Enough sitting around! Now that school's out, me and Jodie and Alun decided we'd go plant some vegetables! We got some rocket, basil and lettuce seeds for now. I'll try and get some pictures whilst we plant them over the next few days and weeks. Mum said it's a bit late in the year but at least we're doing something!

I wanna make these! lead_tag, I accept your challenge! if i can find some old tires, I'm gonna give it a go! I'll see if I can ask someone at the garage if they have any spare. this self-sufficiency stuff is fun!

things are getting a little hairy around the world - milwaukee has had some deaths, Romania's oilfields no one knows what's going on and four more tankers like uncle andy's got attacked. rory23 sounds like he has it worst - i hope it doesn't end up where I think it will. cycleboy_wwo had it bad too - a riot on student campus is never a good idea!

I managed to find some positive stuff about Bristol though! I thought we'd be in trouble to stay here if things got REALLY bad, and that it'd be better to move to dad's in Brecon. Turns out, there's a great group of people working for the Transition Towns project, in this very city! I hooked up with the Transition City Bristol people over email - they seem to have been aware of this long before us - just look at This event held in week 1!

Plus, we have a new prime minister! Brown was sworn in today, with Blair leaving. Mum said she hoped Brown would be a bit more sensible and stabilise us in this time of crisis. Greg (a tory - bleaugh) said Cameron would be better but at least if Brown kept the economy as well as he did as chancellor we'd be ok.

His speech was good. Mum made us sit and watch it on the 10 o'clock news. David grumbled but I was happy to see what Brown said.

Some major points from the speech:

- He's planning to go full-out aggressive on containing any trouble. Economically we're shielded because we tax fuel so high anyway, so the shock should be less.

-a lot of money being put into public transport all of a sudden, to stop the price gougin (maybe some of those cheap train tickets will come back)

-plans are being drawn up to ration fuel. Those that don't use their credits can get reduced fares on public transport - that's great for me!

-food prices are being fixed at their current levels, except those flown in or shipped from far away. No more mangos for me, eep!

-the one that got most people's heads turning was the withdrawal. Brown's decided that the troops are needed back here and a lot of those in Iraq will be withdrawn within weeks. The Afghanistan ones like my friend Ally's dad are staying though.



Sounds like our government is at least trying to do something about this. I've never really thought about Politics before but this speech, while a bit boringly spoken, really got me excited. Will it work?



[author's note - Tuesday, week 10]

Many thanks to wwo_mitchtrix and gracesmominnh for putting me onto the Transition Towns project. Like Mia I was totally unaware of their work in Bristol!

Having mentioned Brown over here, I'll be interested to see if any of my US compadres talk about how the presidential candidates are spinning the crisis. by the end of the wwo we'll be near the primaries, after all.

I accidentally posted this in draft form yesterday - apologies to anyone that got a brief look at the unfinished entry!]