really old style living?

zarazara

Good post ceridwen

zarazara

[QUOTE=RAS;36995246
We waste nearly one third of the food that enters our homes
.[/QUOTE]
In our house we try not to waste BUT mt DS1 drives me bonkers. He will regulally pour out a bowl of cereal then eat half,or heat up a tin of soup [ or some lovely home made frozen casserole or other thing out of the freezer] and eat half, or bring in a takeaway and eat half....he doesnt put stuff in the fridge for later either. I've no idea why or where it comes from,me and his dad are uber frugal. maybe its a back-lash or something.

RAS

ceridwen wrote: »

I do hope that those of us who have retired (as I personally will have long before 2030) arent included under the "got to work heading". I DO want/very much need my retirement

I think that a lot of people already "work" in retirement, often on a voluntary basis. So I would see this as much more society acknowledging what they are doing, rather than chaining them to the treadmill.

I would also see "retired" people doing things that matched their abilities. I have friends who are fiercely robust; moutainerring and skiing with people 20-30 years younger, and others the same ae whose health prevents them being very active physically. But the latter contribute by organising, offer complementary therapies, keeping minutes, staffing community events and facilities.

Ditto people with disabilities; our current situation says you are well or not rather than that sometimes you can contribute and sometimes you are not able to do it, today. And sometime you need tomorrow to recover, or to take it gently.

What I do not see being an option is the person who never works, gets their dole and spends it on stuff. Again, we are working or not, rather than working part-time sometimes and needing help and other times working full-time.

NualaBuala

Started replying but ran out of steam. Shorter version = great posts RAS and ceridwen.

NualaBuala

Oh and ceridwen, is there any book you don't have?! In so you many of your posts you mention some book or another - I'm having book-envy. I'm interested in herbal medicine too, studied a little of it in college but would like to know more.

Mardatha - £15 is super-cheap for chimney cleaning, is that for sending a child up? I paid €50 today which is quite cheap for Dublin. It probably didn't need doing but I figured better safe than sorry.

ceridwen

NualaBuala wrote: »

Oh and ceridwen, is there any book you don't have?! In so you many of your posts you mention some book or another - I'm having book-envy. I'm interested in herbal medicine too, studied a little of it in college but would like to know more.

:rotfl::rotfl: Well if I dont - then its probably en route to me from Amazon right now:D

I DO have literally hundreds of useful reference books on a variety of topics...and sometimes wonder whether I should just leave them wholesale in my Will to the local library when I re-do it at some point:cool: - though I do treat many of them as "workbooks" - so I've got all sorts of comments written into them about various things I've tried and amendments I've made etc.

NualaBuala

ceridwen wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl: Well if I dont - then its probably en route to me from Amazon right now:D

I DO have literally hundreds of useful reference books on a variety of topics...and sometimes wonder whether I should just leave them wholesale in my Will to the local library when I re-do it at some point:cool: - though I do treat many of them as "workbooks" - so I've got all sorts of comments written into them about various things I've tried and amendments I've made etc.

I suspected as much! Lucky your library if you do! And annotating them is just adding to the wealth of knowledge already in them. Hmmm, could be worth a fortune if you become famous!

Kiwisaver_2

RAS wrote: »

What I do not see being an option is the person who never works, gets their dole and spends it on stuff.

I was listening to a radio phone in debate yesterday on this very subject

There's a lot of resentment here in NZ to those 'serial' dole bludgers because recent studies have shown that it is inter-generational and that people who were brought up as children in a benefits environment have gone on to be 'permanent' beneficiaries in adulthood and the cycle continues. Up until recent times with the recession we had a very low unemployment rate, because there simply weren't enough (particulary skilled) people in the country to fill the vacancies - yet still many many people on the dole. This has changed a bit now as many Kiwis that were overseas and lost jobs etc in the credit crunch returned home and of course lots of people have lost jobs through redundancy and Government cutbacks.

Anyway you have to bear in mind, we're not very politically correct in our media and the 'hard' questions can be asked without worrying who will be offended or marginalised. The debate on the radio was asking people on benefit to phone in and discuss what they would do if there were no benefit system, how would they cope, what would they do differently and how would they survive if they weren't being supported by the taxpayers. I can't imagine that question being raised publicly in the UK. :eek:

The concensus seemed to agree that benefiit system should be there for just the short-term, as an emergency to get people back on their feet because people felt that the benefits system actually held people back from standing on their own two feet; took away people's incentive to do anything else, be it creative or inventive because if they had to figure it out for themselves they just would. If they had to they would start businesses, make something and sell it, or offer labour or services in return for payment.

seasalt_2

Have learnt such a lot since I found this thread, thankyou all. I thought it would all be about make do and mend. Had never heard of "survivalists" (except for a rather scary american website I once wandered onto by mistake when I was trying to buy a chiltern hoe!), "preppers", "forward thinking hypnotic trance groups" etc etc although have been long time member of HDRA (now Garden Organic) and read up a bit about community/permaculture food growing - loved what you imagined RAS. Small communities have their own problems though, as well as tremendous strengths, especially in a crisis.

Interestingly OH was saying yesterday that when he was a child the whole family was needed to work the croft (part of a dispute over whether or not DS was going out to help him before tea!). Now most jobs are one man and a tractor - so there would have to be a lot of relearning old (and inventing new) ways even amongst farmworkers. So many of the old skills are being lost with OH's generation and the one before it. I believe Mao's community farms were not wholly successful experiments!

It IS scary to think how we would cope - although the resilience of so many people all over the world (and I've met some of them), whose lives have been turned upside down by war, famine, disasters, hostile and brutal regimes etc and yet who still have hope, dignity and strength and have not gone down the "mad and the bad" road is humbling and encouraging.

OK, will get off my soap box and say that OH cleaned both chimneys yesterday and we lit the small stove in the evening - bliss!

mardatha

A lot of survivalists think that up where you are SS is the best place to be if things go to custard !