So the Suburban Chimp has been out and about lately visiting family over in New Zealand. Feeling guilty about the carbon footprint issue with the flights, but we don’t fly often (making excuses) and it’s the first flight in over two years. Anyway, managed to pick up a deal on a cheap hotel and we got to thinking about how totally un-environmentally friendly going on holiday actually is. What Suburban Chimp is trying to say is that it is good to feel a bit guilty when you go on holiday, but you should still go on holiday and try to limit the environmental damage you do in your every day life. Take for instance our local supermarket Jempsons has stopped giving out free plastic bags. You now have the option of buying a re-usable bag, or take one of the old boxes to carry your food home. A great move by Jempsons.

Read an article on this chap and his merry band of followers who rock around London tarting up bits of scrubland and greenery by doing some impromptu gardening. This sort of thing brightens up London which we generally consider a grey miserable, drab place… All good you’d think, but no… this guy gets harassed by the police on a regular basis. Can you believe that, harassed for guerrilla gardening, as if the police don’t have better things to do with their time (you’d imagine) with all the gun crime, knife crime, muggings, beatings, rapes, stabbings, murders and robberies. Yeah, guerrilla gardeners and drivers are MUCH better targets, the real REPROBATES of society. The guys got a book out (entitled: on guerrilla gardening) and we’re going to get a copy as it looks good!

Suburban Chimp has noticed a growing trend in the UK of running patio heaters when it’s cold. There is a plethora of bars, clubs, affluent suburbanites, and now the general riff-raff, (now the Chinese are in full patio-heater production) of running these heaters all winter long. Now the smoking ban has suffered its first winter all the smokers and friends of smokers who do not want to be left alone have to huddle outside opening ourselves up for all that Mother Nature has to offer. Hark a solution to our woes, patio heaters are here to keep us all warm and give us sun tans (almost) on even the coldest, chilliest winter’s day.
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So are patio heaters really the route of all evil? As usual, Suburban Chimp haven’t bothered with any actual research, but have made assumptions that since these devices could probably heat a small factory by themselves, that they are probably using a heck of a load of fuel and are therefore probably bad for the environment, at least compared to a hemp jumper, woven by a hippy who lives in a commune. So as an environmental blog we cannot really condone their use…
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To be honest, Suburban Chimp saw this one coming and pretty much blames the smoking ban because now that you can’t smoke inside pubs, you have to smoke outside of them, and therefore all the poor smokers would simply bugger off home if they had to suffer the cold the entire winter. Therefore kindly landlords, looking to boost their coffers, or to put it another way, make a ‘honest day’s living guv’ provide heaters for their patrons. Lets face it, for even the hardened environmentalist It’s hardly convenient to go out in the evening attired in full Arctic set up because as soon as you go inside a building you’ll melt, and who wants to deal with cloakroom queue’s and light fingered cloakroom assistants pilfering your belongings looking for your iPod Nano Video et al. (OK, we know not all you cloakroom assistants are bad and are honest as the day is long, we’re just saying, you know…)
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Oh yeah, (Suburban Chimp digresses a bit) and worst still, we have noticed that when we pop along to the local boozer for a few pints of organic ale that the pub smells, of well… organic ale and (as the Scottish say) pish. Not very nice. We think the solution is pretty clear, hug cancer and passive smoking etc and revoke the smoking bad to save us all from unpleasant odours AND PATIO HEATER ENVIROMENTAL HELL!

