NEW UPDATES POSTED BELOW:
I was link surfing today over at Dellers, and I found myself looking at the long list of bios for the 1010 team on their website. I noted something curious in the bio posted on Splattergate’s designer Franny Armstrong, because it was rather off the wall. She listed a “guilty pleasure”. Well no harm, we all have those, but at the same time she says her Actual job: “Asking powerful people for money and/or emissions cuts“.
The “emissions cuts” part I get. But wait a minute…not in season blueberries? Hmmm.
Now I don’t know much about growing blueberries, but I did find this on a BBC gardening site:
Blueberries produce fruit on branches that were produced the previous year. For the first two or three years of a blueberry’s life it’s not necessary to prune it much, apart from keeping the plant tidy. After this, blueberries need regular pruning to maintain plant vigour and high quality berry production. Prune them between November and March when the plant is dormant.
They need cold weather apparently:
“These bushes are hardy and require a minimum of 750 hours accumulated chilling time below 8 degrees centigrade in order to produce good yields of berries, so please do not put them into your greeenhouse over the winter.”
OK, so you can’t grow them “off season” in a local greenhouse. That means UK “off season” blueberries have to come someplace where the “off season” is opposite, like another hemisphere.
Looking more into blueberries, I find this from a Latin American Markets site on Chilean blueberry production:
While the US is the main importer of Chilean blueberries, Europe, and in particular the UK, are also strong markets.
“We’ve seen an explosion in UK blueberry consumption over the past two to three years,” says Hortifrut’s Francisco Ortuzar. “Unlike some other parts of Europe, the market is familiar with blueberries and category managers have done a good job of promoting the fruit.”
Huh, imagine that. Demand for blueberries in the UK is ummm ‘exploding’. Given what I know, I would imagine the demand would increase in the “off season” when no local blueberries can be harvested.
I wonder how they get there? Oh, here we go:
Tesco blueberries are harvested in Argentina and are flown to the UK for sale.
So I think it would be safe to assume that Franny is eating off season blueberries, flown in from Chile or Argentina using the speedy but horrible CO2 belching airplanes to preserve freshness.
Yet WE are the ones that have to reduce our consumption of things like “guilty pleasures”. Ya know, modern, guilty, dirty things like air travel, cars, and incandescent lights (though I do like the new LED replacements), to keep the planet from “burning up” due to CO2 emissions. And if we don’t, or give an indifferent shrug like those school kids in her movie…we get the red button.
She also mentions in her bio:
“Not flying to America or Australia to launch my climate movie”
…yet Franny can have her off season jet set blueberries. No pressure to eliminate that. I guess Franny never stopped to think how “not in season blueberries” get to her local shop.
Now that’s just plane stupid.
UPDATE: 8:05 PM PST 10/7/10 I was informed by email of some silliness. For the record, somebody who obviously didn’t like this story has signed up my name as a “supporter” at the 10:10 website, here: http://www.1010global.org/uk/people along with Christopher Monckton, and James Dellingpole. This is of course false, and the product of a simple minded prank. I don’t know what this stupidity will do for them, especially since it is obvious none of us would sign up to 10:10. Here’s the screen cap:
UPDATE2: 11:40PM PST 10/7/10
It appears the application of names is being handled by a static list superimposed at the website. The people counter continues to rise, but the list does not change. Here’s a screencap from 11:38PM of the “people” page at http://www.1010global.org/uk/people
If you visit the other pages on the website, you’ll find that static list with my name on it, along with Monckton and Delingpole, superimposed on it, even though the counter has advanced from 94,885 to 94,910 signups, a total of 25 names, more than enough to move the list down.
But it appears the “legal” page here: http://www.1010global.org/legal has what appears to be a correctly updated list:
How fun! Let’s watch the amusement unfold.
Hmm. I think she should be shown the error of her ways.
No pressure.
Now where did I put my anti-hypocrite button.
As long as she is below the average of the 6 billion or so of us in energy usage then she can hold the moral high ground I reckon..
Growing up in the UK, I always wondered what on earth these “blueberries” were that featured so prominently in Hollywood cartoons and films.
We had billberries, blackberries and even rowanberries – but no blueberries.
Now I may have been away from the UK several decades and things obviously have changed and “forbidden fruits” are jetted in – isn’t this on a par with Gore and his energy consumption????
Andy
PS Still haven’t tried them despite their abundance down under
That settles it! I’m going to do my part by not eating off-season blueberries! Not a big shock that Franny is like the rest of the lot. Do as I say, not as I do.
And remember to emphasise always that O2 the providers of my broadband right now are the SOLE sponsors of 10:10 and their excellent video they produced together. At least we can change our telecoms providers easily.
And her fancy Levis? Flown in from China?
…and she wanted to hit Ed Milliband (possibly UK’s next Prime Minister) over the head!
She’s the kind of child of whom the CRU said in 2000: ‘within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html)
Now if someone could just find a picture of her throwing a snowball last winter, it would really make my day!
