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Quality is a cost. Manufacturing is about making money, in particular, about making profit; the difference between sales price and cost. Mathematically, therefore, reducing quality increases profit. However, something incredible has happened over the last two generations of manufacturing, the customer who once expected quality, now expects price, low price. Some forget that quality costs money and expect both low price and high quality. These people in particular  influence the attitudes of manufacturers who will do anything to reduce quality, increase profit and sell goods which make the customer think that they have the best of both worlds.

Manufacturers have been telling customers both that they can have quality and price, a sales argument which says that ‘my low-cost item is high quality’ and therefore must be bought, and yet that you cannot have quality and price, which, if the customer still buys your product, precludes him from expecting anything much. Customers are therefore told that they must buy the goods because they are excellent and low-cost, and yet when they complain of the short product lifespan, they are told that they cannot expect quality at that cost.

Customers have thus been conditioned to expect short product lifespans. Items are updated regularly, particularly when it comes to technology, the old is obsolete, and it is only normal to replace items on a regular basis, whether it be cars or stereos. This mentality is called growth. Growth, a factor on which economists base their predictions, means buying more, and the customer, often referred to as consumer, is expected and hopes to buy more and more. The reasons for this are based in sociology in part, keeping up with the Joneses, the feeling of power etc, but  customers cannot afford to buy items simply to replace them unless their incomes are both important and ever-increasing, since anything that is bought must be replaced.

The term consumer must be banned when referring to customers. The extension of a consumer is a manufacturing-led dream, which equates the purchaser with the saviour of the economy since as long as he consumes, buys and destroys. The future of manufacturing is thus assured, since the manufacturer knows that whatever he produces will be replaced in the future, whether it be white goods, electronics, cars or furniture. The consumer therefore, is responsible for the consumption of the planet’s resources since anything that he buys will consume the planets resources. Despite the lipservice given by industry to the ecological lobby, nothing that can be bought today has zero impact.

Ecological policy must therefore change the mentalities of those who spend their money, by appealing to them to place their financial resources in places which respect the environment and look for quality, durability, use of recyclable materials and the favouring of low energy production processes. Today, the customer cannot make informed choices on these issues since they do not have the necessary information. The only perception is cost, and there is some perception that low-cost means low energy. this is not true. low-cost today means low quality and high volume.

What method could technology and progress provide to reduce consumption? The first is to measure the energy consumption of production processes, just as we now have started to measure energy consumption of white goods, and houses. The A to F eco-labels must include the end to end energy consumption of the whole supply chain from raw materials to recycling, so that customers can choose the goods which have the lowest impact on the planet. There is, undoubtedly, a whole raft of new jobs which will be created for people required to measure, audit, report on energy consumption in the supply chain.

Why do I keep watching the film The Art of Flight over and over again? There seems to be some  meaning over and above the simple “I like it”. It’s not the flashiness, or the association with one brand or another but perhaps simply the “effet jeune”; snowboarding is cool, there are lots of helicopters, good music and beautiful photographic scenes.  There is a jealousy effect too, I would like to be 25 years old again and be that good, but this retrospective view is mixed with a present-day feeling of inspiration, fantastic achievement above anything I could have imagined.

It is so easy to watch them making their sport look so simple and yet they have achieved, for the outsider, the seemingly impossible. How are they able to achieve these heights of control, skill, speed and make it all look like child’s play? There is some hint in the film of the danger that they expose themselves to and yet the film itself shows how such danger can be made to look like Art. It’s difficult to describe the feeling that the viewer gets just watching these guys “dropping”. There is little bravado on the part of the actors, no hint of arrogance, just straight performance, top quality delivered with such ease and aesthetics.

This reservedness only serves to increase the stature of the participants, making their work stand above their person; it is the performance first. But what of the aesthetics themselves and the beautiful photography? Even the lighting, the angle and the montage were  thought out in advance. Clearly their down-days were put to good use, not only was the performance extraordinary but the manner in which it was handled so slick. The brands involved are so clearly obvious, but unlike the flagrant film slip-ins of Coke cans on tables, Nike shoes on feet and Samsung backdrops, one can only thank Red Bull for making all of this possible. The film remains therefore an inspiration of what is possible above all imagination and despite the challenge. Of course there is an element of marketing: a cynic might say that this was all just done for sales, but a positivist would say that even the brand is convinced of the beauty of it all. If they wish to convey a certain image of their brand then they are surely succeeding.

