During the course of the campaign against the expansion we were talking about the Transition Towns Initiative.
To cut a number of long stories short we decided to start an initiative in Wolverton.
I'll post descriptions, discussions etc on this in later posts....
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
The campaing against the planned Tesco expansion
So we and some others in the town started Big Enough Already - the campaign to stop the expansion of Tesco in Wolverton.
Wolverton is an old Victorian town in the north west of Milton Keynes. It mainly consists of worker cottages built by the railway works (Wolverton was a major and prestigious railway building town). The houses are mainly terraces with narrow streets etc.
Tesco wants to expand their store in this town, making it more than twice as big. This will require demolishing the current store and building a new one on stilts. They have a store of the same format in the south east of Milton Keynes, Kingston, which is surrounded by dual carriageways (grid roads, for those of you who know Milton Keynes). The Kingston complex is large and always busy even though it is surrounded by grid roads.
We thought that the intention to build a similar sized store in a small market town with Victorian infrastructure was ridiculous.
We (the Big Enough Already team - 5 of us: me, my boyfriend Geoff a local business owner and 3 other residents) set to work on a campaign to get people to raise objections to the expansion. We designed, printed and delivered a leaflet detailing the planned store size and the impact we saw that it would have, on it we provided the contact details of the government officials to write to.
We attended the public consultation meetings and handed out these leaflets - we produced and delivered 2 leaflets, one before and at each public consultation meeting. A member of the group spoke at the meetings, putting forward our views and position on the proposed expansion.
This took place over the course of a few months and we then got to the position of Tesco submitting the traffic and retail impact assessment reports that their consultants had prepared.
The Council's consultants reviewed them and said - not enough info and sent them back.
That's where things got up to.
Wolverton is an old Victorian town in the north west of Milton Keynes. It mainly consists of worker cottages built by the railway works (Wolverton was a major and prestigious railway building town). The houses are mainly terraces with narrow streets etc.
Tesco wants to expand their store in this town, making it more than twice as big. This will require demolishing the current store and building a new one on stilts. They have a store of the same format in the south east of Milton Keynes, Kingston, which is surrounded by dual carriageways (grid roads, for those of you who know Milton Keynes). The Kingston complex is large and always busy even though it is surrounded by grid roads.
We thought that the intention to build a similar sized store in a small market town with Victorian infrastructure was ridiculous.
We (the Big Enough Already team - 5 of us: me, my boyfriend Geoff a local business owner and 3 other residents) set to work on a campaign to get people to raise objections to the expansion. We designed, printed and delivered a leaflet detailing the planned store size and the impact we saw that it would have, on it we provided the contact details of the government officials to write to.
We attended the public consultation meetings and handed out these leaflets - we produced and delivered 2 leaflets, one before and at each public consultation meeting. A member of the group spoke at the meetings, putting forward our views and position on the proposed expansion.
This took place over the course of a few months and we then got to the position of Tesco submitting the traffic and retail impact assessment reports that their consultants had prepared.
The Council's consultants reviewed them and said - not enough info and sent them back.
That's where things got up to.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Localising our shopping
Even before I read the book I'd been questioning where my foodstuffs came from.
And once we started to question where one thing, e.g. our meat was coming from we were compelled to question where our veg was coming from - fish, other groceries etc?
What supply chain had these things been through, had someone been exploited in producing it?
We questioned everything we bought. Once we started thinking about it in this way it was impossible not to.
Did someone suffer to provide these goods to the supermarket? Did a regional or national farmer get squeezed or forced into a non-negotiable contract that works in the buyer's favour? Did a regional or national farmer get pushed out in favour of an international one that can provide goods cheaper?
The scale of the questioning grew and it was not possible to apply this line to one thing but not another.
So there it was, and there we were - in a supermarket and unable to justify buying anything in there.
We were very lucky to be living in a town where there's a farmer's market twice a month, less than 10 minutes walk away from our house. We started relying on that for our veg - and our meat. This meant that we drastically reduced our consumption of meat.
It was expensive - compared to what you could get in the supermarket. This was around the time of the £5 chicken in Tesco... you could get a packet of 10 chicken thighs for around £3.50.
We were looking at chickens that cost £8 and small joints of beef that cost £7 - £10 and a 200g (roughly) packet of stewing beef that cost £3 or more and beef burgers that were £1.80 for 2 instead of £1.80 for 4 etc etc
This was our 1st experience of seeing meat at its true cost.
We started to get a feeling then, that we needed to shop in local places before there were none left to shop in. Our exercise in not using the large supermarket down the road just showed us how difficult it already is to do that.
And then the large supermarket (Tesco) put in a planning application to expand its store.
And once we started to question where one thing, e.g. our meat was coming from we were compelled to question where our veg was coming from - fish, other groceries etc?
What supply chain had these things been through, had someone been exploited in producing it?
We questioned everything we bought. Once we started thinking about it in this way it was impossible not to.
Did someone suffer to provide these goods to the supermarket? Did a regional or national farmer get squeezed or forced into a non-negotiable contract that works in the buyer's favour? Did a regional or national farmer get pushed out in favour of an international one that can provide goods cheaper?
The scale of the questioning grew and it was not possible to apply this line to one thing but not another.
