Run for the hills: Commoners

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Commoners

And in the middle of all that we learnt that our application for shares on the common had come through. After only 18 months of hassling various people too. Amazing.

We've not actually had the official letter yet but we should soon and it should say that we have shares in three grazings:

Common One: Is 1245 hectares (3000 acres). Our 2 and 7/8 share equates to a souming of 23 sheep (or goats or five and three quarter cattle).

Common Two: Is smaller, but we have one share equivalent to a souming of 9 sheep.

Common Three: 1877 hectares (4600 acres), 1 1/2 shares giving a souming of 31 sheep + 6 cattle.

Being optimists, we're hoping that the letter will go someway towards explaining what all this means.

1 comment:

Lulu Stader said...: Congratulations, that's really good news! And thanks for all the blogging, Simon, delighted to read your updates.

Could you maybe email me the two kid pics? They don't seem to go 'big' if I click on them.

'nocandn', a mumbled excuse; 22 April 2009 at 08:41

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Where I"m coming from - !CAUTION! a bit of a polemic

Firstly, there is nothing more important than me and my family. The most precious thing I can give them (including me) is time. In my job, with all it's pressures, I singularly failed to do this. So we run for the hills and try to redress the balance.

Secondly, climate change is happening. It's a cataclysm, the scope of which is beyond our comprehension. This is why we are doing so little to stop it - we just cant imagine the scale of the upheavals to come, and we can't imagine how we, as individuals, can stop it.

Everything is stacked against effective action. Our economy is driven by consumerism and it is consumerism that is driving climate change. Our political leaders are paralysed - to curb consumerism would cripple the economic engine. We increasingly define ourselves by our economic position and the things we buy. We are what we buy. What politician dare restrict our ability to buy, our ability to define ourselves? It would attack our very self and would be political suicide.

And anyway, the real power lies with money - and the people with money want us to consume and they spend millions every second of the day persuading us to consume more. What hope do we have against such power? And everything we buy pumps a little more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Thirdly, I am no saint. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to change my life for the benefit of myself, and, I hope, the planet. Ultimately my reasons for doing this are selfish, and although I'll do what I can to keep my carbon footprint low, I'll make many choices that are not so good for the planet. Like anyone, I can only voluntarily make changes to my life at the speed I can. I don't intend to beat myself up over this - I do intend to change faster than most.

Fourthly, there is hope. Our lust to consume is a very recent phenomena. Not so long ago we principally defined ourselves by our relationships with friends and family and place and we defined ourselves by our usefulness to society. I believe that climate change will force us out of consumerism, and in its place we will find those core values, and rediscover a sense of wellbeing that is so missing from our current fractured existence.

There are lots of examples where this is starting to happen. The transition town movement is one - people getting together and learning to appreciate the things and people around them. I played a small part in helping Sustaining Dunbar get off the ground. (http://edubuzz.org/blogs/sustainingdunbar/about-us) What I found there were people striving to build a positive and resilient future and there are transition towns popping up all over the place - a really positive movement. (find out more about transition towns)

Fifthly, At the end of the day it's all bollocks. So let's all go off and have some fun - it's the most important thing we can do - but let's just try to do it without killing the planet in the process.

Things I"m going to miss

Run for the hills

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Commoners

1 comment:

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