The marketing objective must surely then, be brand image, but is the expectation that people will drink more Taurine, and if so why? Is it the association between the sporting achievement and the drink which might make people think that anything is possible with a can of sugar. Unlikely. It is more about understanding that people will buy the product because they like the brand  and they like what the brand is doing to sponsor and promote top level entertainment. Other people like fast cars, surf-boarding and extreme sports. Red Bull has associated itself with all of these through GoPro.

Go try a can, or buy the film, offshoot, collateral product or veritable motivated production based on perhaps the personal passions of the Red Bull itself. Whatever your motivation or their motivation, there is no denying that the Art of Flight is well named and well worth watching. If you watched the Winter Olympics and wanted more, then the The Art of Flight is for you.

Following discussions over the past week while on holiday, I’m wondering whether I should go into politics, at least to become involved with the Green party to try and change and influence the world in a physical and actual way, although I’m wondering whether party politics is the most appropriate way to do that. I suppose it’s more efficient and effective than writing blog articles, although these need not be mutually exclusive. The advantage, perhaps, is also the time required to compose policy, ideas and approaches to the vision of an environmentally friendly world when probably the Green party has already done a lot of that. I’m not interested in simply joining a party in order to criticise or bring down current policy. I’m just frustrated with the slow speed of implementation of any so-called green policy by government, indeed I have never seen a government that I consider to be philosophically convinced of the need for green policy.

Some talk about economics, to be the most appropriate way to implement such policies, either through investment incentives, or by clearly stating the economic case for moving to, for instance, green energy production methods. I balk at this, since I consider that green policy should be implemented not simply because it’s cheaper but because fundamentally and philosophically and ethically it’s right. For instance, oil prices have risen over the years because there is less of it in the ground and will continue to rise as supply drops and new costly methods are found to harvest the remaining reserves. This implies that we will go on using fossil fuels until they run out or until they are so exorbitantly expensive to use and that we will only use solar power for instance once it is economic to do so. I want to show that it is already economic to do so, even though my motivation is that I believe we should already be using solar power on ethical and philosophical grounds because it is environmentally friendly. While there may be arguments against solar panels as they are apparently difficult to recycle, at least they do not consume the earths resources.

These discussions have led to the idea of measuring the total energy usage of various systems and by taking examples of specific items, products and commodities from cradle to grave. For instance, a yoghurt pot. How much does it cost to produce, distribute and recycle in terms of energy usage and monetary cost compared to a locally produced apple. I’m wondering whether in today’s world whether even cost is a motivation factor for choice. There seems to be sufficient money for people to choose exotic fruits and products, electronic goods produced in China, far away, rather than to favour locally produced goods. Money is power, it seems that people are prepared to make and spend their money in such a way as if to say “look at me, I can bring stuff halfway round the world, I’m powerful”. Eating pears from round the corner is just not glamorous. This means that economics is a factor only for poor people and currently,  environmentally friendly production methods are not cheaper because all investment has gone into mass production since the Industrial Revolution.

To cite an example of the world on its head, we no longer use the waterways for transport and yet this is the most environmentally friendly way to transport goods. The lorry has been favoured despite its use of petrol, its need for road use and maintenance, because of its speed. Time is money, but planning and patience can pay. Supply chain management teaches that transport by waterway is not appropriate for all types of goods. Could we, for instance, refrigerate boats to bring our yoghurts to market? Transport by boat is economic for make-to-stock items such as  building materials, animal feed and large bulky items. What economic factors could bring other items off the roads and onto the water, to once again favour the extensive use of canals, so heavily invested in by the Victorians. Certes, they require maintenance just as do roads but at least they do not consume large quantities of petrochemical and quarried products to do so as do roads.

Considering once again the humble yoghurt pot, consider what it requires during its cradle to grave life-cycle. Plastic from the petrochemical industry, press moulding, aluminium and paper for the lid, glue, yoghurt production, transport, storage in costly, refrigerated shops and lorries, further transport costs from shop to home, further refrigeration costs in the home and then rubbish collection services involving lorries, roads and infrastructure only to learn that a yoghurt pot  cannot be recycled, but can only be burnt or buried. Considering how much yoghurt we eat and even waste each year, does this not make us think that choice is a high price to pay just to satisfy our seeming need to dominate our own environment? Are the arguments to eat locally produced fruit as an alternative sufficiently heard or sufficiently made? What will it take for people to understand the costs involved to our environment from the choices that they make? What may convince them to do otherwise, economics or ethics?

If, for instance I were to stay with the theme of water, we could find some symbolism, that of the high priestess, the Gateway to the unconscious, also to our darkest fears. I could of course talk about simple, straightforward, physical water. The stuff of gardens, of life. I could turn it into a political theme; how water will be the new strategic asset, a Mad Max world. There is the water of Fountains, of the ancient Druids, Menhirs, water lines, geobiology, crystals and entities.Thus there are themes within themes.

