days of yore

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Good morrow Dear Reader.

I hope the sun has risen with you and your hay rick is rat free, your cow is managing to keep producing milk from her one remaining udder from the dried straw you've been feeding her over the 'driest summer since '76' and your well hasn't run dry just yet.

Why the evocation of days gone by ? Well it does seem to me that with every passing day we appear to be coming closer to calamity day, judgement day, call it what you will. Electricity being the item foremost on my mind, as I use the stuff to extract honey, warm wax, steam clean frames, warm honey to bottle it and do a lot of this by the light of a bulb. How in the name of all that's holy will an 'average' family of 4 be able to pay, from after tax income, a fuel bill of £3.5/£4.5/£5.5k over the coming year when they are used to paying (a fair price) £500-£750 a year for their energy needs.

Even if we decided to stop supporting the Ukrainians in the war (and I'm not supporting that for one minute) the sanctions would remain and the price of gas on the world market would remain stubbornly high as long as the Nord Stream pipeline remained closed, and other pipelines diverted to 'favourable' countries. And one doesn't just build an ACME unfolding nuclear power station like they do in the cartoons do they ??

I was talking to my father when he was helping on a honey stall at the weekend (helping is actually pushing it - he had accompanied my mother to the event so he and she could go on a river trip and he was merely resting his legs in a folding camping chair at the back of my stall) and he said that for the past 40 years - as long as he'd been married (actually its 56 years but who's counting) he and mum had said we needed an energy policy that didn't pander to the CND (at the time) and the non-nuclear brigade and we should have built two new reactors for every one coming to the end end of it's life using the British designed PWR reactors that were proven and safe. I have to say I couldn't agree more.

Then a chance conversation in the week with an elderly ex-engineer who had a good rant about the anti-fracking brigade saying that they (and the media) conveniently (or ignorantly) ignored the fact that north sea oil was largely extracted using the same technique after the initial surge of oil flowing from a new well. The fact you have to 'force' it from the ground using a method not unlike hydraulic fracturing, and has been done safely for 50+ years, has been completely overlooked.

Going back to my own energy use - having had more than my fair share of troubles extracting this season (two broken extractor speed controllers) and a bee shed that is increasingly not bee proof as the wood warps and flexes with age, resulting in many midnight oil burning sessions to extract the next batch of supers, my mind was cast back to the 'old days' when honey wasn't spun, it was cut into squares and put into oil cloth and packaged in little cardboard boxes (no polythene cases or windows then) or the entire crop was crushed and strained using, one presumes, muslin or sacking, and bottled in early glass bottles with cork lids, all during the day in a lean-to full of robbing bees (no electricity to work by night) and then a big fire and cauldron to boil down and melt the wax for candles and industry.

I sometimes wonder when people hark back to the 'good old days' whether they were 'as good' for beekeepers anyway. I know I'd rather have a proper extraction system that can spin a few supers at a time in a bee-free environment and have the ability to warm/strain honey as required into clean glass jars with secure lids or buckets for longer term storage. I certainly wouldn't want the faff of rendering just wild comb, even if it were from just a few hives (skeps) and wonder how some of these 'modern' natural beekeepers put up with the inevitable mess, and lets face it, waste of honey, in the processing of the comb.

I suppose the only benefit is they do it in the spring after their colony has died out and they render some honey from some dark combs left in the hives so the bees won't find the honey....

On the stall yesterday a 'know it all' 'the bbka says it isn't allowed' beekeeper who has 3 hives said I can't label my honeycomb (sections and cut comb) as 'Raw' or the chunk honey as 'Raw'. (even though neither product is strained or processed in the conventional way). I said I could do with it as I liked as it nicely surmised the state of the comb, and I didn't claim other run/set jarred honey was 'raw' as that had been through more filtering etc etc. Her lips pursed and I could tell she would be 'having conversations' with well known local beekeepers in her group as she name checked them. I couldn't give a scoobies...This year I've seen and heard more absolute codswallop and utter excrement being spouted by ever more 'experts' who've 'done all the exams' and then it transpires that they have 2 hives and one died last year and the other has swarmed and they have managed to take 19lb of honey off the total.

Experts.

Yeah right.

Yet all the BBKA can do is raise petitions and make political rumblings and align themselves with all sorts of organisations who aren't beekeepers and simply want the beekeeping shilling to fund their own subscription services. They don't understand the real merits of beekeeping to provide pollination services or management of colonies to provide a proper surplus of honey, let alone manage the health of their bees - I shook my head in disbelief when I saw their press release about thymol earlier in the year.

