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[JoceAndChris]

Interesting article, and comments. Very hard to live in a period property, sort it out, and buy all the necessaries, on just 100k.

I'm afraid these supposedly high salaries do in fact get gobbled up by the expenses they generate. For example, Chris' train fare is around £800 a month, and the amount he has to spend on lunches and shoes and suits probably the same. When you think that they take half of it as tax anyway, slobbing out on benefits and beer starts to look very attractive.

 

[biffvernon]

Lime is often chosen as an environmentally friendly material. It was therefore surprising to learn that the embodied energy of lime was slightly higher than for cement. .... things are rarely as simple as often presented.

You may have noticed that a bag of cement is a lot heavier than a bag of lime (or the same weight bag is a good bit bigger for lime). Comparing embodied energies per kilogram is not quite fair!

 

[Nigel Watts]

The discussion on aggregates has been most interesting and informative. What a treasure PPUK is!

As for household budgets, I find that children are by far the biggest expense. When I was at school in the 1970s I worked out that the cost of educating one child was about the same as buying a Rolls Royce. It still is. My father could have bought three on that basis, and by the time I have finished I could have bought two.

 

[Flyfisher]

You may have noticed that a bag of cement is a lot heavier than a bag of lime (or the same weight bag is a good bit bigger for lime). Comparing embodied energies per kilogram is not quite fair!

Fair point. Also, mortars are mixed by volume so that would also balance out some of the higher embodied energy in lime. But it does show how energetics is rarely simple.

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm afraid these supposedly high salaries do in fact get gobbled up by the expenses they generate. For example, Chris' train fare is around £800 a month, and the amount he has to spend on lunches and shoes and suits probably the same. When you think that they take half of it as tax anyway, slobbing out on benefits and beer starts to look very attractive.

Yep, such are the things that drive the 'downshifting' phenomenon, though benefits need not be involved.

 

[Flyfisher]

As for household budgets, I find that children are by far the biggest expense. When I was at school in the 1970s I worked out that the cost of educating one child was about the same as buying a Rolls Royce. It still is. My father could have bought three on that basis, and by the time I have finished I could have bought two.

That's where my Aston Martin went. Sigh.

 

[robgil]

i really cant see too many people quitting a 100k job to go and live on benefits , when i was unemployed and claiming job seeking thingy i couldn't even afford a cup of coffee never mind beer. come to think of it even when i am flat out i can barely afford to buy beer! if anyone wants to give me a 100k job id have your arm off.

 

[Flyfisher]

Downshifting has nothing to do with living on benefits; it's about giving up a highly paid job, with all the attendant high costs, big mortgages, long hours, high taxes, hours of commuting, business trips away from family etc, and living a simpler, less costly lifestyle.

 

[Penners]

Then on an entirely different scale, of course, there's us pensioners. Ignored, starving, frozen, deprived, verging on vagrancy...

No, no - please don't worry about us. We'll be all right. We'll just keep soldiering on with our fingerless gloves and our cardigans.

 

[BMcD]

Biffvernon wrote:

You may have noticed that a bag of cement is a lot heavier than a bag of lime (or the same weight bag is a good bit bigger for lime). Comparing embodied energies per kilogram is not quite fair!

Does this mean that beacause the lime takes up more room, if you needed to tansport 100 tonne of lime and 100 tonne of cement, you'd need more lorries to shift the lime?

Sorry Biff I'm not having a go but I find it very frustrating to know what to do for the best when it comes to energy efficiency and the like because I never seem to be in full possession of all the facts and data. To be honest I'm not entirely convinced anyone is. For instance, if I super insulate my roof space, saving x amount of energy being lost to the atmosphere, is that energy saving enough, over the life time of the roof, to off set the emergy used in the whole manufacture and distribution of the raw materials and finished products which I used to insulate my roof space? This and many other such conundrums trouble my decision making and I often feel that the whole climate change agenda is such big business, the ethos is being marginalised by the desire to profit.

Also, while I'm at it. If cement production ceased and the world reverted back to using lime for construction, how significantly would CO2 levels rise due to the CO2 being released during the manufacturing process? I know this CO2 will eventually be re-absorbed but this dosen't happen until the end of the lime cycle, which could take years. In the meantime, CO2 is hanging around waiting to be re-absorbed. How many of us have a couple of tubs of lime putty that's been sitting in the shed for a couple of years? Just another question that rattles around my head.

As flyfisher says, these issues ae rarely simple

 

[robgil]

Then on an entirely different scale, of course, there's us pensioners. Ignored, starving, frozen, deprived, verging on vagrancy...

No, no - please don't worry about us. We'll be all right. We'll just keep soldiering on with our fingerless gloves and our cardigans.

thers always the never ending mumblings of stories of ye olde days of long ago to keep you warm in these bitterly cold late summer evenings.

 

[biffvernon]

Aye, it's a complicated world. At least I don't have to worry about having a big salary. That must be hell.

 

[Flyfisher]

Sorry Biff I'm not having a go but I find it very frustrating to know what to do for the best when it comes to energy efficiency and the like because I never seem to be in full possession of all the facts and data. To be honest I'm not entirely convinced anyone is.

Absolutely.

My view, for what it's worth, is that there tends to be too much focus on the minutiae and not enough on the bigger, overall picture. So we're all encouraged to insulate our homes to save on our heating costs, while the political agenda is to get the country and the global economy back into growth. No doubt spending money on all these home improvements helps towards growing the economy and, as previously noted, all the money we save on our heating bills always gets spent on some other energy-consuming stuff anyway, which is presumably why global energy demand seems to be continuously increasing.
Inconvenient truths that dare not be publically spoken and deckchairs on the Titanic come to mind.

At least I don't have to worry about having a big salary. That must be hell.

Hellish enough that lots of people actively reject such jobs in favour of 'downshifting'.

 

[Nigel Watts]

As from next Friday I will be joining the ranks of the unemployed - a state I am rather looking forward to until the money runs out.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Ooh, how exciting Nigel. Let's have a jolly day out somewhere, distract my mind from the hellishness of it all. :wink:

On a serious note, down shifting is not a bad idea... But I could never, ever do it. I'm too fond of handsome tradesmen in the house, making my little cottage an Empress Josephine style retreat. Poor husband.

 

[Penners]

Does this mean that beacause the lime takes up more room, if you needed to tansport 100 tonne of lime and 100 tonne of cement, you'd need more lorries to shift the lime?

The nit-picking answer is that this would depend on whether 100 tonnes (or whatever fraction or multiple thereof) is an efficient use of the capacity of the lorries. If each lorry has the capacity to carry 40 tonnes of cement, then of course you'll need 2.5 lorries to carry 100 tonnes. And it may be that the additional volume of the lime would conveniently fill the capacity that extra half lorry. (Never mind whether my volumetric weights are accurate - I'm just conjuring up convenient figures).

So the actual number of lorries used might remain the same. However, the lighter lorryload of lime would of course require less fuel for the journey.

 

[biffvernon]

And when the oil runs out we'll be pushing it in a handcart, just like in the good 'ole day

 

[Penners]

What's that American expression? "Going to hell in a handcart"?

 

[biffvernon]

In Fairford church, Gloucestershire, the great West window (installed before 1517 AD) shows the Day of Judgment in stained glass, with the innocent going to heaven and the guilty going to hell. Among the latter is an old woman in a wheelbarrow, being pushed to her doom by a blue devil. So the idea of "going to hell in a handcart" is a good 500 years old.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/29/messages/257.html

 

[Penners]

Poor old soul, what an undignified way to enter hell. I wonder what she found there.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre - other people.