a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Do you think The Good Life could be remade, with me or Dave playing Tom Good (maybe not!)? If you have seen something on TV or heard something on the radio recently that you want to talk about, tell us here.
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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 186260Post Jandra »

Warning: rant. Skip if you want to.

I think I saw 3 episodes of this show and I enjoyed it tremendously. I can make my own judgements about what I see and I thank Jimmy Doherty for not deciding for me what is and isn't acceptable. Some of it made my stomach turn, but I quite liked the farmer who moved his cows every day to a new field and after 4 days put his mega-chicken-tractor on the used field to clean up after the cows, eating all the parasite eggs and scratching in the dung to spread it around. And the lady scientist who propagates and sells disease free banana plants so that local farmers increase thier yields tremendously.

I believe that a lot of what many people generally believe is 'green' just blatantly isn't. baking my own bread, I use much more electricity/resources than buying it from the store, even if you factor in transport and packaging. There's much energy and resources to be gained by mass producing. The villages who used communal ovens to collectively bake their bread had that figured out already and were taking the first steps towards where we are now.

Heating/cooking on wood is supposed to be green, but personally I doubt it. It's only renewable if you know for sure that the wood you're getting is from carefully managed woodlands. After all we (humans) have deforested large areas in prehistoric times. We could never all switch to wood burning for heating and cooking, for pretty soon there wouldn't be a tree to be found. So how sustainable is it? And the dust/fine particle problem is not to be ignored.
Wood-burning stoves have been a popular heating source for decades. Unfortunately, wood-burning stoves can emit substantial quantities of pollutants to outdoor and indoor air. Among the pollutants are: chlorinated dioxin, carbon monoxide, methane, volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and fine particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5, fine and ultra fine particles). Recent studies indicate that the use of wood-burning stoves for heating of dwellings is one of the important outdoor particle sources [Glasius et al. 2004] in residential district in Denmark. This has resulted in an increase in public exposure to indoor and outdoor wood smoke related pollutants, which has prompted widespread concern about the adverse human health consequences that may be associated with wood smoke exposure.

Air pollution is a major aggravation of respiratory symptoms and disease. Effects are decreases in pulmonary function and evidence of inflammation as well as suggestions of increases in chronic respiratory disease. Orozco-Levi et al. (2006) showed strong association between wood smoke exposure and obstructive pulmonary disease. Several studies have shown that especially the small particles, has an effect on airways, and that asthmatic subjects may be the group at greatest risk from air pollutants. The awareness of the impact of airborne particles, particularly fine and ultra fine particles, on health is growing. In recent years, exposure to fine and ultra fine airborne particles has been identified as an important factor affecting human health [Seaton et al., 1995; Schwartz et al., 1996; Oberdörster et al., 1994; Alvin et al., 2000].
And this is just the health effect, without discussing the effects of extra particles in the atmosphere. I'm quite sure that if we used more solar collectors for warm water and, where feasible, heating, then supplemented that with natural gas for cooking or electricity from renewable resources, we'd be better off. That'd make the natural gas supply last much longer, so in the mean time we can think of other solutions.

Growing you own veg can be sustainable, but how many of us buy soil improvers (compost, manure, lime, organic pellet this or that) in plastic bags? I do! Good grief, if I think of all the stuff I have bought to be gardening (25 different tools, bean poles, propagators, poly tunnel, netting, horticultural fleece, I have a ton of flower pots, kneel pads, gloves, slug traps, and all the stuff I bought for canning and preserving the harvest) I truly can't imagine it is sustainable. I know I reuse the flower pots, canning jars and the tools last a long time, but I wouldn't have needed all this 'stuff' if I didn't grow my own.

I've long since cured myself from the illusion that I am sustainable; more difficult was the realisation that to be sustainable I'd need to live at a subsistence level and I am just not prepared to do that. I want a warm house, good food (yes, some meat too), cats (very unsustainable), a car and cow manure in a plastic bag. I will use lots of energy and resources growing and preserving my own harvest and baking my own bread. I'll do a bit to make me feel better about it: insulate the house, take the bike when I can, turn out the lights, perhaps get solar collectors or PV panels, not fly to tropical destinations twice a year, and that helps.

So, I got carried away quite a bit. Apologies. But returning to the subject: I think that it is very good for a programme that shows how in different part of the world, different people do agriculture. And I liked the fact that Doherty showed respect for all the interviewed farmers and tried to look at it from a positive side, even if he made it clear to the viewer that he wouldn't choose to do it their way.

Jandra

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 186345Post southeast-isher »

Full respect Jandra well said. We can only try our best. There is no right or wrong way to do things as such. But there is a more right and a more wrong way to do things. I'm just glad we're on this side of things, and i found this forum.

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213599Post southeast-isher »

For anyone interested Jimmy's Food Factory series 2 started last night and is now up on iPlayer.

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213605Post oldjerry »

I met him at a food fair once - he's a nice bloke. But, like his maths, his food knowledge is a little lacking (and his sausages were bloody awful!).

Mike[/quote]


I've met him too,and he is a nice bloke and I tried the sausages (and here I disagree,they were bloody revolting).I once saw 20 mins of a prog about some tv pig farm or something which he was bumbling around in,farming knowlege a bit thin on the gound too.Still it makes for jolly viewing,and we HAVE to watch something,well I do, my copy of Kelly's Heroes is wearing out.

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213608Post Green Aura »

I loved Kellys Heroes!
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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213611Post Millymollymandy »

I couldn't be bothered as it sounded too much like that other series on Food which has just finished.

I thought Jimmy's Farm sausages were supposed to be the bees knees? :dontknow: I do hear they are sold in T*scos though! :lol:

Did watch Nigel 'vile greasy hair' Slater, don't like him but like the food/recipe ideas!
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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213620Post bonniethomas06 »

I have to agree there MMM, I love his food but I cannot bear the unbelievably pretentious and over the top way that he attempts to be poetic about his food, his intonation and pronounciation and generally the way that he pauses for breath after every third word. Grrrrrr!

Having said that, I do have Tender vol. 1 and it is very good! Reading him is a much more enjoyable than listening to him.
"A pretty face is fine, but what a farmer needs is a woman who can carry a pig under each arm"

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213626Post Millymollymandy »

Absolutely Bonnie, I used to know him only as a newspaper columnist/food writer and he was fine in print! :lol: Just don't like all that lank greasy hair flopping all over the place and feel that if he was cooking me dinner, I would insist on an industrial hairnet for him. :pukeright: And probably a muzzle so he couldn't speak either. :lol:
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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213632Post MKG »

... and tight leather undies and a studded collar???

:lol: :lol:

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213646Post Millymollymandy »

Buerk (as they say in France)! :pukeright: :pukeright: :pukeright:
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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213666Post battybird »

Do you think Nigel has a problem with shampoo...maybe we could give him the recipe to make a herbal one!
I love the recipes and books but, like MMM, get soo irritated by his greasy hair! :pukeright:
The cockerel makes the noise, the hen produces the goods!! anon

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Re: a very ish must see TV viewing - Jimmy on the BBC

Post: # 213682Post Millymollymandy »

Aha, I've just looked at his website and realised that is what I couldn't put my finger on, he was the one presenting that series 'A Taste of my Life' which had plenty of interesting people being interviewed/cooking but I just couldn't watch after the first few as there was something so annoying but dull about it..... :mrgreen:
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