Phoebe's Jottings

How much is €60bn?

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:02:00 +0000

If we are trying to solve our economic problems and we have €60b to spend, what could we buy?

Three of these: $21 BILLION ORBITING SOLAR ARRAY WILL BEAM ELECTRICITY TO EARTH - http://www.physorg.com/news172224356.html, which would add 50% to our generating capacity

All the top racehorse stallions in the world - really corner the market!

A load of overvalued properties

or

A lot of oil futures - just sit back and relax and watch the money come it!

Thoughts on NAMA

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:42:00 +0000

When the main reason we are being given for NAMA is that it is the only game in town you know this is not a good idea. I did a bit of googling and chatting to various people who know more than me about these things, and reached these conclusions:

The reason for considering NAMA is to:
- Maintain Liquidity
- Restore Confidence
- Create an environment for recovery

Any solution must consider:

1. When given a choice we must choose to reduce risk rather than increase potential return - the government/taxpayers are not speculators
2. No plan can be justified on the basis of previous economic cycles - we are in uncharted waters with this global economic downturn and the impact of peak oil and spending on climate change not yet being felt.
3. The current banking model is not the only solution to maintain liquidity - banks can be bought out, new banks setup by entrepreneurs, new methods of lending and saving peer to peer etc.
4. No solution should have the objective of punishing or protecting individuals or companies.
5. Speculators have money but little time (they want a quick buck now), the government of a country has time but no money - any solution should play to our strengths.
6. Ireland has a finite amount of money it can borrow and spend over the next years - the opportunity cost of any solution must be compared against investing in projects which will support our economy in the future - energy, broadband, transport, food etc.

Risks
- What happens if, post NAMA, the banks are still unable to provide liquidity? Is there a Plan B? "There is still unexploded ordinance on the financial landscape..." FT

Questions
- Banks have already received an injection of cash but are still not lending. Is this a cashflow problem or a reserves problem? If it is a reserves problem, then they can do without cash!
- What would the impact on the economy be if our banks were bought by foreign banks or investors?
- Why do WE have to do the valuation? Take the bad assets on the basis that we will pay the banks the market price when they are liquidated - at some time in the future - and leave the banks to do the valuation for the purposes of their balance sheets?
- Why would nationalising the banks be worse than NAMA? We already own 25% of AIB and BOI at a cost of €7bn, why not buy the rest?

But I think the right questions to ask is, image we have €30-60bn to invest in the future. What are the best investments to relieving short term hardship and creating an environment for long term prosperity?

Liquidity - Buy a foreign bank or start one or support entrepreneurs who want to. Support local trading currencies. Support peer2peer lending.
Energy - building windmills is not enough to protect us from future oil shocks, we need the infrastructure to balance supply and demand of energy.
Transport - our infrastructure is predicated on the use of roads and the assumption that transport of people and goods is cheap.
Food - Ireland should be well placed to feed it's citizens in the event of disruption in trade or climate change disrupting harvests and supply surplus into the UK.
Broadband - without ubiquitous, affordable high speed broadband many options for change are restricted and new ideas are slower to develop.

I am not generally in favour of asking the country to vote, but in this case it's our money (or money we are borrowing and will have to pay back) so I think we should be asked. We will be voting anyway, whether the government is forced to call an election or whether we use the Lisbon vote, we will have our say.

Setting up Hardy Heron with Apache2 and multiple Domains

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:46:00 +0000

Finally cracked setting up multiple domains on my shiny new Ubuntu server. In case it helps anyone else out of a hold, here are my tips for easy domain management.

1. Use GoDaddy and their total DNS option (google for instructions) This means you don't have to worry about a name server. Just setup your domains and subdomains with an A record that points to your IP address. If your domain is currently pointing to a nameserver other than GoDaddy's change the nameserver option to Forwarding - wait a few mins, then you use Total DNS.

2. in /etc/apache2/site-available, create one file for each domain, I just used the domain name for the filename, eg. mydomain.com This should contain something like:

ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias www. mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /home/django/mydomain

...and all the other usual stuff ...

3. in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled create a dynamic link to the file you just created in sites-available. Ordering is import so add a sequence number to the beginning of the name. Ensure sub-domains come before main domain entry.

eg.

