Beer and other matters

When writing a blog all sorts of connections are made - I've had contact with many many folk - and many have led to all sorts of links like the Seattle photographer who let me use his photos on this site or the bee researcher who ended up visiting here from Australia. Well here's a totally random collection of items from the last week or so....

Photos: Green Knight from independent journalist John Hatton then two from my photos of McCluskiegunj in 1984.

Green Knight Beer - remember the stuff to launch Ricky Knight's campaign to be an MEP in the SW - well as we know we sadly just missed that - and the beer has now been renamed - now known as 'Old Rocky' and still at the Village Inn in Nailsworth - and the news is that it has just been awarded Supreme Champion Beer of Gloucestershire by Gloucestershire CAMRA - see more re Green Knight here - and talking of beer, the old news that Guiness in Dublin uses fluoridated water is doing the rounds again - see here.

McCluskiegunj blog - I am not even sure how I came across this McCluskiegunj blog but I visited that village in India in 1984 and stayed there for over a week - it was in connection with a guy I'd met when working in the Probation Service in Dorset as part of my Social Work training - he wanted to set up an alternative tourism project - anyhow the town used to have a significant Anglo-Indian community - even by the time I got there there were barely a 100 left - The town was founded by the Colonization Society of India in 1933 as an independent homeland for Anglo-Indians and was home to 400 Anglo-Indian families within ten years.

It was in 1932 Ernest Timothy McCluskie the founder of the town sent circulars to nearly 200,000 Anglo-Indians in India inviting them to settle there. Wikipedia say that now of the nearly 300 original settlers, only 20 families remain. Indeed an interesting place and have now had correspondence with the guy who set up the blog.

People-Consultants.com - here's a plug for a local Ruscombe company that I've heard good things about - for coaching, counselling, leadership, stress and more see their website here.

Tatworth Growing Together - I recently met one of the key figures behind this - an interesting project by a Parish Council getting involved in crop production project - worked by volunteers but with produce sold and proceeds reinvested: www.tatworthgrowingtogether.org.uk

More on food growing - a friend came across a link in a newspaper supplement about a family growing amazing amounts on a very small area. See http://pathtofreedom.com/ and particularly the videos on youtube.com by putting in "pathtofreedom" or "dervaes" as search terms.

Food Security - then there's a woman I correspond with re farming - here is a piece she sent recently showing the changes since Labour came to power in 1997 in the UK - shocking - but only a continuation of what was going on before:
Dairy Herds have shrunk 22%
The area of fresh vegetables has fallen 24%
The number of pigs has plummeted 40%
The area of orchard fruits has fallen by a third
The sheep and lamb flock is down a quarter
The food gap has widened by more 50%.
Source: Pig World News.