The Great Lactivist Giveaway – Win Barefoot Books

For a little while now, Lisa over at Lactivist has been organising a great big giveaway for June, full of goodies for Mums and babies.  I’m delighted to say that she’s collected a whole host of amazing prizes, including a collection of Barefoot goodies, donated by yours truly.

To win any of the prizes, you need to go to the individual post for that prize, over at the Lactivist blog and leave a comment.  You can earn extra entries by tweeting about the prize, posting it on Facebook, writing about it on your blog, or on forums – just leave a message saying where you’ve mentioned it.  There really are some great prizes, donated by some very generous people – so make sure you have a look and get your entries in.  You can enter between now and 30th June.

The Barefoot Books prize is two hardback books and a set of first puzzles.

Welcome to the World is a hardback book celebrating birth and babies in many cultures.  Beautiful black and white photos are accompanied by wonderful poems.  The book shows motherhood in many guises including pictures of breastfeeding and baby-wearing around the world.

Mother Goose Remembers is a hardback book of 46 favourite nursery rhymes beautifully illustrated by Clare Beaton’s carefully constructed felt and fabric pictures and includes a singalong CD.

Mother Goose First Puzzles is a set of four shaped puzzles picturing scenes from nursery rhymes for young. Sixteen pieces fit together to create four Mother Goose scenes.

So, to get your hands on this great collection of Barefoot gifts, go to this post and leave a comment.  Post about it, tell your friends about it, spread the word and earn yourself extra entries.

 

Hanging our Heads

So, we’ve done it; we’ve made it out the other side of election day.  Barely.

What a performance, and not one Britain should be proud of.  I’m not talking parties here.  I had such a feeling of hope going into this.  So many people had been invigorated by the Leaders’ debate and decided that this year was the year they would exercise their democratic right to tell the politicians what they think.

But they weren’t allowed.  Soon after 10pm, stories started to trickle through about people being locked out of polling stations and not able to vote.  Cries of “should have got there sooner!” started to emerge.  It soon became clear that arriving at 6pm and still not being able to vote was a bit more than idleness on the part of the voters.  David Dimbleby said it was like “third world politics”.  It got worse.  Tales came through from around the country of polling station staff unable to cope with the increased turnout.

The official rule on this is that if you are in the polling station, with a ballot paper issued by 10pm then you can vote.  Even if you’re inside, if the ballot paper hasn’t be issued you’re out of luck.  In some places, people queued for hours, only to be locked out and the police called to move them on.  In others (i.e. Lewisham), despite being unable to deal with the queues which built up for hours, they were miraculously able to get everyone in and issued with a ballot paper before 10pm.  Hmn, so why the queues?  This story came in dribs and drabs.  First we were told they had stayed open until 10.30 to ensure everyone could vote.  This meant people voted after the exit polls were released, which outraged Dimbleby.  Exit polls cannot be released until after the polls shut at 10pm.  Then it emerged that this late opening was not just unorthodox, but against the law.  Then we’re told that it’s OK, everyone was given a ballot paper in the legally allowed time.  I don’t buy it.

But it doesn’t end there.  Two constituencies ran out of ballot papers. Now, to the untrained eye this seems incredible.  Surely, surely, you prepare for an election by having a final count of how many people are registered to vote in your constituency and print enough ballot papers, plus a few spare, you know, in case the dog eats one.  Then you check how many people have been told to go to each polling station and make sure there is one paper to greet each of them, plus a few spare, so if we had 100% turn up to vote, they could.  Apparently not.

In Sheffield there is outrage.  Lots of people were turned away after hours of queuing.  The Returning Officer blamed it on the students who turned up without polling cards.  Tsk!  Those students eh?  Fancy following the information on the polling card which clearly states “This card is for information only.  You can vote without it.”   There’s more to this story though.  Details have come out suggesting that, realising they were struggling to cope with numbers of voters, some of whom did not have their cards (which does make processing slightly longer), one polling station took matters into their own hands.  They divided people into two queues.  One for local residents and one for students.  Whilst many students queued and queued and didn’t get to vote, residents were, in some cases, able to walk right in without queuing.  You couldn’t make it up.

C’mere, there’s more ….

