hire scheme was just a cover for the new budget, which cuts money from other areas such as cycle safety schemes.

Read the Guardian coverage of Boris’s disgrace here.

by Ian McEwan, was the lead story in the Guardian newspaper’s G2 today.

… by turning off his lightbulbs?

Photo lists of beautiful things related to the environment: WebEcoist

But triple yay for Boris!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/18/boris-cycling

The floppy haired one has extended London’s hire cycle scheme.

(We all know Ken had the idea in the first place, but let’s not discourage him.)

Do you want to feel like a conscious consumer for just one day of the month? Missed the rave flash mobs and felt left out? Then carrot mobbing could be for you. A carrot mob is a flash mob spending money in a store that has promised to spend a certain percentage of its revenue over a limited time frame on environmental causes. The Guardian science team recently covered such an event in their weekly podcast, held at a mini mart in Covent Garden.

I imagine that few of the shoppers in the Covent Garden area that evening live in that area. They probably travelled from all over London after reading about the event on the internet. I think their time travelling to the store and buying goods they did not need or would not usually buy(this is spurious, I admit, but I would imagine that a mini mart sells heavily packaged, imported goods that need constant refrigeration – see next paragraph) was just a waste when you see how little they achieved.

Secondly, the organizers said they planned to hire ‘environmental assessors’ to help the store spend the money effectively. Whoever invested in this should honestly take their money back - it was reported that the store wanted to buy a new, more efficient refrigeration system, which is fine, but I doubt they need an environmental assessor to help them understand the energy efficiency ratings on their cooling appliances. To my knowledge, a five year old child could understand the European Energy Label, which is even colour coded. (Red = bad, green = well, green).

The organizers claimed that they wanted a ‘carrot’ approach to environmental projects, and what they should see is that the world has developed in an unsustainable way because humans have been too lazy and obsessed with our own progression to give a hell about anything else. The way this project has developed, however, is to take the environmental out of environmental projects, leaving, well, a flash mob in a supermarket.

I don’t want you to think I am against the idea of environmental projects – far from it. The problem lies in the fact that although this idea is harmless and inoffensive, it isn’t very good. These people could be using their time, effort and money in far more effective ways, supporting local businesses and energy efficiency projects. This is an environmental gimmick, made to make people feel better about themselves. It won’t effect any real, measureable change

In the words of the president-elect (and I know this has been over quoted and is out of fashion now, but I think it’s particularly apt) “Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective.” I know that responses to this will claim that flash mobbing IS collective, and yes, to a certain extent, it is a group of people getting together to try and achieve something, but I think that pales into insignificance when you realize that Obama’s meaning is that he alone, or a group of thirty individuals shopping at a particular mini mart in Covent Garden one evening, can’t stop climate change. There are bigger and more important fish out there to fry.

It is the 9th of September and it is raining, causing millions of people across the country to exclaim in unison with their droning voices: “Summer is over already!” Shame, then, that this claim has already been made on at least 14 separate occasions during 2008, most notably the 15th June, 2nd August and 21st August, among other dates.

I am among the worst of the weather whiners, mainly because I never carry an umbrella with me and have a somewhat disdainful attitude to waterproof shoes, but to claim that a season is over just because of some drizzle is ridiculous. I’m going to make an obvious comment here: the weather is temporal, meaning that, at any moment (even though this is unlikely), the clouds could disappear and there could be sunlight. Would it be summer again, if that happened? Should we invent many some new season names for ‘that day in September when it drizzled a bit (like Autumn) and was cold (like Winter), but cleared up later and was sunny (hang on, can Summer come after Autumn and Winter?)?’ 

And why do all these seasonal gripes have to be whinged? There are many contributing factors to our incessant nasal babbling but the first is obvious: the weather has actually got more shit, or at least it has since that glorious summer of ‘96 when we were all children and ran around with the sunshine on our backs chasing cats with hosepipes (maybe just me). Secondly, we’ve got so bored of the usual ‘I say, how do you do? Horrible weather isn’t it?’ comments that nothing short of proclaiming our unwavering disgust of each and every single raindrop can make these kind of meteorology based conversations interesting anymore. 

Shock Horror! The now famous and oh-so-controversial graffiti artist Banksy’s true identity has been revealed by some intrepid journalists who decided to follow his movements for a while. But, as usual, the revelation was not the artist’s name, but the fact he went to a private boarding school. That’s right, Banksy is middle class.

Why should this piece of information be so shocking? Yes, he’s a graffiti artist. Also he seems to like exhibiting his work around some dodgy parts of East London, so it was quite natural for us to assume that he was working class. But the reason that he stood out as an artist was his perceptive insights into culture and modern life, something which would suggest a good educational background. The Carrie Bradshaw in me is crying out: And it made me wonder, what is the problem with being middle class?

If you want to be successful or famous, it helps if you’re working class because then you’ll have a story to sell to a magazine when the work starts drying up. You could even string it out into a book if the work really starts to dry up. “My mum used to shop in Waitrose,” doesn’t sell papers. 

The main reason that Banksy isn’t allowed to be middle class is because being middle class isn’t cool. It ruins his whole image as someone who shows up the flaws of the middle classes. The middle classes don’t have the wealth for extreme spending, nor can they pull off cheap and chic.

I like being middle class, and I like that Banksy is, and that he’s taken something with such bad connotations (graffiti) and made it clever. Middle class and cool.

Today I decided to go swimming because it is raining, and if I’m going to get wet the instant I step outside, I’d always like to be heading in the direction of somewhere with a hot shower, such as the swimming pool (or, on the way back, my house).

That’s the thing about swanning (to swan: to move or go somewhere in a casual relaxed way, typically perceived as irresponsible or ostentatious by others), when it rains, it can get really boring. Especially if you’re reading Henry James, who writes books that require concentration and effort, and are far too much hard work to be swanning. The only things you can really do are eat (fattening), watch bbc iPlayer (most amazing thing ever invented, although now I have watched all the good stuff and must spend hours trawling through BBC3’s catalogue of documentaries about women with odd hairstyles/50 children/bad body image and it’s getting a little dull) or exercise. So I went to the local swimming pool.

I noticed the following things about the swimming pool:

1. There were a lot of old people there. Old, unfit people. Which made me feel great about myself even if I only did 30 lengths because I forgot my goggles
2. It was huge compared to the one at Uni. Tall, wide, deep, more chlorinated, but massive.
3. I have got to the stage in my life when it becomes unacceptable to throw a tantrum until somebody else puts your locker key on their wrist (a problem averted at the Uni pool by a crazy pin code locker system, which would not survive a day in a pool with geriatrics and children who haven’t been brought up on Pret sandwiches and croissants).

Overall, I would rate the swimming pool 6/10, for an afternoon’s entertainment when one is swanning and indisposed.