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Anne Yarwood

No. 2 – India Taps Solar and Storage: echoes in UK

By Wake Up

India’s Government plans to invest $ 2.5 billion in solar & storage to get 300 million of its 11.3 billion people onto the grid by 2018. Meanwhile, plans are already in negotiation with Australian Government to import more coal, as the cheapest form of fuel for the poor. If Solar & Battery Storage technologies continue to advance on their current trajectory, they will undercut coal by end of the decade. Carbon dioxide emissions would then be reduced by 10%

In the U.K. the cost of Solar Power has reduced by 40% 2012 ( KPMG)  Energy experts argue that technological advances will soon make it as cheap as Fossil Fuel. There needs to be a transition away from centralised power generation, it is argued .

E.g. Nissan investment in Electric cars & Storage Battery technologies.

And note that the cost of the delayed Hinckley Point Nuclear Reactor may rise by  £3.bn.to £21 bn.

SOURCES : –

Unearthed – Greenpeace – HERE

Alan Tovey Daily Telegraph Business Editor 15 May 2016 – HERE

TERI : Energy & Resource Institute. New Delhi –  HERE

Guardian 4 May 2017 Nissan investments Home Batteries – HERE

Melanie Klein Labour Party Conference 2017 International speaker – HERE

Photo – India Energy Storage Alliance – HERE

 

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October 8, 2017

Cassini Spacecraft and Saturn

By Blogs

On 15th September 2017 the 13 year journey that Scientists made alongside CASSINI ended as they crashed the craft at 70,000 mph, into Saturn. Fuel had run out. The 22 ft. Robot took 7 years to travel the 200 billion miles to Saturn where it photographed, for the first time ever, Saturn’s majestic Rings. It cost £2.9 million; a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency & the Italian Space Agency.

This exploration & the pictures of Saturn received back, start off our website’s idea to focus on AWE & WONDERMENT, as the Blogs from now until the December year end.

We’ll alternate  between Cosmology and Nature; very big to pretty small !

Why ? You may ask … Because whilst the website tells stories about minutiae … everything we do is set in evolution; are all part of the evolution of the Cosmos and of the details of changes in the Natural World.

Sources : Cassini – The Grand Finale:-  https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Photo – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft about to make one of its dives between Saturn and its innermost rings.  Credit: NASA

 

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October 8, 2017

Handmade Things Gallery

By Uncategorized

WE CAN WRAP OUR DAILY LIVES, IN BEAUTY

A picture celebration of family and friends’ imaginings: skilful play, with all forms of Creativity

 

SPIRITUALITY: acting through non-acting

THE GALLERY offers a series of selected contemplations, of poetry, thought, scientific research, and image. It offers examples of how stirring a quiet seed might be. What thoughts might spring from what you read, what you see, how it touches you? How might the quiet seed grow? For grow it will, and this is the beauty of how we open ourselves up to nourishing freshness, through taking time to focus on spiritual offerings of creative minds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HANDMADE THINGS

I love handmade; honour craftswomen & men. I wear handmade dresses from Rajasthan, India. Handblocked prints, Ikat weave produced by families which Denny Andrews has  known for over 30 years. www.dennyandrews.co.uk.

There’s a few pots in the kitchen, bought at roadside stalls, in Malaysia. Rugs from the Subcontinent and some cloths woven in Indonesia and Mali. Woven baskets and turned wood bowls are particularly cherished because you can imagine the crafter sitting, painstakingly forming the object… a Philippine woman crouching down, weaving a flat brown & black dish from banana leaves…in Mali, mud relief patterning. Recall watching a 15 year old boy sitting before a log loom in Srinagar, Kashmir, weaving the golden silk rug  which arrived here by post months later.

At the time, I knew little of the arguments for & against child labour.

I do know now that ancient craft skills are being lost, world- wide, as city technology gives hope of money .

Two current exhibitions in London, take our imaginations into the imaginations of present day and ancient Craft women and men :-

– Tate Britain until 21 January 2018 – Rachel  Whiteread celebrates over 25 years of her internationally celebrated sculptures http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/rachel-whiteread

– British Museum 14 September to 14 January 2018 – Scythians warriors of ancient Siberia  http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/scythians.aspx

 

Anne Yarwood

October 3, 2017

National Poetry Day – 28 September

By Blogs

Rosa Parks – 1st December 1955

by Joseph Coehlo

Not the first to sit.
Not the first to get arrested.
Not old (she was 42).
Not tired (‘just tired of giving in’).

One of many, unable to sit
with the injustice of years.
A rider on an old road
walked by millions on tired legs.

