Fossil Fuel Subsidies

 It's kind of scary to realise just how much fossil fuels are subsidised.

It was the UK budget that really shocked me, with £1.3 billion subsidy for North Sea oil.  I can't for the life of me see how the government can reduce subsidies for green energy while spending this much on subsidising more fossil fuels.

But it's not just our government.  Everyone is doing it.  If you factor in the cost of health problems caused by air pollution and the costs of global warming then the international subsidies both direct and indirect are absolutely staggering.  (If fossil fuel companies don't pay for the costs of people with asthma, etc. caused by air pollution, then that is an indirect subsidy as someone else is paying the cost.)

The total international subsidy internationally has been calculated by the IMF at trillions of dollars.  Around 6% of Global GDP.  You could probably argue about some of the things included in the calculation (I have doubts about some of the figures related to vehicles), but the total figure is still  terrifying.

I have no idea what can be done - I don't have the money and resources that the oil, gas and coal industries have - but I feel the need to try.

I'm one of those people who take the time to write individual letters to my local MP, so I guess another letter is due. (Our previous MP was great, she had a track record on green issues - our new guy is someone I don't yet know much about.)

Great summer for bookshop

 The Weldmar hospice staff newsletter just came round.  Some very nice compliments for the bookshop - we've had very strong sales this summer.  We expected to do better than last year, but we didn't expect to be up by over 40% !

It's a whole combination of things. We've got more volunteers; we're better at spotting what will sell; we've got display tables outside the shop whenever it isn't raining; we've gained a reputation for friendly service and we've got a lot better at pricing.  We still use Amazon and ABE as a guide, but we also have become better at recognising when the pricing there is being done by  guesswork and have a lot more confidence in knowing when to price above or below the Internet prices.

It's very good for morale.

We definitely caught more of the tourist trade this year.   We're learning which books are seasonal. Children's books sell much better in the summer as families are on holiday together and children of working parents are often out with their grandparents.

University text books also sell better in the summer as the students are home from university. We've had good sales of things like recent books on organic chemistry.  I still don't know how we came to have a donation of a large number of high quality books on university maths and chemistry, but that particular donor has helped us raise a lot of cash - it's a real shame that there was no gift aid on it. 

If you're a taxpayer and donate anything valuable to a charity shop, make sure that you fill in a gift aid declaration (and ask for a form if staff forget to offer).  We'd have made over a hundred pounds extra for the Hospice if there had been gift aid on the text books.