As for my own season - record honey crop and still 4 apiaries to clear which I need to do before the ivy starts (it's about to burst into flower about 4 weeks early) and plans afoot for next year. Beekeeping certainly helps take your mind off the problems of the world and oneself, now if only I could get a bee-proof extraction facility sorted this week !


KR


Somerford
 
I believe that some of us should learn to do the same! Those that need help should receive help. Those that don't shouldn't try and say that they do.
I knew I would get flack. I knew that people would not understand my point of view. It got personal far quicker than I thought but hey, I started it!
No one denies that people who need help should receive help, and I did not mean to misrepresent your comments.

It is not just about the sick and disabled, everyone supports that they should be helped but in my experience, living in a very far right wing area, many 'say' that, because it sounds all warm and fuzzy and it is the socially acceptable position, but somehow they never vote for a govt. that would outright tell them that they would give more money to the most unfortunate. They whine about those who exploit the welfare system, yet, private companies can fleece the govt. with impunity because that's just good business accounting. They always vote for the money to go to the very well off, they always vote for the party that promises to decrease taxes ( for the rich) and yet the middle class is left paying the most.

The middle class complains in my country because they are paying the brunt of the costs, most of them do go for holidays abroad once a year, and yet they are being asked to now give up more while the rich have loopholes to pay less taxes.
 
but neither should you knock someone who, through no fault of their own didn't have the luxury of doing so
No I take that point. I read it to be targeting those that are lucky in that respect, but also dont display enough self control to adopt a life style that supports hard times. I know loads of people who "have" to go on holiday abroad at least twice a year and then complain that their salary won't cover the rising costs of daily living.

This situation is driven by the greed of man, not by those who plan ahead. Living on a planet with 8 billion people, if there was a magic button that would make the top 100000 less rich but would end world poverty, hunger and probably turn the tide on global warming issues should we press it? Clearly the Gvts around the world think not!
 
This situation is driven by the greed of man, not by those who plan ahead
it's driven by the greed of corporations and politicians who have asset stripped the country and sold it to their cronies at bargain basement prices, and are now going to 'save the day' by subsidising these corporations even further, using taxpayer's money to enable a price freeze.
 
I am not going to say anything more, BluntSpike has taken over the sword and is wielding it far better than I ever could!
 
No I take that point. I read it to be targeting those that are lucky in that respect, but also dont display enough self control to adopt a life style that supports hard times. I know loads of people who "have" to go on holiday abroad at least twice a year and then complain that their salary won't cover the rising costs of daily living.

This situation is driven by the greed of man, not by those who plan ahead. Living on a planet with 8 billion people, if there was a magic button that would make the top 100000 less rich but would end world poverty, hunger and probably turn the tide on global warming issues should we press it? Clearly the Gvts around the world think not!
But they might not have read Capital in the Twenty First Century....and believe in Malthus.
 
I know loads of people who "have" to go on holiday abroad at least twice a year and then complain that their salary won't cover the rising costs of daily living.
But do you know loads of people who don’t eat because they can’t afford to? Who feed their kids before themselves. Who are frightened ti death by what is to come this winter? There are many more of those than your holiday haves.
 
When those who are genuinely struggling just to get the basics are discussed, an all-too-common response seems to be that they should do the work necessary to find a better paid job. I am at a loss to understand the logic of such a suggestion.

Let's say that a good proportion of all those people earning less than some fraction of the average wage do as suggested and get new jobs paying significantly more. Where does all that extra money come from? The supply is of money fixed, as far as I understand it. The only way more money gets into the economy is by something like quantitive easing which risks driving inflation up, thereby making people effectively poorer, or by increasing levels of debt, and debt is basically just another way of transferring money from the less well off to the better off. So the only way I can see that it could work is if prices increased overall, increasing inflation and making people worse off.

Perhaps if I'd done Economics for A level I'd understand this stuff better, but at the last minute I switched to Art instead and enjoyed it greatly so it's not all bad. It seems to me though that for a few people to be really rich, an awful lot of people have to be really not very well off at all.

James
 
But do you know loads of people who don’t eat because they can’t afford to? Who feed their kids before themselves. Who are frightened ti death by what is to come this winter? There are many more of those than your holiday haves.
No disagreement from me regarding the dire straits that gvt lead selfish greed has put people in.
 
