Norwich to get Connect2 pro-cycling funding for river crossing between city and Whitlingham Park

Sustrans, the UK sustainable transport charity, have been successful in the People's £50 Million Lottery Giveaway for their Connect2 project.


Sustrans will use the funding to invest in walking and cycling UK-wide as part of the 5-year Connect2 project in partnership with local authorities.


One of the Connect2 projects is up to £1 million to benefit Norwich by providing a river crossing from the City to Whitlingham Country Park.


The planned route would stretch from Whitlingham Country Park over the River Yare and River Wensum and behind Norwich City Football Club. Photos of the event to launch the Norwich bid can be found here.

The Tour Norfolk site has good information about Whitlingham Country Park and its facilities.

The former gravel quarry is now an excellent centre for water sports, and a great place for walking, cycling and wildlife. The official web site Whitlingham Outdoor Education Centre is here.

Sustrans are the charity behind the National Cycle Network, Safe Routes to Schools, Bike It and TravelSmart.

This might inspire me to pump up the tyres on my old bike and brave cycling again after more than 10 years!


I came across the excellent Norwich Cycling Campaign web site, which provides useful information to promote cycling and cyclists in Norwich.

NCC are also campaigning against the insane decision by Norwich City Council to pilot the use of our cycle lanes by HGV's, which I previously blogged about.

How to live off-grid

Got sent a review copy of "How to live off-grid" by Nick Rosen.


Apparently he is an award winning journalist and documentary maker, for PBS Frontlineand Channel 4 Dispatches amongst others.

This is a new concept to me, living "off-grid" but I guess it may be something we all could do well to find out more about. With the credit crunch, building a yurt in a forest maybe the only option for some of us!

"Off-Grid" means living without mains water and power, sewage and a landline. If you are cut off from the mains you have no choice but to conserve power and water as much as you can, and perhaps, as Nick Rosen would say, makes you more in harmony with nature.

The book charts his journey around Britain in a camper van meeting people who live outside the system and off the grid, i.e. not on mains water and not on the national grid for electricity.

For more information about living off-grid, you can go to Nick Rosen's site.


Read this book whilst waiting for my daughter to be born last month, and it was interesting, challenging and informative. Made the hours of waiting and worrying a lot more bearable.


The style annoyed me a bit at first as it was part travel log, part off-grid guidebook but I soon warmed to it. In some ways, it was like a conversation, rather like a blog, and because of this, it did bring some of the characters and experiences Nick Rosen had a bit more to life.


The UK certainly has some eccentric and some inspirational people around, as well as some con-merchants cashing in on the green thing.


Worth a mention is Nigel Lowthrop, who on leaving the RAF, bought Hill Holt Wood , moved his family there and created a social enterprise with a sustainable income from the wood that involves the whole community and helps disadvataged children. Politicians are taking an interest in learning from and replicating such pioneers and schemes, which must be a good thing.


I am not sure I will rush to buy an old bus off eBay, off-grid it with solar panels etc and fill the tank with old chip fat and drive my family into the wilds of the UK.

Can't afford it for a start and all the energy saving measures I would like to install at home are just beyond us financially because the technology is so expensive still in the UK.

Not only that, trying build a house in the middle of no where off-grid seems like too much hassle to navigate the labyrinthine planning regulations and application process.

If you are rich, you can probably find a way through quite easily. That said, the book has some innovative, brave and driven people, like Mr Lowthrop and family, who make a success of it.

Good luck to them and I would heartily recommend this book as an enjoyable window on the world of living off-grid.

Another option to manage junk and unwanted communications

In this lead up to the local elections, I am more conscious of the amount of junk mail we get through our letter box.

Most people have come across the Mail Preference Service, which is a free service to help you manage that unwanted junk mail that usually ends up straight in the recycling unread (at least if you are anything like our household).

I got an email about a new free service called Choose Your Mail, which takes the MPS a bit further by allowing you specify what direct mail you don't mind receiving.

