train defecator hunted by police

from bbc news website

Train defecator hunted by police

A man has been defecating in trains across south-east England, causing damage costing £60,000 to repair.

British Transport Police said the man had struck on at least 30 trains since August, smearing excrement inside carriages.

He waits until he is alone in the carriage before committing the offence.

“This is a serious public health issue as well as being exceptionally anti-social – we need to locate this man,” said Det Con Donna Fox.

She said his offences had resulted in many carriages being taken out of service, causing disruption and cancellations and serious inconvenience to the travelling public.

There was also £60,000 in damage and cleaning costs.

“There is no particular pattern as to when he appears,” said Ms Fox.

“He travels to various areas and at different times of the day and different days of the week.

“We have been trawling through CCTV images to try and track the man and remain hopeful that members of the public may know him and where he lives.

“On at least one occasion CCTV footage shows the man being disturbed by a passenger walking through a train.

“If anyone sees this man travelling on the railway network they should not approach him, but call the police or alert train staff immediately.”

more worms

got a response from the council to my email.

Dear Mr. Holland,

Thank you for your email. Please accept my sincere apologies for the
delayed response, caused by an administration error at our offices.

I am sorry you have had cause to complain. You do raise a number of valid
points regarding people who have access to composting in their home, that
live in the city centre. Whilst I know that the council is committed to
reviewing its waste strategy in this area, I have asked for further
information regarding subsidising of composters and wormeries or
alternative solutions for you from colleagues, and we shall contact you
again shortly.

Please reply to cityclean@brighton-hove.gov.uk or telephone (01273) 292929
for further information or assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Tim Read
Customer Service Team Leader

..still no change on the website.

back again

yes it’s me, back after a short break due to all sorts of reasons. not much news to share but to update previous posts…
-i’ve heard nothing from the council and they’ve not changed their website
-have had two boxes of fresh organic veg delivered
-bloke who got hit by bus is out of hospital
-i have been to the literacy class twice
-i’ve rejoined the gym
-my friend isn’t leaving work for a while
-it’s now eight weeks ’til baby arrives

nasty injuries, joining the gym, volunteering

well it’s true – you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I went to visit someone from work today who was actually hit by a bus the other day. Four broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. Ouch! He was in the surgical assessment unit and it was awful… the doctors and that were great but all the squeaks, squeals, yelps and shouts of pain were almost unbearable. lucky it wasn’t me that got hit by the bus really. (god, i have no heart)

i visited my old gym today to find out about re-joining. i joined about a year ago and dropped out about six months later (like about 80% of people, i read). worst decision ever. it was for financial reasons at the time but on reflection i see that the £27 a month – although expensive on my low budget – was money well spent in terms of health, mental state, energy levels, and the effect it had on my back pain (i usually have a lot of back pain, but when i was working out regularly it went away). i made up my mind last night in the basketmakers talking to a couple of mates. it looks like we all might join at the same time which might be good for motivation – gym buddies! also it might be nice to have a better level of fitness for when the baby comes along – less than 10 weeks ’til due date!

i’m supposed to be starting my new voluntary post on monday. i’ll be helping in a basic skills literacy class. i’m a bit scared as i’ve not done that kind of work before but also excited and quite positive. it might even turn into a job at some point if i’m lucky and find that i like it (and am good at it!).

imagine a puddle…

read a quote from douglas adams in richard dawkin’s “a devil’s chaplain”

…imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking ‘This is an interesting world i find myself in – an interesting hole i find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch for.

i was talking to someone the other day who said she didn’t recycle because it ‘doesn’t fit into my lifestyle’.

so this is it – we’re going to die.

trying out a box scheme

just ordered an organic vegetable box from real food direct. i’ve been meaning to do this and cut down on my food miles for a while and have finally got around to it. i chose them as a friend said they were good. i’ve also seen a few advertised in infinity foods, but they were only phone numbers and to be honest i found it a bit easier to order online just for convenience to start with, although i might check out the other schemes as well at some point.
i’ll post with feedback about what was in the box when i get it (hopefully friday)

new stuff on anxiety culture

got the new email from brian at anxiety culture today – it’s the original, unedited draft of a piece he had published in the guardian. i’d recommend anyone to visit his site and have a read (and spring for a bit of money on the e-books you can download there, too)

How do you avoid becoming a corporate drone? Firstly, it helps to accept that if you spend most of your waking hours confined to the office, it will eventually get to you. Anyone starting an office job expecting to escape the politics and petty bureaucracy is in for a shock. You can’t expect to remain dignified in that environment. It’s better to recognise your inevitable deterioration into something contemptible. The only alternative is to join the ranks of the deluded, seek opportunities and aspire to professionalism – but that’s the action plan of the trainee drone.

Of course, jobs are supposed to give people self-respect, not take it away. But due to the nature of the typical workplace (authority hierarchies, miscommunication, chaos), employees end up behaving in undignified ways: concealing things from their bosses, redirecting blame, feeling resentment over trivial matters, reporting that everything’s fine when it isn’t, hiding in the toilets, etc.

