Heaven is ...

Drinking tea in the sunshine in the garden at breakfast time. Being paid to write a book that really excites me. Ruby lying on her blanket at my feet, cats safely locked in the office, as we are enjoying the sights and sounds of baby blackbirds fledging. Parents chirping instructions, whilst fluffy brown things with unsteady wings hop up and down the mountain bikes beside me. Wall to bike, bike to wall. I wonder if I am interrupting but they don't seem bothered by Ruby and I. Skipping into the porch corner behind my chair.

When you arrive somewhere in autumn or winter, spring really is a surprise.

Finding a balance ...

I appear to have scared everybody off by blogging about politics. Shhh!

So, to compensate for my misdemeanour, I will share the last google search to land someone on this blog :

'dirty poems about sheep' (warning - this link may not be Badger Friendly)

Is that a more comfortable level? ;)

But seriously, I seem to have shifted from asking "is that too personal?" when I write to wondering "is this too impersonal?". I have given myself permission to blog my verucca*, but I still feel a bit wobbly about sharing my world view. This does not sit comfortably with writing a book about how to save the planet. You will read it when it's finished? And not be cross that it doesn't have any fornicating frogs or photos of Ruby in it?**

*For those who are interested, I have had a verucca on my left foot for over 10 years. I have half-treated it numerous times and always lost interest just in time to let the little bugger recover. And then a few weeks ago it spontaneously disappeared, just after I returned from a weekend of traipsing through deep scottish peat bogs. Coincidence? 

** Actually, the book features both fornicating*** frogs and photographs of Ruby - how could I let you down?

*** Badger thought fornicating was a kind of dance. I suppose she's not entirely wrong :) Badgers**** are brill, every family should have one.

**** Did you know that Badger is doing all the design / artwork / graphics / layout for the book? She is really really really talented. We are going to put her on Britain's Got Talent. Doing animal impressions and photoshop manipulations at the same time.

A vision of public spending in the UK: versions 1 and 2

Solution 1

The final chapter of this book thing I'm writing includes a proposal for restructuring our tax system. It then sets down a competition to design a more detailed solution, but the basic premise is something we're calling PIE ... which will one day stand for something but doesn't yet :) 

In a nut shell, when a citizen votes they would also be able to directly allocate a significant amount of tax revenue to various different buckets. There would be buckets for health care, education, defence, housing, public transport subsidy, international development ... 

The money that voters could directly distribute would be about 10% of the total tax revenue, on a rolling basis, so each bucket-department would know that they had at least 90% of the money they were allocated last time around.

Each bucket-department would have to disclose exactly what they're spending that base 90% on, and what they would spend each additional bit of cash they might get on should they be allocated it.

The impact it would have on our relationship with the government could be quite profound. Discussing it with other people, someone has suggested that in some ways it's the integration of Marxism and Consumerism. I'm no marxist scholar but it seems that Marx believed that the course of history was headed towards a flatter structure, in which us little people held the power and the state was little more than a professional system for implementing our decisions.

With PIE our government could only maintain a standing professional military if we chose to fund it. For me this is a really exciting prospect. If our leaders really felt that they wanted to take military action in the absence of a UN coalition they would have to hold a referendum to ask for the money.

Some people have said that it sounds a little outrageous ... so I'd like to describe an alternative solution.

Solution 2

Imagine we allow a handful of people to make decisions as to how the whole pot of money is divided. Make them read out some overall figures to us once or twice a year, but don't require them to detail what they propose to spend the money on within each area.

Let them allocate sufficient money to defence to allow our government to go to war without the direct support of the population as long as one or two other governments are interested in pursuing the same agenda. 

Leave the trivial stuff, you know, giving hope to deprived children, nursing people with cancer, air ambulances, equipment for people with disabilities ... leave those little luxuries to be provided for by money raised through charity game shows and reality TV phone-ins!

Hey - anyone remember You Bet! ? A genius way to fund those inessential social care programmes!  