For Country people, farmers, water is the key to life.  The reasons for finding the water networks were fairly obvious to country people, those who lived in and worked in the country. Water was a common resource, in the sense that it belonged to everybody. Everyone felt responsible. There was no big farming with chemicals at the time anyway. So what pollution could there have been until the petrochemical world came along? Sure, pollution from horse manure!

This leads me on obviously and clearly to the “ecological theme”which in many ways I would like to discard. If everyone understood the obvious sense of respecting the environment, there would be no ecology, there would just be harmony. But today, there is greed. Religion has done little to resolve that question. The church is by nature of its humanity, greedy. It cannot solve that problem. No, religion is not the answer. But how to convert the whole world overnight to an understanding? I myself am a paradox, commenting on the evils of the petrochemical industry and yet am the first to benefit.

If then I am prie-de-partie, what value my comment? One is obliged to follow the precepts before preaching. How then juxtapose the paradox? Observing the system from within? The current system is structured to accept the water company and the energy producing company and make it seem that the two systems can exist only with the presence of these two companies.

What solution? How to get out of the system, change the system, that the system evolves naturally, that the system changes radically due to changing external circumstances, such as war or apocalyptic pollution.

For the first, an individual who wants to get out of the system must make radical lifestyle choices. Time to watch The Matrix again. Changing the system is a pretty tall order for an individual. Groups of individuals tend to be political parties, from radical anti-capitalists revolutionaries who have no more chance of winning than the wishy-washy centrist ecologists. And what is the point of a political party? Rather like an association it’s part of the system. And for some reason the political system is roughly based around half and half, half good, half bad.

So water leads not only to sub themes but to connected themes, such as the political and legal system which both constrains it into a power system and serves as a social arbiter, right winning over wrong, the poor having the same rights as the rich. That is the basis for social politics. The economics of capitalist natural selection suggests that if you can’t afford it you can’t have it. This implies that only the monetary minded are members of society and the poor lose their rights.

The Right justifies this point of view by pointing to the lazy, those unwilling to work, sometimes those unable to work and sometimes those unauthorised to work but who work anyway, saying that’s only those who merit have club membership. This leads to question the criteria for membership of a society, to the racism of  inclusion and exclusion. What then, are the criteria for membership of society? Birth surely? The very fact that you are human and part of the species should be sufficient. But birth where? Inside or outside the administrative boundary called Nation.

And who has access to Water? Those on the billing list, on the housing list, on the voting list, the telephone list, the good behaviour list, the society list.

And what of common law? What rights do we have to water? Why even ask the question? Surely we can look up to the sky and drink the rain that falls to our mouths, or is it possible by a legislative manoeuvre to institute a drinking tax, bill measurement done by the chip in your throat?

If water is to be the power game of the future remember this: if you thought life was impossible without an iPhone, you’re dead after five days without water.

Woodburning is probably the oldest heating method. After inventing hugely sophisticated systems over the last hundred years, we now find ourselves going back to basics and finding that the simplest is the best. I’m building a house, and in it I’m going to be installing a woodburning stove. I’ve been wondering whether that’s the best heating system possible, both from an economic and ecological point of view.

The conclusions are uncertain, even having done a little analysis, and despite going ahead with this decision perhaps it’s a question of form. One thing is clear, I no longer want to be tributary to the big energy networks. From an ecological impact point of view, woodburning and thus wood production certainly feels more ecological, since it is a product that can be renewed, unlike oil, gas and coal.

But it still depends on a distribution network, since I don’t have the five acres necessary to supply my own wood. The important decision for me now is what wood to buy or should I say wood pellets, since my stove burns wood pellets which in themselves have a production cost. However, realistically, I live a life inconsistent with logwood burning, and prefer, for ease, to switch on my heating, rather than stoke a fire every morning.

However, I do have a choice in what wood pellets to buy. I can  choose wood  produced locally and I can verify that  the wood that I use is produced in a renewable fashion.

What of all the other methods of energy production available? Indeed, is this even the right question? We should be asking a different question. Not energy production but how do we keep warm in winter, what energy will we use for cooking, lighting, and for electricity? Once we have asked these questions it is more pertinent to talk about energy production, but we must also be thinking of energy conservation, usage, expenditure, wastage, renewability and our general attitude and awareness to our own impact on the world.

