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People

Rocker who lives in a shed

Tim Barry has been rockognised.

The singer songwriter from Richmond VA lives back of his girlfriend’s house in a shed with a busted kerosene heater – not great at this time of year, but ok, really, when you are wearing camouflage coveralls to fight the chill.

Winter has been harsh but the shed balances Barry’s queasy relationship with fame. Since the early ’90s, he’s fronted the speed ’n’ scream punk rock band Avail, but he isn’t always as comfortable with the attention.

He’s a hermit with a publicist.…

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People

Living for free









27-year-old Katharine Hibbert is a nice middle class girl. She writes book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, and volunteers for the Food not Bombs group which finds food in dumpsters and turns it into free meals in London.
For the last two years she has freed herself by living for free,and writtten a book about it (we hope she got an advance from Ebury Press). Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society (click to buy) describes how she walked away from all her possessions (books, music and other treasures stored in mum’s garage), found a squat, and lived on food discarded by cafes and supermarkets.…

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People

Real-life Canute fights coast ruling

A retired engineer who built his own sea defences is trying to reverse a legal judgement which would result in his home being washed into the sea.

78 year old Peter Boggis has spent seven years and over fifty thousand pounds of his own money constructing a kilometre long sea wall from 25,000 tonnes of compacted clay.  He is trying to stop the sea eroding cliffs just a hundred yards away from his home at Easton Bavents, north of Southwold in Suffolk, UK. Mr Boggis started the work without planning permission.…

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People

A Freegan Feast for 500

Freegan Mark Boyle is marking Buy Nothing Day with a lunch for 500 that will cost him and his guests absolutely nothing.…

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People

Peak Oil is now says IEA

THE world will have to find four Saudi Arabias by 2030 if it wants to maintain its oil consumption habit, says the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, Dr Fatih Birol.…

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Shoestring Survivalism – book review

This is the third book I received from Paladin Press to review. I appreciate the chance to read and review these books, I have enjoyed them immensely. This book is about survivalism on a budget. Being on a budget is a full time occupation for most of us.  With these uncertain times, it’s good to have backups, ways to get along if things go wrong. It’s ludicrous to think the government will step up and take care of us, your best bet is to be your own best advocate, take care of yourself and your family. With the knowledge gained from this book, even someone on the tightest of budgets should be able to implement many of the ideas in this book with little or no financial output.…

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Tough Times Survival Guide vol 1 – book review

1192_1459_largeReading, learning, it’s what I enjoy doing. Before the internet, I would go to the three local libraries in my hometown, I would check out as many books as each on would allow, take them all home, read-read-read until I had gotten through all of them, then I return the books to their respective homes and start all over again. I tended to read non-fiction, I preferred them over fiction most of the time. With the exception of a few notable authors such as Stephen King, Jean M. Auel, and such…

With the advent of the internet and ebooks, I mostly read what I can get in digital format, including audiobooks. So these last couple of books I’ve read, I have held in my hand, turned pages, it was quite old-school for me. J I love it. Now, on to the book review.…

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Grow your own tobacco – book review

Tobacco PlantsA while back, I had some trouble with the government about buying cigarettes from outside the country (USA), it is WAS perfectly legal (at the time) to order cigarettes for import into the USA for personal use. I assure you that the cigarettes I ordered WERE for personal use, I did not trade, sell, barter or in any other way distribute these cigarettes. After receiving a threatening letter from the Dept of Homeland Security, a very scary thing to find in your mailbox, especially for a law abiding citizen! I decided that I needed to find a better way to get smokes without having to pay an arm and a leg, or having the threat of the government over my head. I found an alternative way, it’s legal and it should be doable by nearly anyone.…

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