In Chester, a minority seat, up to 600 registered voters were turned away because the powers that be were not using an up-to-date polling list.  People registered to vote, were added to the polling list, turned up to vote, only to be turned away because their name wasn’t on the version being used, which was produced before people began registering to vote in this election. Really.  This seat changed hands last night.  A Conservative gain.  Now, even if all those 600 people had voted Labour, it still would have been a Con gain, but I don’t think that’s the point.

We, as a country, send observers to oversee elections in the areas of the world where we don’t trust those in power to run a fair election.  Where we consider there to be a risk of irregularities.  Can we do that again?  Ever?  I think not.  If anything was irregular, yesterday’s election in the UK certainly was.  It’s a disgrace and we should hang our heads in shame.  Those responsible should be brought to account, using the law which rightly governs how an election is run.  Oh, but wait.  The law says what should happen, but gives no-one any powers to do anything about it.  The Electoral Commission was “extremely concerned” about the stories last night and issued an unprecendented apology. They would be launching investigations.  Dimbleby asked several times what would happen to those who screwed up (he didn’t actually say “screwed up”, but I’m sure he wanted to).  The lady from the Commission said over and again that the Commission has no power to do anything.  They can advise.  They can investigate.  They can express in the strongest terms possible.  But they can’t prosecute or otherwise punish.  No-one can.

So, in what was billed as a really exciting election, I watched as first time voters everywhere caught the whiff of excitement and got interested in politics.  I watched as the penny dropped as to why it was important that they use their vote.  I watched them turn from “can’t be bothered, it’ll do no good” to “give me a ballot paper, I want to be heard!”.  And then I watched in dismay as thousands of them were disenfranchised and told to go away, no voting here.  I could cry.  We will never, ever, regain the trust and enthusiasm of those voters.  Ever.  Not all who were denied a vote were first timers, and many will be determined to be heard next time (and a damn sight sooner than that I expect).  But that election fever that spread through young first time voters has been lost.

And what of the result? Disappointing.  For all concerned.  I think we always knew we were heading for a hung parliament, and I happen to think that this is no bad thing.  A signal to them all that we are not happy.  But for all parties – except the Greens! – it was a night of disappointment.  None of them did as well as they had hoped.  A night of missed opportunities, big name losses, less enthusiastic support than they hoped for.  And Ed Balls kept his seat.

Not all bad news though.  The BNP did not gain the seats it had hoped for.  It did not even gain the second places it was hoping for.  Nick Griffin conceded defeat in Barking some two hours before the result was announced, claiming an unfair Labour win.  Not more irregularities, surely?  What’s that Nick? Labour encouraged people out to vote?  Successfully increased the turnout?  More people than expected decided to exercise their democratic right to express their opinion?  Oh, that’s terrible.  That’s right folks. Griffin is claiming an unfair win because Labour successfully encouraged more people to vote, and the higher turnout disadvantaged the BNP.  Shame.

So, with one constituency not voting til later in the month due to the death of a candidate, and barring the legal challenges which will no doubt emerge from the shambles, who wants to bet on the final outcome – the one after the bun fight and name calling have finally stopped.  When they’ve done their deals and electoral reform has been pinned on the chest of any agreement?

After last night, I wouldn’t dare!

 

Plotting against Expansion

As almost everyone (I imagine) knows, there are plans to expand Heathrow and build a third runway and a sixth terminal.  Some think this is a great idea, allowing for more flights into and out of the UK.  Many, many others think this is a disastrous idea.  Expanding Heathrow in this way means there’s no hope of the UK meeting its emissions targets.  At a time when all parties are telling us we need to reduce our impact on the environment, expanding air travel in this way makes no sense.

Greenpeace have decided to take action to try and stop this going ahead.  It will be years before a planning application is made for the new runway, but action against it has already started.  Greenpeace has bought a small plot of land – a field in the middle of the village of Sipson, which is under threat from the new runway – and are seeking beneficial owners for this land.  The deeds for the land can only have four legal owners – these will be Greenpeace, Alistair McGowan, Emma Thompson and Zac Goldsmith.  However, there will also be thousands of “beneficial owners” named on the deeds – people who are legally represented by the owners, and who have rights and responsibilities for the land.  Currently there are more than 80 000 beneficial owners, but Greenpeace would like to increase that number to 100 000 by the end of April, when the deed officially closes.