There seems to be a belief, especially amongst the daily mail reading type that 'the poor' should not have the damned cheek to expect to enjoy life in the slightest. and should be happy to accept a life of soulless drudgery without any form of entertainment
How dare they have a sky subscription so that, in the little free time they are allowed between working themselves to death and sleeping they can sit down and enjoy themselves by immersing themselves in some fantasy land?
many people don't own laptops or fancy tablets and their phone is not only a basic means of communication, but also your access to the internet and all it offers - the means to communicate, pay your bills, try and find a job, manage your finances and yes, claim your universal credit - apparently you cannot even claim some benefits now, including universal credits and 'jobseeker's' allowance without internet access.
For crying out loud, even in deepest Africa where many are lucky to earn a dollar a day, every other person is carrying a smartphone.
 
My grandparents used to tell me of the days when every Thursday, they would sit at the table (tiny little cottaounge, just the one room to line and cook in) using their oil lamp and would count my grandfather's pay and decide wht they coupd spend their money on that week, no running water, just an open coal fire, then jump forward to the late 1970's when the money my grandfather has kept to one side (his redundancy payment from the factory and the compensation payment from his time underground) they finally bought a house, my father, being a carpenter helped them 'modernise' it and one of the things my grandfather insisted on was central heating. never again, he swore, they would wake up to a freezing bedroom or come back home to a cold house. To him, this was a necessity, not a luxury, even though he had to kill himself working from the age of thirteen to finally live like human beings in their retirement.
It does sicken me a bit when the haves think they have the right to lecture the have nots as to what they should and should not spend their money on.
 
I think there's a general agreement here that those in need should have help and that the government (indeeed successive) governments, are failing to provide that adequately.

My question is, where each of us knows people in the level of need being talked about, what are we doing to help them? Sitting here blaming others/the government for not helping/failing them when we have it in our own power to assist, in however meagre a way, is not exactly consistent. I know I can do better.
 
My question is, where each of us knows people in the level of need being talked about, what are we doing to help them? Sitting here blaming others/the government for not helping/failing them when we have it in our own power to assist, in however meagre a way, is not exactly consistent. I know I can do better.

For sure we as people should help, but IMO counting on charity, which is done when people have extra time and money, to make sure neighbours survive is a pretty precarious way of ensuring people have enough. Especially when the number of people who need help will increase rapidly with the rising cost of living.

What happens when things get tighter? The charity dries up and people look out for themselves and their families first because now they are struggling to make ends meet. Or, if they have a good salary they decide to help when it is convenient and suits them. Not a very stable system when the money is given on a whim.

It is the govt.'s job to help, they are the ones making all the rules they are the ones choosing who gets the countries money and who does not, they are the ones who choose to allow companies to fleece the public all in the name of shareholder profit. So it is the govt's fault, they have all the cards and could deal them differently, so IMO they must shoulder the blame.
 
I think there's a general agreement here that those in need should have help and that the government (indeeed successive) governments, are failing to provide that adequately.

My question is, where each of us knows people in the level of need being talked about, what are we doing to help them? Sitting here blaming others/the government for not helping/failing them when we have it in our own power to assist, in however meagre a way, is not exactly consistent. I know I can do better.
The strange thing for me is that the only people I have hitherto known who were at the "eat or heat" level is my own family when I was growing up. It is a tribute to what Society can achieve, that my many siblings and I have been able to achieve a secure lifestyle. Poverty naturally tends to be concentrated in discrete localities, which shields many of us from seeing its effects.
In the hierarchy of need, there are people thousands of miles away from me whose situation is far more desperate than my neighbour's. Whilst that doesn't prevent me from doing my bit to help those close to me, I expect my Government to do more for others than they currently see as appropriate.
Individual generosity and charity is always seen as a good thing. On a State level, some politicians and parts of the electorate are very resistant to distributing our national wealth, other than to those who have plenty already. 😉
 
Wealth%20shares.png



The wealth inequality in GB is quite high - the top 10% of population hold 50% of the wealth. But more starkly. the top 0.1% hold 10%. The ratios are lower in the Scandinavian countries who are among the happiest in the world. The biggest driver towards reducing the difference is education.
 
Wealth%20shares.png



The wealth inequality in GB is quite high - the top 10% of population hold 50% of the wealth. But more starkly. the top 0.1% hold 10%. The ratios are lower in the Scandinavian countries who are among the happiest in the world. The biggest driver towards reducing the difference is education.
You are correct regarding education.
I think a fiscal policy that taxes consumption via VAT, rather than income, doesnt help improve those statistics either.
 
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