Solar Simon

What a hectic month since my last blog. Working six (7 if you count the paperwork days) a week very often until late trying to keep up with everything. It  has been interesting to watch MPs squirming lately, as a businessman I find it staggering that they can claim household items and food as an expense. If I tried that Customs and Excise would lock me up. Don't start to feel sorry for them this is your tax money, money that could pay for extra teachers, care for the elderly. The story  had my local MP in tears. Now that made me laugh.
Spending the Bank Holiday at Gressenhall Rural Life History Day showing of my straw building skills so no day off this week.   

The wife is off on a course today so she has left me in charge of the shop, I have to say it's been a little quiet today. It's given me time to catch up on some paper work and other things. I now have two jobs in the hands of planners, the first is a 15kw wind turbine which is proving a real challenge, the slightest mention of wind turbine on an application and all hell breaks loose. The next is a 11.4kw solar system that is on a listed building in a conservation area. I love a challenge, bring it on.

Spent Earth Day yesterday at Burnham Deepdale in North Norfolk. I spent the day with Tom from Desingner Stubble straw builder and timber frame specialist trying to convert people to sustainable building. I didn't notice it at the time but I managed to get sun burnt, global warming.

By dinnertime on Saturday I have refilled 16 bottles with washing-up liquid, laundry liquid etc. I know you can recycle your plastic bottles, but it still works doesn't it? Reduce, re-use and then re-use again and again.

Find a refill stockist  http://www.ecover.com/gb/en/Products/Dishes/Refill.htm they might not do such a large range as we do in our shop.

In my spare time I like to search local authority planning sites for wind turbine applications, sad but very true. I am at present involved with such an application and have been getting rather down hearted of late (you may have guessed)  by the bureaucracy and nimbyism. But I have just spent a few hours looking at some applications and my faith has been restored in people, there are still some fools who can't except change. But 99% of the letters I read were of wholehearted support of micro-generation. All I need know is to convince the 1%, though I don't rate my chances. But I will try by saying that if we all generated our own electric (either by small scale wind or solar) there would be no fat cats, there would be no coal power stations belching out crap. And you wouldn't hear anyone else going on about global warming etc. etc. Sound good? Well support some of these applications or put a chair on the beach and try and hold back the sea for the rest of us while we do something constructive.