Apparently, UK households receive something like 6.3 billion items of junk mail per year and most of it ends up in the bin unread.

In addition, if you receive annoying cold calls on the telephone, there is also the Telephone Preference Service to try out.

It isn't foolproof but it does reduce the calls a bit.

I haven't tried this yet but there is also an Email Preference Service to, which is another weapon against spam.

Trading Standards are the place to go if your life continues to be hounded by unsolicited calls, post or emails.

Are children safe in the UK or are we exaggerating and worsening the risks?

I was reading the Observer yesterday, which had an excellent Climate Change issue with Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead as the guest editor.

He helped launch the Friends of the Earth "Big Ask" Campaign, to lobby the government to bring in a 3% carbon reductions year on year to reach the 60% reduction needed by 2050. Watch an interview with him here.

In amongst it was an article about what could be the greenest city in the world, namely Freiburg, Germany. I remember going there in my teens on a school trip in the late 1980s and thought it was great. There were a few mediaeval bits that allied bombing in WWII had not completely destroyed, and a brilliant tram. Trams were a novelty to me then and now, although I did use the one in Sheffield when I was studying there in the 1990s.

What struck me most about this article was not the climate change angle and public transport options. It was a picture with little toddlers, not older children, playing in a woodland on bits of plank and felled trees. It was called "an adventure site" an was largely Freiburg's answer to a children's playground.

How can this be? Where is the health and safety? What about splinters? Is this irresponsible?

The kids looked like they were having a great time but being a father to a toddler myself, I could feel my concern rising as the planks and log was in no way secured and looked like something I would have put together when I played with my friends in the 1970s.

But isn't that the point?

Don't get me wrong, I am a Dad and have baby number 2 on the way. I worry about my kids and my natural instinct is to not let any harm come to them.

What I struggle with is letting my son grow up and explore the world around him. I'm pleased to say that he has a cautious head on his shoulders and still gets cuts and bruises as evidence of him trying new things out and learning about his environment, and maybe having some fun along the way.

Should we be protecting children or should we be teaching them to spot potential risks and manage them?

The Noise To Signal blog has collected together some info on the old child safety films that many of us grew up with. It is amazing how long this tough line in parenting has been going with children made to see a little squirrel, Tufty, narrowly avoid becoming road kill by a wise owl, or the scary tales of the unfortunate Charley the cat.

Tim Gill's is an expert in this area and you can read more at his site Rethinking Childhood .

Maybe we are playing it too safe? Before I became a parent, I thought that there was a lot of scaremongering.

You hear about flashers and worse near children's playgrounds as if it is worsening problem. The fact is, bad people have always been around and there are probably no more around now than in the past. My Mum surprised me once by recounting a story of being flashed by some pathetic man in the 1940s when she was growing up in the country. She was so matter of fact about it and even managed a cheeky joke about saying how "he had nothing to boast about"! ;-)

What I want is for my children not to be scared, be in control and to be able to deal with what life throws at them and hopefully have good lives.

Wrapping them up in cotton wool, fitting GPS devices to their clothing and even locking them indoors is not going to help them.

As Tim Gill would say, adults worry about children (which is ok) but where we probably go wrong is by trying to make childhood zero risk.

Wouldn't it be even better if we taught our children how to manage risks not to always avoid them?

Maybe they would grow up better able to deal with life and have a great childhood in the process?

I did, although the thought of my son climbing and jumping out of trees is starting to give me palpitations.....

Recycled materials in the home - get inspired by Oliver Heath this Easter

Got an email this week to tip me off about a video that has been produced by the government recycling agency WRAP with the eco-designer Oliver Heath.

It seems we under bombardment from advertisers to go to the sales or DIY shops this Easter weekend. In fairness, the email I received was not from an advertiser.



Thought I would put the video up as I look forward to a weekend of DIY myself having to paint what will be a nursery with, of all things and co-incidentally, some "Eco Chic" eco-paint from the Oliver Heath range at Homebase! :-)

More of his top tips are available on the WRAP web site here.

