This all started after two of my children (Charlie and Polly) gave me a home winemaking kit last Christmas. Cheers, kids!
Here are my two demijohns - wonderful objects to handle, and functional as well! The one on the right contains a batch of Pinot Grigio that is nearly ready to decant and drink. The other has a batch of Shiraz that I've just started fermenting. The previous batch of Shiraz was nice - sweet and not too alcoholic. My first home-brew batch was Chardonnay and was as good (in my unrefined view) as any shop-bought one. One of these days I'll get a suitable sampling container to use with my hydrometer, and then I'll be able to work out how strong each of my homemade wines is.
This all started after two of my children (Charlie and Polly) gave me a home winemaking kit last Christmas. Cheers, kids!
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I attended a gathering of the Oxfordshire Green Construction Network earlier this week in Bicester. The network's strapline is "Building a Greener Tomorrow - Today" and it does what it says on the tin. It's a network of members who are local businesses in Oxfordshire who all have an interest in the building sector and who want to see more sustainable building design and construction practices. More information will be made available on a website coming soon.
Some details of the gathering can be found via this link (opens in new window) For her Richard Dimbleby Lecture last night in the Guildhall in London, I'd give Christine Lagarde, MD of the IMF, 8 out of 10.
She dealt superbly with the story of homo-economicus to date. She spelled out environmental degradation as the most significant challenge currently facing humankind. She highlighted economic inequality (of nations and individuals) and lack of progress on economic convergence. She recommended stronger and more co-operative global governance for the greater good of the global population it serves, eg in terms of climate change accords. However, I've docked her a couple of marks because of a little fuzziness in her use of the word "sustainability" and a failure to recognise the need to challenge the economic mantra of "growth" and the consumerist nature of most of modern global society. More than once she used the expression "economic sustainability" and sometimes (seemingly interchangeably) "sustained economic growth". While she recommended the use of taxation (presumably pigovian taxes) to make the polluter pay (in the context of climate change) and provide funds for low or no-emission energy, she failed to give any recognition to strands of economics that ask us to consider whether a steady-state economy might be a better and more sustainable solution than the currently predominant growth-based economy. I can't tell, from her talk, whether she entertains any such thoughts, or whether she is a died-in-the-wool "growthist" , as almost everyone in the mainstream public sphere is these days. Perhaps, even if she has any doubts about the wisdom of growthism in private, she might deem them too difficult to raise in public - after all, in times of crisis, public figures don't want to panic the publics they serve. A transcript of the lecture can be found here (opens in new window) |
About the BloggerI'm David Calver - an Accountant with a passion for sustainability. Categories
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