Friday 1st October 10

As it was raining all day, I did relatively little outside.  I was awake early and did a fair bit of sorting things out around the house... but spent a lot of time on the computer.

The 10:10 organisation, which I'm proud to be a supporter of, had announced last night that in the morning there was to be a new mini-movie released, and I posted the message onto facebook to suggest to people that in the morning they should check it out.  I got an email to say it was released, and I watched No Pressure... and was really shocked and horrified.  It depicted a teacher and a class of children, talking about climate change and the teacher asked who was doing the 10:10 carbon reduction, to which all but two put their hands up.  The two who weren't doing anything were asked to confirm that they weren't bothering... and then the teacher pushed a red button and blew them up; lots of strawberry jam and ketchup splattered all over the other children.  The scene switched to a workplace with a boss talking to his workforce, similar situation with two people saying they weren't bothering.  The boss was handed a red button and pushed it, exploding the two non-participants.  Then there was a scene at a football pitch with an iconic footballer saying he wasn't interested in 10:10, and he was similarly blown up.  The final 'victim' was a voice over person finishing a take, and in answer to the question 'and what are you doing personally to reduce your carbon emissions?' she answered that she thought that doing the voice over was enough.  The interviewer then pushed the red button, splattering the studio glass with the pretend blood and guts.

I found this horrible and very negative, nasty to watch, and the wrong message to put across.  I would never advocate killing someone who wasn't getting involved in reducing their emissions... nor would I joke about it, suggest it or even think about it.  Sure, I get angry with frequent flyers, indulgent meat-eating gluttons, petrol heads driving everywhere and other people not behaving responsibly in the light of the climate emergency... but they don't deserve to be killed!  I feel that there is enough anger about the issues for some people to consider environmental terrorism... after all, some people believe what they believe so strongly they become suicide bombers or plant IEDs to kill and maim their enemies.  We don't need this behaviour transferring into the environmental movement.  Also this film could be used to portray us eco activists as over the top, wacky, etc, and I think it is unhelpful to 'our cause'.  I found the 10:10 contact details and rang them, spoke to a nice person called Harriet, and explained my feelings and asked them to remove it from the website. 

There was a lot of comment, on the Guardian website and on facebook, with at least one well-known supporter of 10:10 saying he'd taken off the tag and was parting company from that arm of the sustainability movement henceforth.  Many people said they disliked the film, thought it was horrible, did the cause no favours.  Other commentators thought the film was funny, or might shock some people into action.  It was fascinating to see the comments coming in, and to follow this story.  I don't know what time it was, but some time in the afternoon, sense prevailed and 10:10 took the video off their website and offered an apology.  I rang Harriet again and thanked them. I'm glad that people power isn't dead!

I didn't spend all day on the computer.  I visited Debbie over the road mid morning as it was her birthday, and gave her one of Gill's home made cards and chatted with her for 20 minutes.  I did a bit of work in the garden late afternoon dumping a sack of gubbins onto a heap, and collecting the crop of windfalls.  I got a trailer load of logs together for Ann's party, as she'd asked if I could bring some as a birthday present.  I also got a small bag of dried fruit together, and a small nut selection too, as I thought she'd appreciate these.

So I had a bite to eat at 5pm but at 730ish set out to go to Ann's on the other side of the river.  It was still raining.  I really enjoyed this party, and had good conversations with new friends Penny and Kate, current friends Sarah, David, Will and Helen, and old friends Jonathan, Belinda, Jadzia and Keith.  I had a super time... I love parties, and haven't been to as good a one as this for quite a while.  Almost at the end I did a few balloon models, and left at midnight, taking less than 15 minutes to get home.