London commuters are generally an unhappy lot and with the majority of Suburban Chimp-ites commuting to work via public transport, (we have day jobs too you know) we are a long suffering lot who have to put up with a fairly tired public transport system. Lets not get started on the tube system just yet, God knows there is plenty of stuff to complain about there, mixed in with some good service but instead lets focus on the South Eastern service from Hastings to London Charing Cross. Ok, first up the service is pretty decent on the whole, but a few tweaks could be made to make it EVEN better. Not all the tweaks are aimed directly at South Eastern so the title of this blog article, Open Letter to South Eastern probably should have an addendum placed on the end. Something like: Open Letter to South Eastern & the numpties who put too many train on the railway system (you know who you are).
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OK, I said it. The main gripe is how long it takes to get a train into Charing Cross and out of Charing Cross past the infamous London Bridge station. As I type this we are sitting just outside London Bridge (again) waiting for ‘something’ to happen. Apparently there is congestion in the London Bridge area. The thing is, it should come as no surprise to rail companies, because every day there are delays due to congestion in the London Bridge area. In fact I have a suspicion that they pencil these delays into the time table to make their performance look better and not have to pay a 5% discount on season tickets (because of delays). Surely this can’t be that hard to sort out. I don’t really care about the technicalities of it, but it should be made a PRIORITY.
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Secondly, specifically to South Eastern, after 6pm and before some god awful time in the morning, like 7am why does my train HAVE to stop at Tonbridge the poor neighbour of Royal Tunbridge Wells. As far as I can work out, only Chavs appear to get on the station at Tonbridge. On the way home if there is anyone drunk, shouting, playing silly beggars, playing their music on their mobile phones for all to hear, it’s people who get on at Tonbridge. So I would prefer the Hastings and Ore service to skip this little detour as it does on some of the peak period trains. If we don’t need to stop then, we don’t need to stop at all. May as well include Sevenoaks and Orpington here as well. Thanks very much.
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Next, on a packed commuter train when someone comes on board with a big suitcase and then proceeds to walk up and down the entire length of the train barging into people’s elbows, waking up people who are sleeping in the morning wouldn’t you think we would prefer them not to get on the train at all… what happened if this went on EVERY SINGLE day? You’d be annoyed right? Then why do South Eastern persist in dragging the bloody buffet cart though the train in this fashion? It’s irritating. This is a call to bring back the Buffet Carriage. We used to like those, not these annoying trolleys.
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Next, I can’t stand listening to people chat on their mobile phones. Thank heavens for the ‘silent carriage’ that can be found on many trains around the UK. Short tempered idiots like me can then hide in the silent carriage, safe in the knowledge that I do not have to put up with NOISE POLUTION for other moronic individuals on their mobile phones. And what is wrong with these particular imbeciles who always have the most banal and dull conversations and broadcast them on the train. THESE ARE THE MOST INANE PEOPLE ON THE PLANET. Right now, a dullard woman is sitting in front of me and has had five or six calls while I type this. What a boring insufferable wench. I hope she dies from head cancer caused by her mobile phone. I REALLY DO. I’m not kidding. This is live commentary, and we’ve stopped at the dreaded Tonbridge. The noisy wench has left the train, phone glued to her ear and someone shouting has got on. Need any more evidence, lets ditch Tonbridge. Right where were we, silent carriages. Why oh why oh why can’t you implement silent carriages South Eastern.
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Also, why do people always have to flop down and bounce about in their train seats? What the fuck is wrong with these tards?
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What else is wrong with the South Eastern service to and from Hastings and Ore. Oh, I know. It’s the five minute wait at Royal Tunbridge Wells for the train to attach/detach (depending on direction of travel) carriages. This takes a good five minutes. That 25 minutes a week, that’s about two hours a month I have to spend looking at Tunbridge Wells station longer than I have to. It’s annoying and unnecessary. I reckon, if we stopped this annoying practice, spurned Tonbridge and sped up the journey through London Bridge we could save 15 minutes on my commute and that is a lot of time that is being stolen from me. Downside I suppose is that I would have less time to rant about it.

For whatever reason that is unbeknown to us here at Suburban Chimp (probably because we can’t be bothered to read articles in their entirety and prefer to make presumptions and rant randomly…) BAA may face loosing control over some of the airports in the UK, with Gatwick being a likely candidate. Apparently this will help improve services etc for passengers and airlines and after the T5 launch comedy (not funny for the passengers though), it is hard to imaging that it would take very much indeed to improve the service offered.