Becoming a beneficial owner costs you nothing, but does give you a right over and an interest in the plot of land.  With over 80 000 beneficial owners, a compulsory purchase order would be much more of  a pain to implement.  You can read more about what Greenpeace are planning on the Airplot website.

The village of Sipson, made up of 700 homes, would be demolished to make way for the runway and a staggering 114 schools will be heavily affected by its construction.  Only the Labour party support these plans, and a growing number of their MPs are not happy with the plans.

Sign up today to become a beneficial owner of the Airplot land and help support the fight against a third runway.

 

Ten Tips for Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

So, Earth Day is upon us once again.  A day when we are encouraged to think more about how we treat (use) the planet and how we could change it for the better.  Of course, there’s a strong argument that every day should be Earth Day in that respect, but one day is better than nothing.  Start small, and build….

So what are you doing for Earth Day?  There are lots of very small changes we can all make, which together have a much bigger impact.  I know a lot of people think they can’t change anything on their own, but I don’t think that’s true.  Apart from anything else, many of the changes we can make have a positive impact on our own lives, so we can see immediate benefits for ourselves.  When others do this too, we start to make an impact.  Don’t let people tell you that because we can’t solve the environmental crises overnight, we shouldn’t bother trying.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  (Margaret Mead)

Here then, are a few things you could do to make a change.  You’re probably doing some of them already.

1. Set your computer and monitor to sleep mode, rather than leaving it on.  If you’re finished for the day, turn it off altogether.  Setting a desktop to sleep mode reduces electricity usage by 87%.  The surge of energy used by turning it back on again is very small in comparison to that used by leaving it on.
2. Drink tap water, not bottled.  Apart from the fact that there is evidence to suggest some bottled water sits in the plastic bottle for a year or more, absorbing the chemicals from the plastic (yuck!), the waste involved in bottled water is phenomenal.  On another level, many of the bottled water brands available are owned by Nestle – a fantastic reason not to buy it.  It is just me that thinks it’s a very cynical move on Nestle’s part that they own most of the bottled water companies in many countries where the tap water is not safe to drink?  Anyway, according to the New York Times, Americans will throw away over 30 billion single use plastic bottles from bottled water this year alone!  Buy yourself a refillable water bottle (most supermarkets sell them, along with their packed lunch bags) and use tap water.  You can get a filter if your tap water doesn’t taste great.
3. Set yourself a target to reduce you family’s or business’ carbon footprint.  You can assess your current emissions  and get ideas for ways of cutting down by visiting ClimateCare.
4. Recycle your waste.  Most local councils now operate a recycling programme, but the quality of these varies enormously.  You can recycle all sorts of things these days.  Of course, you can recycle tins, cans, plastic bottles, paper, newspaper, cardboard and glass, although not all councils recycle all of these things.  Some will allow you to recycle tetra-packs and plastic tubs and yoghurt pots, but not all.  Some allow textile recycling too.  If yours doesn’t allow all of this, you can usually find quite decent recycling at one of the local supermarkets, often including textiles and shoes.  Clarks shoe shops offer a recycling scheme for kids’ shoes – they collect them and send them to developing countries for children to wear.
5. Even better than recycling is reducing the amount of stuff we use in the first place.  This is harder to do, because the amount of packaging manufacturers get away with using is outrageous.  However, there are still things we can do.  Buy your fruit and veg loose.  You usually get a choice between plastic wrapped and loose, so choose the loose ones.  Rather than sticking them in a plastic bag, put them straight into your trolley or basket, or into a cotton bag you take with you (even then, you still get cashiers at the checkout trying to put stuff into plastic bags – grrr!).  When you have no choice but to have packaging, try to choose products with packaging that can be recycled.
6. Ignore sell-by dates – sell by dates have lulled us into this false sense of danger – most food is still edible after the sell by dates, so ignore the dates and use your common sense.  Cutting down on food waste makes a big difference to the  amount we throw out.
7. Compost!  If you grow your own veg, you cut down on a lot of packaging!  It also gives you a good reason to compost more waste.  Lots of food waste can be recycled (but not meat or dairy, though egg shells are fine).  Teabags, veggies, bread – they can all go in.  We have a small lidded bin with a removable bucket, which we collect the waste in.  We then take the inner to the compost bin, wash it out and start again.  You can get a compost bin from your council, usually at a huge discount, or you can make your own.  Don’t forget that grass cuttings, other garden waste, shredded paper etc can all go in too.  If you keep chickens, their poo makes excellent compost too!
8. Save water.  If you’re not on a water meter, it can be very easy to use water with no real idea of how much you use.  There are lots of devices which fit inside the cistern of the loo to reduce the amount of water used in a flush.  Modern loos often have water saving flushes built in, but older ones can be encouraged to use less.  Some of the devices can be got free from the water company.
9. Collect water.  We have plenty of falling from the skies, so it makes sense that we should make the most of it.  A water butt is easy to connect to your drain pipe to collect the rain water from your gutters.  You can then use this water to water your garden, saving water and bypassing hosepipe bans at the same time!  Again, water butts are available from councils at a discount.
10. Buy local.  This can prove to be quite a task, but it is possible to do – at least for some of the shop.  You can take this to mean buying from local shops, local producers, local produce from a supermarket, or just thinking about the food miles involved in what you buy.  If you can buy something grown or reared in the UK, does it make sense to buy the alternative brand sitting next to it that has been flown half way around the world?  Doing this in full means giving up some things we love that can’t grow here, but again … small steps.  Buy stuff in season, and it doesn’t need to be flown around the world.  Cut down and change where there is a UK alternative, and then buying something which doesn’t grow here isn’t such a big thing.

