It's not cheap being green.

[Weatherlawyer]

What it costs with a rather large victorian house and a for British standards, a rather large garden, is another 100,000 quid.

For that you get a lot of glass wool, several wood burning stoves, two or three turbines and a rewire job, a new roof and several outbuildings including a rather perilous looking outhouse loo.

I know what I'd have done with the =A3100,000.

Still if you factor in some very average hand held film work (probably cadging help the way they got the gardening done) the initial outlay would be amply repayed in the TV series.

Of course turning your wife into a vegetarian in the process could be an added expense.

[Weatherlawyer]

I forgot to mention the cottage industry of recycling the fat they use. Which they get from a couple of pigs?

Someone bring me up to date on that process will you?

I can't help wondering what ever happened to that idea of installing an old car engine under the house to run a generator, provide heat and some mechanical take off.

There must be hundreds of scrapped diesels with perfectly adequate engines going to the crusher every week in the big cities. I wonder why he never looked at something like that?

[dom]

It just seems to be more of the same old cra-cra-crazy stuff each week. Another Heath Robinson contraption that adds to their overall consumption of "stuff" to bring very small scale eco-payoffs. I can't believe that the number of people going back and forth consuming fuel can possibly be covered by the tiny biodiesel production (especially if you include the production crew). Whilst it's all no doubt lots of fun for them - there was probably one or two good tv progs in there - not a whole series.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think its more 'proof of concept'

Now a gas turbine powered by waste cooking oil..theres a thought - stuck in a CHP system.

[meow2222]

I'd say its more a proof of junk tv profitability. The idea that its expensive going green is bunk from the start.

NT

[Ian Stirling]

I think it's more 'poorly costed, debatably engineered gestures'. If the aim was to get towards self-sufficiency as much as possible, while spending as little money as possible it was a failure.

If the aim was to make an interesting TV program, it succeeded.

[David Hansen]

On 17 May 2006 00:15:42 -0700 someone who may be "Weatherlawyer" wrote this:-

You neglected the cost of keeping the students in alcohol and other things like the building work (roof in particular), water wheel, at least two solar water heating systems and the greenhouse heating system.

Personally I think it is a good series of programmes, not least because it shows that being green can be fun and neither the people or things involved are as boring as the anti-green lobby have long asserted they are.

[Helen Deborah Vecht]

"Weatherlawyer" typed

Wouldn't turning you wife vegetararian _save_ money? Beans are _cheap_ !

Or would there be the additional expense of meaty 'rescue' takeaways? ;-)

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 17 May 2006 13:56:44 +0100 someone who may be Helen Deborah Vecht wrote this:-

That was something I was pondering. However, as an example of the most evil sort of person on earth (according to the politically correct), white, heterosexual, meat-eating and male, I had not been brave enough to ask the question.

[Weatherlawyer]

What question?

If killing a couple of pigs would upset my wife I would have spared them. It's as simple as that. I have nothing against vegetarianism or any of that stuff. But amarriage is a artnership.

As for the programme, I liked it too. But for an 100 thousand I could do what I wanted for a lot longer. I could hire a deputy prime minister for about 9 or 10 months and stop him being whatever colour the opposite of green is.

(That would take a considerable numer of pigs though no doubt.)

[Helen Deborah Vecht]

David Hansen typed

I'm white, middle-class & heterosexual but I balance this with being: female disabled Jewish

so my evil is balanced...

[Guy King]

The message from Helen Deborah Vecht contains these words:

I'm all up one end. Fat, bald, lazy...

[Owain]

And an awfully large trough...

Owain

[Mary Fisher]

...

Depends on the meat you eat, not your colour, sex or whatever.

:-)

Mary

[The Natural Philosopher]

Cheapest would be simply to serve her up for dinner

[Helen Deborah Vecht]

The Natural Philosopher typed

Nah, legal fees are never cheap.

[Owain]

But is cannibalism actually an offence?

After all, she might not be dead - give her crutches and enjoy a boned leg joint.

Owain