Have a great Easter break.

Future of waste in Norfolk - have your say

Norfolk County Council is inviting residents of the county to have their say on the future of how household waste is managed in the county.

You can complete the questionnaire online , or download it, or request it by email.

The deadline for completed questionnaires is 11th April 2008.

Visit this link for some useful background and related links to help you decide on what the priorities are.

The annoying and undermining thing for me was that I got a hard copy of this questionnaire about waste management in Norfolk as an insert when I bought a copy of the Eastern Daily Press newspaper today, which was wrapped in clear plastic just to emphasise that it was on sale for 25p today.

Big thumbs down to the EDP for being rubbish by creating unnecessary rubbish with this needless packaging!

Prime Minister Brown and the Bags of Doom

Got an email to say that Number 10 has responded to the online petition to put a tax on plastic carrier bags.

You can read the Number 10 response here. The original petition "Introduce a tax on plastic carrier bags" was signed by 1,964 people when it closed on 28th February. May not seem a lot but it does at least give you hope that a few like minded people with a worthy cause are occasionally listened to by the government.

Hopefully we will soon stop seeing these bags flapping around in trees and discarded on our streets and countryside. We shouldn't wait for the government to act though, and keep on leading by example by reusing bags, refusing new ones at supermarkets if they try to pack for you, or using non-plastic ones.

Green Jelly Bean in the Times Online '50 Best Eco Blogs'!

Received an email from TheTimes Online that went as follows:

Hi there,
We thought that you might like to know that we have featured your site in our '50 Best Eco Blogs' roundup:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/environment/2008/02/the-top-50-eco.html
Please come along and check out some the entries: you're in good company!
All the best,
L**** A****

TIMESONLINE
The Times and The Sunday Times, in real time

You can follow the link here on The Times Online. Green Jelly Bean is mentioned in section 6 "The micro activists".

Wow. Didn't know many people read the blog. Better make sure I watch my language in future! ;-)

Join the "Stamp It Out" Campaign

It is my view that there is only one race, the human race. And yet we see and experience inequality and discrimination.

In the UK we are lucky that we have a voice and most people recognise and increasingly speak out against racisim and inequality.

One of the most subtle forms of reinforcing false difference, and promoting inequality is the use of language.

This is most dramatic in its effect when you consider the work of charities such as Survival International. They and their supporters fight for fair and equal rights for tribal peoples around the world.

The power of the media can be a force for good and if innappropriate language is chosen instead, the media can be a force for harm.

Using words such as "primitive" or "stone age" are more than innacurate or insulting - they can be a way of building a campaign to justify the supression and persecution of contemporary tribal peoples.

If you are like minded, please visit the Survival International link to get involved in the "Stamp It Out" campaign.

This campaign is just over 2 years old and I think it is worth me giving it some promotion, and getting involved myself.

Survival's Stamp It Out campaign aims to challenge racist descriptions, however unwitting, of tribal peoples in the media.

Several examples are cited by Survival and perhaps suprisingly, although regrettably, the UK is not exempt. A UK example of such innappropriate descriptions and language in the media is the article entitled 'Face to face with Stone Age man' in the Daily Mail on 21st July 2007.

Visit the Survival web site to get involved and find instructions on how to send one of the Stamp It Out postcards or e-cards to make a real difference to people's lives.

Calendar of Norfolk and UK Green and Ethical Events

I've decided to try to keep a calendar going of events in Norfolk and the UK that have an environmental or ethical living theme.

It's called NUKGEE for short, or Norfolk and UK Green and Ethical Events.

Over time it will improve and if you have any events that you think are relevant and of interest, please get in touch and I will add them to the calendar.

Although I put it together for my benefit so thay I didn't forget and miss out on things, I hope you find it useful too.

Make your town climate-friendly with the Greenpeace EfficienCity

Greenpeace has just launched a natty 3D interactive virtual city called "EfficienCity".