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/blog.mydomain.com 010-blog.mydomain.com
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.com 011-mydomain.com

4. And this is what I had missed. Ensure there is a default file in your sites-available that includes this line:

NameVirtualHost *:80

That's all I have in mine. And have a dynamic link in sites-enabled so that DEFAULT IS RUN FIRST.

eg, ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/default 000-default

5. restart apache eg. /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

6. Cross fingers and enter domain in the browser.

If you are doing this all at once, it takes a while for the changes to propogate through from godaddy, so be patient.

Dead Cat Bounce

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:56:00 +0000

I'm not filled with optimism by the 'green shoots' spotted here and there. I think this is the dead cat bounce phase, or put even better in the Editorial of the FT this weekend "... unexploded ordinance still litters the financial landscape".

Have a nice day...

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:52:00 +0000

Travelled up to Dublin on the new intercity trains last week. The toilets have these huge curved doors that you open and close with a button. There is another large button to press once you are inside to lock it and when you do the door says "Thank you"!? Whatever next. Reminded of the doors and drinks machines in Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... "Have a nice day!"

Catchup

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:31:00 +0000

Got out of the blogging habit with the long (wet) summer days so going to try and get going again with a number of small blogets. Items of note in the last months?

Christophe and Jérôme, two french wwoofers, have just left after a month that has transformed the farm. Everything is strimmed, the fencing is not only repaired but has handles to open on every field and a bank of switches from which I can turn each field on and off. (You probably have no idea how great this is!).

Great multicultural BBQ Polish, Irish, French, German, Brits and Americans. Great pics here: web4u.ie/phoebehouse/

Managed to make haylage after 7 weeks trying but never a gap of 3 dry days. Started raining as we were baling so not sure how good it's going to be.

Had a great Jumpstart with Fish Publishing and came up with a raft of new ideas on how to get more entries to their competitions.
Recession much in evidence, but life and showjumping go on...

Can you teach old dogs new tricks?

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:27:00 +0000

I am trying to learn a new programming language, Python, the new 'it' language. I taught myself PHP 10 years ago and it's interesting comparing the two experiences. 10 years ago I bought a couple of books on PHP and immersed myself in the language. I had many, many frustrating days trying to do seemingly obvious things with no success. But after six months I was pretty competant and after 18 months I was pretty good. For the last nine months, I have been working on and off with Python and I'd still class myself as a beginner. So what's the difference? Is it just that I'm 10 years older and finding it harder to learn new tricks?

Firstly there's the attention thing. Sometimes I can't remember if I brushed my teeth or not, but when I was a child with only a few hundred brushes behind me I was still a novice, and paid close attention to my brushing. Now with many thousands of brushes behind me I pay little attention, the brain focused on what to do today or tomorrow or what I should have done. So it's hardly surprising, given my lack of attention, that sometimes I can't find the memory of brushing my teeth. So while I've been learning Python for nine months, very little of that time was actually spent concentrating on learning. I have far more distractions than I did 10 years ago, far more different areas of work, and far more horses! So I don't put my attention into learning I put my attention into solving the immediate problems at hand as quickly as I can.

And this is the second point. Youth is for learning, and once we grow up, we are expected to get on with it. Until I moved back to Ireland, I attended evening classes took up new interest and was always learning new skills and new subjects. But there are fewer opportunities here, and seemingly less time every year, so I don't expect to have the time to learn, I just fix. So rather than sitting down and trying to learn Python, I've created websites in Python and fixed problems as they arise. I didn't even buy a book until a month ago! With Google, fixing rather than learning is so easy. You type in the kind of problem you're trying to solve,"python difference between two dates", for example and up comes the solution. You didn't have to work it out you just copy and paste and move onto the next problem. So in a months time you find myself again googling "difference between to dates".

So I don't think that is a problem in teaching old dogs new tricks, as long as the old dogs recognize that they're going to have to pay attention and commit their energy to learning, a skill which may be a bit rusty. I need to bring a different mind to the table, sit down with a different intention and probably uses a different part of my brain. I need to stop being so pragmatic and remember the joy of mastering a new skill and finding a whole new view on the world.

Feelings vs. Thinking and Tidy Towns

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Listening to a discussion at the Transition Towns get together for Cork groups at Cork Institute of Technology last week reminded me of a field trip at Shumacher College back in September 2001. The discussion was something like, we are working with the Tidy Towns committees to try and get them to understand the benefits of not spraying the road sides. "They could poison us" said the road side food gatherers.