OK. there are my ten tips for Earth Day.  I don’t claim to do all of them perfectly, but I do try to do them all to some extent.  I’d love to hear your suggestions of other ways to reduce our negative impact on the world.

As a special incentive to go eco (especially with your kids), I’d like to make an offer.  Barefoot Books have a lot of titles aimed at helping and encouraging children to think ecologically.  I’ve talked about some of them on here before.  Today, I’d like to give a special mention to “Whole World Fun Eco Activities“, “Kids’ Garden” and “The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales“.  Between now and midnight on Sunday, I will pay for one tree to planted for every book sold through this link, whether they come from our eco range or not.  Barefoot Books are printed on ancient forest-friendly, acid free paper already.  Now you can have a tree planted on your behalf for every book bought, through Eco-Libris.

So remember, for every book you buy from me on one of these links, I will pay for one tree to be planted.

Happy Earth Day!

 

Sprouts!

Just a quick post today, to say that we’re all very excited (yes, we really are!) to report that having planted seeds on Friday and Saturday, the first shoots have made an appearance already!

Yesterday, we had five little shoots appearing from the tray of mixed salad leaves, and the pepper and aubergine plants have also got quite a lot of growth on them.  I fully expect not to be able to get into the greenhouse by the end of the week, due to the jungle that will have sprung up in there!

Bean did a dance around the garden when he saw the first shoots, and is now jabbering happily about being able to pull up carrots for his tea!  Happy days!

 

Dig in!

So Spring has finally put in an appearance and we have been a hive of activity over the last few days, trying to make the most of the good weather and the energy it brings before both disappear.

The BBC are running a gardening campaign called Dig In, trying to encourage as many households as possible to have a go at growing their own food, whether in window boxes or carefully mapped out vegetable plots.  We sent off for our free pack of seeds and on Friday we got to grips with planting them.  This year, the seed packs include carrots (specially short ones so that they can be grown in pots and window boxes as well as in the ground), french beans, sweet basil, courgettes and mixed salad leaves.

Bean got himself suitably kitted out – he chose his brown cords, his wellies, a tshirt and his new pink gardening gloves and together we filled our seed trays with compost and sowed our seeds.  He was astounded at the variety of shapes and sizes of the seeds and it became a great game for him to try to guess whether the seeds would be large or small.  The packet of mixed salad leaves was fantastic, because all the seeds were different shapes and sizes.  He really was amazed.

Dig In!