Obviously this behaviour doesn’t fit our beliefs about ourselves as essentially rational and well-adjusted. The result is cognitive dissonance, which occurs when our self-image is contradicted by our actions. How can you come to terms with your ‘guilty’ behaviour if you see yourself as honest and dignified? You think you’re above it all, but the evidence of your own actions shows that you’re immersed in it. Faced with the horror of your out-of-character behaviour, you rationalise and make excuses. You turn into an office drone.

Any smart person with a meaningless job suffers the crippling cognitive dissonance of: “I am intelligent, my waking hours are spent in stupidity”. Rationalisations are used to mask the frustration: “I’d be bored without my job” (if you really believe that, it’s probably time to consider entering a nursing home). According to Leon Festinger, creator of dissonance theory, the less you are paid to do stupid work, the more you will attempt to rationalise it (“well, it was fun”), rather than admit to doing it for the money. Remember this next time you hear someone claim to “enjoy” their underpaid desk job.

As an office worker, don’t expect to have any dignity. Perhaps the only way to stay sane is to accept that you’ll turn into something despicable. Don’t fall for the office management propaganda about integrity and professionalism. In the corporate workplace, self-respect is out of the question – it exists only in the delusions of drones.

tornado on sussex coast

from bbc website: Coastguards put out a warning to shipping after a tornado was seen sweeping along the South Coast just after dawn on Sunday.

more worms

just rang the number on the leaflet. guy wasn’t sure whether the offer did apply to residents of brighton and hove.
so i rang the council. the chap said he wasn’t sure. then he advised me to ring the wormery company to find out. i asked him to find out (i mean, surely the council should know! it’s their – no, our – money that would go into subsidising, shurely?). he asked someone and came back and told me that no, the council do not subsidise wormeries. he said they’d change the website. so at least i might have got them to not pretend they do when they don’t. however i’d be a lot happier if they’d just go ahead and subsidise the bloody wormeries like it says they do here, here and here

angry from brighton – am i going mad?

oh man. i’ve sent an email (below) to cityclean, brighton council’s in-house recycling, refuse and street cleansing service, about the fact that wormeries are not subsidised by the council even though it’s advertised on the website that they are. I’ve never done anything like that before. maybe it’s the fact that we’ve got a baby on the way. maybe i’m just turning in to a mad person. i should have written in it in a green font just to confirm my bonkers credentials.
Still, i think the point i make is valid one. fair enough to subsidise compost bins etc but that just means that homeowners and people with gardens get to save a bit of money and feel they’re doing their bit whereas flat-dwellers like archel and myself (and believe me we’d live with a house with a garden if we could) don’t.
now to be honest i’ve bought a wormery (for FIFTY QUID!) and very good it is too. so it’s not like i couldn’t afford one because they weren’t subsidised. the point is that if the council is trying to encourage home composting (and remember this will cut landfill use by 30% potentially) then everyone should be encouraged to do it. east sussex council manage to. why can’t we?

STOP PRESS!!!

oh bollocks. well, good news and bad news. having looked at the leaflet, i see that brighton council is part of this promotion too (£35 instead of £50 for a wormery). But in my defence (backpedal, backpedal!) the offer is through blackwalls, a very good company who my in-laws got theirs through. the brighton and hove council waste website only links to original organics and wiggly wigglers, neither of which seem to offer any discount for b&h residents – they are just there as examples of place to get one.
so… the easiest solution to this would be for the council to just link to the blackwalls offer. let’s hope they do.

***************************************************

dear cityclean

hello. a request.
on the brighton and hove council website (http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=b1000037) there is a link that says “buy a reduced cost composter, wormery or water butt”. This is excellent and to be applauded – but when you click on the link the only things that are reduced are composters, not water butts or wormeries.
I would ask you to please consider subsidising the wormeries. As stated on the B&H Council website, “Kitchen and garden waste makes up about 30% by weight of household rubbish. Green waste in landfill sites causes the generation of landfill gas which contributes towards global warming and a toxic liquid called leachate”. Nightmare! Brighton is right by the sea and I don’t want it to be underwater when my kids grow up.
Lots of people in Brighton and Hove (especially in the city centre) live in flats with no access to a garden. As you know, a compost heap or composter is best suited to being on a grass or soil surface, as they are open at the base. A small wormery (or even a big one) can be kept indoors. As it says in the waste local plan, “Householders can compost their own organic (uncooked) waste at home and this avoids the need for onward transporting and processing elsewhere. This is the most sustainable way of dealing with household and garden wastes, should not normally require planning permission and should be encouraged as much as possible”(my italics). It’s great that the council is encouraging people with gardens to compost by offering discounts, but surely the encouragement should be extended to people without one? On the Council website there are instructions for making your own wormery, but this is to be made out of four car tyres. Again, this restricts the number of people who can make their own. I certainly couldn’t fit a car tyre in my kitchen and i’m sure it wouldn’t be sanitary. So again the option to recycle organic waste in the mosy sustainable way is limited to people who have garens. A commercially-available wormery is small and sealed to prevent smells leaking out and so is easily suitable for most kitchens and so could be used by anyone with the will to do so.

Please subsidise the wormeries. Thanks.