As part of a course in Business and Sustainability run at Schumacher College (and if you ever get the chance to go there it is a wonderful experience) we did a field trip with a deep ecologist. We agreed the green fields of grass were deserts of monoculture, admired the cattle in the ancient water meadow (as I scoffed some very tasty blackberries. Nobody else would eat them and I wondered if I had missed a part of the lecture where we were told to leave the fruit to the birds.) After a bit of experiencing the wonder of trees we came to a field which had clearly not been touched for some years, with a wide mix of plants up to four feet high. Our tutor asked us how this field made us feel. The class expressed their appreciation of the wide mix of ecology, the animal and plant systems dependent on each other. At last I could hold my tongue no longer, "It makes me feel awful" I said. It's uncared for, unloved. It makes me want to get in there with a mower and tidy it up!". The tutor could not understand me. "But don't you see how the mix of plants and insects and animals create an ecosystem?". I couldn't explain to him that I was simply answering his question. How the field made me feel had little relation to what I thought about the field. While I like to think I have strong sustainability leanings and try to run my small farm as organically as possible, some fundamental part of me believes farmers have a responsibility to tend their fields, keep the grass grazed, the ground fertilised and hedges trimmed. No amount of logic is likely to change that feeling.

I think it will be a long, long time before you could convince a Tidy Towns committee or the judges (or me) that the verges should be left to run wild. No amount of explaining the benefits of sustainability are likely to have much impact on our own feelings about what cared for or tidy looks like. It says something about our culture that we assume that if we can simply explain logically our thinking, that this will change someone else's feelings about something. Do other cultures suffer under the same beliefs?

Tidy Towns at Work:

Dolores in Foal!

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:37:00 +0000

Dolores (broken pelvis horse) scanned in foal today to French Buffet (TB) standing at Kylemore Stud in Co. Galway (b. miles away). 10 months to go but with a bit of luck there should be a foal next april! So excited.

<-- The mother

The father

Survival of the Fittest?

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:56:00 +0000

This blog post was inspired by Trevor Sargent's speech in Clonakilty today at the talk on the Climate Neutral Network. His mention of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" reminded me of when I had been picked up for attributing this to Darwin. The phrase does not appear in On the Origin of Species and his theory has much more to do with survival of the Fitting.

It seems to me our western competitive, dog eat dog world (do dog's eat dog's?) is, in part, justified by this famous phrase. It's the natural way of things, survival of the fittest and yet I think that has only ever been true in the minds of those who wrote the history books, the victors who passed down stories of chief's slaying other chief's to become the mightiest chief in the world. Everyone else was busy surviving by fitting into their environment or trying to change their environment to fit their needs.

I am encouraged by the change in language I hear from many of those taking a positive attitude to the future. From Obama's "We can do it" to the haven of positivity which is our local Open Coffee group in Cork. I hope the war metaphors of "combat ting climate change", "a war on poverty", "fighting drugs" will give way to a more fitting language of cooperation and alliances. The kind of culture that is emerging from the Internet worlds of open source development and from the gaming world where hierarchies are leveled and mutual benefits are sought.

(Having googled Survival of the Fittest before publishing this I find that Darwin did in fact add the phrase in his 5th edition, but that it was intended as a metaphore not to be take literally! - see Wikipedia entry for why it is incomplete and misleading).

New Foal at Kippagh

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:07:00 +0000

After four sleepless nights, Emy Lou finally put us out of our misery and produced a big, strong, bay filly foal. Grabbed a few pics before catching up on some sleep!

Another Victim of the Recession - Fred the ex-racehorse

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:11:00 +0000

I'm another victim of the recession having lost my job as a racehorse. I tried to get a job as a flapper but I guess they thought I was too old so it looked like the scrap heap for me. But luckily I got on a re-skilling course and I'm retraining to be a show jumper. I got lame soon after I started the course and was a bit worried that was going to be the end of it, but after a break I'm back practicing hard. Here I am doing a jumping exercise, made a mistake the first time but got it cracked now! Next stop Dublin!

Installing Pinax 0.7 on CentOS

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:07:00 +0000

So Easy!