Basil Seeds

As well as dealing with our Dig In seeds, I decided we should make a proper go of this and grow lots of other things too.  Although we have a (very small) vegetable plot in our garden, we’re trying to sell the house, and I don’t want to put in lots of hard work only to abandon our crops when we move house, so I chose things that we could grow in pots.  Over two days, we sowed seeds for red peppers (the long pointy ones.  Bean was highly amused that the variety translated as “Cone Peppers of the Red Bull”), cucumbers, mint, thyme, parsley, salad tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

We also transplanted some seedlings we bought – round carrots, beetroot, garden peas, more salad leaves and spring onions. I repotted a new oregano plant and a new rosemary plant.  Finally I bought some young, but well established organic sweet pepper and aubergine plants and put each one in a pot, and created two troughs full of organic strawberries.  Phew!

Oh, and I forgot, we planted several large tubs up with potato tubers!  Bean really liked that – making holes in the compost and dropping a spud in and hiding it again.  He thoroughly enjoyed himself.  He began by using his gardening gloves and trowel, but soon abandoned these as he discovered that he actually liked to feel the earth in his fingers.

Watering the Seeds

He’s not blessed with patience however – 20 minutes after we finished, he wanted to know if the carrots and potatoes were ready to pick yet!

Not quite ready for picking yet ...

Because it really was a lovely couple of days, I finally got round to finishing what I started a few weeks ago, and planted up the hanging baskets with pansies.  I did some planters with them a few weeks ago, and they have really come on in leaps and bounds, so hopefully, the baskets will be overflowing very soon!  I still had loads of pansies left though, so I dug out our old strawberry planter (which we never had a great deal of success with, strawberry-wise) and filled it with the remaining pansies.  Again, I think they will soon take over and this will be covered in bright blooms!

Old Strawberry Pot of Pansies

Time for a rest I think, and start planning how to use these lovely veggies in our meals.

 

Book of the Week: The Real Princess

The Real Princess is a mathemagical tale and a quirky take on the “Princess and the Pea” story.  Practice maths skills as you read how the King and Queen and their three sons search for a real princess.  Only the Queen knows the secret.

After the story, there is an opportunity for readers to test their counting skills with fun number games.  Available in Paperback, with or without a story CD, read by Juliet Stevenson.

The Real Princess is also the subject of the current Barefoot Podcast.  Subscribe for free, and each week you can enjoy a new story or song, courtesy of Barefoot Books.

 

It’s been a while ….

So I started with very good intentions of posting regularly on the blog, and felt like I was doing well with it.  The last month has been a hard one for me though, and I stopped posting on here and took a bit of a back seat in other areas too.

The trigger for this lack of… anything … was being assaulted at school for the second time in 8 months.  My right hand is damaged from the first incident last summer, and I’m still undergoing treatment for it, which has included steroid injections.  I’m now almost certainly looking at surgery to try and regain full use of my hand.  The second incident last month involved the same hand, causing significant pain, as well as whiplash.

Still, I’m determined not to let it get me down anymore and so will try and get on track with posting on here again.

 

Book of the Week: Kids’ Garden Card Deck

The Book of the Week this week is, in fact, not a book at all, but the brand new Kids’ Garden Card Deck.  I’ve been waiting for this one to hit the warehouse since I first saw it on the Spring new releases list, and my copy arrived today.

It’s beautiful, quite simply.  It’s billed as being suitable for ages 8 and up, but I bought it for my 4 year old, and there are plenty of projects he can enjoy and understand, and it will certainly last him until well after he is eight.

He’s already looking forward to making a rain catcher and a bird feeder (as well as the bird food to go in it).  There are cards for making paperweights, and using flowers and leaves to create art.  There’s plenty to keep little ones occupied, and the projects increase in sophistication as the child gets older.  Set your older children off on experiments to compare the growth of seeds in a variety of ways, planting “Three Sisters”, creating corn dolls, planting rainbows and lots, lots more.  Children who love dirt will love the projects including making compost, wormeries, investigating habitats and the like.

There are projects for the whole year round, and plenty that can be done indoors, as well as outdoors.  Each card contains a different project, and includes simple equipment lists and instructions, and beautiful artwork too.

This is a fantastic opportunity to show your child the wonder of nature in your garden or window box.  As Spring finally seems to have sprung, it’s a great time to get started.

Get your copy today and you too can be creating home for the “garden people”.

 

Wordless Wednesday – Spring is in the Air

Wordless Wednesday