Its aim is to show how we in the UK can fight climate change, although it is being blogged about all over the world like at the excellent EcoGeek site.

It is a fantastic resource with a huge amount of information on the different options available to us, from saving energy to generation from renewable sources.

The way it is presented and the large amount of photographs, videos, and technical presentations make it a brilliant educational resource for individual citizens, schools, and the workplace.

You can even download the whole thing to run it offline with a PC version (51.5MB) and a Mac version (53.6MB).

You can take it further than just learning and you are invited to join Greenpeace's campaign to put pressure on you local council to find out what they are doing about climate change and securing a sustainable energy for the future. You can encourage your council to work with experts in Greenpeace to increase access to decentralised energy generation.

Whatever your views on Greenpeace, this is an excellent educational resource about the options we have to respond to climate change. Tell as many people as you can about it.

More on a UK Ban for Patio Heaters

There is a good review of the debate on patio heaters on the Mygreenweek site.

Although this opens the debate more on the potential energy inefficiency and harm caused by patio heaters, suggesting it is not so clear cut, I would urge people to consider the fact that it is not just CO2 and water vapour that is emitted, they also give out other harmful, unfiltered by byproducts and gases, as pointed out by Leo Hickman of The Guardian newspaper.

We know that B&Q will stop selling patio heaters when its current stock is sold. Wyevale were the first when they announced they would stop selling these back in April 2007.

In the UK, there is increasing support for a total ban on these heaters with various campaigns, perhaps led most prominently by Friends of the Earth. I came across this plain speaking one called Patio Heaters are Evil. Definitely worth looking at if you are considering buying one of these things.

You can read the full details of the EU's Energy Efficiency Motion in its full proposal, which includes the proposed withdrawal from sale of patio heaters.

It is obvious that this is going to be most strongly opposed by the pub and catering trade who have had to deal with the smoking ban introuduced last summer in the UK. I have seen figures that suggest it could cost the pub and the catering industry £250 million per year in lost trade.

Maybe if we ban smoking completely as well then we can have the double benefit of improving human health and reducing the gases that cause climate change? ;-)

Garden waste scheme to be extended across Norwich

Norwich City Council launched a brown bin pilot scheme last April. For £35, residents of Eaton and Crome wards could buy this service for fortnightly doorstep collection of gardening waste.

It has been a great success with 1,700 households signing up, and more than 400 tonnes of garden waste collected in its forst six months.

As a result, the scheme will now be made available to all residents within the Norwich City Council's area.

This is great news and I have even seen at the Waste Disposal area/Dump at Kettingham that you can purchase compost. I guess that this will be an output from some of this garden waste?

We'll certainly be renewing this service.

You can download a leaflet about the scheme or visit the Garden Waste Recycling section of the Norwich City Council web site for more details.

EU debates patio heater ban

The EU will debate a ban on patio heaters tomorrow. It seems a bit mad for us all to be encouraged to save energy and produce less greenhouse gases, only for these things to be allowed to heat up the night sky outside pubs. bars and restaurants. Fingers crossed that the EU can take the lead on this and vote to ban these devices of doom.

End of an era - Co-op to sell dairy business

Got a letter from the milkman this morning. Co-op are looking to sell their dairy business and transfer the Society's milk rounds to Dairy Crest this February. What a sad day. We just hope Dairy Crest don't give up as well and enough people pay a fairer price for their milk rather than the unfair supermarket ones.

Have a Green Start the New Year - Recycle your Christmas Cards

Happy New Year !

Why not support the Woodland Trust and Recycle Now's joint campaign and recycle all those Christmas Cards you might have received this Christmas? Apparently we sent about 100 million!

Various retail chains have tubs for you to post your cards including, Marks & Spencer, TK Max, Tesco, and WH Smith's.

The campaign runs from 2-31 January 2008 and more details can be found on the Woodland Trust's web site.

