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| Archived blog - December 2004 |
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Friday 31 December 2004
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Thursday 30 December 2004 Shopping Hell Firstly, an update about donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for those affected by the Indian Ocean Earthquake and what I said yesterday, if you go to the DEC website you can donate, if you're based outside the UK. I don't know why I thought you shouldn't be able to, but hey, so please go ahead, the link is below. I've just being reading that the poor shopkeepers, concerned about the UK shoppers restraint in the pre-Christmas period are breathing a sigh of relief. Apparently UK shoppers have thrown caution to the wind, on Tuesday a record 185,000 people (yes that's 185,000) went through the doors of the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, a new record for one day's trading. Similar records have been broken at other regional shopping centres around the UK. Now, I don't want to come across as scrooge's younger brother here, after all I'm typing this on a laptop, I go to the shops, but a bit of restraint surely wouldn't go amiss. I wonder how much of the 'stuff' we're all going out to buy we really need and how much is just stuff you fancy because, 'well hey, it's cheap and if I don't use it or want it anymore I'll just get rid of it'. The problem here isn't just that UK consumers are we're getting themselves in record debt, it's that the majority of the purchases have been manufactured from oil or sewn in a far east sweat shop and then have been shipped half way around the world, to a distribution centre then trucked all over the UK in 40ft articulated lorries, then we all drive to Bluewater in our cars to pick the stuff up! Now I'm depressing myself Please, just think before you shop and say to yourself, 'is this something I need or something I really, really want or is it something I just fancy?' and if the answer is fancy, then do the world a favour and put it down! Thank you. |
Wednesday 29 December 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake The BBC News has said this evening, that the death toll from the earthquake in the Indian Ocean will exceeded 100,000 and I think that there is little doubt that this will continue to increase. I'm sure that everyone is watching the developing situation there with horror, as I am. I'm mentioning this because, as it happens, there was a programme on TV last night about the flood in Boscastle, Cornwall earlier this year and although it is nothing like the scale of the events in the Indian Ocean, they showed the news footage of the time and it showed a queue of rescue helicopters, waiting to pull people from rooftops etc. As a result of this although there was some terrible damage to property, some people lost their homes and their livelihoods, no one lost their lives. It makes me, at least, feel incredibly lucky, that through some chance of fate, I was born where I was. There have been appeals across all the media asking for donations and I would echo that call, if you're based in the UK you can donate through the Disasters Emergency Committee website www.dec.org.uk or if you're not happy about donating on line, the phone and postal details are available from their website. If you're outside the UK, I'm sure there are similar arrangements in your country. Please don't look back on this and wish you did something. |
Thursday 23 December 2004 Wildberry's finally launched !!  Great!
The web site is launched today, after a lot of messing about. There is
a lot more information and links I want to include, but you need to find a
balance between getting it right and tinkering for so long that it never
gets off the ground. Apologies for the gaps but I'll try to get round to
those as soon as possible. Please let me know about any problems you find,
or any thing you think should be included and call back as often as you can.
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Wildberry.
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