The analysis of the different methods of energy production available to us in the 21st-century is a wide ranging subject. There are many texts, books, sites, organisations, political movements, green organisations that know fully well all of the methods available and their relative benefits and impacts. Most people, I’m sure are aware of most of the methods listed here. But today, there is no political will to move  to ecological methods. There is too much dependency on profit. The State, in all countries is implicated in energy production and benefiting from such. This is understandable, since in our early development we needed energy and we needed energy production methods. We developed whichever ones we could and we were probably not conscious of the impact in the beginning, not until their usage became so widespread and extensive. Suddenly, when cities found themselves under layers of smog, something had to be done: we closed the coalmines.

If there is awareness now of the necessity to respect the environment, we are deeply entrenched in energy consumption. Society is based on energy consumption. Until that changes, little else can. Until we change our attitude to consumption, until we stop talking about growth, making more, using more, getting bigger, getting better, it is unlikely that we can fit into the natural scheme. Indeed our very numbers on this planet almost preclude it, and it is likely that when the fuel runs out, the number of people will reduce. This is natural selection; this is the consequence of Darwin’s theory, and probably the consequence of Einstein’s theories in that the energy system will re-equilibrate itself by reducing the energy consumers to match the energy output.

So, once the fuel runs out, energy output will reduce, probably no matter what other energy production methods we can implement. This in itself is no great tragedy, as long as it happens gradually and naturally. Whatever happens we will be obliged to adapt, since despite man’s illusion of grandeur, his imaginary vision of mastering all things, his destiny, his surroundings and even the planet itself, and despite his unwillingness to accept the natural order, the fuel will run out, whether it be in 100, 200 or 500 years.

A Doomsday view? False, perhaps, since we will be able to invent new methods to add to the existing and emerging ones. But there will be limits to population growth, not set by politics but by the natural order itself which will limit population by the limits of energy available, whether in the form of heat and light, food, clothing, transport, or materials. We will be obliged to recycle, it is just a question of when and how much and how quickly we will understand the need.

The odd thing, is that we have spent so long trying to distance ourselves from our past, that we have hardly noticed the full circle coming around. We burnt wood in our mediaeval homes, we just didn’t have the sense or the technology to insulate them properly to minimise the needs for fuel. We recycled without calling it recycling; we reused things, we made compost and used it to grow our own vegetables, we used water from the stream without thinking about its pollution, now we cannot because so many sources of pollution find their ways into our waterways, whether it be chemical from farming or industry or simply someone dumping paint in the woods because they didn’t want to pay the fees in the dump.

Humanity is not lost, the human race will continue. This is not the Domesday book, Nostradamus, David Icke or Paco Rabanne, but we will have to find a way forward in the best possible conditions. Progress or regress? How can we move forward in time, preserving our ways of life while respecting our environment? The first thing is to understand that our environment is there for us to use, but not to consume. Medieval wood crofters understood this. They took just enough wood, not all of it and everyone understood that. No one would come around and cut more than necessary because they knew that if they did they would be none for anyone.

The question is using the environment but using it wisely, in such a way that there will be more tomorrow because we have let it grow back. Our usage is too intensive today. We are certainly too greedy. The symbol of this is surely our greed in supermarkets. How can we be convinced by slogans such as “new”, “better”, “bigger”, new colours and brighter packaging? Where have the values of good and wholesome gone? Why do we need 15 flavours? Indeed why do we need flavours at all? Could we not just content ourselves with taste?

I’m working on a film at the moment. The main character is an old man of around 75 who remembers the time when the land belonged to the state and there was no real notion of private property. He was a cowherd, herding his cows across the land with no real notion of barriers. He didn’t need to ask permission to cross land, he just did. He wasn’t trespassing, it was just normal, that’s the way things were. He would leave Ty Planche, passing by Probert’s Place, up past the Windmill, and the Laverie and down into Loperhet. Anyone else could do the same. In fact, there are signs to prove it.

Interesting perhaps that it was Microsoft who first came out with online mail: Hotmail and Online networking: Messenger, both of which have been superseded by Gmail and Facebook respectively (ICQ was great but didn't last). They were the first really to have an online secure auth token with passport and windows live.

Now Microsoft are playing catchup with Windows Live revamp: Skydrive against Google Docs which is simple and intuitive to use, and obviously way behind on search with Bing / Yahoo.

Windows 8 is no excitement and Windows Mobile version nnnn is likely to continue to unimpress, the plight of the big M is looking as down as IBM when Microsoft originally stormed in with DOS and the first version of Windows.

The decline of the big M: too greedy by half and still trying to force people into upgrades. Example: using Windows Live, I could test it easily but it requires me to use Office 2010. As I still only have perfectly serviceable Office 2007, I give up !!!

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