Gary from Colchester claims he can recognise 150 models of 1970s saloon car, just from a photograph of the driver side wing mirror, in under 2 minutes! 74% of the studio audience and 2 of our celebrities believe he can do it. If Gary can pull it off then we'll give £7400 to their nominated charities - Macmillan Nurses and the NSPCC! If he can't then we'll give £2,600 to a physiotherapy center for children with cerebral palsy. Gary - are you ready?

Matthew - YOU BET I am!

Wonderful stuff. A beautiful vision of modern democracy.

The choice is yours ...

So - which is a better way to distribute around 500 billion quid? I'll tell you what - let's hold a phone-vote and 12 pence of every call will go to charity!

Sentimental post alert

Living with Stray is not without its surprises. (I shan't mention her current obsession with memorising sheep breeds, nor her plans for launching the sheep version of Top Trumps in time for Christmas.)

She has a remarkable intolerance for most television, but reserves a particular contempt for badly made documentaries. In a former life she used to write, direct and present factual TV which makes her something of an expert on the subject.

As I have come to realise.

Repeatedly. 

Strange then, that her intolerance of flakey documentaries is matched only by her phenomenal tolerance for populist crap. Which is how come I know exactly who won  X Factor, American Idol and that ice skating malarkey, for the first time in my life. 

And how come I have just spent the evening blubbing like a loon with Stray as we watched this amazing young man win Britain's Got Talent.

Bet you cried too, didn't you?

Would you buy a book called ...

Homo Sapiens Globalis

The species that can save our planet.

?

It's a serious question. Finding a useful title for the book I'm working on is proving to be incredibly difficult.

Having completed all the chapter introductions and summaries, and the bullet pointed content from cover to cover, I'm now at the point where calling it 'the book' isn't cutting it anymore. Someone who has a potential hook into a publisher wants to read an overview, and the overview needs at least a working title. Today I'm attempting the 400 / 200 / 100 / 50 / 20 and 10 word synopsis. Many versions of each. The title above is a 10 word synopsis. I think I like it, but I need feedback!

Oddly I came up with the term 'Homo Sapiens Globalis' without even knowing if 'Globalis' was valid Latin, and then when I googled it I found that a couple of people have used the term to mean precisely what I am intending. That bodes well, surely?

So - as to the synopsis, the front cover of this book will also bare the statement:

Why the threat of Global Climate Change is the greatest opportunity ever to have faced the human race.

The back of the jacket might say something like:

Global Climate Change is not a technical problem - zero-carbon energy sources are available and well understood today. Global Climate Change is not an economic problem - a world that can afford Formula One, Space exploration and armed conflict is not unable to find the money to fund the technological solution. Global Climate Change is a human problem. If we do not successfully address the threat to the livability of our planet it will be because our own human nature got in the way.

So - are you interested? Would you pick it up and give it a flick through? Inside it's a mix of normal text and light hearted illustrations - not entirely dissimilar to the "Jung for Beginners" kind of books. It's being pitched at bright 13 year olds upwards - not too dry and stuffy but with a lot of quite complex ideas in it.

I'll also be looking for readers for the first and second drafts. Any volunteers? 

*edit: This is a book for grown-ups too! It's intended to be mainstream - we've included smart young people in the target group because they're particularly good at weeding out jargon etc, and because they're the generation who have most investment in the outcome.

Speed blogging because lately ...

... I am dehydrating. Everything. It's the best science experiment I've done in years. To take camping of course. Little bags of mexican chicken in the freezer. Making my own instant mashed potato. The miracle of putting the water back in and it all going back to how you made it is quite thrilling.  Water eh? Oxygen and hydrogen ... who'd have thunk it?