These riders fought for a feat,
years in the trudging,
of sole-worn protest
walked in frustrated miles
over landscapes of lives.

One day became thirteen months
of continued mapping,
of hitchhiking and car pools,
of walking and tattered shoes,
because the bus
wasn’t going anywhere they planned to go.

National Poetry Day is 28 September, and this year’s theme is ‘Freedom’  – https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/about-npd/

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the US Congress called “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

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September 28, 2017

No. 1 – Overseas Aid

By Wake Up

For every £100 made in U.K, 70p goes to make the Foreign Aid budget.

2013 first time UK achieved UN target of 0.7% of GNP (Gross National Product)

2015 UN target as U.K. law.  Government can’t be taken to court but Minister must report to Parliament on any infringement. 

Debate on efficacy of Aid:

  • £21.2 billion is 4 or 5 times shortfall costs of Care provision in U.K. in one estimate 
  • £21.1 billion is a bit less per household of cost of food thrown away, in another estimate 

SOURCES :-

 *Info. From FULL FACTS : independent fact finding charity HERE

 * Informative read. “Aid on the Edge of Chaos” Ben Ramalingham  pub. 2013 

ALNAP :  Strengthening humanitarian action through evaluation & learning. Hosted by Overseas Development Institute.

Picture acknowledgement – The Guardian (15/4/16) A woman herds her animals past the carcasses of livestock that died due to the drought in Somaliland. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

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September 26, 2017

ASCENT FESTIVAL – PAINTING FROM MEDITATION GALLERY

By Gallery / Archive

ASCENT FESTIVAL – PAINTING FROM MEDITATION 

 

ASCENT aimed to introduce a wide range of approaches to environmental education in this Festival including playing, meditating, messing about, being deeply inward…

Sarah Cox, Multi-faith Minister, inspired the day with reflection and encouragement. 

We painted all day in silence then shared, LOVING the amazing paintings.

 

John O’Donohue: ‘Awake to the mystery of being here, and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.’

 

 

 

September 25, 2017

Can’t Do That !

By Blogs

“Can’t paint” has been THE Response to a suggestion that “having a go at painting” is a brill idea… in my experience. Going to a taught art class, might be considered. Just having a go, on the kitchen table…altogether inconceivable. Forget all the miniature painters of The Slosh & Splatter school of fun. Forget our own excited moments discovering COLOUR .

From which hidden volcano does CAN’T DO arise? Because it doesn’t ‘alf hold us all back from ‘possibilities’… and needs some delving.

Fr’instance…I can re-enter a maths class, aged 10. Called up front by Miss Leigh…”work that out, Anne”. (Me off school previously for a whole term following major op.) ‘Me’ couldn’t. Me never caught up with the mystery of ‘sums’…

Question: who told your unconscious that you couldn’t do…well any ole thing ???

Here’s an inspiring woman mathematician and scientist – Ada Lovelace whose day was celebrated on 10 October 2017 – HERE and HERE

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September 24, 2017

Centenary of the Russian Revolution 1917 – 2017

By Blogs

I spent one summer when I was 13, reading about Russia and a book entitled ‘The lives of the great composers’ …..many Russians.

I LOVED Russia. Knew nothing of the political implications of the Revolution. Just loved the Soul of Russia. 

The 2017 Proms ended on 9/9. They had celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution throughout the Programme.

One performance broadcast the day before the Last Night, was Shostokovitch 5th Symphony. This was composed in 1937 at the height of Stalin’s purges.

A small point…Valery Gergiev conducted the Marinsky Orchestra from the floor not from the rostrum.

A sense of those times … those aspirations…sounding in the music.

Acknowledgements : Royal Academy of Arts – Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932

Poster: The Bolshevik – Boris Kustodiev 1920

www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/revolution-russian-art

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September 21, 2017

‘Again … How Come We Don’t Know ?’

By Blogs

Today’s Blog echoes the Story and Tales about OUR local NHS services and the importance of knowing what’s happening locally so we can be involved and respond with IMAGINATION.

The leaked 82-page government Brexit-immigration report should ring alarm bells for the NHS as it tackles the greatest workforce crisis in the health service’s history.

The Home Office proposes measures to reduce the number of lower-skilled EU migrants by offering them residency for a maximum of only two years, whereas those in “high-skilled occupations” would be granted permits to work three to five years.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/07/brexit-home-office-nhs-immigration

[ Acknowledgement  – The Guardian, Article by Ben Howlett 7/9/17]

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September 11, 2017
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