Here is the complete list of commands I used to install in a pinax directory of /home

easy_install virtualenv
easy_install pip
cd /home
mkdir pinax
cd pinax
curl -o pinax-boot.py http://github.com/pinax/pinax/raw/master/scripts/pinax-boot.py
python pinax-boot.py pinax-env
cd pinax-env
source bin/activate
pip install --requirement src/pinax/requirements/external_apps.txt
cd /home/pinax/pinax-env/src/pinax/pinax/projects
pinax-admin clone_project basic_project myproject
cd myproject

amend settings.py to point to required database - I'm using mysql
setup mysql database
python manage.py syndb
python manage.py runserver

DONE!

Difference between men and women is in the knot

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:32:00 +0000

I havn't read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and am sceptical of many of the differences attributed to the different sexes. But I do believe there are fundamental differences in male thinking and female thinking and I pondered yet another difference as I stomped back to the house from inspecting the resulting mess of wire and fence posts caused by SuperCub running through the electric fence.

Take knots. Men tie knots so they won't ever come undone. The rope is knotted and double knotted and then the ends of knotted just in case, and it rarely comes undone, ever. Women

have to undo this knot sometime, so let's make sure I can undo it, and yes sometimes it comes undone before it should.

When putting up electric fence, Men make sure the fence is strong and tight, wrapping the wire around the insulator so each section of wire if effectively tied to the fence post. Women think, something is going to go through this fence sooner or later, so lets put it so there is minimum work to repair it. This morning's fence was put up by a man and with four broken fence posts that need replacing it's going to take a while. If the wire had not been wrapped around the insulator, it would have pulled past the post and taken five minutes to put back up. Serves me right for not doing the fencing myself I suppose.

An on the subject of differences, what is the difference beween a male car and a female

car? Female cars are a bit unreliable, they sometimes fail to start and tend to have a few niggling complaints, but if you really need them to get you somewhere, they get you there, even if they are running on one cylinder when you arrive. Male cars are much more reliable, start on the first turn of the key every time, until that time when you really needed them to start...

Female vehicles I have had:

2 x Ford Transit

BMW 3.0s

Mitsubishi Shogun

Male vehicles:

Ford Cortina

BMW K75

Nissan Micra

Jaguar XJS V12

Jaguar Sovereign v12

Yahoo BOSS - no joy yet

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:01:00 +0000

Am trying to get Yahoo BOSS search running in Django. It all looked so easy based on this site: http://www.peterkrantz.com/2008/yahoo-boss-in-django/ but I still can't get it working. So I'm adding a link to the site to see if that helps.

Visit http://dunmanway.ie!

The Barefoot vs. Shod experiment in West Cork

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:42:00 +0000

Every interest group has it's battle lines, and there is one between the barefoot proponents and those who believe horses need shoes. I won't go into the arguments but just report the results of my trying to get my horses barefoot.

The biggest challenge here in West Cork is the endless rain and mud, winter and summer. This makes the hooves soft and encourages thrush and infection in the frogs and heels. It's all very well to show the wonderful hooves of horses in the mid-west of America, but you guys wouldn't believe the mud we have here!

I've been through the process of taking shoes off horses that are used to them, twice. The first month or so they get more and more sore and you really wonder if it is fair to put them through so much discomfort. I would advise riding them in boots from day one, there is no advantage to them getting sore heels and soles. Then they slowly start to harden up but it takes a good six months to get to the point of being able to ride them in a sand arena and occasionally on the road without shoes. But I could never get their hooves hard enough and putting eight lots of boots on to exercise two on the road and going back to look for them when they fall off is just no fun.

I've tried all kinds of supplements and potions for the feet and found none made any noticeable difference. The horse were in good condition anyway, shiny coats and out 24/7/365.

Re the boots. Marquis are goodish but they do fall off, even just trotting on the road. Easyboot Bares are better, but still fall off on the road occasionally breaking the gaiters, and they are black so not easy to find!

There are two major downsides to barefoot for me - chasing after the boots when they fall of and the need for studs when jumping competitively outdoors. So I have reached a compromise. When the horses reach serious competition level aged 5 or 6, the shoes go on in April, with stud holes. And come off again in October for the winter. This works well for me, and keeps the cost down (at €60 a set of shoes). I have had no problems with jumping the younger horses all summer without shoes, no swelling or lameness or splitting of feet or all the other dire consequences of riding without shoes that I have been threatened with.

But if a horse has had shoes for a number of years, don't underestimate the effort and discomfort you will cause the horse in getting him sound barefoot. Get some good boots before you start.

