Ive just been thinking about the housing market in the uk how the whole thing is hyped to get young people into debt , and how this debt controls those young people for the rest of their lives . if banks are giving people mortgages of many times their earnings they are not doing those people a favour their just driving up the prices of houses and getting them into debt for a longer period . anyway the whole thing annoys me as people I like are likely to be caught in this whole trap , my advice would be for people to just go out and make eco houses all over the place or live in tents and dont get into any debt at all . The whole money system I feel is based on debt and flim flam most likely it will fall
Hey man, i hear what you're saying. Would you care to elaborate the idea of eco-houses, sounds like a step in the right direction, but where and how could we do this? I think the councils might have something up their sleeves to coax people away from this idea.
yes the system is set up to stop people just making a eco house and living off the land ,even if they own the land you have all sort of planning laws set up against you. but if your willing to fight and can prove your living off the land it is possible to get somewhere, http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm http://www.simondale.net/house/links.htm http://www.thatroundhouse.info/ very interesting communitys in spain , giles off this forum is over there not in that place but I think hes doing something simular http://www.thatroundhouse.info/matavenero.htm I think setting up eco villages and eco homes is a bit like guerilla warfare and what people need to do is make it a success wherever they can and look not just in the uk but in other countrys too. Even if you dont personally want to live in one tomorrow you could support the concept give political support , go and help build places At the moment it seems that in pembroke there may be good prospects , Ive volunteered to go help build eco houses in the coming year with lammas , I have a house so Im doing it because I believe in the concept and that we need to get more people into living with small pieces of land in the countryside . this isnt going to happen with normal housing developments If you divide a farm into lots of plots of a couple of acres and you garden it as opposed to have a dairy herd or some sheep on it you can produce far more from a given piece of ground and feed far more people . If those people kept bees for candles and had woodstoves and grew lots of trees and lived in a very local ecological way they would reduce some of the burden on the planet generally and free up a lot of resources that otherwise they would use in living what we think of as the normal british lifestyle. anyway the thing our entire world is based on fossil fuels is about to reach its peak production if oil hasnt already which a lot of people think it as , so we will be faced with some choices live more sustainably ,or have more oil wars but say with china next time not Iraq . So thats why its important to show successful examples of sustainability , if anybody fancys coming down as a hip forum group to help on building eco villages we could do that, you might find that once you have built a place for someone else that you are better able to build one for yourself or join a community that was starting up
Such is the role of capalatism, the mortgage culture started with Thatcher in the 80's at least the percentage of wage earned spent on repayment is a bit lower nowadays. Not sure you will be able to convince the youth that living in fields making candles around a woodburner is the way forward though.
well as it stands they dont think they have that option , and whether we like it or not fossil fuels are going to run out soon some people believe we have already reached peak oil and that soon in the uk we will reach peak gas , gas in many ways is worse than oil in that there isnt a gradual decline just a steep fall and then there is no gas what are the other options for heating a house nuclear which again is going to go through a peak and wont last long , so personally Id rather be in a eco house with a means of heating and cooking and lighting than in all the millions of houses depending on a nationalgrid thats likely to go down looking at a gas cooker that wont light. The things we ought to be doing now is replacing all our farming for meat with more market gardens and far more trees and forest gardens , and coming up with more efficient biomass and woodstoves , teaching people how to preserve their own food so that their larder is full of dried beans and kilner jars rather than tins . If your talking about young people we should teach them at school things like gardening and how to preserve their own food and make their own things . If you look at how few people know how to do things that practically everyone in the country used to know like growing food or making clothes its quite amazing . My grandmother made all her own clothes and her familys clothes she also made some of her own furniture including a welsh dresser as well as running a business , how many people make their own clothes today or repair their clothes or shoes even
if the devils didnt run the world johnny, i'd be right there with ya, but since they do i just keep my mouth shut. but i am going on my 31st debt-free year. freedom is great, sure you get cold and hungry hear or there, but work is voluntary. i could leave tomorow and be happy.
Depends where you are but all structures have to have planning permission. Most undeveloped land is classed as agricultural so any buildings would need justification for farming purposes. Placing living accomodation on farming land is severely frowned upon.
This Land is (not) Your Land ENGLAND - Under the UK's historic right to roam legislation, Britishers have long cherished the right to meander over 1.3 million acres of common heath, moor and mountain land. But now, Prime Minister Tony Blair is being pushed (by wealthy land owners, including the Duke of Westminster) to give roamers the boot. Environment Minister Michael Meacher has proposed allowing ramblers to roam free on 3.2 million acres in England and Wales as long as they respect closed gates, leash their dogs and don't start open fires. Blair has put off any decision until the year 2000. The UK, which lacks a comprehensive land registry, is peppered with a hundreds of unowned parcels of land. Often the only way to find out if a parcel is owned is to erect a structure on it or try grazing animals there and wait for deeds to be produced. The Land is Ours [10 Highwood Close, Orpington, Kent, BR6 8HT] advocates seeking out unowned land and claiming the sites as locations for eco-villages or to serve groups in genuine need of land. http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/spring98/departments/aroundWorld.html I've signed up for the lammas project myself jonny, might see you down there... I'm researching these areas of unowned land. I don't consider myself to be that young anymore but i've been speaking to my younger siblings and their friends, they think it's a fantastic way to live. Especially as they can keep most of their commodities, there will still be electricity. I noticed that most of these communes use wind or solar power, do you think a bio-diesel generator would work as well? What about setting up next to a river and utilising hydro-power? Surely having all of these sources to hand would be most beneficial.