Pledge to Tread Lightly - join The Guardian's low carbon diet and save the world!

I got an email this week, and it read as follows:

Hi Tractorboy,

My name's N***** and I work for Outside Line, a digital PR agency.

At this moment in time we are currently working with The Guardian to promote their new Tread Lightly campaign:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/treadlightly?CMP=OTCTreadLightly

As one of the top 20 Green Bloggers, I am contacting you today as I thought your readers may be interested in reading about the Guardian’s ‘Tread Lightly’ initiative and learning more about how they themselves could making a real difference to this campaign.

Guardian Tread lightly is a new community site, which aims to encourage online communities into reducing their CO2 emissions through making weekly pledges and recording their actions against their pledges.

The idea is that every pledge is simple, straightforward, and something that everyone can do, so that people who are normally put off doing environmental things because it sounds like a lot of effort will find Tread Lightly a good solution to easing their carbon conscience.

A large part of what we are trying to achieve is to get community and online evangelists in the subject, such as yourself, to help us help educate and motivate the online community into taking those first small steps that make the big difference.

We have campaign outlines and a blogger’s button that we can supply you with, plus the Guardian weekly blog will make mention of key bloggers helping in the campaign, and we really hope you will consider being one of them.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you require any more information on this, if you aren’t interested then thank you for taking the time to read this and we wont bother you again.

Many Thanks
N***** P******
http://www.outsideline.co.uk/

It was a bit of a surprise to be described as an "online evangelist" on matters green!

Not sure I deserve this. Just trying to listen to my conscience and do the right thing when and where I can.

There are loads of these pledge-based groups around and I may do a post collecting some of the better ones I have found and subscribed to.

The Tread Lightly community seems worthy of a mention and I will add a link to the site on my blogroll.

Whether you are green, orange, red, blue or some sort of rainbow in terms of your politics, there is some good stuff here that goes beyond the standard Guardian readership.

Do have a look and maybe get involved. The issues go beyond politics and are about trying live a good life and cause as little harm as possible.

Even better, tell your mates as well and encourage them to live a low carbon lifestyle so that we can each save our little bits of the world. These bits could add up to a lot of planet.

Another incentive is that you could win a G-Wiz car in the New Year, or at least get a free cotton bag so you can stop using all those platic bags! :-)

If you want even more info, I asked for more from the PR company and received this:

Guardian Tread Lightly

Guardian Tread lightly is a new community site developed by Guardian environment that aims to encourage people into a low carbon lifestyle so that they come together to save the planet.

The idea is that people can go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/treadlightly?CMP=OTCTreadLightly1
where they will find a different pledge every week that, if they take an act on, will help them reduce their CO2 emissions. The pledges will all be quite simple, achievable things, so the first one will be change your light bulbs for energy efficient ones, and this will be followed by things like: take showers not baths, recycle all of your newspapers this week, turn down your heating by one degree and recycle your glass this week. The idea is that every pledge is straightforward, simple and something that everyone can do, so that people who are normally put off doing environmental things because it sounds like quite a lot of effort will find Tread Lightly a good solution to easing their carbon conscience.

Once a user has registered with Tread Lightly and clicked on Take the pledge, they will be sent an email reminding them of what they have said they will do and this will be followed at the end of the week with reminder to go back to the site and say whether you fulfilled the pledge or not and what the next weeks pledge is.

The user will then get a personal profile page that will show them what pledges they have taken, how much CO2 they have personally saved and how much it equates to (5 less cars on the road for a day at rush hour etc).

The community aspect of the site will include a message board / blog where people can share tips on how to achieve that weeks target, a little bar chart showing how much CO2 the community has saved so far (in kg) and what this equates to (big things hopefully, like a coal powered power station being turned off for 2 minutes), and users will be invited to write in and give suggestions of other pledges.

With a big community, it’s hoped that when all of the individual carbon savings
are added up over time, the users will have made a real difference to the environment.