Fred the ex-racehorse

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:06:00 +0000

Fred is a remarkably well mannered horse. He wouldn't dream of lagging behind when you lead him. If you ask him to pick up a foot, he snaps it up and holds it there for you. A joy after my lazy lot, who oblige you, generally, but at their own speed! But today, Fred showed the flip side of that anxious obedience. His feet are very sore after some weeks without shoes and when the farrier started hammering on some shoes, Fred's fear of reprimand was overridden by his desire to get rid of the farrier. With no warning at all, the farrier was thrown out the door. And this was the pattern for the rest of the feet. He would stand for as long as he could and then bang! He leapt forward or kicked back. Racehorses are generally treated with a lack of patience and understanding by a wide variety of people so their expectation is that people are unpredictable and often violent and the best policy is to appease them, if possible. Until anger and fear builds up to a point where the brain flips to fight or flight.

My nags and I have a escalation ritual. I ask quietly and politely, I ask more loudly, I shout and then start hitting with more show than effect and this is usually as far as it goes. The nags start with a look, a snap of the teeth, a raised leg, a nip if pushed and on only one occasion have I annoyed one enough to kick at me (got me by mistake I think).

It will be interesting to see if Fred can learn our escalation rituals.

After Fred, the farrier moved onto the two thoroughbred yearlings. It was time for them to re-learn that not only can we influence their behaviour, but they can influence ours. Both these two had been handled when small and would lead and pick their feet up. But in the last six months they have become a bit wild. Their reaction to having their feet picked up was, "no thanks, I'm off".

After patience and quiet has little effect a battle then ensues where the aim if to get them to a position where they discover that standing still makes the people relax. It's difficult to ensure they are learning the right lessons, and all to easy to teach them that rearing and kicking earns them freedom. But it's great when you see the light go on and they start to react to you as you react to them. I think many horses have no influencing skills when it comes to people. All they know is how to avoid trouble, how to run or how to fight. If only horses had money, they could go on management training exercises.

Slides/Notes from Energy Scenarios presentation at Dreamstake Meetup

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:17:00 +0000

The presentation http://www.vividlogic.ie/uploads/Dreamstake_Feb09_ESUK.pdf

And the Scenarios Summary Sheet http://www.vividlogic.ie/uploads/ESUK_Summary_sheet.pdf

Any questions, do email me at phoebebright@vividlogic.ie.

London Open Coffee and the future of social networks

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Had lots of stimulating conversations at London Open Coffee today (yes I know you are supposed to gather essential info and move on but I relish meeting so many interesting people and am not going to waste the opportunity, so there).

First, checkout the amazing light sculptures at http://www.sculptlight.com from Ivan Markovic, who is an Adobe expert and an Acrobat guru.

Touched on the future of employment and work with Livia and Azita from Eat Your Cake who do job-sharing for professionals. Given the current outlook, are few jobs going to be shared by more people or will the unemployment figures rise?

I look forward to meeting Wendy Deaner to talk more about network marketing and where that might be going.

BobbyHathiramani is developing some pools (betting) software and is looking for the best business model.

Michael O'Shea has a website http://www.wickeduncle.com that does cool presents for small people, and we agreed it would be great to be paid just for being interesting!

Andrew Gerrard has a great new business card, minimalist - how to contact him and how he likes his coffee... We also had a far ranging conversation about the future of social networking. We agreed that similar to your local community network (that not everyone has these days) it requires investment of time and energy to get the rewards and having experience of both an online network and a strong local community network (thank you all those neighbours who turned out, many more than once, in the middle of the night to get injured horse back on it's feet last year), I wonder if we generally have only a finite amount of time/energy to invest in our networks and tend to make a choice between on or the other? Myself, I would say if I'm at home in Ireland, I focus on my "real" network, but if I'm in London, where I don't know my neighbours even, I focus on my online network. Is this a generational thing, or a character thing?

We also considered whether the last 50 years of an increasingly peripatetic lifestyle for many in the developed world, is a natural evolution or an exception. Traditionally the younge leave the nest and many return when it is time to marry and settle down. But these days people are expected to move with their work, or their next step up the property ladder. Are we living in perpetual youth? Is there a natural need to belong to a community and because we don't expect to stay anywhere long, is this what is driving the desire to invest in online communities? If we had the opportunity to become more rooted in our local communities, because we could work locally or from home, would online social networks become less important as we invested in our local community or would they continue in parallel? Lots of questions to ponder!

