Protecting yourself from the Banking Crisis - urgent advice

Mike Haywood is an independent financial analyst who carefully studies the financial and economic systems, with a view to informing people about the impending state of financial collapse globally, and how best to respond. He regularly talks to Transition groups, companies and organisations. This week he's issues this email in response to, what he believes to be, an impending Eurozone collapse. It will affect all of us!!

Yesterday the Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, announced that they were making contingency plans in the event of a break up of the Eurozone. When asked what those plans were, he declined to comment, implying that discussion of the plans would precipitate a banking crisis. Because of the interconnectivity of the Global Banking system, UK banks would be severely affected by a Eurozone collapse. The situation is extremely precarious and could change at any moment. Just remember how fast the collapse of Northern Rock happened. Do not expect any leadership from our politicians prior to the collapse. The Government has also made contingency plans as well but are keeping quiet about them.

 

It would be prudent for all UK citizens to make their own personal contingency plans sooner rather than later and I would recommend the following

 

1) A banking collapse would mean the suspension of full banking activity for days with no or limited withdrawals from cash machines. Credit/debit cards won’t work.  You should keep at least enough cash at home to cover your family’s expenses for a week.

 

2) People will start to hoard essential items once the collapse starts. To pre-empt this, you should keep at least enough food and essentials at home to cover you and your family for a week.

 

3) Keep your car fuel tank topped up to full so that you will have transport.

 

Kind regards

 

Mike Haywood

P.S. You can sign up to Mike Haywood's free weekly digest of the global banking crisis by emailing him at mike@mikehaywoodart.co.uk

Thickness and area of Arctic sea ice

"LARGELY UNNOTICED, a silent drama has been unfolding over the past weeks in the Arctic. The long-term consequences will far outstrip those of the international debt crisis or the demise of the Libyan dictatorship, the news stories now commanding media attention. The drama - more accurately, a tragedy - playing out in the North is the rapid disappearance of the polar ice cap, the Arctic Ocean's defining feature."

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/10/25/3344289.htm

ISREC open day

The Isles of Scilly Renewable Energy Co-operative (ISREC) are holing an open day on Thursday 20th Oct from 11am until 2pm in the Methodist Hall on St Mary's. Feel free to drop in at any time.

ISREC is focussing on solar PV systems and how residents of Scilly can gain maximum benefit from renewable energy. Come along and find out more on Thursday.

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Transition Scilly
Web: www.transitionscilly.org.uk
Email: enquiries@transitionscilly.org.uk
Positive solutions to peak oil and climate change
Check our blog www.transitionscilly.blogspot.com for regular news and event updates

Rivers of ice

Recent photos of glaciers in the Himalayas, directly comparing sites photographed 80 years ago show a stunning loss of ice over that period.

The cause, a warming climate, is evident but the effects on the hundreds of millions of people that rely on melt water for all their water are not immediately so obvious...yet equally as frightening in its impact.

Watch this wonderful narrated slideshow here.

Five Mile Meal

St Mary's Hall Hotel are hosting another Five Mile Meal this year. The majority of ingredients for the meal have to come from Scilly, with an added twist of it being a competition between two chefs.

It takes place on Sunday 2nd October and there's a special rate for locals. See poster for details. You can see a report of last year's event here. Promises to be a great meal!
Five Mile Meal Poster 2011

Harvest festivals and apple pressing

It's the time of year again to celebrate the annual harvest and once again Transition Scilly has teamed up with the AONB to co-ordinate some events happening on the Islands to celebrate our local food culture.

On Sunday 25th September, right after the harvest festival in St Mary's Parish Church, will be an apple pressing session on the lawn of the garden pavilion on St Mary's, from 12.00-2.00. Please bring along any excess apples (or other fruit) that you may have, plus some empty containers and take home some freshly pressed juice! If you don't have fruit to bring you're still welcome to come along.

If there is demand we'll run another pressing session in October - please get in touch if you're interested in a session next month.

Isles of Scilly local food events 2011

TRESOC and ISREC

TRESOC is not a typo for the second largest island on Scilly, it stands for the Totnes Renewable Energy Society and is an offshoot of Transition Town Totnes. Their aim is to engage with individuals and businesses to increase the amount of renewable energy generated in the South Hams area of Devon.

This blog is a really interesting and honest take on the vision, practice, highs, lows and direction of such a project:

http://transitionculture.org/2011/07/06/hard-work-vision-kilowatts-a-story-about-the-totnes-renewable-energy-society-tresoc/

The reason why this is so appropriate to us at Transition Scilly is that we are setting up ISREC, Isles of Scilly Renewable Energy Co-operative. The aim of this will also be to increase the amount of solar PV installed on homes and businesses across the Islands.

