Here’s another dose of environment advice found in the Indy. DEFRA reckons that buying local isn’t always the eco-friendly option. Despite a reduction in carbon miles, some products (strawberries and tomatoes for example) grown in the UK are using much more energy for heating then they would in a sunnier climate.

This argument is rather more valid than that nonsense that people sometimes spout: “It’s our duty to ruin the ecosystem buy importing food from Africa so we can temporarily prop up an unsustainable system”. But still it’s becoming ever more difficult to weigh up whether buying locally is really are doing our bit for the environment.

But I’ll probably carry on buying British ‘cos I love the Queen Mum an’ that.

Much of what we do as greens rests on the assumption that our own actions will be amplified by others doing their bit as well. Which is of course a pretty childish fantasy – very self centred of us. Most of the things we do have a vanishingly small effect on anything. Which is why it annoys me all the more when those who are actually in a position to affect lots of people’s actions don’t do what they ought to.

As a miser, I am a big fan of Martin’s Moneysaving Tips, and have been getting his weekly email since he were a wee small lad. But it always irks me when he promotes his “flightchecker” which encourages people to take short haul flights that they don’t even really want by showing them where to find the cheap ones (I’m not going to link to it!)

But I used it for the first time today. Ryanair are doing an offer where, for a change, they actually do give away flights for 1p and no booking fee – the idea being that they’ll make money on the check in and the duty free and so on. Well have this Ryaniar: I just paid you 10p for 10 return flights which I won’t be taking, and you’ll not be getting another penny out of me!

This is really bad: World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations despite own warnings.   An example of what so many of us are doing – making a big noise about greenness and not backing it up – perhaps even telling ourselves that the noise we make absolves us of the bad things we’re doing.

It’s another reason why I think these “pledges” (like this one, thanks Gosport Borough Counciltaxpayers!) that people keep inviting us to make are just lame – pledge what you like, if you don’t do anything about it it’s worse than meaningless.

What a rubbish return I have had from my window boxes this year.   The rocket all went to seed, a bird ate my basil, and the chives never even came up.   The only thing that seems to have worked, if you can call it that, is the spring onions, which I am tentatively eyeing at the moment.   They will, at best, form about one eighth of one of Laura’sa salads.   Gives a new meaning to intensive farming – intensive effort, limited reward.  Still, that’s all you can expect from organic stuff!

At least it’s been a good year for blackberries – I’m up to 15 and a half pounds now.  Am going to have to start measuring my takings in stone…

My exclusive expose on the fact that you can buy things to make your kettle more efficient has fired my kettle-enthusiasm. Our kettle has been on its last legs for a while now. I’ve been struggling though in a typically tight-fisted effort to reduce me WEEE, but last week I snapped, and treated myself to this: The Ecokettle.

There were other ones with cool blue lights which went on when you boiled it, but in the end I plumped for the only kettle with a whole website to itself. It also happens to be the only one backed by the Energy Saving Trust, which in my book means that the other kettles out there need to raise their collective games.

Anyway, my road tests indicate this kettle is unbelievably good. It has heated ordinary tapwater all the way to (and slightly beyond) boiling point, and given that I have not had an electricity bill since I got it, it has been absolutely free. You can’t beat that.