Posters with Messages

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:54:00 +0000

Came across this site http://www.wildriverreview.com/4/art_sdposters.php with The Posters of Scorsone/Drueding

More like this:

and this:

Beyond the Recession - Dragon's Den 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Dreamstake is a network for supporting entrepreneurs who want to take their ideas to market by providing networking with similar people plus access to funding, marketing, legal advice etc. It is still in it's infancy but the team are rushed off their feet as people decide to take their future into their own hands and go into business for themselves.

http://dreamstake.ning.com/

I'll be speaking at Dreamstake's inaugural meeting on Thursday talking about using scenario planning to identify risks and opportunities in uncertain times. The fun bit will be asking everyone to come up with ideas for Dragon's Den that would be appropriate for different scenarios in 2020. What will be hot?

All are welcome, just sign up to Dreamstake here
http://dreamstake.ning.com/

February 19, 2009 from 6pm to 10pm – Downstairs at Shish (Old Street) This will be an informal meet up for members of the DreamStake network. Phoebe Bright will facilitate some brainstorming about 'Beyond the Recession - steps to our new economy'. It will be a chance...

Cork Airport at Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:20:00 +0000

An alternative to pouring money into banks

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:13:00 +0000

I think it is a top priority to help people stay in their homes and like many people, I feel most uncomfortable with our taxes being poured into a seeming black hole.

Here is my idea for helping the banks indirectly and helping people directly - please shoot it down!

A family can't meet their mortgage payments. The Government redeems half the mortgage and gives the family 2 years payment holiday and then expects them to pay 3% interest per year. BUT, the loan belongs to the site not to the people. If the house is sold, the loan goes with it with the obligation to pay, what becomes in effect a property tax. However, the loan can be repaid in part or whole at any time without penalty. Why won't everyone do this? Because there is a public register of properties with loan amounts and payments made, no names attached, but it would not be hard to work out who. This could also be done where the landlord cannot meet the payment.

This has the benefit that the money is not going direct to the banks.
People are given every support to stay in their homes
The country has a SECURE revenue stream for the future

What do you think?

Avoid the peak to reduce carbon emissions

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:44:00 +0000

Jerry Sweeney's website, Synergy Module, shows the current pricing for electricity on the Irish Grid. The graph above shows the graph for the 3rd Feb 2009. Remarkably consistant apart from the huge spike around 6pm. This is when peaking plant is turned on to provide the extra capacity required, and this peaking plant is not as efficient as generators for base load and so is both more expensive and emits more carbon per kilowatt. So if you want to reduce your carbon emissions, try to avoid using electricity at peak times. Run that washing machine at 4 in the morning, eat later! Once we get smart meters, we will have the option for smart machines to decide when it is cheapest for them to run. Until then we have to make the decisions for them.

Earning your place in the world

noreply@blogger.com (Phoebe Bright) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:22:00 +0000

It's tough being a small younge horse in a group of big older ones. You are at the bottom of the pecking order, at the end of the queue for a place at the haylage bale, and there is not much you can do about it. You will be kept in your place by baring of teeth, bites and threats. Ivor is reminding little Poppy above, who is the boss round here.

So what do you do if you want a place at the haylage bale? You can try puffing yourself up and going for the next in the hierarchy with teeth and hooves. If you are fierce enough you may succeed. You can wait in the corner until the rest have tired of eating and go a snatch a bit while they snooze.

I have watched my younge horses as they grow, deal with this situation in different ways. Little Piper tried the teetch approach and did quite well at it, until one morning I found him with a swollen head. A good kick in the face had put him back in his place. Supercub, the biggest horses on the farm, decided he was a victim early on, and despite putting on his best "I'm only small, don't hurt me" face to every horse in the place, he was unmercifully bullied.

Little Poppy has another approach. When scolded for trying to push in for a bite of the bale, she doesn't run back to the corner, but moves back just enough to avoid the teeth, waits for a bit, then tries quietly and respectfully to have another go. She is careful not to antagonise the other horses, does not take offence when they snap at her, but at the same time wants to make it clear she is not going away. This strategy of quiet persistance seems to be successful. After two weeks away I see she has earned the respect of her elders, and while she still is last in line for the bale, they do not try to bully her anymore.

Mad Dog, Ivor, Katy and Poppy.