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Not that we at Suburban Chimp are particular advocates of flying as it’s extraordinarily hurtful to the environment, but we certainly have our eyes open and understand that people are going to fly. What we would like to see is some sensible limits to this flying malarkey imposed, for instance, do we need a T6 at Heathrow when five seems to be an unlucky number, and do we really want a third runway? The answer we think is no. We do not have the inclination to explain why the answer is no, it just is.

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Anyone who has flown from Scotland to Heathrow on a regular basis has probably ended up circling the sky around Heathrow for quite a while, and this is the reason that is sometimes given for why a third runway is needed. We have a better idea, instead of having another runway at Heathrow, why not have a reduction in flight traffic so planes do not have to fly around in circles burning fuel? Let the airlines put up their prices so that they can remain profitable and then we will all no doubt take less trips by plane. Hands up how many of us have booked a £30 flight for a weekend away some place because it is so cheap? Most of us are guilty of this (hands up), instead why not save up for that trip of a lifetime, or take a weekend away to sunny Bognor? You never know, it might not rain.

Not sure how the youth of today are ever going to gain a sense of social responsibility and a passion for the environment when even at school, the youth of today are actively cheating to get their qualifications? Search the web and you’ll find a whole host of sites offering college essays and term papers etc. I wonder if these are being used for proper research, or just a means to get a good grade? I guess the teachers of today have a lot of work on their hands deciphering the real work from the manufactured. You can relate this very subject directly to looking after the environment. Too often people ‘claim’ ‘green and clean’ when the reality is they are cheating. How many people buy just whatever they want regardless of the environmental consequences, to quench their thirst for the latest gadget, or cheap clothes manufactured in a developing nation, where the workers are constantly being exploited, and yet still claim that they are green activists? The answer unfortunately is too many people.

So the UK government is pushing ahead with plans to build a new bunch of nuclear power stations, which in my view is simply a way of making the country believe we are actively reducing (the new buzz word on the street) CO2 emissions, whilst investing heavily in a technology that is dangerous and gives a poisonous legacy for our offspring to deal with. Reading on forums there is a big backlash against ‘lentil eating tree huggers’ who have stood up to complain about these new power stations. I wonder why it is that the ill-informed and all the painfully stupid people in the country, always revert to the same old name calling tactics, which make me wonder what is wrong with lentils, or having a positive outlook on trees. Having watched a few programmes on the television as of late, notably Hugh FW’s programme on the treatment of broiler chickens and the attitudes of the people he had to deal with who didn’t seem to care that the chickens were kept in hideous conditions it made me wonder truly what the state of the country is in. This country is filled with really dim people, to say that it’s OK to keep chickens in horrible conditions was OK, because the chickens ‘didn’t know any different’ is missing the point by such a long way that it would be funny if the subject matter wasn’t so dire. What has this got to do with nuclear power? Well, it’s the same mentality taking grip here, the ‘we need power’ let’s leave the small, apparently insignificant issue of disposing of nuclear waste for some other generation to deal with, because we don’t care, because ‘we need power.’ I also loved the argument that we were too dependant on nations such as Russia to provide Gas, the Middle East to provide Oil and we want to generate our own home grown power. Great argument, but where does the fuel for nuclear power stations come from? Well, I tell you what, it’s not the Lake District. It’s Canada and Australia predominately. That’s OK though, because we like Mounties and Aussies, I mean Aussies are great they all work in bars and they are always so chipper, but those Russians and Arabs… well we just don’t know what it is with them. I hate all the spin from Governments who so easily pull the blinkers over the masses in this stupid country, it drives me nuts. Honestly, I’m tempted to emigrate.

Looks like they are building a coal powered power station in Kent. Greenpeace labelled it “dinosaur technology” which is bang on the money. That’s another dim idea from the bunch of idiots that run the UK. Coal really isn’t the future and if this government wants to tackle climate change they are going to have to ‘think outside the box’ and not come up with nonsense like this.