So there it was, and there we were - in a supermarket and unable to justify buying anything in there.
We were very lucky to be living in a town where there's a farmer's market twice a month, less than 10 minutes walk away from our house. We started relying on that for our veg - and our meat. This meant that we drastically reduced our consumption of meat.
It was expensive - compared to what you could get in the supermarket. This was around the time of the £5 chicken in Tesco... you could get a packet of 10 chicken thighs for around £3.50.
We were looking at chickens that cost £8 and small joints of beef that cost £7 - £10 and a 200g (roughly) packet of stewing beef that cost £3 or more and beef burgers that were £1.80 for 2 instead of £1.80 for 4 etc etc
This was our 1st experience of seeing meat at its true cost.
We started to get a feeling then, that we needed to shop in local places before there were none left to shop in. Our exercise in not using the large supermarket down the road just showed us how difficult it already is to do that.
And then the large supermarket (Tesco) put in a planning application to expand its store.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Localisation
Last year Geoff and I started doing something different. Well a lot of things really. It sort of germinated in us for a while and then I read a book I'd had on the shelf for some time but wasn't ready for.
Shopped, by Joanna Blythman.
It spurred me into action.
We stopped using our local Tesco supermarket, we stopped using all large supermarkets. In fact, we stopped using a supermarket at all for a time.
This was no small task and not easy.
First we couldn't think where to go to get things from in the first place if we didn't go there. Thoughts like 'well, I know that the butcher would sell meat if we had one in the town, but who traditionally sells bun cases?' were common (we ate cake instead and didn't complain, at least we had the means to make cakes).
There were a lot of questions in this process and I'd like to write about them... but it's late so it'll have to wait until later...
Shopped, by Joanna Blythman.
It spurred me into action.
We stopped using our local Tesco supermarket, we stopped using all large supermarkets. In fact, we stopped using a supermarket at all for a time.
This was no small task and not easy.
First we couldn't think where to go to get things from in the first place if we didn't go there. Thoughts like 'well, I know that the butcher would sell meat if we had one in the town, but who traditionally sells bun cases?' were common (we ate cake instead and didn't complain, at least we had the means to make cakes).
There were a lot of questions in this process and I'd like to write about them... but it's late so it'll have to wait until later...
A bit random
I've been toying with the idea of blogging about this stuff for some time. So I'm going to just start saying something and go a bit random.
Peak oil, localisation, climate change, dwindling energy supplies, the end of cheap energy, learning to grow food...
That's what I want to talk about.
Peak oil, localisation, climate change, dwindling energy supplies, the end of cheap energy, learning to grow food...
That's what I want to talk about.
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Pushing cars in the cold
What an experience. Geoff's car was stuck at the garage 6 miles away. I towed it home today. It was a bit scary. My poor little car, I'm so proud of it.
My little 1993 Polo has a fuel leak, an oil leak, a loose exhaust (new) and over 130,000 miles on the clock. It cost me £380 and I've managed to get it through 2 MOTs!
Today I managed to tow Geoff's car , a 1998 Skoda Felicia diesel. The poor Skoda has a broken injector pump and either won't start or starts but won't go anywhere!
Towing it was fun and then we had to try and get it into the garage by pushing it. After emptying the garage and spending an hour pushing (and shunting with my car) we realised it just would not go (Like Lee Evans's hair styling sketch). The back alley is so narrow it just wasn't possible to manouevre it up the little ramp and round the corner...
This was all made the more enjoyable by the temperature being 2 degrees.
I'm going to bed.
My little 1993 Polo has a fuel leak, an oil leak, a loose exhaust (new) and over 130,000 miles on the clock. It cost me £380 and I've managed to get it through 2 MOTs!
Today I managed to tow Geoff's car , a 1998 Skoda Felicia diesel. The poor Skoda has a broken injector pump and either won't start or starts but won't go anywhere!
Towing it was fun and then we had to try and get it into the garage by pushing it. After emptying the garage and spending an hour pushing (and shunting with my car) we realised it just would not go (Like Lee Evans's hair styling sketch). The back alley is so narrow it just wasn't possible to manouevre it up the little ramp and round the corner...
This was all made the more enjoyable by the temperature being 2 degrees.
I'm going to bed.
Just getting started then
I've been threatening to do this for ages!
I've been waiting until I had time to make my own site but that's not looking likely - it's a case of "the cobbler's children" so far, I've been busy working on other people's websites and not had time to make my own.
So I thought, hey, I'll just start blethering and then decide what I want to do.
So this is going to be a mixture of things - life stuff and work stuff, boring stuff and interesting stuff. I'm going to use it for a few things - to communicate with friends and family who are in different countries, to work through thoughts and ideas, to make me stay in the habit of writing... and whatever else there may be.
There will probably be some ranting....
I've been waiting until I had time to make my own site but that's not looking likely - it's a case of "the cobbler's children" so far, I've been busy working on other people's websites and not had time to make my own.
So I thought, hey, I'll just start blethering and then decide what I want to do.
So this is going to be a mixture of things - life stuff and work stuff, boring stuff and interesting stuff. I'm going to use it for a few things - to communicate with friends and family who are in different countries, to work through thoughts and ideas, to make me stay in the habit of writing... and whatever else there may be.
There will probably be some ranting....
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