Or perhaps a stupid video:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRD8lpY_ifI
I wonder if she likes Kiwi;
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/10/kiwigate-nz-government-abandons.html
peakbear says:
October 7, 2010 at 3:32 pm
“As long as she is below the average of the 6 billion or so of us in energy usage then she can hold the moral high ground I reckon..”
To the contrary, I expect she is part of the 20% of the world’s population which consumes 76.6% of the world’s goods (and the energy needed to make them) while 80% of humanity gets the remainder. Seems fair to me?
I see examples of that all the time. Some vegan in Minnesota claiming theirs is a more sustainable lifestyle. Then I ask them what they eat in January and where it came from because no veggies are growing within 1000 miles of Minnesota in January.
They are eating food that arrived from Chile or Argentina or Brazil. MAYBE if they are lucky it came from California which could arrive by train. In my opinion, meat is the best use of vegetable protein there is. It can be kept over winter alive, feed can be stored, and meat can be put to market at any time of the year.
Actually, Franny did fly to the US for her premiere – and Phelim McAteer got manhandled out of the press conf for asking her about it.
I bet he’s glad the RED BUTTON hadn’t been invented then.
C’mon, you’re being unreasonable. If climate campaigners were meant to lead by example then nobody would want to be a climate campaigner.
Well, that’s why it is a “guilty” pleasure. Duh.
she’s just another typical warmista leader . . . do as I say and not as I do. Al Gore’s use of private jets, David Suzuki’s multiple residences and children and now Fanny . . .
They are all the same, convinced their secular religious beliefs in environmentalism are inviolate and that makes them, as progressive smarty pants, have the right to tell everyone else what to do.
Or else.
No pressure of course.
Of course, some are more carbon neutral others.
It’s a ‘guilty’ pleasure because she feels guilt for her hypocrisy. Since hardly any blueberries are grown in the UK, they have to be flown in from all around the world all year round.
REPLY: No doubt, but why broadcast it next to “I’m not flying to USA and Australia to promote my movie”? If kids get blown up for something as simple as an indifferent shrug in a classroom….
nice one Anthony, yeah you can always trip the AGWer’s up with that one. Most consumer goods AGWers buy are moved half way round the world, therby guzzling carbon at ludicrously inefficent rates, while at the same time they proudly boast about offsetting their carbon footprint with effectively pityfully weak gestures.
It would be nice to start a meme going, if some AGWer broadcasts some carbon offseting token gesture they’re doing, then they get a photo with an arrow pointing to some consumer good they’ve got on them, easiest thing their clothes, the arrow says where this item came from ( other side of world ), how much carbon it took to travel to them, and how long it would take for their carbon offset routine to pay off that consumer item, like serveral hunderd hours.
It would really nail them to the cross of hypocracy.
Of course, they can’t get us back for us ‘cos we know carbon burning is good! 🙂
This is Frannie Armstrong and Ed Miliband (he was our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and also partly responsible for our horrendously expensive Climate Change Bill and our representative at Copenhagen) touring the UK as a double act explaining to warn us of the dangers of Global Warming. Ed is very concerned about ‘negative feedback’ which gives us global Climate Change!!!!
The Age of Stupid indeed!!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/shantabarley#p/a/u/1/1r29uVnKfaQ
Typical for a “climate campaigner” to be clueless about her own direct and indirect CO2 footprint.
A well-to-do friend of mine has fully bought in to climate alarmism and is pressing me for silly measures at work to reduce our energy usage. Since she and her husband travel a lot in their private jet, I indicated that when she stops traveling, I will get to work on my office energy saving program. Her reply? “My travel has nothing to do with this.”
Where do you even start with these people?
Yet another useful idiot.
A pious piece by the Picaso pusher on why you should support 10:10
“….they had a team of interns there who used to sleep on the floor of their offices and forage for their food out of dustbins, now that’s dedication…”
(Looks like only Franny got the blueberries – hence the guilt.)
“…these guys seem to have some kind of direct link to the Zeitgeist…”
(Hence the splattered children.)
There are some very curious close ups – I eventually realized that these are designed to capture the dainty 10:10 bracelet – not some kind of fascination for the camera person vis a vis Fred’s trousers.
(I would recommend that anyone seen wearing 10:10 jewelery be avoided at all costs – they may have a button box)
I’m not sure that it would be possible to make this stuff up. Be sure to watch it before it is taken down!
Sometimes I worry that we are paying armies of these twits through their corporate shakedowns and back channel subsidies from the government. But then I see how truly stupid, clueless and out of touch with mainstream opinion they are. There are a lot of hard working people who might be fooled once or twice by some climate propaganda, but won’t identify with the anti-capitalist brat in the picture.
Is it just my imagination running wild or does that 10:10 symbol really look a bit like a pair of handcuffs!!
I’m sure she has no clues as to how blueberries are grown.. or meat for that matter.
She says she won’t be flying on the 10-10-10 to promote her movie. She does not say if she will fly before or after. Maybe she will already be there.
Just like the Prince of Wales, the environmentalists think they have a higher calling and they are here to save us all…
HYPOCRITES!