Happy New Year to all of our readers from Suburban Chimp! This environment blog sure does hope that environmental news and sustainability plays an even bigger part in people’s minds in 2008 than it did last year, as we have an awful lot of issues to deal with. As for us, we’ve had a little holiday, put our feet up and enjoyed a well earned rest. At home we sorted out our recycling area so that it’s easier to place things in the recycling bins than it is to put in the waste bin, meaning that instead of having to make a concerted effort to recycle we have to make a concerted effort to NOT recycle. In fact, due to a lazy lie in one morning we missed the dustbin collection (which is only once every two weeks), and therefore our trash isn’t being picked up for a month. In this month our household has generated one full wheelie bin full of rubbish that we can’t readily recycle easily. Considering we’ve just got through the ‘excess’ period of the year, dealing with Christmas and New Year, we think that our effort was pretty good. However, it could be better, so moving forward we are going to aim to reduce our waste further. Another resolution (of sorts) is to recycle more of the rubbish we generate at work. Suburban Chimp isn’t a full time job, so we have day jobs to contend with too, and the recycling systems in our offices and work places aren’t always up to scratch, for whatever reason. This means taking our rubbish home with us, and where this is practical we will do so. Of course, when we recycled most of our Christmas waste, what was we left with? Yup, we were left with plastic and specifically polythene food wrappings. We are going to make a bigger effort to avoid buying foods/products with polythene where possible. However, this stuff gets everywhere so we know it is near on impossible to avoid it completely. In 2008 we at Suburban Chimp are going to target ‘excess packaging’ as a priority as it is a subject that is starting to drive us nuts. For example one of our staff writers bought a DVD without really thinking about the environmental impact of it. OK, so we live in the real world where we buy DVDs and stuff, we don’t live in caves and live off moss. We buy stuff too! However, this DVD is a real case in point of something we probably shouldn’t have purchased if we had looked at it from an environmental aspect. DVD creation aside, here is a run down of the packaging involved in this purchase. One polythene cover over the DVD. (yawn). One cardboard sleeve over the plastic DVD case. One plastic bag to carry it all in. OK, there are commercial reasons for the polythene but it gets absolutely everywhere and is annoying. We should have bought our own bag to carry the purchase home in, and as for the cardboard sleeve? What on earth is that for? Pointless, excessive and wasteful. Manufacturers, please stop doing that!

Well, with just four days to go until Christmas Day is upon us and we all unwrap a bunch of presents we may or may not like (my wife is nice, I’m sure I’ll get something I want!) the last mad push towards the shops continue. I was out in Oxford Street, London yesterday and it was bedlam, I work close by and have to cross Oxford Street every day so it wasn’t if I was deliberately torturing myself with it, and I was wondering why on earth do we continue with this nonsense? Unless you do you Christmas shopping in November buying stuff, is just a pain. I know people just default this attitude to scrooge mentality, but come on it’s becoming a joke, along with the houses festooned with Christmas decorations, burning up electricity as if it was free! There are people who live in my street who spend the entirety of their lives on social security, no jobs, nothing who have spent thousands of pounds on the useless tat to make their houses look stupid. OK, they can spend their money on whatever they like, but this form of ‘showing off’ is not the spirit of Christmas, it is just a complete waste of money and a joke. I think the spirit of Christmas can be simplified, today I went to my local café to grab my usual breakfast of a couple of slices of toast and a tea, and today the owner said that it was a gift from him, saving me a couple of pound. A wonderful, appreciated gesture. That’s the spirit of Christmas, not buying or giving tonnes of pointless tat. What’s this inane rant got to do with an environmental blog? Well, it’s about consumerism, it’s about wasting resources for the sake of it, it’s about all the greedy things that make a modern day human being. Baa humbug to one and all!