Our trip to Scotland was amazing, thrilling, terrifying, exhausting and the most exercise I have done ever. 5 hours hiking with gear in difficult terrain to get to the most amazingly remote spot out the back of Ben Nevis, at the foot of Stob Ban. Gorgeous, remote, breathtaking, great weather ... I was actually thinking that I might be the happiest I'd ever been in my life.  The next afternoon, Ms M and I said goodbye to our friends and their boxer dog at the peak, as they descended north whilst we went back south to camp for another night, having the monday off. We made good progress down to the coll between the 3 peaks, and then suddenly we lost Ruby.

An hour of shouting later, the weather came down hard and fast and we left the coll to descend, heartbroken, sobbing. I stuck a pole in the ground on top of a mound of dirt in the hope that we might return to look for her again in the morning as we dragged ourselves back through a bog for 2 hours and struggled to cross the swollen river. Suddenly the vastness of the landscape and remoteness of the location felt overwhelming rather than exhilarating. Back at camp we concluded that Ruby must have succumbed to her heart valve problem - she's never had any symptoms but the vets do warn me that her life could end suddenly at any time. Lots of tears. I kept telling myself that this was not the littlest Hobo. There would be no happy ending, my baby was lost and probably dead or badly injured and I would never cuddle her again.

And then. Five hours after we lost her. A woof. Far away. I know that is Ruby's woof. Ms M and I stared at each other. I blew the whistle. Two woofs. Definitely Ruby's woofs. Far away, but getting closer. And then, coming from the other side of the mountain, a little brown spot running in the distance. 

She ran and ran and ran until she reached us. It was like the end of a made-for-tv movie. I hugged her and she shook next to me. She was bleeding quite badly from a ripped claw and cut paws, and suddenly instead of looking like a paranoid overpacker I looked like a well prepared sensible person as I took the dog supplies out of the first aid kit and bandaged her paw.

She slept as late as possible the next morning as we packed up around her. I carried her pack as we limped collectively back to the car for four hours. Where had she been? No answers, but a theory - she thought the others were lost. The point at which she left us was where our path would have had line of sight / hearing / smell with their path. She almost certainly went to try to round them up, but couldn't catch up with them, and miraculously made the decision to return to the place we had slept the night before - even though that would have been three or four miles away and on the other side of a huge peak. I am sure she thinks it was us who were lost, and is relieved that we had the good sense to go back to her tent ;)

Other than that I'm writing. Writing the book. Need to blog some of it soon. Get your feedback if that's ok? Planning a couple more books. Planning on doing something different when I grow up. Planning another camping trip in June, and making my own dehydrated packet food. Suggestions for recipes very gratefully received!

The Patch!

Over the past few months I have been growing things in pots from seed and chitting potatoes on the window in preparation for my new vegatable venture.

I had a go last year in the tree house in Surrey but the elements were against me, including gale force winds blowing almost everything over... but I have not given in.

Back in February I took myself off to the local garden centre (I say local, nothing is really local around here, it was a 60 mile round trip), but I came back armed with packets of seeds and bags of compost. Since then I have grown 4 varieties of Tomato plants, which promise to give me a selection of yellow and red tomatoes.

My salad leaves are coming on very well indeed and I think we could even start grazing on them.

I also planted some broccoli seeds indoors back in late Feb and last week they were ready to go out into the patch. Their stalks are still rather thin but I hope they will grow to be strong. At the same time I also planted a few stronger plants straight outside, this included the elephant garlic and onions. Both these are coming along very well and they made it through all the snow we had.

Now the weather has improved I have put a few more things straight into the ground, including radishes, beetroots, potatoes, dwarf beans, and carrots. My potatoes would you believe were only planted 2 weeks ago and they have gone crazy, I hope I planted them deep enough, this is my biggest worry, other than my cat Frank being a complete bastard and digging everything up. I swear he is so full of self importance that he thinks I am making these dirt areas as outdoor litter trays for him.

Katy over at the potting shed gave me some of her finest Cauliflowers to rear in the patch. She also gave me a wonderful Strawberry tip which was to arange 3 Strawberry plants in a hanging basket and then the strawbs will grow over the edge ready for eating. This way no slugs can get them and they cannot rot on the ground.