Not Self Sufficient

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Flo
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Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294797Post Flo »

Storm Arwen has certainly revealed that a lot of the North East has no idea what happens or what to do when the electricity goes off for three or four days and the power to the local pumping stations may well ensure that there's no water either.

One night of high winds has removed a lot of Kielder Forest, grounded many top heavy trees around local villages where such trees should never have been allowed to get that big that close to houses and/or power lines and telephone lines, taken off badly kept roofs, shaken off many TV aerials, shaken the Alnwick Garden Tree House, had a few words with Bamburgh Castle (place the Scots never conquered).

Truly, we've grown soft in the UK and not prepared for storms despite the Big Freeze of winter 2009/2010 and Storm Desmond in 2015.

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Green Aura
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294798Post Green Aura »

I agree, Flo, and it isn't just emergency stuff either. A friend came round for dinner before we moved and we were talking about picking chanterelles. She's German and said everyone around her, growing up, went out mushroom picking at the appropriate season. When I went to Finland to visit family they all went out doing the same. I guess it's common throughout the whole of mainland Europe. I could probably recognise chanterelles and morels but even then I'd be worried about eating them.

We never went mushroom picking, in fact we were told to not pick them because they might be poisonous. Far from being the strongmen of the world, we're frightened of anything we can't control - like nature.
Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

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Flo
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294799Post Flo »

Ah you and me don't do mushrooms. Had an uncle on the farm as a child who knew all about mushrooms - so the rest of us never learned.

Thing is - up here a lot of older people's social housing bungalows are out in the villages where the power is off. When people get to 70 and over it's really not sensible to expect them to have camping gear and be able to manage to use it. Nor to survive when the power goes off for a week. And they don't have family close by any more. People are living independently a lot longer whereas it used to be that family was close by or there was intergenerational living.

So many of the older folks don't do online ordering for food, online banking even on the phone. Technology doesn't help granny of 90 without family close by.

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Green Aura
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294800Post Green Aura »

I’m not sure what the answer is. As a nation we’ve spread out and relied on social services to take care of our elderly etc. Now that lifeline is struggling. The best of it is the 90 year olds probably have the better skills to survive this, but not the means.
Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anais Nin

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Weedo
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294801Post Weedo »

I agree, we have lost contact with our environment and how to live within it and the authorities allow inappropriate "developments" and continually allow downgrading of building standards resulting in more damage. In Oz the standard house construction is lightweight pine (pre-fabricated) held together with pressed on nail plates and stuck together with a few thin nail gun pins - roofs are similarly lightweight. It is now common for a new house to have its entire roof peeled (in one piece) off in a storm.
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ina
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294803Post ina »

Flo wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 10:29 am So many of the older folks don't do online ordering for food, online banking even on the phone. Technology doesn't help granny of 90 without family close by.
And none of that is any use during a power cut, anyway. I hate this craze of "card payments only" that even some of the smaller shops now go for. All well and good as long as we have power!
Ina
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294804Post Green Aura »

Weedo wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:06 pm In Oz the standard house construction is lightweight pine (pre-fabricated) held together with pressed on nail plates and stuck together with a few thin nail gun pins - roofs are similarly lightweight.
Likewise over here, Weedo, with a single skin of bricks. Then they fill the gap in with expanding foam insulation and call it eco-friendly.

We've just moved into a house built in 1900. It's absolutely solid, with thick stone walls. During the recent storms we didn't hear (or perhaps more importantly feel) a thing.
Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anais Nin

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Flo
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Re: Not Self Sufficient

Post: # 294807Post Flo »

Storm Arwen got worse before it got better. 11 days some outliers were without power. There was a firm chomping at the bit to install generators (supplied and maintained by a group of companies with the know how and ability to get outlying places)to be paid for by Northern Power till they could get their act together. Heck as like till it got to 7 or 8 days. I think that the last of the generators may be just about to go home.

I moved from a house built in the 1920s and rented out by the local social housing group some years ago. It was one that they took over when the roof blew off and blocked a major road out of town. It was the end one of a line of terraces which had been upstairs and downstairs flats owned by an old gadgee who got fed up with doing repairs and sold them off to sitting tenants.

This one particular house the buyer couldn't afford to do any repairs, she was told to find her own place but her daughter and two sons were given social housing (granny lived upstairs and the rest downstairs). Anyway it's still two flats (no outside access from upstairs in the case of fire), a mud void under the downstairs flat that claims to be a cellar. Various works have been done over the years to bring it up to some form of habitable home but it's not as solid as the 1960s bungalow I now have. At least it has double glazing instead of single but if the bath overflows upstairs, downstairs is still flooded. So not all older housing is solid.

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