We are doing more and more preparation for a public launch this autumn and hope to be offering exciting projects that people can invest in that will be generating both energy and wider benefits to the community. More on this before long...

Energyshare

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is best known for cooking all sorts of weird and wonderful food from sustainable and seasonal ingredients and generally being passionate about food. But his team from River Cottage, on the back of several very successful media campaigns such as the Big Fish Fight, have got involved in renewable energy...in quite a big way.

Essentially, Energyshare is about sharing information and bringing people together to get more using and producing renewable energy. There are some really useful resources on making and saving energy.

Perhaps the most exciting part is the Energyshare Fund, where £500,000 of funding is available to successful applicants of community energy projects. It's really worth reading and considering applying for if you're interested.

They have an open day at River Cottage HQ in Dorset on May 18th - details here.

Broadleaf trees now in Community orchard

On Tuesday 12th April about a dozen island children planted around 40 broadleaf trees at the Community Orchard at Trenoweth, including field maple, hazel and rowan. This was organised as part of a Spring in to Scilly activity week for children on Easter holidays.

The soil was still damp and hopefully the trees will take well, providing shade, timber, food, nesting sites and much more in years to come.

Many thanks to Rebecca Steggles and Clare Lewis who organised the children, the Duchy for providing trees, stakes and tree guards and of course the children themselves for doing the work! Here's a photo of one of the planting teams.

Some of the blossom at the orchard is looking lovely - even though the trees are still young it's looking good. Do go and have a look soon if you can.

Note that the tree planting was part of a wider project in collaboration with the Isles of Scilly Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), the RSPB and the Council of the Isles of Scilly Children’s Services

Food, Inc

On Thursday 24th March the Green Team film club is showing Food, Inc, a film about industrial agriculture and its flaws. It's being shown at 7pm at Carn Thomas school, St Mary's. There will be some refreshments at just 50p each made with organic and fair trade ingredients!

This is the trailer:

The Impossible Hamster

Here's something funny with a very serious meaning behind it - just watch the video!

Local food workshop report

Last November Transition Scilly and the Isles of Scilly AONB co-organised a workshop on local food production, supply and consumption issues. It was a very interesting day and the report from the workshop is available to read here.

Scilly Local Food Workshop Final Report - FINAL VERSION - 260111

Progress made at the orchard

Last Sunday a group of people came up to the Community Orchard at Trenoweth to help manage the orchard. We got some hedges cut, cleared brambles, weeded around the trees and pruned every tree. A good fire was a welcome source of heat and social focus on a quite cold day.

Most people hadn't got much experience of pruning, but under the guidance of two "pruning gurus" (not a self-proclaimed title!) everyone learned how to do some formative pruning - a good example of Transition facilitating some skills learning. Pruning is made out to be a quite complicated process when in fact it's not really.

When fruit trees are young they need minimal but important pruning. The shape and direction that trees grow when they're at this stage affects their structure when mature. So formative pruning is really important to try and get right as it aims to create the structure of a good strong and healthy tree.

Atmospheric carbon levels visual

This video, produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows how atmospheric carbon levels have changed over time, visualised in a startling and not previously seen manner.

Firstly it starts by looking at the rapid rise in carbon levels over the past 100 years. This is shocking enough, but when it's put in the context of the past 800,000 years (with it's multiple associated ice ages), this puts beyond any doubt that carbon levels now are at unprecedented levels, and that the rise has been so rapid that it cannot have been caused by anything other than human intervention.

These are first rate graphics that provide a startling wake up call.

Rescheduled work day

Due to poor weather forecast and lack of availability of organisers, the planned work day at the Community Orchard is being cancelled for Sunday 16th and rescheduled for Sunday 30th Jan. Again it will be from 11am to 3pm. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Work day at community orchard

On Sunday 16th January there will be a work day at Trenoweth Community Orchard on St Mary's (weather permitting). This will run from 11am to 3pm, but you can come and go as you please.

One key job will be pruning the fruit trees, so come and learn how to prune properly from experts. There will be other jobs to do also, such as hedge cutting, tidying up and wood cutting.

Bring some food and drink to share at lunchtime, bring suitable outdoor clothing and hope for some good weather!

The orchard field is the one bordered by red below: It's just north of the pine belt, on the path that runs down to Innisidgen: