E-On

Power company E-On is hoping to build the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for a generation on the site of its present station at Kingsnorth in Kent. At a time of climate crisis, it's an obscenity.

They've been the targets of all kinds of action, from last summer's Camp for Climate Action, to a series of smaller action on April 1st (Fossil Fools Day), to their graduate recruitment stalls being so heavily targeted that they just gave up, with more action coming up at the end of this month.

One easy, comfy action can happen from this computer you're looking at. The tactic is called google-bombing.

The more links to a site, the higher it climbs in Google rankings. So, if enough people make the word 'Eon' link to the No New Coal site, pretty soon it'll top the list of anyone searching for Eon. (This tactic was successfully used a few years ago to make 'swivel-eyed loons' link to UKIP).

Two weeks ago www.nonewcoal.org.uk wasn't in the top 50 sites when searching for Eon. As I write this it's already number 13.

So a simple online action can help us get our electronic placards in their face without getting out on the cold winter streets.

If you have a website, blog, myspace, bebo, forum account, etc then please place a link to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk.

Ideally you write 'eon' and place a hyperlink to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk from that text.

Anyone can do this! Blog comments/forums are easiest. Good websites are most effective.

If you're wondering what else to write, you could copy or edit this.

To get a top 10 google ranking probably won't be to hard, but to pip Eon to the top will require a lot of effort so tell your friends, consider putting this simple action in your newsletters, spread the word online...

Notes:

* 1. It works best if you mention Eon several times in an article.

* 2. If you are posting the link in a blog post then put Eon in the title and the tags.

* 3. The more important the site the more kick nonewcoal.org.uk gets from the link.

* 4. If you leave comments on blogs or other sites, they usually ask for a name and have an optional web address. If you make your name Eon and your address nonewcoal.org.uk, it doesn't matter if the comment itself is coal-relevant or not.

* 5. If you are really determined then consider setting up a fake site like the EON Corporate Social Responsibility blog that way you can link loads of times to nonewcoal.org.uk from a site that is very relevent!

* 6. Why not take this is seriously as a real world action and forward it to people with green blogs/campaign groups etc?

It might also be worth pointing out that Eon is sometimes written E.On or occasionally E-On.


(thank you for the words, jim and merrick)

seven songs but a bit wonky(belated)

i was going to do seven songs. i really was.
and then i decided to do seven albums instead; i've just rediscovered soulseek after the death of my laptop (and all my music, following having lost many cds in between moves), and i've been having a few field days (wonky internet connection permitting). i also got given a hundred or so new songs by a very nice passing lady, and have been spending blissy days rediscovering early rem and finding out that i have a guilty weakness for the notting hillbillies. oh, and falling in chaotic love with 'hasselhoff', which would definitely have been a seven songs song.


anyhow; the things that have been being listened to in big chunks:


alligator - the national

i was living in 'the annexe' with an extraordinary man (red wine/nick cave on vinyl/living room/ballroom dancing were a regular fixture).the day alligator came out we had a listening party, with about two or three other people. i think we may have listened to it all night (with the odd tindersticks/nick intermission).
i've done drunken blogging before about what various bits of this one mean to me. as the rest of this selection are, it's an incredibly emotive album. there's also the week-hurtling-around-britain-on-the-alligator-tour, which was probably one of the best things
i've ever done. i think i should definitely do more of that sort of thing. diary note to check their next dates..


bryter later - nick drake

sunshiney days, growing veg, hurtling about, not having a job but having a wee bit of money (well, at the start), drinking much coffee, buying many books and vinyl, sitting on the front doorstep with a spliff at two in the morning and (i think - it may be rose-tinted glasses) looking at stars. and having a fair amount of fun.


against the pull of autumn - epic 45

when i first start listening to it, it's for the first track, 'i'm getting too young for all this'. the first time i heard it, it made me think of walking through hyde park at duskish. and then the next time i heard it, i was doing just that, in the rain. it fit perfectly.
i really like the weird scrunchy sound on it. the 'if destroyed still true' refrain takes me right back to being at school, but with kind of extra joyousness. and then i hear the rest of the album, and realise that i adore every song. i think that if you like hood then you'll like epic45. and vice versa. if you don't like either, then, well, you should.


clogs - lantern

one afternoon, i had some seriously bad juju. as you do. i got strokes, hugs, the massagiest massage ever, and this playing in the background. and possibly some wine. it's all a bit fuzzy. but if any album's going to get knots out, it's this one.
2:3:5 always makes me think of lying on a hillside watching shooting stars, even though i've never done such a thing.
again, the followytourybloggy thing applies to this one - i'm crossing my fingers that there's a uk date again soon. very recommended. also a good album for quiet contemplation with a big spliff, a bottle of red, and imagining that you own a rocking chair and velvet curtains.


woman king - iron & wine

there's just a beauty about iron & wine that i can't put my finger on. i think i first heard about them when i heard 'free until they cut me down' on americana 2004 and then again when i did 'all the wine' djtasticness, and i heard stuff from their collaboration-with-calexico album,'in the reins' . that's all i have to say on the matter, apart from 'oooh'.


slumberwall - packhorse gig

with huge thanks to the aforementioned very nice passing lady for this, and with huge thanks to mahalia (of course) for playing it, and whoever recorded it too. i had a little cry when i heard it; this music is *special*. i don't really know what else to say about it.
except thank you again.


uncut americana 2004 - various artists

the hottish (maybe) summer of 2004: i was in love, turned 25, met my boyfriend for packed lunches in graveyards during the week, had pink hair and a big smile....
i fell for this whole compilation instantly.
it's not country. honest. at least, not in the garth brooks sense...







it's struck me that none of these are *new* new. maybe i don't get on with modern things....

actually, that's rubbish. one of my friends really likes my chemical romance and fallout boy. i have spent several red wine-fuelled evenings declaring my liking of them, and may have a guilty download or few that i've been bouncing round my bedroom to.... damn my apparent love of emo combined with musical snobbishness. i'll be listening to the darkness next. what was that i said about not really knowing about anything modern?)

seven good things revisited

ok, so it's ten months or so late, but the time's come where there actually *are* seven good things, instead of desperately clutching at straws. and in my current mission to make myself like london a whole lot more, they're mostly southerncentricified...


deptford

i went on a freebie guidedwalk thingy in new cross the other week, which was ace - lots and lots of local history, stories of exploding chip shops and secular societies, and other randomness.. it meandered into deptford a wee bit - there was talk of theories of a super-henge in the area, and a standing stone under platform 2 of brockley station... .my favourite bit of it all was st peters church - full on skull and crossbone gates (see enormous pic below), and christopher marlowe buried somewhere in the grounds. looks even better at night :)


apples

who'd have thought that there'd be an abundance of apples down here? well, i guess it's pretty obvious that you'd find them *somewhere*, but i'd never really thought about it.. the lovely people at organic lea have been scrumping and juicing apples from waltham forest. i pottered along t'other week and did a wee bit of picking, including the weeniest apple i've ever seen.

and yes, much crumble was eaten that night.


ginger cat

sadly, big bad bob died this earlier this year. not a good thing in the slightest. but back to the good thing theme, at the moment i'm getting kitteh fixes from Ginger Cat, a mean purring ginger machine who likes to stalk around the back garden, viciously swat at my hands and hijack the sofa. if you see him in the street, he'll make the most amazing 'mwaaooaaah' noises, run in front of you, and roll on his back. photo to follow when he's not camera shy.

spinach and composting

my next door neighbour has a dustbin under the tree in his front garden gathering dust. my wednesday project is (providing he doesn't want it) attacking the bottom with a hacksaw and starting some compost going. i've been living in the same house for nine months now, but spent most of it in a state of denial (well, of REALLY wanting to move, and thinking it might happen soon, and it not happening at all...) and therefore did nothing compostworthy until now.
oh, and planting spinach to see if it works :)

tindersticks playing next month

in a chapel. yes, i'm prepared to sell a kidney to get a ticket....
hopefully an improvement on nick cave in may (one round at the bar was twenty quid, i was stuck at the back behind incredibly tall people, my gig companion doesn't seem to actually like music that much... i walked out after about half an hour. meh.)

but yes, i think i definitely want to go to this. with a different gig companion.

honesty boxes

at the moment i live in east dulwich, which is as far as i can tell is generally inhabited by braying twats and yummy mummies (you're in serious danger of being ploughed down by three wheeled pushchairs and toddling tarquins whenever you leave the house, and the local 'ethical market' sells muesli bowls made by young offenders for a tenner a pop. worthy i'm sure, but i really really really really hate it. i'm not sure whether i emphasised that enough). however, there's always a silver lining - there's a house round the corner from me which seems to always have various flowers/veg plants on the front wall, with a load of envelopes in tupperware. it's normally 50p a plant. so far i has parsley, foxgloves, violas and i'm off this afternoon to see what else is out there :)

getting my arse into gear enough to apply for a housing co-op place

one with gardens and kittehs and about a hundred other people (it's a whole street). and it's not in east dulwich. nuff said & fingers crossed.