Freesteel Blog » 2011 » June

Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 11:04 pm - - Whipping 1 Comment »

I have had some long running FOI disputes about the handling of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) because they are pointlessly kept confidential, unlike the amount you paid for your house, the name of your mortgage company, or any planning applications you have taken out on your property.

My campaign took a turn when I went to an afternoon talk by Luciana Berger MP about government climate change policy and what was going on with the new Energy Bill. I read the text of the Bill off my phone while the meeting was getting going.

Bingo!

Here is Clause 73:

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Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 12:07 am - - Kayak Dive 2 Comments »

The week of hard boat diving in the sound of Mull with the club carried off very well, though we shall not speak of the incident with the octopus.

Unusually, the dogsbody assistant on the boat was far more senior than the skipper. His name was Alan and he had run a dive charter business in the area for many years until he retired. For some reason, he chose our week to spend some time out at sea. This was fantastic as he knew all sorts of dives which the skipper didn’t know about, and was trusted. Because of him we double-dipped the Falls of Lora.

Alan had strong opinions about what places were good, and what was over-rated (eg don’t bother with the Summer Isles, they’re a waste of time, the diving’s no good there) — which was amazing because he had never once himself been underwater. Everything he knew came from dropping his paying divers in different parts of the ocean and listening to what they had to say when they came up. He gave completely accurate dive briefings.

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Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 6:37 pm - - Kayak Dive

The camera flooded with a tablespoon of water today. Bum! I felt like such a spoilt child getting this camera last week that it serves me right. I wanted some cheap and cheerful one, but the shop was out of stock, so I tried to buy the expensive one. But something was wrong with my head that day that I’d forgot my PIN numbers to both debit cards and had to cycle home to fetch cash from Becka. Then I got the camera package home and there was no camera in the box! I went round the shop the next morning and he didn’t believe me because I had been so erratic, so I bought another camera at cost price for the week. And now it’s fecked. Tits!

Well, a lot of more serious things could have gone wrong this week (like my air supply) but didn’t. I nearly lost my regulator on one dive when Becka mistook my hose for a stem of kelp with which to pull herself along and I had to pry her fingers off it.

Everyone is going home tomorrow, but we’re staying up a couple of days extra to kayak dive in Loch Sunart and another place to the north of that, having been tipped off a few good sites. Only problem is we’ve not got a GPS, except for the one on my android phone. Hmm. Am I going to look forward to breaking that on this week as well? We’ll see.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 10:24 pm - - Kayak Dive

I’m on hardboat diving holiday in the Sound of Mull.

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