you can use pv solar systems but they dont produce lots of energy in the winter months ,but people can still get by . I think it would be possible for people to club together to get a large windmill or maybe biomass generation maybe micro hydro in the right position . I think a big thing is designing our way of life to not need that much electricity , there are things like cookers or washing machines that we run on electric that we could run on wood or human power . I have a rayburn cooker that heats all my hot water I can cook on it and it heats my house , I run it on wood and waste paper , I have a hand crank washing machine (as well as a electric one I dont use..I also have a electric stove I dont use ) cooking food and heating and washing clothes are some of the highest uses for electricity if you can find non electric ways of doing these things apart from saving you lots of money it means that a renewable system will have to provide less . a recumbant set up would be better I think http://cyclean.biz/pictures.html I dont think anyone makes a hand crank washing machine like mine anymore Ive seen one in a museum, it takes up less space than the bicycle set up and works really well , for a spin dryer get a old victorian mangle or you could do your washing in some big tubs and use a washing dolly or posser again this is hand powered and doesnt cause global warming or use electricity. I think we can learn a lot from the period when people started to get machines but before they were engine or electric powered , look at the gadgets you have and try and find human powered versions . As for biofuels john jeavons is looking into sustainable growing of biofuels in a small way very interesting guy on gardening good talk by him http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/484
House prices are going through the roof and at the end of the day, Estate agents will become their own worst enemy if they continue raising fucking prices. No wonder many people adopt the bavarian way of life, rent and be merry (No offence intended as I believe it is a very good thing)
Estate agents don't raise prices John, supply and demand does. I'm sure little green houses are fun, would of loved one myself once upon a time, can't see the way to fit 60 million people into them though. It's fun to try and live outside the system, though in many cases it is a facade because they rely on assistance from others for their basic needs (quite often expressed as rights). Love the encouragement from johnny regarding the machines, cool as a cucumber.
At this rate in the year 2014, we will all be living in caravans or barges.The housing market prices keep getting raised. Now we might have another boom or crash.
The system makes it impossible to live outside it , there are people in america alive today who had parents who never had any money I dont mean they were poor I mean they never had any money were not part of a money system they either made all the things they had or used barter . What stopped that is land charges being made payable in money , to get that you needed to make money which made you liable for taxes . The system wants you to be dependant on it , it wants you in debt and consuming crap . Its gradually worked to make people more and more dependant on it , at one time most people had their own wells and their own sewage system but the system wants you dependant on it so they try to stop things like compost toilets and people digging their own wells by red tape . And this same system is taking over the entire globe so there are few places you can go to avoid it . One of the best crops for a person wishing to be independant is marijuana and lots of backwoods hillbillys used to grow it in the states and make their own clothes and rope out of it, and then when the federal government made it illegal they sent people to destroy these poor people crop so they couldnt make their own long johns and suchlike. They did the same to people making their own whiskey The planning laws are set up to stop big farms being broke up and lots of people smallholding and being more independant , there are some smallholdings but generally they are expensive because the planning laws stop artificially more being set up . its easy to take over a smallholding and make it part of a big farm , but much harder to take over big farms and make lots of smallholdings , and this isnt about protecting the countryside as people have no real trouble building superstores and powerstations or rabbithouse housing estates But as fossil fuels run out I see people becoming more independant of a what will be a impotent central government , things that are organised on a large scale will just cease working and people will do things on a local scale
Hey man, I'm glad you've brought this point forward, I've been wanting an option like this for years. I've heard of people setting up communes (etc) in Devon but didn't realise how good the houses could be. When i first saw that woodland house i thought it wasn't real, it looks too good to be true. It's real. Have you been involved in anything like this before? I've been looking at unowned land but it's still difficult to decipher whether or not it's legal, even people on private land with permission are finding it difficult to live in peace. I'm absolutely serious about getting involved this summer, I don't really have any ties, I'm self employed and I'm usually not that flush anyway, making money doesn't satisfy that much. I waste what extra i have. I'd rather my hard work went into something more constructive, something that has an outcome, something i can call my own. I can't see me ever been out of dept if I don't change my lifestyle dramatically. Maybe it won't work, i could be back home after a few months. The winter could kick in and my fire might not be good enough, the insulation might be crap. Maybe the water will freeze and just wouldn't be able to cope, but at least i tried. At least i tried to go completely green and self sufficient and if it does fail, I'll put that down to a lack of knowledge and perhaps try again. Then again maybe it'll be the best move I've made in my life, the idea of a guiltless, free and happy life is more than appealing.