The launch will be supported by a competition to win a G-Wiz car and a free bag giveaway. Anyone who completes a pledge by the end of November will be automatically entered into a competition to win a G-Wiz electric car. Anyone who completes 12 pledges by the end of February 2008 will be sent a free Tread lightly cotton shopping bag. .

Plastic bag tax - sign the petition

Plastic bags are useful and are a menace to the environment.

If we use them then we should pay for this.

Apparently in Britain, we use an average of 300 plastic bags every year. Each bag lasts up to 400 years, spending the vast majority of that time in a landfill site or strewn across the British countryside.

Other countries have been more active and successful at sorting out this problem.

In Ireland, a tax of 15cents per bag resulted in a 90% drop in plastic bag usage, and raised 3.5 million Euros which was spent on environmental projects. Bangladesh has banned polythene bags altogether while Taiwan and Singapore are taking steps to discourage their use.

Paying for what has been free and has caused us to be wasteful and thoughtless might start a change for the better.

Paying 10p or so for any plastic bag might encourgae us to start reusing them, use longer lasting bags, boxes or non-plastic bags.

If you think that it is time to pay the price for our wasteful, thoughtless use of plastic bags then sign this petition at Green England.

If you can go out and spend some time gathering signatures, a document version of the petition is available here.

They have hit the 10,000 signature target and it is still rising!

Green real ale, or is it blue?

Went to visit family in Ipswich on Saturday and got the chance to go the 25th Ipswich Beer Festival.

We are spoilt in Norwich as the Beer Festival every October half term (most of CAMRA members in Norfolk are teachers I am told!) is brilliant and is held in the grand cathedral-like setting of St Andrews Hall. Serious setting for serious drinking.

As it was lunchtime and I would have to drive later, I was on strict orders to only have one pint. This meant two half pints of course as it would be a big mistake to sample only one pint of over 200 real ales on offer.

The Corn Exchange behind the Town Hall in Ipswich was fine as a venue. Small but well organised. The festival was supporting St Elizabeth's Hospice, which was established in 1989 to meet the needs of those living with an incurable illness in East Suffolk. Needless to say, I donated my unused tokens to the charity.

Being an Ipswich Town Supporter, I had to try some local stuff and had a great half from St Judes Brewery. The St Francis Pale Ale and Gypeswic Bitter were great.

For those who are interested the name Gypeswic or Gippeswic, meaning a city on the Gipping, and is the old English name for Ipswich. I bought a bottle of both and I have to warn you that the St Francis is quite fizzy and was a bugg*r to pour, so my pint had a head on it as if it had been served at the Rovers Return in Coronation Street!

The brewery is a micro brewery and tries to be as green as it can. That is great but I would like to warn them against pursuing their blue beer fantasy.

Apparently their Suffolk Blue Punch (Suffolk Punch is a breed of horse, also on the badge of Ipswich Town FC), is a blueberry beer introduced mostly for women and the alco-pop market.

Don't get me wrong, blueberries are great. We have a small blueberry bush that produces lovely berries each year. Blue beer though? Fruit in your beer? What's that all about? I had a tiny taste and is was revolting.

I wish St Judes Brewery well and will buy their real ale when I can. You can buy it online.

One last thing though...

Green brewing, yes.

Blue beer, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The real cost of milk - more price rises from the Co-op

We get our milk delivered by the Co-op. Seems like a good idea. Supporting local farmers and dairies with the convenience of having the milk brought to your door.

The milkman left us yet another note saying that the price per pint is to rise yet again by a whopping 4p per pint from next month!

The note said that the price rise is as a result of increased demand for milk in the Far East and the rising cost of animal feed. Over the last 6 months, raw milk prices for the Co-op have risen 32%.

I think this is a bit of a wakeup call that we have been shielded too long from the real cost of food in general.

At least with the Co-op you can find out where your milk comes from, unlike other supermarket chains.

You start to think, is this service worth paying the extra for?

We just about think so, although I might have to learn to drink black coffee. ;-)