Jim Webster's Blog

Another day, another SF novel. Rather than a ‘series’ I have in mind a ‘Touchdown Collection.’ Same worlds, same characters, same universe. But the idea is that each book is complete with its own ending and no cliff-hangers. The books will follow on from each other, but ideally not so you’ll have to read them …

Funny how some things never change. Sixty years ago I was busy with a fork and wheelbarrow cleaning out a heifer shippon. I was no more than eight at the time. This morning, there I was, with fork and wheelbarrow, mucking out heifers again. Admittedly my younger self would have appreciated the developments in muck …

According to its website, “Wildlife and Countryside Link (Link) is the largest environment and wildlife coalition in England, bringing together 82 organisations to use their strong joint voice for the protection of nature.” They provided parliament with evidence to show that the British countryside is a “racist colonial” white space. This begs a lot of …

In the UK both major parties have been promising that there will be more money spent on environmental regeneration. Also politicians are now starting to pay lip service to food security. Sir Kier Starmer promised that “The next Labour government will commit to this – 50% of all food purchased by the public sector will …

The problem with environmental schemes is that it can often be difficult to work out whether they are worth entering. Indeed with some it will probably cost you more to take part because of the income you lose is larger than the money you’ll get back from the government. But every so often there is …

T Rex used to sing ‘Life’s a Gas’ and perhaps they were right. I was chatting to somebody who has been involved in agriculture (on the engineering, patching machinery up, side) pretty much all his life. He was commenting about the problems they’d had with a pickup which just didn’t seem to be getting fuel …

Another supermarket caught up in scandal. But it says a lot for the reputation Booths has built up that everybody seems to agree they were being cheated by their suppliers. Still it might be interesting to see who else those suppliers were supplying. Now the National Food Crime Unit is investigating just how it happened …

There is a shortage of salad vegetables in the UK at the moment. Given it is February I suspect my Grandmother would not have been particularly surprised by this. But a modern, environmentally conscious, and wealthy population expect to get everything, all the time. The problem is that the consumer expects it to be cheap. …

Rather than repeatedly explain my absence from the 21st Century I decided it would be easier just to write one blog and point people at that. Our broadband is less than sparkling. We have a maximum speed of 4 mbps because we are at the end of a long piece of copper. This copper is …

There is a saying, ‘To deny is to confirm.’ The minute a body puts out press releases saying that it had never considered a policy change, everybody assumes that policy is about to be changed and they’re just waiting for a good day to bury bad news before they tell us. The problem is, that …