Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Kudrow is an actress I’ve never come across before, but then I’ve never seen any episode of Friends. However, I’ve just seen her trace her family history on the American version of Who Do You Think You Are?
Lisa is Jewish and many of her ancestors were murdered by the Nazis in Belarus. It was a moving story, but it did have a happy ending, when she was reunited with a Polish man, who had met her father years before.
I have been to Belarus to see England play football and it is a country with a lot of sorrows. It lost about a third of its population in the Second World War and it wasn’t until about thirty years ago, that it recovered to its pre-war level. I showed some of the pictures, I took in this post.
I also wrote a piece for the East Anglian Daily Times about the trip. It is in two parts.
Both these files are in a PDF format.
One day, I hope I’ll be able to Belarus again.
An Alternative Recycling System
Various organisations, like the Council for the Fossilisation of Rural England, think that all glass bottles should have a deposit that is returned, when you take the bottle back.
This is very old thinking as these days we can do much better!
I recycle all my glass and put it in one of those large cylindrical containers in one of the neighbouring villages, as we don’t have one in the village where I live. These are then craned away on to a truck to go to the central recycling centre, The system works well, except when the containers gets filled and the truck doesn’t empty them for a few days. Incidentally, most recycled glass round here ends up being used as road-stone and hardcore. This may seem a waste, but I think it is actually, the most energy efficient way of reusing the glass and it avoids the need for digging hole to extract gravel.
I got to think, that this system could easily be modifed to create an incentive to recycle.
Let’s take glass bottles, although it could easily work with things like newspapers, old clothes and rags, aluminium cans or plastic bottles.
You would create a Recycling Fund, that was either filled up by a levy on all glass bottles sold or directly by central government.
The recycling container would be stamped with an empty weight and every time it was collected, it would be weighed to ascertain how much glass had been recycled. I suspect that the crane on the truck could do this very simply and easily.
Councils would then have a map of which areas recycled the most bottles say, and this would then earn that area an appropriate proportion of the Recycling Fund, which could be spent how the area wanted. Perhaps, they might want a children’s playground to be refurbished, some public toilets re-opened or just some flower baskets.
What has been created is a virtuous circle. The more you recycle, the more you get for local projects. Areas that didn’t recycle wouldn’t get any special projects, but those that did would get a substantial environmental improvement.
I suspect that such a scheme would be affordable and non-bureaucratic to run. It could also be run initially without a bottle charge, so that people saw trhe benefits before they paid.
Pea Therapy
I have my son and his friend to lunch today. I’ve just been shelling peas, which is something that I haven’t done since I was a child.
It seemed to be good therapy for my bad left hand!
Boiler Room Scams on BBC Radio Tonight
They are investigating boiler room scams on the Adrian Goldberg program tonight on BBC Radio 5 Live at 21:00!
Jimmy “No Bellies” Gardner
Today one of the competitors in the Great North Run is Paul Gascoigne’s old drinking mate Jimmy “Five Bellies” Gardner.
Except that he’s slimmed from twenty-one stone to thirteen and now goes by the nickname of “No Bellies” according to The Sun.
Let’s hope he keeps to his new lifestyle!
Cycle Race’s £1.5m Boost for County
Yesterday, this was the front page headline in yesterday’s East Anglian Daily Times. It was a good day out and shows that if you put on a show in Suffolk, people will attend.
As we have the Great North Run, today, would it be an idea to have Great East Run!
The Anonymous Widower 