Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. Lots of excuses to get dressed up in the gorgeous fair trade dresses I bought online with my birthday money; plenty of chocolates and delicious puddings and no reason not to eat them; and best of all, snow! Well, we don’t always get snow at Christmas, but the only good thing about climate change is that our winters have got a little more extreme in recent years, making the prospect of a white Christmas just a teensy bit more likely….

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My friends often complain about the fact that life has become very complicated. I find it very amusing when a person employed as a data quality management department head complains about complications in life. Had life not being complicated, she would have never been employed in the 1st place. Had we lived a simple life, we would have never faced the requirement of managing quality of data. It is obvious that we would have never bothered with such complicated systems. However, we have done so and that is the reason why hundreds and thousands of individuals are employed.

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The basic idea of having organic food is to have it the way the nature originally intended to serve it. Any modification in the way the food grows would make it less than organic, and therefore less healthy. You might try to keep a check on your diet by eating all the healthy food like green vegetables, fruits, drinking milk etc. But have you ever thought that what you have on your dining table and looks full of health might (more…)

Gas central heating was the way forward. Gas was cheap, it burned cleanly, and it made our homes nice and toasty. The problem these days is that the price of natural gas sky rocketed and we are all held hostage to the big energy suppliers. What is a honest hippy girl to do? A lot of people I know have installed wood burners in their homes and have sourced local supplies of waste logs from tree surgeons and the like. (more…)

When you turn on the TV, listen to the radio, or get online you will be bombarded with the phrase “go green”. Because of global warming there has been an increased concern about the sustainability of our planet. Entire industries are being targeted for ignoring the warning signs of the environment. No matter if your company is London builders or a paper mill, to truly be a 21st century business one has to be on top of environmental issues. It (more…)

I was so depressed with the new report on train travel in the UK, it basically said that the government shouldn’t be subsidising it because it is only used by a small percentage of the population (I believe the figure was twelve percent). I thought these people were supposed to be smarter than the rest of us as they were all Oxbridge educated. I am not, but I know clearly that one of the reasons that poor people don’t use (more…)

It seems that the big question these days is how to have a cool, ethical job, where you don’t have to work too hard, can help save the planet, and make money too. I was just in Bristol visiting some friends and the council in the face of cuts, still maintains a great play scheme with play workers sent out to parks and green spaces to work with local kids of every age. My friend, who was a newly qualified (more…)

I’ve always been a bog fan of yoga, whether the common Ashtanga variety that appears in celebrity fitness DVDs or the trickier Hatha yoga, which not only requires more dedication, but is also as much about meditation and relaxation as it is about getting fit! I try to mix it up a bit in my weekly routine – a bit of Ashtanga to work off all those skips full of chocolate biscuits that I eat just to get me through (more…)

Reasons for mass bird deaths

There have been many presumptions about the sudden death of birds. Even the autopsy reports have revealed some reasons. People think of the Arkansas incident as the sign of the end times. Many also think of it as an outcome of a lightning or firecrackers. But as per the autopsy report it looks like the birds suffered trauma, resulting in blood clotting, followed by death. But the reason for the trauma is unknown. Following are (more…)

Tattoos have been famous among young Samoan men since it is considered as a mark of their manhood. A tattoo design can be traced back to the ancestor of the person who wears it and it can also get him some special privileges that he would have not had otherwise. This is mainly done in respect to historical background of the person. Anyone who would like to become a professional tattoo maker in Samoa has to train under an experienced (more…)